Other people’s lives
Are so noisy — shouting at me from the screen
They are on Jimmy Fallon again. Aren’t they always? Noisy, proud, frightened people. Gaining and losing admiration in a constant cycle of credit and debt. Hungry, hungry ghosts.
They shout at me with their Instagram likes.
They shout at me with their eyes.
Other people’s lives lived with their opinions that stick to me like egg in the worn out pan.
Other people’s ways of wearing jeans. Other people’s ways of tucking shirts.
Everyone’s way is right unless it’s mine and then it’s sort of so embarrassing.
Other people’s lives hammering on the wall, playing tinny music for their sunshine-starved children.
Everyone else is shouting, so why not join them? No risk of being heard.
Other people’s lives screaming on the subway. Lightheaded and alone, drowning, dreamlike and deep, in imagined conversation with: their old friend, with their adversary, with a chaotic/loving partner, with the Devil, with a frenemy who never was. Carrying on arguments begun decades ago that play out fresh and again on the R train platform. On a soiled bench for one.
Other people’s lives that scream more demurely and without sound, these ones over oat milk lattes, matcha lattes, oat milk matcha lattes because in this day you can be both an oat milk and a matcha latte. You do not have to choose.
Just a glance can be a scream.
Close a thousand doors on the world to open a phone in quiet privacy and the noise couldn’t be more soundless and could not be more loud.
How should a person be?
Certainly not like this.
A person should not be like this.
A person should live their one life, only, and not the lives of a thousand others. At least, not concurrently.
And so.
I will not open my phone. This hour.
This fifteen minutes.
I will not open my phone. This. For fifteen minutes I will — go, without my phone.
For a little while.
I love this line: "Everyone else is shouting, so why not join them? No risk of being heard."
Extraordinary. Emotional. Thank you for shining a light on feelings I have not been able to access.