addicted

Today we live in a world designed to provide us with heavy dependencies. We depend on our jobs. We spend eight long hours a day, five or six days a week working our asses off for somebody who doesn’t give a shit if you live or die. What’s more we try to build ourselves a successful career just to make sure we have enough money, and we most likely forget to live for ourselves, to settle down, get married and have kids. Of course the continuous income is enticing as hell. We need it to buy necessary and unnecessary stuff as we’ve long forgotten how to grow our food or how to manufacture allurements of the eye. So we purchase our semi- or fully-prepared meals conveniently from the supermarkets, sometimes not even knowing how it looked like when it was alive, and our knick-knacks from the ‘time-and money-saving’ malls and shopping centers. We make our choices depending on their special discounts and bargains, and on some advertisements that are just thrust upon us by the media. There are billboards everywhere on the streets, posters in shops, banners on websites, spam in our private mails, flyers in our mailboxes. So, without even realizing it, we come to buy products because they’re promoted not because of their quality or products that we don’t even know what to do with just because they have a pretty persuasive ad. On top of all this we believe that we actually enjoy the guaranteed right to freedom of choice whereas in point of fact we depend on some monopolies like electricity companies, which thrive by providing a fundamental service that we’re practically dead without. We need electricity to make all this new revolutionary technology, that helps us live more comfortably, functional. We are way too attached to the bulbs that illuminate the boxes we call a home, to our electric ovens, stoves, microwaves and all sorts of kitchen robots that save us our precious time, to the fridge and washing machine we simply can’t do without, to our vital security systems that give the feeling of being snug as a rug, nevertheless to our indispensable accessories such as laptops and tablets, which aid us in staying connected to this whole world. We desperately need to check our mails, messages and the like lists on Facebook, where we share banners advertising that life is outside. All the same we nod our heads in agreement, maybe give it a like and keep staring at the screen and running the power. We depend so much on the inside of our home, where we feel protected from the dangers of the outside world. Instead of going out in the treacherous nature we prefer to connect our system to some channel that broadcasts about ‘wild life’ or stare at the fishes in our aquarium when we want to induce ourselves a relaxing state of mind. Instead of enjoying the society of a real person we prefer to make friends with complete strangers from the network. We go even there to choose our life-partners based on some profile matching sites. We became so ignorant that we don’t know how to choose anymore and what to do with our choices. Blinded by this need to make ourselves indispensable to others, we simply slip into a routine of some actions that we think we need to undertake to keep up the pace with the world. Ironically we’re still looking forward to our bleak future.

users

She caught a whiff of a familiar fragrance the moment she entered her room. So sweet, so much different from the pungent odour of alcohol mixed with stale sweat. Her head was still rumbling from the deafening row of the loudspeakers. It was still hard to hear her own thoughts. Her heart started to get back to a normal rhythm as she felt that imaginary safety taking over her whole being. She gently closed the door behind her trying to avoid the squeaking sound, with no success, of course. A flashing image of her mother having that disappointed look came across her mind. She never yelled at her, never beat her, she just stood there with that stupid look on her face. She shook her head violently chasing away that thought. She just didn’t want to think about the consequences of her actions. She felt the wall looking for the switch. As she flicked it the light flashed into her face making her close her eyes. It took a couple of moments until she got used to the brightness. She headed towards the bed, but suddenly she remembered that she wasn’t tired at all, so she decided to go to the bathroom instead. She sat down in front of her make-up mirror and started looking for her cotton ball to wipe her face clean. When she raised her head some hazel deep-set eyes stared back at her. She focused hard to catch some details of what was left of her morning make-up. To her surprise it wasn’t smudged as badly as she thought. The traces of her eyeliner were still pitch black highlighting the emptiness in her eyes, the bluish purple eyeshadow went a little bit pale, but it was hardly noticeable behind those long black eyelashes. The foundation on her cheeks seemed also intact. However, the glossiness of her lipstick wore off leaving her full lips in their pure form. Still, a perfect mask to hide behind. She gathered her locks in a ponytail and started to wipe that mask away revealing her true self. She saw anxiety mixed with anger and hatred staring back at her. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, but when she opened them again those feelings just got worse. She was wondering why she even tried it; it has never worked before, not once, not for her. She could feel her heart pumping blood towards her brain, making her burn. A constant shrieking sound replaced the music in her head bringing her on the verge of exploding. The emotions kept overwhelming her. She was seething with rage now and she didn’t even know why. She couldn’t just hold it back anymore, she had to do something. She stripped her clothes off and hurried straight under the shower. As she was trying to focus on the water she caught a glimpse of the needle mark on her arm. Definitely visible, she thought. She’ll have to explain it tomorrow. All she wanted to do was to scream. Just like a banshee. That would have relieved that intense pressure inside her but she held it back. She didn’t want to end up in a freak show again. The last thing she needed was those curious eyes which would have certainly gathered around her penetrating her private place. No, she didn’t want that. So she screamed inside what made the stabbing pain in her head unbearable. She started staring at her back arm. Surely it would fulfill her needs once again. Without realizing it she was scouting the room for her purse. She found it right next to the chair leg. After some rummaging she pulled out a ready to use syringe. She tightened her belt around her arm, pulled it with her teeth and stuck the needle exactly in the small wound made by the previous ones. At once the feeling of easiness took over her.  The pain changed into a light constant rhythm. She heard the waves of the ocean splashing against the rocks down below her feet. The seagulls were squawking from time to time somewhere far away, hiding from the driving rain. She just stood there on the edge staring at the drops in the freezing water. That moment was the long expected alleviation. No more frightening tomorrows, no more satisfactory reasoning, no more keeping up appearances, no more hiding behind masks, no more pretending it’ll be fine one day, no more concealed tears, no more humdrum living, no more…just the sound of the drops hitting the water…

