It's Fast Food or You Run - Out of Time

My dad was in a non-fatal crash while I sat on this laptop in the McDonalds hundreds of feet away. I don't think I ate there, but I might have drank a sweet caffeine mix.

The crash was an instant that cannot be undone. Score is kept and maintained, a quo upheld. Continued trauma with the lack of maintenance allows time itself to degrade the body. A car is a chamber designed only to consume. It ate a rear-end collision as it consumed gas on its way to the fast-consume place.

Once scheduled, maintenance could be done to hide the scaring. But it never leaves. The scars hide beneath layers of repair that effect how the outside layers operate. If the scars are too large, sometimes you're advised to replace the car.

This time it was worth the effort to repair. Most times it is - a repair seems so close. But scheduling can be delayed, the car's scar could deepen, and then you might realize you've been wasting even more resources just to keep your status quo.

If things deviate from the norm, it gets harder to hide those deep injuries. Things are rarely as expected. To find comfort, quick and cheap tend to be the default. Highs like that include fast-food, lying, anger, drugs, content, anything to hide interpersonal scaring.

Because these highs are quicker than the alternative treatment, even a good home cooked meal, it's easier to cower behind them. Indulgence of wants outcompetes what’s in front of you, and makes every space seem like a pillow. To today’s mind, pleasantries take the forefront to survival.

It’s important to rest, and sometimes that includes pushing the bounds of pleasure. But day drinking alone in McDonalds is past pleasure, as I whitnessed during my dad's non-fatal crash. He was barely conscious in the corner as the world outside was crashing.

Sleeping while drunk is not rest. The brain encourages a reality it thinks it wants, that feels good to precede. Only a masochist may seek an alternative where their outcome feels worse. Goodness always feels safe and comfortable.

A feeling is a reality, even when it conjured in a headspace. Addiction will happily drive use. Pleasure directs traffic. Roads lead the way even when you don’t know where they go. It’s not legal, or safe, to park here, so the only option is forward. 

Cars are a chamber of consumption. The destination will be about consuming, but so is the journey.

Each branded steed came from a financial transation. Brands so synonymous with the experience, that it feels out of place to see one sporting a frontal logo. Gasoline acts to scull the vessel.

Energy to create motion, music to create drive, and light to create direction to navigate the space. When symphonies are frequent and energy is plentiful, worry becomes meaningless as light feels neverending.

Most no longer consume to survive, even when it's life or death. Driving for preference and not continuance. Opportunities to partake in pleasantries are constant and are shaping direction. This realm of over consumption takes precedent over our basic needs, so much so that one may find themselves complacent with a lack of needs. Or, blindsided by their own perception of needs. No one is worried to crash their own car and so we speed. Can't stop the accident if you're getting hit.

$277.88 is the price for a year of Spotify (in the Duo Premium Plan between my brother & I). Those dollars could afford a one night stay at a decent hotel, a really fancy dinner for two, or around 28 hits of fentanyl.

I need music to drive, is at least what I tell myself. A library in my pocket; more minutes of music than I have, and in this moment one gets the honor to graze my ears.

However, when I get behind the wheel I am rarely looking for a new experience. I want familiarity to ease these strenuous moments of a commute. Searching takes time and energy, liked songs are good, I’ll queue this one up for however long my drive is. I’m already nostalgic of my third listen today, as I know one day I’ll wish I enjoyed the song this much.

The price seems justifiable if I can get a lot of hits from it. I am paying to entertain my time with a distraction, the labor for the distraction service deserves pay, and so we transact once a year in bulk.

Sounds of the road are not about the need for safety, anymore. The cabin is designed to tune out the outside rhythm, removing the driver from their local space between point A & B. No longer does someone have to care about the poverty they drive past - as long as their interiors are velvet. 

A begging man feels your intersection is the only way to reach you, but entering the car already removed you enough to look away. Peripherials don't upkeep survival like they used to, so might as well zone out. Can’t help but look at the billboards, though. They paid for your attention and our curiosity must ascertain. A glow of light feels more compelling than the darkness resinating with a lonely person.

It’s harder to look at a breathing sign than a dead one. Its breath comes with judgement, pride, and unpredictable emotions, all familiar feelings that feel too overwhelming to take on out of good will. We have our own set of troubles.

When the light turns green, it makes sense to press the gas. Consume a little bit more fuel to go forward, it feels right, it feels necessary. That’s the direction everyone else seems to be going.

Each commute passes individuals in peripherals.

There is no journey without a destination. Arriving there always means consuming: dinner, a film, groceries, words from a friend, work, a view, a sunset, delivery, graduation, funeral. I cannot think of a place that you don’t take things in, almost like our form is to consume. 

Ahead of you is, this thing. Circumstances put both things in the same room, so one might as well ingest the other.

It feels natural, it is natural. That’s why we lack control over the things we buy, the places we go. I cannot help having a need for food, community, and to ease boredom. Advertisements are designed to make a consumer choice feel easier, familiarity drives a purchase. It feels forward, even when it is backward. 

Maslow began to understand how simply we operate, and the rest is history. A foundation needs only the strength to weather a storm, so clear skies allow a shelter to be baseless in its roots.

But there really is no history of controlling the weather. Tropical roots can be warm, but come with occasional hurricanes. Northern bases have a half year of seeking insolation. No one chooses where their roots begin and most don’t have a choice but to weather the storms that come.

People are born into situations of abuse or unconditional love, drug use or being fed every day, working low-wages at 15 or having the opportunity to finish their childhood and persue higher education. Not every life is this-or-that, but every life has the opportunity for any of it.

Anyone could have been born with fentanyl in their system, with a host birth defects and a pre-determined higher chance of use-disorders. No one chooses what room they're born into and what the circumstances give them to consume.

Up and leaving is not a choice even with a car. Point A proceeds B or C. Changing roots can hurt all the breathing signs you’ve come to love, while finding new signs is distantly terrifying. 

Transportation allows me to take some time to seek a momentary pleasantry. At least this scenery is familiar. Before I run out of moments to listen to music I can keep the same song playing. Why change the station when I know this one? Maybe tomorrow I won’t go forward, I will take the right. But probably not, because that’s tiring and I rather rest.