Some days it seems like the city becomes a sentient being, seeking to buoy you up or drag you down alternatively on a whim.
Other days it seems that no matter how much it rains here, the city is a barren wasteland desert. Sure there’s life in a desert, as any National Geographic special can tell you, but it’s hostile life.
The city is defined by walls and concrete, and its inmates take them along. We even have them in our little online prisons like Facebook where we pretend to interact with our fellow inmates.
Everything is driven to purpose, it becomes very difficult to reach out through the walls.
And so we go months without calling to the point where we don’t call because we don’t know what to say because it’s been so long and we can’t define a specific purpose for calling. Maybe we email an invite to go to a show together and then that gives a topic to speak about and a purpose to the call.
We’re restless in our little concrete boxes and we think gussying them up with knickknacks will fix it. “Buysexual” as my best friend calls it. We think if the walls are pretty we won’t mind them so much, or at the very least we’ll have something noncommittal to talk about and stare at while the real walls of the city stay up between us, even without a physical barrier.
We bleed money in this pursuit then whine that we have none. We want the nicest walls that the other inmates will be irked by them.
We fill the walls with mindless chatter, verbal and otherwise, while they remain empty of the things that matter most. Nice on the surface, beneath that either nothing or dry rot.
