Peaches

When I was ten years old my mum tried to commit suicide. I remember her and my dad had been arguing again. If you asked me what they had been arguing about I'd not be able to tell you with any certainty, although I would guess money and I'd probably be right. What I do remember is more important. I mean, you can only be shaped by what you remember, right? This memory shines the brightest in my mind and everything seems to be connected to it. We always have these memories; anchors of to the moments that made us the people we are, and no matter what happens in our lives the thought of past experiences that shaped us snap us back and stop us from getting too carried away. I've always thought of this as how our conscience is formed, but it must be more complex than that because whatever happens in my life, I always seem to come back to the day I fought back tears and held my mum for what felt like the longest time before dragging her home while she pretended nothing was wrong. Maybe I was crying, because I can remember tasting salt in my mouth. Whether that was from tears running down my cheek into my mouth or from the salty air coming off the sea I do not recall. Anyway, the strongest memories from that day are senses, not thoughts; that salty taste, the sound of the rushing waves and my mum's smell. Peaches.

Money was always a factor growing up. I don't suppose we were any different to any other family in the area at the time, the whole idea of the undeserving poor was everywhere in the tabloids and a trickle down economic approach from the government essentially meant those in work had to rely on the generosity of their employers to grant them more hours on a wage that barely covered living costs. No wonder there were riots on TV, days off school when we watched the teachers stand in the car park holding up signs and waving banners, and empty stomachs all over the country. When talking about this time to my parents, I'm told they were both working two jobs, sometimes three. Of course they only officially had one job, the others were undeclared and paid cash-in-hand. When you can't afford to feed yourself or your children, you're mind isn't really on the collective benefit of tax revenue or of your National Insurance contributions and pension. Your mind is on getting in enough money to make sure your heads stay just above the water of poverty, debt and the embarrassment of picking up fag ends from the street, breaking them apart and collecting the tobacco so you can roll it into one thin and crooked cigarette at home. It seems so easy now to just brush this kind of environment off as a historical tale from the Victorian age but the fact is, this happened only twenty years ago, and to people you know.

As I say, money was always tight which means that tempers were always short and emotions were high. Stress will do that to a person. Later, my mum would tell me she had to force herself to have one meal a day so she had the energy to work again the next day, because while she would go to bed, she couldn't guarantee she would sleep. She rigidly stuck to one meal a day for years so that her children and her husband could eat. The shame of pretending you gave a cashier a £20 note and creating a scene so that they relented and gave you change from a £20 instead of the £10 you both know you handed over was nothing compared to the shame of sending emaciated children into school. No matter what happened, the kids always had to have clean, white shirts, shiny shoes and trousers with no holes in the knees. Being poor was no reason to be unclean or not properly presented. On good days we got a Fray Bentos pie from a can and boiled potatoes for dinner; otherwise watered down tomato soup and bread filled our stomachs.

I would later find out that the year of my brightest memory was the year the highest number of suicides was ever recorded. It wasn't just poor people suffering from far too much stress either. I'm reluctant to think about it because of the damage they caused but the people making the decisions about which employees get more hours, who gets to keep their job and who has to be given their P45 must be have been as stressful, if not more so than the prospect of clocking in every day not knowing if it will be the last time you do so. As we are seeing in China now, suicide was a big problem for any company with a building big enough for it's employees to jump from.

In one way, I've always thought of suicide as the most selfish act a person can make. It's your life, and you can do with it what you choose, right? If you end it, that's your choice and your problem alone, right? What about the people that depend on you? Your children, your husband, your friends, your parents and your siblings? What about the guy that gets paid less than you do that has to find your body; see your mangled corpse and who can't sleep at night because whenever he closes his eyes all he can see is your legs bending in unnatural places and your forearms poking out of the skin where you have instinctively tried to brace yourself for a fall that nobody can prepare for. But that isn't fair. That's me, a fully rational creature applying my reason to your situation and taking your decision completely out of context. Everything being equal, we all have a choice in what we do and while being among other people or situations can colour the choices and make one look more attractive than another, this doesn't change the fact that we could always do otherwise. This isn't the case under extreme stress or depression. In that state the mind shuts down and not only are some options painted black, but they might as well be invisible, such is the opportunity to grab them.

