Vague traces

Vague traces of childhood return to haunt. You feel miserable and low.

You sit for hours looking at the blank pulse of the electronic screen, addicted to shifting words and misshapen soundscapes. Images watched with red, listless eyes. You know there's no changing the past. The past decayed, and then melted away. The present is an empty waiting for the correct words to form. And no matter what old Althu said, even the future doesn't seem to last forever.

You realise that 'justice' you'd learned about in school and the academy has nothing to do with right or wrong. It is just used to justify the arrogance of power. Once you kept asking yourself why. Now you don't. The same goes with 'freedom'. No one learns freedom by rote and you cannot do a thing. Just watch the whole thing happen, just stand there firm, bleeding deep inside. If someone asks, tell them freedom cannot be had through rations.


It's just like you to find a spot like this. Here you've already failed your own dreams once. You won't probably qualify for other dreams the next year either. Your skepticism will be construed as conspiratorial. You'll just provide them with some information and emotions they can never process. And you'll be back here in two years' time saying "Yes, I'm fine, thank you..." to someone or the other, when you didn't mean that at all.

But you'll never forget. Like stale tea from inside a thermos, believe me, you'll be okay.


If someone is still listening to this rambling talk, here's an old favourite song of mine, sung before it got famous, and the singer was still nineteen.