IN THE EVERYDAY STRUGGLE

    4 a.m. Phone alarm rings.

    I emerge with difficulty. The body does not want to start. My
    breathing is labored, as if my lungs were still asleep. Is
    that even possible?

    I'm starting to feel diffuse pain, just behind my eyes. I
    don't want to get up. I want to go back there, where all is
    forgotten. Why should I get up?

    But there's no time to think about it. Better not think. To
    nothing. Never. Just act.

    As I pull myself from the couch where I collapsed, the song
    emerges slowly from the depths of my mind. It begins spinning
    in my head. It's the remix by L'indécis. It will accompany me
    all day, like a lullaby, pushing me forward.

    "I know how it feels to wake up fucked up."

    I'm already out of the house. Subway. Tramway. I'll arrive in
    one hour. Ready to take my shift at the airport. Outside. In
    the dark. In the cold.

    On my way, I see others. They are just like me. Empty faces,
    lost looks. We are all the same. Interchangeable. We're all
    mindless ghosts. Taking shape and consistency only to
    accomplish the task assigned to us.

    "I don't wanna live no more. Sometimes I hear death knockin'
    at my front door. I'm livin' every day like a hustle."

    I remember, being young, asking my uncle why people didn't
    fought more the crushing system I was discovering living in
    little by little.

    He explained to me that, burden by harassing work, fighting
    for your family, you don't have time, nor the energy. You even
    hardly think about it. And when you have a day off, you just
    want to forget all about this shit. Better watch football on
    TV than organizing riots. Easier for the mind.

    You want to control a population? Make sure they are flooded
    with bills and exhausted by their job. Then add bread and
    circuses, for good measure. Either that, or throw them into a
    senseless war. Everyone knows that, since at least the
    Mesopotamian era. But I was young with a whole lot to learn.

    The headache is well established now. She'll not leave. She'll
    be my faithful companion for the day. The dedicated counselor
    to my every steps. And the song continues to spin.

    "That's me, blowin' like a bubble in the everyday struggle."

    I mumble it over and over, almost without realizing it. It
    turns and turns and turns and turns. My own little enchanted
    merry-go-round. Right there, in my head. Turns and turns.
    Carrying away the laughter and carelessness of yesteryear.

      | "Do you people have any idea what this kind of mindless
      | labor does to a person? It kills your soul. It turns your
      | mind into jelly and it crushes your spirit to dust."
      | 
      | --- Francis, in Malcolm in the Middle, S02E14, 2001.

--- CC BY f6k@huld.re