Inner Peace


An hour from where you live there’s places you don’t know about. An hour from your home there’s places with names like Grotham and Earpiece. These places have bus stops. A post office. In rooms in these places, people make home movies. In rooms in these places abortions are conceived. Plans to divorce are made.

Right now someone is googling “how to kill your husband and make it look like he disappeared”.

Life insurance does strange things to people.

One hundred yards from where you live, the woman of your dreams is sleeping alone. She waits until her daughter is asleep and then the doorbell tinkles and she lets in a man she found on the internet who has travelled hundreds of miles. Last week, as you were curling to bed, you heard them having sex. You masturbated into the toilet.

You walk past the girl in reception and you think I wish I was your boyfriend.

Right now someone is googling “Why are there flowers at my local railway station?”

You walk into the sandwich shop, and your true love had left five minutes before. Right now, they are sat behind a desk at their work, idly wondering if they should leave their partner. Right now, they are in front of you in the queue at the supermarket. And you will never meet them.

Right now someone is googling “How to talk to strangers”

You avoid the toilets because the smell of urine imprints itself into your brain. Everything has a smell. At work, a woman would get a nosebleed everytime one of the other girls had had sex. She could smell semen. She was allergic to semen. Her nerves would seek out male semen inside her colleagues and react. She would come into work with a nosebleed and she’d have been sat next to someone who’d had sex the previous night.

Right now someone is googling “How come she didn’t get a nosebleed when she interacted with males?”

Right now someone is googling “I wouldn’t want to be married to her.”

An animals sense of smell is a thousand times stronger than a humans. A shark can detect one drop of blood from three miles away. Menstruating women shouldn’t swim.

You wonder if maybe you can get a business trip away and meet someone for a night. You have a hotel room and a partner who will never know. You wonder what the woman who just walked past you tastes like.

You ask yourself “Is this all there is?”



You think human evolution is going too slowly. We’re still commuting to work.

Right now someone is googling “Is happiness impossible?”

You clean your fingers and wonder about the hair you missed shaving. You wonder if your lucky clothes are just coincidence. You wonder if facial hair is laziness or style.

You carry on with your work and know that tomorrow things aren’t going to be much different. You count down every day. Every day closer to retirement. Every day closer to death.

Every day you are £30 nearer to the end of your mortgage. Every hour you are £1.20 nearer to the end. Even when you sleep. You look out of the train window. Over the years of this journey, you have come to recognise every inch of these fields. Take me a patch of grass outside Maidstone, and I’ll tell how many minutes I am until home. I’ll look at the retreating shadow of a rabbit, and I’ll tell you the next stop and how long away it is. I’ll tell you how far into “Achtung Baby” the half way point home is. The discolouration of red corroded railtrack will tell me we are nearing the disused spare line leading to a town that’s now only got one train station.

That field, over there, used to have a pastel coloured dalek for a scarecrow.

This field, here, used to have the burnt out rusting skeleton of a Ford Fiesta.

Right now someone is googling “TWOC : Taken Without Owner’s Consent”

Every day is a step closer. Every day is a victory. One more payment to make. One more moment lost to time. One more experience lived. One more dull journey to work. One more dull morning behind a desk. Another small victory in the battle of our lives. Another step delaying the repossession order.

This is how we live our lives. Wealth addicts. One step at a time. One day at a time. Debtaholics. Detoxing from the institutionalised slavery of mortgages and credit cards. One day, I swear I will be clean.

Just one break. That’s all I need. One good break. One moment where I am no longer indentured to the bonds of interest rates. Another hour. Another £1.20 nearer. Only another £157,684 to go. Sysphus has his rock. We have our debts. We climb the pinnacle of human achievement. The light of freedom gets imperceptibly larger. A fraction. And then one day, maybe we will be released from the chains.

Own something. Be someone. Make something of your life. We dig for glory. We find ourselves slaves to hunger and to shelter.

An hour from here, someone is happy. An hour from here, there is a millionaire living a life of relative sloth. An hour from here, someone is old. Their battles are over. Their wars are won or lost, but no longer do they have to fight. I’m losing the will to fight. I don't want to fight anymore.
- posted by Mark @ 9:12 pm