The post box tells me what day it is on my way to the bus stop. A monotonous, repetitious way of surviving.
And I want to escape, constantly. From the metal box. And from the concrete box.
When I step into the concrete box I step in a metre below everyone else - whilst everyone else wades through muddy waters, I'm in way over my head. You miss one day - and the waters creep up further until you can't breathe.
If I could paint, it would be of a person trapped in a box they're too big for. That's me.
How are you supposed to know when to escape? Life ties us down in extraordinary ways - so whist it would be easier to walk out - you can't.
I watch people. Walk past. Make observations - presume things I'll never know about them or their lives. Sometimes I wonder if people do that to me. I do it to myself - imagine what people think.
She sits alone on the bus, quiet. Not one of them.
Only a few months left of this hell. I'm still trying to find ways to escape from the midst of the hell whilst it's lasting though.
Get me out.
Does life ever change? Are we committed to one sense of being for our whole lives. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Sleep. Is there nothing more?
"We want more than a mere photograph of nature" - Edvard Munch.
I watch poverty on TV screens. It doesn't really exist to me.
I wrote that. Thinking it wasn't about me. But it is - it's about all of us, isn't it? We have no concept of poverty, because we have only seen it on TV screens. We're the "lucky" ones, the middle classes in the well developed countries that don't have to worry about a thing. Because we have everything we need.
I've been wondering if there are people in the world who are blissfully unaware of what we've done - how we've destroyed it with our desperation to be bigger and better and richer. I wish I could be blissfully unaware. But I know in my lifetime, things are just going to get worse.
We should have depth - we should be able to go beyond material possessions. But look at me saying that - listening to music on my laptop using the internet, which if I didn't have, you wouldn't be reading this. So everything revolves around what we do or don't have.
But there are some people who have nothing. Or next to nothing. So whilst you hear us complaining because we don't have the latest whatever, or need new clothes or music or books - we can't hear them complaining, because they don't have a voice.
We suffocate the weak - pretend we care - pretend we hear them - whilst we fight wars for economic benefit and devastate countries because of it.
Their concrete boxes are much smaller - and they're in a lot deeper than I'll ever be. I know I'll have a way out - I already have a way out, I just have to wait. They don't know when things will get better - and the chances are they'll have to wait years for it. The constricting elements of life.
