The Precarious Nature of Adulthood

"Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying to get some rest!" It's all in my head.  All I can hear is "do you dress like a boss-to-be or a permanent underling?" Clothes: you go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything...  

HOW DID I GET HERE?! 

Sitting in my cubicle today, I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. I love the passing of time with no alarms and no surprises in a job that slowly kills you.  Liquor provides the only mechanical relief; it is a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us. I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour... Then, I wake up to reality: an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.  They can all just kiss off into the air...

''You look so tired-unhappy,' said the lady to the man she adored.

'The plain fact is that I'm a loner, Dottie, and I fake my life like I've lived.  I'm not the one you want, babe,

I will only let you down. I'm tired of openings, closings, bad repartee; everybody knows-can't buy a thrill in this town. This ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming and I'm done digging for fire.  Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place!' 

'Shh, someone will hear! Let's go up and get some fresh air, alright?'

'I'm less concerned about fitting into the world...Your world that is....I went to a shrink to analyze my dreams. She says there's a whole generation with a new explanation in the West!'

'There's always a siren singing you to shipwreck. So, don't buy everything they sell you.' 

'How about way on down south, London town?'  

'Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land! There's no other road, no other way... I Live this moment as my last. People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shit which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it here!'

'I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that you're not happy. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, then pick up your money and pack up your tent because time waits for no one!' 

'I need more time.  Same time, next year, tell me that you'll wait for me.  Hold me like you'll never let me go!'

'At one time, you've got it, and then you lose it, and it's gone forever. All walks of life: George Best, for example. Had it, lost it. Or David Bowie, or Lou Reed-'

'-Calm down; you're not going to prison. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love this land because this land was made for you and me.'

'I'm becoming less defined as days go by. Fading away...' 

'It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.'

'I've got balls like watermelons, I'm telling you. People tell me it's a sin to know and feel too much within; well, I feel numb- born with a weak heart, but I watch my daddy in bed a-dyin', watched his hair been turnin' grey, he's been workin' and slavin' his life away.  I would perish here miserably. Ain't you tired of this excruciating banality? There's a better life for me and you.'

(Morning came and morning went)

'So, you and me babe, how 'bout it?' 

'Home is where I want to be. Life's been good to me so far, plus, I'm a straight shooter with upper management written all over.'

'Go ahead, take a quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide.  Quietly he laughs and shaking his head: 'So long, Dott.'

(Forty days and forty nights, into the future to be exact)

Our young hero shrieks in realization as he is surrounded by gentle people with flowers in their hair, 'Heaven knows I'm miserable now.  Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell! '