Lucy Opens Fire

Friday, August 3, 2018

Living the dream.

Janzen: This must be real life. When nothing works, we have to make everything work. There is no one to call, nobody but us. It's just, when you're here for long enough, everything feels like you're walking around in a dream.

Kleinsausser: So, if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is that we're living the dream. And the dream is real.

Fort Severn, ON.

We actually set out to save the world. That is what was insane . . . me, for thinking I could enter a war and personally restore order.

So that’s the easy answer: forswear idealism, resign myself to a sad maturity; put away the things of youth; be thankful I survived and move on.

But that’s horseshit too, a craven capitulation. I’m not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naïve and romantic and idealist – the part of yourself you treasure most – to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicism, isn’t that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?

- Ken Cain, Emergency Sex