Most days I don't wear a shield. I'm out here raw-dogging late-capitalist society with my full humanity on display, and it shows. But if it were up to me, I'd drop out of the futile Olympics of suburban life and commit fully to the madcap commie mommy persona. I'm grateful for all that I have, but I could do without the excesses and material complications, which in themselves do nothing but make me feel sad and defective. Like I can't keep up and I'm never enough.
Then there's the constant guilt that I'm not adequately preparing my kids for the world they will soon become enmeshed in - with all its trappings of modernity and vague uneasy feelings of disconnect and dysphoria. I step outside myself, looking around at all the people struggling as others live in ivory towers, and the cognitive dissonance grows. It's difficult to see things with such open eyes when I'm just as complicit in it as the rest. Maybe I have a weak stomach for suffering and emptiness, but don't think I was meant for this.
Sometimes I fantasize what it'd be like to leave it all behind for something more egalitarian. A different place. A different time. I want to know the unvarnished pleasures of a small town, a slower pace, a less commodified existence. To flip the bird to big city stoics with their pretty clothes and empty heads in favour of silent conversations with ancient oaks. I'd take my bronze medals and placement ribbons with me, putting them high on the shelf to remember a life I wouldn't miss. I'd have no need for alarm clocks, master calendars, and email notifications. I'd relinquish myself to the fluid hands of nature and the beauty of art. I'd travel more and learn from people whose eyes have seen too much.
I'd like to spend my days doing only what moves me. I'd read obituaries in the morning to pay homage to impermanence; agitprop before bed to remember what my hopes are. I'd use my tongue to write poetry on my lover's body. Untraceable and unplugged at the end of the day, we'd make love on the floor by the overlit fireplace and swing life away. Our children would no longer be distracted by machines spewing out their thoughts at a jarring pace. They'd gaze up at stars instead, making question marks out of the constellations.
And I wouldn't feel so far away.
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