Comfortable Disconnection

broken egg shellBetween the idea
And the reality…
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

— TS Eliot, The Hollow Men

This culture is a suffocating fog
that wraps around my body
(like the blanket that I pull around myself
to shield me from the cold)
separating me from what is real and
disconnecting me from all-the-life-on-Earth,
it draws the very life from me.

So where do I belong?

This culture is a solid shell that insulates my body
(like the car I drive, alone, each day)
keeping me apart from others,
from their lives, their sorrows,
feelings, thoughts and knowledge, and their
touch and scent and worried stares
and sighs of resignation.

What reason can there be for this?

This culture is a concrete wall that isolates my body
(like the wood and stone and steel and glass
that separates me here, in this immense sad house,
from my real home, outside)
deluding me to think that I’m
apart from “the environment”, and nature,
and the creatures of all species
who are victims
of our grim, relentless progress.

Not dumbed down, but dulled down, muffled, rendered mute.

So I go on, still blind to all the consequences
of my actions and inactions
and to what I’ve lost
and long forgotten.

In this comfortable disconnection
I’m accustomed, now, to unreality.

Category: Poetry
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2 Responses to Comfortable Disconnection

  1. MLU says:

    This sounds a little like the guy who, watching monkeys scampering and swinging through the jungle, felt their freedom was constrained by all those trees, and removed the jungle to liberate the poor creatures.A good culture provides the tools needed to recognize various moments of an eternal nature woven into the fabric of transience and decay. . .The greatest literature, and the greatest music as well, brings into view that other world. . .Of course, literature and music are cultural artifacts.

  2. Anant says:

    Thanks for the resonance.

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