The up-sized 'Landy' – or Land Rover for those Jap-Crap loving ignoramuses – pulls into town: then another and another, all shades and attitude and accent.
I watch them watch me and I smile and they smile. Later we hang and chat and flirt I think. I always think and I hear about what is going down in their world. It’s a different reality with overlaps and a lack of overlaps and stuff!
Trappings and brands and opinions about everything and an apathy of a different kind. Apathy caused by belonging: safe and successful – successfully safe.
Taking time out – or time off – hitting the road and getting into a different groove; with a swagger that is bred from knowing that you are reaping the rewards of your labour: a life of labour; a laboured life.
This is a planned road trip along different routes to the same inane destination. This is the one: the pilgrimage!
Some visit an ailing and aging parent; others go to town in their Sunday best; or they go to school or to church or the clubhouse or the pub; some want to smash and plunder; and some want to own your life. But most just want to get to Mecca; their Mecca where they belong. And once you have arrived, when you have found it, you more easily, you are more readily able to withdraw: so opinionated, yet largely vacuous. Redundant! Like an exclamation mark at the end of a one-word sentence.
Good people, mostly harmless I’m almost sure. Doing this doing that; saying this saying that; planning this while planning that: ambivalent, obscure. Seemingly unsure that there’s life beyond subscription: that what they say is genuinely what they will ultimately do one day. Because after all we each have to do what we have to do dude! That’s cool… But why don’t we all do what we need to do so that we can all be cool dude? Because in the doing begins the reconnection with or own humanity. We become the human – singular – in humanity. Cognoscente, committed, caring and conscious.
Look into the depths of suffering and inequality and privilege and see yourself in its midst. Let the light spill forth. Baby steps. Just let the light be switched on; let it get turned on why don’t you?
And as the day draws to a end and the fire burns low, conversation turns to thoughts of a warm bed and the last beer is freezing your already cold hand and there’s no more tea in your mug or words that have not already be said.
The expensive guitar gets snuggled away in its un-scuffed case, contact lenses stored and teeth brushed: hot water bottle and pajamas, thermal – Kway for rugged outdoor slumbers. That’s cool. I wish I could do that. Dude! I dig this isolation of belonging?
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