Where to Now, my Little Furry-Snouted Friends?

As I wander through the valley of the lost sheep, I forgot what it was that I seek. Now, in this small break, this tiny space, this tiny pause, my eyes are no sharper, my goal no clearer. Where was I heading? Why did I open the fridge? Why am I standing in the kitchen? This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful cat.

What I would like is a little more humanity. It’s funny, the ways in which we use this word, ‘humanity.’ In the name of God, show some humanity! Where is your humanity man?! We use it to mean goodness or mercy, as though to be more human is to be more good, more giving, more generous, more caring. I wonder if we have forgotten this. I don’t mean individually, but as a species. Or, perhaps I mean individually. What I mean is, I would like to be surrounded by some more humanity, maybe sitting in a café while, all around me, people stare at personal devices, screens of themselves reflected back at them, selfies taking selfies.

It seems that my housemate and I have now exhausted our conversation. We have become true isolationists, rather than true visionaries. We have become that, which we will become, the final versions of ourselves, the top of the evolutionary ladder. We wake, we speak our simple habitual words, “I will make a coffee now,” “It is hot.” “It is still hot.” “Where is the cat?” “I will make cat now.” “I will make cat now hot.”

The outside is still out there. I know this because I can see it through the windows. But the windows are not clean and they smear the world with the grime of ages. What became of the days of the great poets, the revolutionaries, sitting in cafes with berets, the days of revolution, changing the world one cigarette at a time? What became of the Occupy movement? What does it now occupy? What follows a world of massive social and economic inequality? More? Less? The more get more and the less get less? That doesn’t seem fair. It seems the more I look, the less I see. I miss cigarettes. And bourbon. And cows. When was the last time I saw a real cow in a real meadow? What happened to all the cows? Have I really been absent for so long?

“Cutest Puppies #15” is a video on youtube. Perhaps you have seen it already; I could send you the link. 12 million other people have seen it, even though it has only been posted there for less than one month, 26 days to be more accurate. That’s a lot of people, a lot of eyes, a lot of people who like puppies, 461,538 times per day, bite-sized, snack-sized, snack-videos of puppies falling down stairs, puppies trying to get out of cages, puppies on plastic sea-saws (haha, puppies on sea-saws), puppies on puppies, again and again towards infinity. But not one of these puppies looks as though it is having a good time, especially the puppies on the sea-saw, who just look confused, like they got out of the elevator on the wrong floor.

Who needs revolution, who needs Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who needs Voltaire, when we have Cutest Puppies #15? Okay, it’s revolutionary for the puppies, but does it really go far enough? Puppies, rise up against your oppressors! Do not let them put you in cages, on sea-saws like circus elephants, whilst outside the world crumbles down around your furry little snouts, crying out for your attention. I am still here! Do not forsake me! And yet, I feel it pulling me in and I can’t resist those furry little snouts.

I have heard there are immigrants, lost millions living in whole cities of tarpaulins and sticks, in camps of shit and mud, global chaos freeze-framed around people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It reminds me of that trash vortex known as the ‘Great Pacific garbage patch,’ oceanic intersections where the world’s rubbish accumulates. Whole cities of impermanence, a sneeze away from complete destruction, devastation, and yet, there they remain, for years and years, these cities of sticks. Who are all these people living in cities without hope, left to inhuman mechanisms that only make more mud, more shit, more chaos, more rubbish? Close the borders! Pull up the drawbridge! Play the puppy video!

There is an illusion here, that these immigrant camps of mud and rubbish are on the outside, whilst I am safely on the inside, but in reality, this separation does not exist. In reality, we are all just a sneeze away from being in the same boat. Except for those who have bigger boats and are free to sail them in oceans of trash, sipping champagne high above the detritus of the world’s ills. Is this the choice, to be down in the mud or sipping champagne high above? Where to now, my little furry snouted friends?