The way this world has panned out is only one possible outcome of billions. There are possibly parallel universes showing alternative versions of this earth. Sometimes I feel as if just one person has designed everything in this world (and his name’s not God). Shops? Buildings? Cars? Roads? It often feels and looks so dull. I want to blame this one person, ask them what they were thinking. Why weren’t we asked if we wanted things to turn out this way? Barbed wire, guns, estate agents, rat poison, uneven distribution of wealth, McDonald’s, cigarettes, capitalism, reality TV. It all seems so unnecessary, so unfair.

But there’s no one person to blame. Councils, businesses, governments, no one wants to take responsibility. Apparently the onus is all on us, but we feel powerless, dishevelled, worn out. Maybe we’re all to blame. Even the locker in my local swimming pool doesn’t want to take responsibility for any loss or damages incurred. Everything is ‘at your own risk’. Enter, swim, proceed, park at your own risk.

There’s a Jorge Luis Borges character who wanted to create a world. So he made houses, provinces, rivers, valleys, tools, fish, lovers, then at the end of his life realises that this ‘patient labyrinth is none other than his own portrait’. (For the life of me I can’t find the original Borges’ story; the above is a Jean Luc Godard quotation referring to the making of Pierrot Le Fou. Ah, to be a French intellectual, eh?)

Previously on Barnflakes
Don't Blame us