A Walk, a Stranger, and a lot of Garbage
On occasion when I was feeling particularly sullen, I would wander the trails near my home and sneak onto a rail line some of the local businesses use to ship equipment to each other. It wasn't active during the day, so it was not very dangerous. I'd never seen anyone else walk on the tracks, however I had seen much evidence to suggest that other people did, in fact, exist and occupy that same space at different times. Why these times never coalesced, I do not know. Be it happenstance or an act of God, it mattered not to me; I wanted it to change.
I wandered continuously, up and down, waiting for someone to come to me. For a stranger to be wandering in tandem, to feel a small connection in knowing we enjoy the same activity, even if I would never know why they did it. But no one ever came.
Objects kept moving around, I saw blankets and garbage, the discarded waste of others. But the others themselves were nowhere to be found. I decided I would wander until I found someone, anyone, to ease my mind. So that I could return to coming to these tracks for myself, and not in search of others. But I found no one.
As objects continued to appear on my path, I wondered if I was wandering on someone else's path, right behind them, as they endlessly discarded garbage they no longer desired. I kept walking. I thought that they had to rest eventually, and I would come across them sleeping and turn around and go home. But I happened across no stranger.
I started to wonder if maybe someone was following me, searching for an encounter and finding no one, because we all march infinitely forward into the ocean, never to be seen. I started to wonder if I even existed if my life was just a march into the ocean, or if I was simply the garbage I had left behind. I started to consider whether or not anyone else even existed. And nobody came to prove they did.
And after wandering for 10 years without eating or sleeping I wondered if the things I had ever needed to do either of those things, or if I was consuming simply to prove that I existed. I started to wonder if I was even going forwards still, or if I was just walking. I wondered if my house was still where I had left it, or if it was more garbage I had left behind. I wondered if my belongings were frozen in time, holding the emotions I left them with, or if they ever had a time to be frozen in in the first place. I wondered what life was like in the town I had left behind 10 years ago, and I realised it had to be the same as how I left it, another piece of garbage on my endless march of progress, my desperate chase after someone I've never seen. And I never did see them.
I do not know what life is like anymore, and in that detachment I have learned that life is everything I have avoided for 10 years. And everything I have lived. This knowledge drove my eyes wild, and I sprinted ahead. Surely the strangers couldn't outrun me forever. Garbage was strewn everywhere, and the piles appeared fresher and fresher. Fresh garbage is almost stuff, and people love stuff. I must be near. I dashed manically ahead and found not a person, just garbage. Appearing out of thin air, from nothing, more garbage. I had dedicated a decade of my life to chasing clusters of garbage, which led me to more garbage. I have forgotten what it means to be a person, I have become a blank slate, a knower of all by virtue of knowing nothing, I peered into the meaning of life. Where I found nothing but a void, I willed stars into existence. All but 13 of them exploded, and I looked to those 13 for answers. They told me to open my eyes. I obliged, and all the garbage dissolved as if by acid.