This is how I try to understand the way my mum was feeling when she left the house with her cardigan flowing free in the middle of the night. Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of money, lack of hope. There's that song, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Sometimes it isn't lack of love that we are torn apart. Sometimes we are torn apart by the black hole of despair and the lack of a light at the end of the tunnel, and the jagged silhouette of the rocks one hundred feet below that look so enticing because they can extinguish the final flame that keeps you alive but tortures you at the same time. The argument raving in her mind must have been deafening because calling out to her so loud that my throat strained and my voice cracked wasn't acknowledged at all. Maybe the wind took my voice and carried it down to the rocks, and she would have only heard it moments before the rock cleaved her face in two.

Looking like a ghost, staring at the wild sea crashing against the base of the cliffs stood my mum. The woman who had given birth to me and cared for me and fed me over herself. A woman who had suffered more than I could imagine just so that I had no less than any other child I knew, and I have the nerve to consider her selfish. That's what I think now, not what I thought at the time. I don't remember what I thought then, only what I did. I remember willing my legs to move faster than they ever had before, and I remember them obliging. I ran so fast I felt like I was flying. I remember the waves crashing below and the sound of my feet moving over the changing terrain; grass, earth, rock, until finally I wasn't running any more. I was holding onto my mum with my arms wrapped around her waist. I don't remember her turning round but she must have because my face was pressed into her stomach. She looked down at me and while her mouth said she was just going for a walk, her eyes told a completely different story. I held her so tight, engulfed in the wonderful smell of peaches.

Wallace

Why is it that those with the most unsociable mouths always have the most to say? If you have teeth like Victorian gravestones, jagged and gnarled things sticking out of your face like grotesque tusks, don't expect people to smile when you bare them in a snarling grimace and ask them a question which demands more than a standalone yes or no. If that question is:

"Hey, can I ask you a question?"

Then don't bother because you'll only waste your time and disgust me.

Wallace wanted to say all of that to the sunken-eyed junkie who, along with his silent partner had accosted him on his way home from the supermarket. He wanted to, but the mind often works faster than the mouth so instead of this witty and erudite response he grunted

"No"

The long face which originally asked permission to question him got longer still, mock surprise raising his eyebrows and colouring his speech.

"Oh, too busy to help a guy out eh? Think this will slow you down?"

In the dark, the blade shone momentarily as he pulled it out and turned it slightly to grab Wallace's attention. The mouth may not always be able to keep up with a racing mind but the body dances to its own rhythm when faced with a threat. At the sight of the blade, Wallace's instincts kicked in and without even being consciously aware of it, his stance changed imperceptibly to the untrained eye so as to adjust for the slightly gravelled road. His arms registered the weight of the shopping bags, one in each hand. Both filled with miscellaneous foodstuffs but the left filled with lighter but bulkier items. This one offers the best protection.

His attacker comes in from the left with a lazy stab, already off balance. Lifting the bag in his left hand to protect his stomach, Wallace notices the blade is around three inches long. Dangerous to bare flesh but not through the multi-pack of breakfast cereal that it penetrates.

In one swift movement as the blade sinks into the box through the plastic carrier bag, Wallace pulls the bag sharply down to his left, also moving his attacker in the same direction, making the already off-balance junkie lunge to the side for just a second. This is more than enough time for Wallace to lift his left leg, turn his hips over and stomp on the exposed leg, completely obliterating the knee with a loud and stomach turning noise; a wet slap. That disgusting mouth made sounds to match.

The knife-wielder dropped to the floor clutching his knee, surrounded by Coco Pops. If his still-silent accomplice's face was visible, you would have seen it completely drop and turn grey as this chain of events occurred.

"That's three questions now and the answer is still no."

Cradling the injured bag in his arm, Wallace knelt down and scooped up the knife, sliding it into his pocket as he walked away. He was to busy thinking to look back. He wished it was the Corn Flakes that had been stabbed and lay scattered all over the road, or even the Rice Krispies. Anything but the Coco Pops. Those had been his son's favourite.

Concrete Jungle

As far as I can make out, nobody can see the world as I see it. Around ten years ago, when I was nineteen; the world started to transform. The office blocks down town, the houses surrounding mine began to resemble something else altogether. At first, I could only hear animal noises on the wind, the rustling of dead leaves and detritus whenever I walked outside. These alien noises became the norm over the next year or so despite my early suspicions that they weren't, couldn't be real.

A doctor once told me I had frontal lobe epilepsy, this turned out to be a misdiagnosis. Doctors tell me a lot of things. None of these gave a full account as to why I inhabited a completely different world and didn't care. Before she died, my mum hedged her bets on some sort of social phobia, thinking I was lying when I described how the ferns surrounding the corner shop slowed my journey home.

