A low and steady chord.

*

"I feel so bad for her…she was so alone…"

"What do you mean ‘alone?’ She was famous. She had people fawning over her at every turn, she couldn’t hide if she wanted to…"

"Yes, but some people hide in plain sight…"

Happiness is the reassurance that we are justified in whatever lifestyle we happen to be imploring. It’s the calming sentiment that says "You’re right to have thought that, keep up the good work." It’s a streak of evidence that supports that which has always been supported by the individual…unwitting contributions to one’s own pride in the disguise of separate and objective testaments to that which we hold as truths. Happiness is the enemy of change and surprise, and in a broad sense…it is the enemy of itself.

It is a strange place I find myself, here. Clutching this notion loosely, like a piece of scrap paper with a note whose job as a reminder has long been served. I sit on a park bench by the river, and although I can smell it, and see it quite clearly, the aesthetics no longer have any meaning…as if the possibility of joy has dried up. Fascination turns into the inconsequential; interest into apathy; want into have, and have into burden…