lost at home

The heat from the Summer sun creating a haze of visible and tangible irritability blankets the ground exerting its power over its empire in which no one really participates willingly. The wrens wail, the cars pass intermittently, and I place myself on a curb where I light a cigarette. Even smoking makes one an outcast in the land of everything pretend. Massive homes in which four or five people reside dot what used to be a beautiful landscape of chaparral, horses, oak trees, deer trails, and the most interesting of creatures romping and climbing through the intricacies of stones, brush, and oak leaves. The robots that live here have most recently been titled the Top One Percent; of what, I could not succeed in explaining. The revery of this facade I fail to grasp in that stability creates an atmosphere for happiness, yet I struggle to find a sense of peace from anyone here. There is a lack of something intrinsic that I am unable to identify, but either way, it tastes of something awful. An approaching Escalade pollutes the sound of the breeze and upon its passing, a McDonalds bag full of trash lands at my feet spraying my shins with cigarette butt laden remnants of hot Coca Cola, and ironically to deal with the frustration, I drag my cigarette; my own attempt at turning lead into gold. Two years have passed since my ultimate return to the Land of Opportunities Past. In this place shouldering the battles from years gone is of the most dangerous undertakings yet to go unrecognized. Time is the both the milkman and the taxman of incident, all in one, vying for any affect it might have on anything and everything, culminating in an empty cup of absolutely nothing. The overbearing feelings of utter disparity within a neighborhood of homes built nearly on top of one another is a paradox, happily unexplained, whilst the residents of their manufactured paradise take pills to curb their anxieties of what they know, at heart, is intrinsic to the financial slavery they have subjected themselves to. The symmetry of this phenomenon is only highlighted by the same strife felt by the less fortunate majority, who too, are subject to their own psychological and financial slavery. In The City of Angels, a man is worth the reflection of what he owns, and rest assured, he will die before the image staring back at him ever changes for the better; as he will always remain lost at home.