Lying as an excuse to avoid social contact. Autism. Aspergers Syndrome. Simply attention seeking. Just whatever seemed to roughly stick.

I've been on medication previously for bi-polar depression.

It didn't work.

I don't have bi-polar depression.

A number of weeks ago my doctor informed me that he thinks I have schizophrenia and wanted to try me on a prescription. An anti-psychotic. I told him I would think about it.

Three weeks later, I'm still thinking about it.

I have been diagnosed so many times and by so many doctors, individuals, internet health pages. With doctors, any diagnosis will do so that the conveyor belt of passengers continues to move. Did you know that in the United States where medical care is paid for through insurance for the majority of people, this conveyor belt often dictates life? When birth rates have slowed down, as they typically do in a natural ebb and flow of human life, obstetricians often recommend birth by Caesarean section, instead of a natural birth. Lower birth rates will typically equal lower income for the hospital in general and the doctors in specific. Can you guess which birthing method is more expensive? I don't think it is hard to understand why I distrust the medical community.

I left school and had no idea what to do next. I became a member of the growing unemployed community and walked around in my own daydreaming world while pretending to be looking for jobs. After the noises became regular and normal to me, I became aware of the buildings changing colour; the pavements and roads degenerated into dirt tracks, streams and marshes. For reasons unknown to me at the time, my world was gradually changing into a maze of building shaped trees until almost without notice, the city had disappeared. Whole neighbourhoods were surrounded by fast flowing rivers. My old school, a monolithic '80's greyscale feature, was replaced by a ruined building covered in vines. I was amazed by these changes. Instead of being confused or scared, I soon realised that the world as it was now made a lot of sense. Walking around town became a magnificent sensual spectrum of smells, colours and sights. The cold grey world became a world filled with excitement. The only thing that made me feel sad was that nobody else seemed to react to these changes. I soon realised that these changes were only for me and without me, this whole environment would disappear...

In primary school, a life skills teacher warned us of the dangers of keeping your emotions inside. “It is healthy to open that bottle sometimes”, she had told us. I didn't know what to make of it; who keeps the lid screwed firmly on their emotions? It seemed like such a bizarre metaphor at the time. I now often think of myself holding my happiness on a string to stop it floating away from me. Fear isn't the mind killer that it is made out to be; you just need to know how to stop its darkness from blinding you. Each emotion a puzzle.

Like a Columbus egg.

The drive to find out what is wrong with me doesn't come from me. I don't think there is anything wrong with me at all. The problem is everyone else. The drive to get to the root of this comes from my one and only friend John. He was once my therapist but when my mum died, I had no idea how to pay. He is now my friend instead. It always seems that he is desperate for me to be “normal”. I ignore his obsession for normality and he seems too ignores that I tell him things that make him uncomfortable. It's a fair trade.

He doesn't like when I tell him that to me, death is almost tangible, like smoke. I can feel and see it. It doesn't have a smell. He is disturbed when I lose my emotions. I keep them in my pocket but sometimes lose them. During these times I have to hunt for them, completely void of emotion and my face stuck in what he calls a blunted affect. After recounting this to a doctor, he described this as anhedonia but I looked this up on wikipedia at the library and it said nothing about losing your emotions like you lose your keys, or someone's phone number; only that the individual cannot feel pleasure.

One time, I found my emotions stuck in the muddy bank of a stream outside the tax office. Nobody can understand how this feels.

For the past three weeks, I've been contemplating medicating. Weighing up the pros and cons.

I can't remember what a sunrise looks like any more. All I see are the spotlights that the thick canopy so far above my head allows. It might be nice to see the sun rise. On the other hand, I'm so used to seeing greens and browns, windows in trees, vine thickets. How would I adapt to something that was last familiar ten years ago? I spent almost a week sitting alone in my hut with these thoughts. The most bizarre aspects of my world would be gone – a good thing. Who really wants to see a huge tiger roar down the street, only for people to get in and out its ear at regular intervals? No matter who you are, this site is disturbing.

If I was on some sort of medication, would what I see be regulated? At the moment, the inside of any building is the same as before but if I look out the window all I see is jungle. From the outside, the library is the biggest tree I've ever seen, a very old and ornate African mahogany with rotating doors built into the trunk. Inside, it's all books and posters encouraging kids to read. What feels consistent now will become unpredictable on medication.

Sometimes I feel like I am alone in this city.

The only human walking amongst animals in a concrete jungle.

