Monday May 4, 2026

So there I sat in small, dark, beiged apartment which seemed to be eternally hiding its face from the sun. Never did it seem to want to allow any sun in and so there was a certain coolness, a chill which ran throughout the apartment and prevented one from ever really recognizing just how hot it was. The walls were more paint than plaster at this point, endless indentations, holes, and pooled paint drips covered over by next year's drips of white paint. This apartment sat in a larger complex located on the downside of a hill off of a busy road - tucked away just beyond the industrial sadness of a town which once brimmed with hope of expansion, hope of hustle and bustle and artliness with little hip bhikkus walking about between dinners and flashiness and trends. But that time had since folded, and the once bright in-trend fashions of a few decades ago had become the faded outlanded and hard silhoutted shapes of billboards hardly glanced at. Industrial ugliness. There's a sorrowfulness around that kind of landscape. One that reeks of destitution and loneliness. Have you ever seen a building and felt sorry for - felt the lonliness that enshrined it within its landscape - like the artist had simply chosen not to color in those neighboring buildings or bushes or trees as a way of punishment. Things which seem so utterly barren. They're the forlorn railtracks and empty warehouses of old America, dreamy eyed America or at least the steel skeleton which used to hold her up and work her arms like a puppet. The skeleton has weakened, or the puppet has gotten too loose, shaggy, and fat and now there's hardly any semblance of a skeleton at all. The core is dying, and so too will the rest. There's something just so dreadfully sorry about the way of it all. What happened to it which was once so full of hope and fortitude. There was an attitude of perserverance, grit, and a common struggle shared and passed between the worn hands of dirtied, sun-tanned men who had shared the great brotherhood of dirt and nothingness and work. But now, these men don't know eachother. They passby on the street and keep eyes directed down and away, pointed to that un-ending cracked sidewalk dutifully doing their duties of keeping alone and isolated. It's a sad state of the world. The truth is it used to be sad before but at least we had hope. There's no hope anymore - at least not a hope of an upturn, just the hope of an end. We used to look upon our future and think of greener pastures, bountiful beauty, and liveliness which would burst forth from the great loam and rich dark veins of America. Now we think of rest, we think of taking our tithe's beneath the shade of a weakened tree under grey skies and in front of similarly ashened fields. It may not be green but at least my time has passed - and now I can rest and cover my eyes. It's really forlorn and I long for the time of hope that we once knew, that I once knew when I was just a starry eyed green-behind-the ears kind of kid who didn't know any better - but I thought I did. "I'll show em'." and now I'm just as aged and as tired as those before me - least i hope I don't shoot down those young and hungry kids as I once was.