The consumerism is gross here, as it is most everywhere, but still i am shocked. At first i am amazed, sort of enchanted as though it were kitch; i slip into it, i am overcome with the way that it functions, the multi-storey coffee shops on every corner, the way that large swathes of this city look like a shopping mall. And then i begin to wallow, and suffer. I wonder where poor people live, how i could ever live here as a poor person. I become filled with a sense of vacancy. I begin to dream of the things that i cannot buy; a coffee at every hour, a frozen yoghurt with all the toppings, clean white shirts and black shorts like all the pretty girls have. I begin to dream of all these things, just for one moment. And then i realize that i am sinking into an abyss of self medication of all the things that i cannot and don\u2019t want to have. I find myself filled with even more vacancy. Someone tells me that everyone here is a zombie–that nothing touches anyone anymore, that they (those people, those seeming other people) cannot feel, cannot get into anything, that nothing shocks an audience. I am drawn into despair. If this is really true, that we cannot touch each other anymore, to what ends are we going? is this consumerism functioning, is this what we mean for the world to function? Can this even really be true? But more–Is this not some bizarre twist of self referential egoism that leads us to believe that we ourselves and those closest to us are the only ones left who can actually FEEL? How many of us believe that we ourselves are “the last one to survive?” and it is only us whom can even identify the feeling of vacancy when confronted with this monstrosity, only us that would choose to resist (if only we could completely)? whether i see evidence of it or not, i cannot take part in this mythology.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I am quite sure, i will only survive this if i begin writing, more, and quickly. This time my own survival is at risk. And yes now i am talking about survival.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The consumerism is gross here, as it is most everywhere, but still i am shocked. At first i am amazed, sort of enchanted as though it were kitch; i slip into it, i am overcome with the way that it functions, the multi-storey coffee shops on every corner, the way that large swathes of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}