Excerpt: Untitled

Civilization rolls on without our attention. Time pushes it along, time and circumstances, like selective pressures, forcing people to become something they are not, something they don’t anticipate, until the change has been made and they are clear and free of it. Civilization rolls on like a great herd of buffalo; you see it coming from a great distance off, but only faintly and only from a distance. Once recognition hits, you are consumed in selfish attention and mindless wandering, the meaningless busywork of a modern human life. Stay alive, get ahead, watch your neighbours navitage ahead and behind you and stay aflat as best you can. It’s only once the herd has passed and all that is left is the trampled grass underfoot and the stampeded bodies of the dead and the glazed eyes of those lucky enough to have survived that a recognition sets in. Those with a mind constructed of stern enough stuff can move from that place, from those trammeled bodies and flattened growth to find a new and better way to live. Those without, who are unable to constitute within themselves the desire and will and sheer understanding that they have survived and are now free, they are left forever to wander, terminally adrift unless by some chance of luck they can be grasped by the hand and led to greener pastures, where the water is cool and clear and the sky is blue and the air is pure and fresh and bracing. This is what civilization does to us. This is what it forces us to become.