The first time I heard that phrase it instantly struck a chord somewhere inside me. Concrete jungle. As if there were a number of different species, each adapted perfectly to a certain part of the ecosystem. Revolutionary primates and artist-birds floating, climbing, mating amongst and above the foliage; above the office worker bureaucrat ants who toil tirelessly in the dirt below. Yet with the multitude of different species in this jungle, I feel like the only human, walking along on my own path, tied to no determined outcome. The way I see it, the common link between birds and ants is that their lives consist of the same tasks, every day: wake, collect food, eat, shit, sleep. This schedule is built into the social fabric of the jungle, there is no escaping it.

Instinctual tasks for the kingdom of animals within this concrete jungle, giving life meaning. There is no need to wonder about the meaning of life, since that is predetermined by the next task on the list. Finished working for the day? Go home and laugh at an American sit-com. Meta-narratives have no purpose since the only one that matters is in and around everything. The perpetuation of the jungle is key to the mental, social and physical survival of all these animals. But I somehow managed to be out of sync.

That's where I find myself now. In transition, a decision between a living city and a living jungle. The features of both are as clear and real to me as the water and the air around me, as real as I am. I've found my purpose.

Modern Man

This is just me trying to be as descriptive as possible. Let me know what you think.

His face framed in constant disgust , perpetually on the cusp of frothing. Eyebrows shaped in the sharp 'V' of scepticism above his eyes, thin slits glaring misanthropy at anyone who dares to meet his stare. A mind full of retorts, spring loaded for fast response from his downwards, slightly pursed lips. Offence is the best form of defence, he has learned. Wasps are killed on sight. Before his morning coffee, his sharply acidic tongue meets no resistance and shoots forth venom at anyone unfortunate to cross his path. Before coffee, looks can kill.

Later in the day, he can be found behind a desk; answering the 'phone; typing; reading. The busyness of modern life ensures a focus as deep as the ocean. The smallest fracture in his business is magnified tenfold and appears tectonic. Lunchtime however, brings a 360 shift, nothing is as important as food.

CTRL/S

CTRL/ALT/DEL

The spread sheet which was the centre of his whole universe is now frozen behind a locked Windows 7 screen, patiently waiting for his return. One hundred per cent focus is now on lunch, where he regains perspective.

After lunch, more of the same. The scowl he wore this morning has been replaced by a concentration and focus only worker bees and monks know. The question still remains; why scowl? Why do his eyes fire daggers as a default setting? Could it be his go-to as a form of defence? This only holds true to strangers but why be on the defensive with friends or colleagues? If we ask “why so mean?” might we be greeted with the same steely stare? Does he even know?

The emphasis in his culture is to be creative, individual. Realise your free will. This has led him to a realisation that others have this same free will. We can only control what we do, our own free will. Not that of other people. His culture also emphasises mistrust of strangers. Who are all these people? Paedophiles, fraudsters, terrorists: Would-be criminals. He assumes the worst because he has no control over them. Without control, what stops things going downhill? Before coffee, he thinks of nothing but this.

He leaves his desk at the end of the day, scowl intact. A day's work: typing, frowning, calculating, shoulders shrugged over and lumbar strain is finally done. This day's work, completely in misery, pays for the weekend's smiles. This could be anywhere.

Man-Smiles

            I had just finished throwing up when I heard someone calling my name from outside.  Licking the bitter saliva from my lips and spitting it into the toilet, I turned to leave the cubicle.  On opening the door and seeing the bathroom, I was once again punched in the xiphisternum by my conscience which almost put me down to one knee; a slight stumble.  Appropriately, it felt as though I had been punched by the tip of a sword.

           

            The door frame is a reliable wing man to every drunk, as it was to me at that moment.

           

            The green marble on the walls and the sincere expression on the face of the Nigerian immigrant worker selling a spray of cologne for £1 forced me to choke back a snort at the presentation of this juxtaposition. He is a big man, and I could tell by the way his cheap shirt pulls at his trapezius that he either spends a lot of time with a pull up bar or he has a second job carrying heavy loads.  Probably both.  From the compassion displayed in his eyes; despite no doubt being paid less than minimum wage and having to play Houdini multiple times a night in situations where aggressive drunks who have been stood up too many times in one night want to take their frustration out on someone, I could also deduce he was most probably in the country on a student visa and restricted to working only 20 hours a week.

            “Would Sir care to splash his face with some cold water?”

           

            I shook my head but offered a man-smile, the type where you kiss your teeth but press your lips together firmly.  Again, I heard my name.  And the nausea returned.

