Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), Arcade Fire

Interstate-5, through the center of California, shows all sorts of life forms, from the real life cities, suburbs and the middle of nowhere. There are crops, there are gas stations, and everyone seems to be "passing through." Life is temporary there - it changes with the seasons, in more ways than just the sowing and the reaping of plant and food life.

When I was young, making the long, laborious trek from Oakland to Los Angeles with my parents, I wondered once where the people who ran the gas stations lived. Where did the children go to school? Why did they chose to work there, of all places? And, most importantly, how long was their commute?

My dad chuckled. I had asked all of these questions in a row, without pausing for answers in between. My mom was asleep, and my brother was plugged into a game or music or something. Dad explained that people lived in these settlements (they were too small to be towns) and, while some had to travel distances to a school, there were other schools near certain places. Parents gave businesses to children, to children, to children, and the child took over. The process continued for generations, and few left the cycle, just because they didn't know how. I probably accused my dad of lying, the concept was so foreign. My dad had a tendency of making up answers to questions when he didn't know the truth. By the time I was 8, and big brother was 10, we knew what he was up to.

To leave a place like this is hard. To leave any place is hard. You're called names, you're judged. Most painfully, you're accused of not caring about those you left behind, when perhaps you leave because you care. You care enough not to be stuck where you were five, ten, fifteen years ago. To desire, to aspire, are those verbs really so despicable?

Are the people who want something different pretentious? We are expected, almost, to stay in the world we are born into. If someone from California moves to the midwest, people are shocked, why would they ever leave? Yet, the same thing happens if vice versa. Why would anyone leave where they are from? Because someone wants change, or wants to simply change themselves, their scenery, they are told to stop. Even in true cityscapes, the ones who pursue nature or adventure or music, laughter, noise, are mocked and laughed at. We are told to be unique, yet when we try, we are discouraged.

We are born, we work, we reproduce, we work, we die. Our existences have been instilled with such monotony and patterns. Are we even aware that there is one? Are we gratefully oblivious of do we blindly follow the pattern? Does being lost simply mean we hesitate to follow the plan?

Being stuck in an in between town, in an in between place. Waiting for something to happen, someone to pass through. Waiting is hard, for no other reason than the inability to do anything in between. Being unable to pursue something good because you're waiting for something even better is ridiculous, but what is it when the better thing is coming, you just have to wait? Civilization has spread, "sprawled", if you will, and goes on and on. I've begun to wonder if we have become so accustomed to life, to urbanization, that even when we're in nature, somewhere clean and pristine, we expect to see what we subconsciously associate with urbanization. Will we someday see the ruins of skyscrapers as nature?

I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights.