A million little ruts.

When the tactic becomes the strategy, when the idea becomes the reason, when the suit becomes a sale, then all is good as lost. Some gleanings of art may survive the cull, some atom of difference may make it through the bland, surprise via exhaustion. But these are mere emoticons of meaning, shortcuts, biopsies of a bigger truth. For years, we sweated the details, knitting our own myths of expertise, a clingy conviction, blanketing reason. But if I stretch it tight, push against the knots, I can see a light through the holes. The light shines on crumbs under a table, cracks in a wall, dents in a car door. It shows a ragged pile of bills unopened, a well worn TV remote, and a slumbering exhaustion of rags on the couch. Too tired to talk about nothings, too jaded to gossip trivialities, they half-watch the actors in the rectangle. The light shines on, over years of disappointments and misgivings, expensive sales and cheap trinkets, broken promises and numbing invisibility. There's no warmth from this light, no comfort to it's reality. Separate lives, parallel and undeviating, these million little ruts have been veneered smooth by a cacophony of promises. My pretty words are neutered here, 50% off any meaning.