           

            I had just finished giving a talk when I was hit with the first wave of nausea.  I looked down at my Oxfords, curious as to why they felt like cement blocks and my head started swimming.  My freshly pressed and bespoke Thomas Pink shirt, bought for the occasion suddenly felt like a whalebone corset.  My hands, white at the knuckles, were holding onto the wooden lectern as if to choke any potential life out of it.  I'm sure the audience are applauding but I can hear nothing.

            The ugliness of being floods into my consciousness and I can't tell myself apart from the paintings that adorn the walls.  Have my emotions been painted onto me?  Perhaps deft brush strokes with a careful but purposeful hand have crafted this moment and continue to craft each new one.  No.  Talking about tertiary economic activity and how to implement cheap immigrant labour was a choice, I realized.  I realized this for the first time in my life at that precise moment.

            At least the paintings, whose existence is defined by their being, do not need to comprehend or face a choice, never mind deny one.  Because that's what I had been doing.  Education was a choice.  Employment was a choice.  Snorting from the very lap of Columbia was a choice.  These things can present anyone with problems of the conscience, such as:

The problem that in order to gain the PhD supervision necessary for progress, you may have sabotaged the preparation of more than one person with the help of a keystroke logger, which records the key presses on a keyboard.  Very handy for discovering passwords.

Or, the problem that you may have hand-picked illegal immigrants for jobs that barely paid enough to cover the bus travel to and from work every day; and dangled the carrot of a full-time contract in front of them so much that they literally begged for the stick of no lunch break and 14 hour days.

            These problems play on the mind unless they are written off.

            You did not have any choice in the matter.

            Your hand was forced.

            You could have done differently, theoretically, but you live in the real world where bills need to be paid and reputation is key to having a good life.

            With my audience facing me expectantly, I made the first real choice of my life.  By that I mean for the first time in my life I was fully aware that my actions were always a choice and by denying I had a choice in every action I took meant denying I was a human being and more importantly, denying from myself that other people existed as separate social agents and not merely objects to be impressed or scorned.

            I did the only thing I could think of at the time.  Every action is a choice.  I raised my hands, palms facing the audience as a signal to stop applauding.  I was persistent so they knew I was not simply feigning modesty.  When silence fell over my audience I turned my hands around, so that my sweating palms faced me instead, balled my hands into fists and raised the middle finger on each hand.  With my hands still raised I took full advantage of my lapel microphone to address the crowd.

           

            “Fuck you.  Fuck you very much.  You are all parasites”

            And I walked off stage.

Serenity is not something you would associate with a man who had just insulted a large audience but that is the only emotion I felt.  Well, it was the first emotion I felt.  The serenity of facing up to the transcendent nature of being human was shortly replaced by the sharp impact of a colon gripping cold sweat which you most definitely would associate with a man who had just insulted a large audience.

            Every action is a choice.

I tipped that large Nigerian man very well.

Little Things

I wanted to make this into a 500 word essay but I don't think I could without sounding preachy. So here is a verse I wrote:

We're told it's the little things in life we should feel blessed for,
all the small things we never think about, that we ignore.
Look closer to home in times of existential crisis
cos no doubt it's the world out there that's made you like this
or so we're told.

I'm not gonna stand for that, justice ain't no little thing,
instead of holding out olive branches, it's the fire you bring,
it's the songs you sing, the trampled freedoms you choose to ignore.
In order to feel better about yourself, you've locked the door,
completely disregarding the twenty three millionaires
who represent us normal people from way up there.

What chance do I have of feeling better about myself
if my whole purpose in life is to be put on a shelf
into a big book of history and statistics,
a victory over laziness, or so it's twisted.

If I'm just here to prop up your political career
to be broken down and built again under a middle class veneer
I'd offer: maybe society is broken, but just to make it clear,
I'm not the problem, it's the little things in life that make people disappear.

Moral Legroom

Another bus journey, this time in horrible weather. The falling rain leaving criss-crossing veins on the glass. Miserable faces, obscured by condensation pass me by outside as I try to decide where to get off. They say rain is cleansing and this may be true for the many homeless people who line these streets, hidden in plain view. Their suffering is offensive, so we ignore it; block it out. I do not think that the rain can wash away some of the obscene things I've seen in this city however. Still, revolt of the flesh is absurd, so Camus tells me, for what we despise about other humans is the same as what it is to be human and it is absurd to hate yourself simply because you are human, or to hate the nature of things you cannot change.

