to the old lady working at the internet cafe, whom i could slam a hundred times in aftermath but only saw my childish smile in backwards retreat, we could make an example of you in our courteous, civilised new metropolis, as per a certain someone said i was often wont to do, some sort of ethnographic approach to what lack of humanity there may be in world of screens and headphones, of blank faces and pounding hearts, why in the world should i wish to make an example of you, sickly woman with cracked face who sits in the dark by day, your rule this world perhaps and i am mere observer, a hasty brushing off sends me away, without being able to engage in the very services that you offer. or the mistake that we make in this situation is that working for the money (the system that creates low wage working conditions, the worker that desires to fill this position for lack of better opportunity, because it is easy, because it is simply what is there) eliminates the very ‘you’ of this equation, for You, Other, are simply no longer there. This is not an issue of being looked down upon or prejudiced, it is the disappearance of another all together. Combined with the last 61 years of our lack of self, we come back in full force with an overbearing subjectivity that oppresses all not-self as well. it leads us to a form of exchange without humanity whatsoever, but what sort of presumption was that, anyway.

i cringed when he mentioned that words had been missing of late, but the lack of literature could have been a parallel to a similar decline of the sense of being. i am present, perhaps, in some way, a childish half-smile, but it’s only half-shock, a blinding before anger sets in, what was that about to solidify, hard-set equations, exchange is never all that, i kind of hate you sometimes, kind of, sometimes.