I feel the strain of civilization. I feel the weight of modern man, as he struggles to be everything he can be... at once, to stretch his arms out mildly and say "Here I am, see me" - not to slink into the shadow and become the spectator to the spectacle of modern life, to know the moral truth, and act by it, as others do. We are the compromisers, the balansers on intersecting lines, which go off into the distance, we know not whence. We know that we do not know, and that we can never know, but still we trot on, and it is straining. Straining, straining to wake up yet another day and face time measured endlessly and minutely. To feel the weight of progress, and yet of repetition. To know that there is no god, no heaven or hell. No consequences but for those we make for ourselves, and the guilt of judging others to life with unaesthetic walls. Romanticism is dead, and modernism tells this truth; that while we crave for green hills and red suns, a simple white will do. I feel the strain of civilisation. Of waiting in lines...to talk. Not to interrupt and tell them off. Not to give in and be ugly. I want to be ugly and slink in shadows. To be spiteful, to mourn my egoistic self and to ignore my grasping hands for love. Those corrupting hands, reaching from my tribal core. Lust and vanity comes over me sometimes. Mirror mirror on the wall, is there more of me beyond that face - the vizor of modern man - that genteel smile. Coming to greet you in hallways and shake your hand. Ask politely how you feel. See you, but who are you, Mr. "One in a houndred each day", who are you? Do you feel politeness wear thin as I? Do wash your face yesterday and tomorrow? We enjoy the quite distance of politeness, and are united by it. Move slowly closer and see our tribal brother, and someday your lover.
Poem: The Strain of Civilisation