Still it rains. Spit shine your black clouds they say: make the most of what you've got. I decide to stay on the bus for as long as I can. I will always have legs to walk, however the warmth of this bus is finite. I must leave it at some point. Spit shine your black clouds indeed.

I was forced to do just that last week when my bourgeois expectations of life, of what is normal were proven to be false. I was confronted by two individual instances of geriatric collapse. In the second instance the man's head bounced off the pavement like a grotesque bowling ball, thud included. The first made no sound. He just slumped against the bus shelter as if he was embarrassed, or lazing. From my own retrospective observations, it was as if this silent collapse was a practice run.

I was inside the well populated bus shelter, at the rear of the long queue whereas the man collapsed at the front. My location allowed me to view the whole incident but gave me enough moral legroom to do nothing aside from spectate. An ambulance was called by someone closer than I, so no action was required. While waiting on the paramedics arriving a number of the queue drifted away and I made my way to the front of the queue. By now, the bus had arrived and in a bizarre scene, people did not know whether to get on the bus or continue waiting in the queue. To get on the bus would entail almost stepping right over the man who had collapsed, which would be rude, at the very least. At the same time, with around twenty people queuing not everybody could hope to be of assistance. People were clearly struggling with the decision but it was made for them when the bus driver cut the engine and left his vehicle in order to check on the man, who must have been a regular passenger as the driver knew him by name.

As I mentioned, I had made my way to the front of the queue, partly from curiosity and partly in order to ascertain if I could be of any assistance. An unexpected potential NHS angel descended upon the man and began relieving him of his tie and collar as well as freeing the woman who he had collapsed upon en route to the pavement, the shock of which had shocked the woman so much that she instantly declared that he had died. Now we had a nursing student who was happy to help and use her small bank of knowledge. Happy to help because the good deed had not yet been clouded by academic or experiential cynicism. Thus, I did not need do anything but observe until the paramedics arrived and the bus driver was happy that the man was in safe hands.

In the second instance of an old man collapsing in front of me, everything was more instant; more grotesque; more demanding of my attention and assistance. I alighted from the bus a few stops early in order to walk through the city as it arose from its semi-dormant state. Had I been on that day of my present mindset, this incident would only have been a momentary spectacle viewed through the rear window of the bus. I suspect this would have made it somehow less real to me. I was two people behind the elderly collapsee and felt his skull bounce against the pavement through the reverberations in my feet.

While this had happened only once before in my experience, these incidents followed each other in day. The silent collapsee was only the previous day, thus it was fresh in my mind and had already been replayed in my mind many times. I instantly called an ambulance while the prone and bleeding man was attended to by another ex passenger. My location was handily placed on the bus stop sign so my mental geography capacities were saved the embarrassment of admitting they could not compute. The ex-passenger tending to the now partially conscious man explained to me that he was a retired but sill voluntary fireman and had plenty of experience in dealing with partly conscious individuals. Again, chance had saved me. It had also gradually given me more experience in an emergency situation. The situation seemed scaled to my ability and I can't help but view these instances as twins; as an existential coincidence. My lack of ability in an emergency situation was highlighted and needs now be addressed, thus a positive spin is automatically put on these men collapsing in front of me. Spit shine your black clouds...

This brings me back to my thoughts in the present, on my warm bus travelling through the city in the rain. We ignore suffering that seems to be excessive, as if it is too much of a caricature to be real; too Hollywood to be happening in the here-and-now. How many people were present to witness those two old men collapse butt refused to help or even acknowledge that help was needed. In the second case there were many more than five who got off at the same stop as I but five is all that remained to ensure he got the proper care deserving of any person, anonymous or not. This wilful ignorance is one thing I cannot help but despise in humans, myself included. However as I have already stated, I believe this type of self-loathing to be absurd. Aside from the contributions from obscure philosophical arguments , this type of ignorance is a part of human nature that can be observed in every city and town in the world, where people believe there is enough moral legroom between them and the incident for them to ignore it and keep walking.

Moral legroom – as if morals are as flexible as legs and must carry you about life in the same manner. It may be provided by physical distance as in the case of third world debt or by perceived social distance as in the case of homeless people who may or may not be homeless through their own doing. In my case, moral legroom was provided in the first instance by the number of people in front of me who were already taking action and was not provided at all in the second. As I approach my stop, an analogy springs to mind. The aggregate heat from passengers has formed a heavy condensation on the windows of the bus which separates us from the bitterly cold weather outside. It also obscures our vision and view of the outside world, just as the concept of moral legroom separates us from responsibilities we do not wish to assume.