Ever get that whole, “oh, piss on it all” moods?
No angry so much as just exhausted by trying to live in a world that doesn’t seem to much care for you or what you do? A world that insists you stay in your place at the margins because your clockwork is not in full synchronization with all the other Barbie and Ken influencers that get paid to try to turn us into a commercial product (or, at least, someone who endlessly consumes)?
Or, maybe just weary at being the only person who believes in holding doors open for another person (regardless of gender), or letting a car merge ahead of you in rush hour traffic (typically to get the bird flipped at you because you slowed down to do so)?
Or maybe trying to do something other than what a prompt into an AI chatbox can do: music, writing, art, opinion, philosophy, (or, I don’t know, make the sparkliest rhinestone jacket anyone has ever rhinestoned), what have you — only to see people cheer on AI slop or write a “roses are red, violets are…” composition while you are greeted with crickets? And a jacket Liberace would have envied.
Or where someone says “It’s been a while since we spoke,” acting as if it was more like “last winter”, but was closer to 20 years? And then thinking it will be as if it were last winter indeed, when you know for a near fact that you might not speak for another 10 years after they satisfy their need to say they kept in touch, or discover that you can’t go back after 20 years with the click of twin ruby slippers and chant, “there’s no place like home”.
You get a choice most of the time: take one pill to buy into the delusion and conform. Or take the other pill and stay beyond the pale.
Looking at one hand, then the other. Pausing. Contemplating. Navel gazing. Philosophizing…
Eh, fuck ’em. Toss both pills over the palings, ignore everything and walk the thin, liminal places they ignore. Piss on it all.