power of money

Once upon a time there was a child, the apple of everybody’s eye in the small village. He spent his childhood flitting from one smile to another. No fear, no hurting, not even a single twinge of sadness filtered into his life. No wonder he wanted to give back what he received, so one fine day he decided to become a priest, thinking it was the best way for doing that. He was over the moon when he got into the college. All was just turning up the way he planned. Then he met his colleagues. They were like chalk and cheese, funny colorful fellows – each and every one of them, having different social and financial backgrounds, different beliefs, different tastes. The one thing they had in common was their motivation. They all thought that the god business is a good business. Neither his teachers were any different. Some of them even requested an amount of money to give the students permission to sit in their exam. No need to say he was bitterly disappointed. However, he graduated from that university and started practicing as a priest in his home village, where to his surprise the series of disappointments persisted. An elderly lady came to confession. After she enumerated her sins she handed over an envelope containing a sum of money hoping her sins would be more easily forgiven; the mayor came to his office and asked him without any trace of shame to promote his campaign after service. Once again he found himself holding an envelope before having the chance to disagree on the proposition. It was only then he started to realize what his former colleagues were talking about. Money simply kept flowing into his bank account without pulling his finger out. One day he remembered why he wanted to follow this path in life and decided to try his luck someplace else. He got himself a meeting with the archbishop and requested a transfer to a church in a town. It cost him an arm and a leg, but he got what he wished for. It was all over again the same story in different clothing. Today people  simply just buy everything may it be of material or spiritual value.

Let’s just keep telling ourselves that we make the money and not vice versa.

christmas thoughts

I bumped into a classmate of mine the other day. It was christmas day in the morning. She was in a hurry, just like everybody else, rushing to do the last shoppings before the ‘big’ day. She was after the sweet rolled dough filled with nuts, a must have, especially if you buy it from Annie’s Home Made. She said hello, smiled politely, asked about my health bla bla bla. To my surprise I answered  the same way although all I wanted to do was to smash that pretty dimpled face of hers against the wall. I’m hundred percent positive that the feeling was mutual. We had lived once to make each others life miserable. Still, it was christmas. We had to show kindness, right? This is what it’s all about: being nice to people who you haven’t been in touch with for a long time, being nice to people who come unscrupulously to knock on your door and sing a carol, being nice to people who at the end of the year suddenly remember that you still breathe, being nice to people who show up once in a while asking for favors and now they’re just paying their respect, being nice to people you’d rather see two meters under the ground…All these colorful species just keep coming and going through your home and you find yourself smiling and welcoming, setting specific dishes on the table, and everybody is nibbling on the food, which you ordered so carefully from a catering service. Why the hell should you bother to cook if you anyway throw away most of it? But it’s part of the picture: the rissoles, schnitzels, roulades and boeuf salads, the sweet rolled dough,  the plastic christmas tree with the star on the top full of jelly filled chocolate candies wrapped nicely in shiny colored tinfoil, the blinking lights on the tree, on your roof, on your entrance door, on your back door, everywhere, the large red socks hanging from your fireplace where the fire’s still smouldering…When you come to think of it you created this pixel perfect picture just to show these people that you’re not any different from them, that you’re doing the same thing on the same occasion as they are, and maybe you try to attach some meaning to it, you spoil yourself with the thought  that you’re celebrating something called life, where in fact what you do is just the yearly routine, nothing special, nothing meaningful.