Detachment

"We can live beside the ocean, leave the fire behind. Swim out past the breakers, watch the world die." - Everclear

"The truth is, there is no spoon" - Kid from the Matrix

The world is a funny place. The world we live in is overrun by people. Everywhere you go they surround you. The police officers driving by you, the homeless people begging for your change, the toothless whores on Ponce de Leon playing out the string of their failed lives.
One movie that I enjoyed from a year or two ago was the Dawn of the Dead remake. In this movie one character asks another why so many of the zombies knew to converge around the Mall where the survivors were holed up. Ving Rhames responds by saying that perhaps it is instinctual and that they are reacting to traces of their memory.
Sometimes I look around and it seems to me that the country is full of zombies. People are dead and yet they don't even know it. Whether its the fat old lady shambling in front of me, or the drivers who don't realize that there are two left turn lanes and casually drifts in front of me, an accident avoided merely because I correctly anticipated his stupidity.
It isn't that I hate people. It isn't really even that I detest stupidity. Most people are fairly well meaning and just want to live their lives and be left alone. What it is more than anything is that I don't feel particularly attached to people in general. I can almost relate to Meursault, the coldly indifferent narrator of Camus' classic The Stranger at times. While it is filled with people, sometimes the world seems empty to me. Pleasure can be found, but it is fleeting, empty at its core.
To put an end to this rambling thought, I will leave you with a couple of quotes that sum up my feelings from a couple of individuals with little in common (one who recently passed).

"Is this it? Is this what it's all about Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking, snorting? Then what? Tell me, then what?"- Tony Montanta

"I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and the time to sit and smoke."- Arthur Miller