Only Human

I had an accident yesterday. An accident takes a millisecond – and in that millisecond, your brain broadcasts all the missteps you made that led to the accident, like CNN’s breaking news, complete with a crawl at the bottom of the screen that keeps reeling “stupid fuck… stupid fuck… stupid fuck…” Then you berate yourself for being human. Mostly because being human is costly. We’re all high-maintenance. And very expensive. Fortunately, though, your moral thumbscrews ease up on you as the hours go by. (You thought it was a moral compass, you say? Hell, no: a compass involves no pain.) And I baked and cooked and cleaned and laundered and flogged myself sufficiently with domestic labor as penance.

Penance. Jesus, now there’s an archaic and utterly bourgeois concept.