La vida absurda 



Life flows and ebbs and traps us in little spaces where nothing happens until it does, or blows us away or apart with the flood. Most of the time it is just the routine that gets that tiny little bit heavier everyday, it is that wee bit more difficult to get out of bed, to face the mirror, rinse the blooded toothbrush, pick up the razor and scrape across that face of a stranger in the mirror, drag myself upstairs with a cup of coffee trying not to think in the absurdity of it all, of these arrangements and rearrangements of atoms and energies that constitute us, that surround us, that eat away at us from all corners and off which we too unwillingly feed in this universe made wrong, based on conflict and clash and death at all levels, from the tiniest particle to the unimaginable clusters of galaxies, with us in the middle of the scale -or so we'd like to think, vain that we are, now that we are no longer at the centre of the universe and god didn't make us at his image and semblance....

I hear the news while struggle with the tie knot, the news sent to us to reassure us in schadenfreude that there is death and destruction, ,there is untold suffering, there are calamities innumerable product of the workings of the uncaring universe or the wickedness of our fellow men, but they are all far away, we are here safe in England... finish my coffee, switch the radio off, set out juggling with the rubbish that has to be put out today (it is too early, they have already threatened to prosecute me for putting the rubbish out too early but if I don't nobody will and the house will stink as it has done in the last couple of days..)

The constituent materials of the universe have arranged themselves in the world outside in no less absurd a fashion... the cyclists jump on and off the pavement ignoring the pedestrians in their path and any pretence of civility, after all they too have god and right on their side, they are 'environmentally friendly' and therefore unencumbered by the laws and regulations that constrain cars and pedestrians. A neighbour walks by with his dog on a leash. I know what I'll find on the pavement a little further down the road, a less delicate arrangement of atoms... the parking attendants wait behind a corner,, at the ready to pounce. The man that was sitting outside the furniture store yesterday, drinking strong lager and addressing the passers by, is still there, asleep on the pavement, an overturned can of Super-Strong and a small puddle next to him. One of the local shopkeepers greets me as I walk past, looks at the new Tesco supermarket across the road and sighs at the sight of the possible end of his livelihood... 

Posted: Fri - September 16, 2005 at 10:21 AM          

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