1st draft: 14 October 2008
unpublished
Temptation is the primary facet of modern society. I’d find a platform from which to scream this if only I felt it would change a thing today. Everyone has their own solution for the problems of the world. From communists to fascists, they all look in one direction or another simply too far. I’d tell them all that there is good in everything if only I felt it would change their minds today. I’ve shouted plenty of things in my life, but they have all been too personal. Personality is the nature of the pride of young men. I remain young, but I feel less of a man with each day passing wherein the system remains. I’d love to say that there is something to look forward to but there is not. Armies, civilians. These are the composition of society whether we like it or not. You’re either militant or you’re not. I’d love to say that there is something here worth shouting, but there is not. Here I am in the heart of a city in the depths of a society which will one day too be forgotten, and I feel nothing. No one needs us anymore, we’re nothing. I’ve come to a turning point, a last resort of necessity: I’ll either enlist or I’ll go hungry. A past life would have driven me to choose the latter, and perhaps I’d manage to survive awhile before things got easier, but inevitably they’d get harder again. Sister-fuckers everywhere I turn—a melody I can’t remove from my head no matter how many years pass. I am but twenty-one. There is time for me, and plenty of time to be successful, or so they say. So here I sit, broken-hearted, society shit, while I but farted, and there’s a war on. They’ll take anyone in the effort, and I’ll go. I’ll go, and I’ll be there, and soon there will be new horizons before me, and perhaps within the madness I can find some concentration. Seems to be the best place for me to find it. For tonight my goals are to be much simpler. I can still go home, the lease has not expired. I’ll do that. In the corner of that room which has become gradually more empty, there is still a bit of food and water. I’ll make use of it. And tomorrow I’ll join an Army I’ve never felt affinity for. And tomorrow I’ll break down into something new, a new compound. Once I thought life was an interpretation of art. Now I see otherwise: there are no universals such as that, there is nothing. There are choices, beginning when you’re young, and over time they add up and become what you’ll know as your life. I’ve seen this world for what it can be, and I’ve seen this world for what it should be, and tonight I see this world for what it is. Someday I’ll be something, I swear I will. In the meantime, I’ll be a soldier, and pride will be something I keep in shoe boxes, proof of what I can do, proof of what I will do. Life is research for better novels. Life is anything you demand it be.