Tim Barrus, New York Times
Why Are You Here
When we try to answer the question: why are you here, we do not mean your house, we mean on the planet. The forest. The trees. The ill-at-ease. Follow the rituals for comfort. Everywhere you care to look, you can’t stop looking. All of them riding it out day to day. Moment to moment. We cannot listen to we must not stop. I am exhausted. I’m tired. I do not know that I have more to give. I understand how it works. Without the bodies and cash, it doesn’t work. How can we make a romance out of a subservient junk heap of what we know is what we do not know, and what can we do about it. How do you fight back with nothing to fight back with. Culture wars are, in fact, warring tribes. Hate and power on the menu. The struggles just to make it through the day drain you of hope that anything can really change. The toxicity the aristocracy spews not unlike insecticide in a bug bomb spits in our mouth as if venom were as salubrious as a politician. How is it that we should not give up. For what. What is it that we have let go of. How is it that we either extend our arms, and hands to the very system and the very people who would see and do see a blindness tunnel in our deep focus like a telescope that assumes were are just so distant and far away, no one knows who we really are which is a strength, while the pretense of it – knowing things that help you pull the strings of the dog and pony show come to town – that there even is a culture to lose, we ourselves are lost inside the beast.