Just to relieve the monotony, and to breathe a bit of fresh air, and for just a little physical activity, yesterday I ventured outside the walled confines of my parents' house, to take a little walk.
I don't like it when I'm the only one on the street. I don't like the feeling of nakedness and isolation when the only other human beings you see (from the neck up--if that) are in enormous vehicles. But then, those are mostly hypothetical human beings since most vehicles have tinted glass.
But to be fair, there were a few other life forms on the streets, even a family with bicycles. Not enough to make this a friendly experience. Isolated life forms among the dead cement.
The environment is cement, concrete, asphalt, and metal, with those insane walled in squares of green or "rock gardens" in between... a sterile environment...
The cars zoom by--and that noise they make is not pretty!
The dogs bark.
I walk and I don't enjoy it.
If I am unlucky enough to walk facing the traffic and the sun has set, the bright lights of the cars blind me. The emptiness of the darkness is like a cloak ripped by the penetrating knife of the vehicle's lights--the vehicle itself an act of violence.
True, I have escaped from the artificial air of the air conditioner. El Pasoans, indifferent to any concerns of conservation, mindlessly turn on the AC at the least provocation.... and it stays on....
But I escape the dirty air of the AC, for a time....
And I walk, sadly, falsely, with no particular pleasure in viewing my surroundings, with the constant thought that others are inside, invisible to me, and that I am the naked one, not surrounded by a vehicle or a home...
The mountains' tops are surrounded by a curious ring of clouds, but it does not move me. Those mountains represent an indifferent nature, a hostile environment, a place where green grass and imported shrubs do not belong, where humans have arrogantly created an artificial environment which encourages false and superficial desires more than it satisfies any deep ones.....
an empty environment in which there is no hope or consolation or beauty.... but only manipulation, the permanent threat of rain, wind storms, and also the threat of body-breaking collisions with the omnipresent trucks.... and, in the distance, the golden arches, or some other icon of fast food....a sign of the degraded condition of hope in this desert.
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