The Rant.

Making my way through my apartment in to the communal corridors that insulate myself from the collective, I walk outside to bask in my own feeling of isolation to enjoy my final cigarette from the eternal pack of emptiness. As I draw back on the paper-lined cylinder of cancerous gases, I look up at the sky to see one of the last visible stars that is not cloaked by the smog that engulfs our lives.

As I take the final draw on the already extinguished cigarette I sit there watching the incandescent glow of an ember that is one puff away from oblivion, like the star that’s light has already diminished after its million-year journey to reach my eye. Reaching down to put out the remains of the cigarette, I look up to see a stilted figure taking clothes off the line, with every peg that falls into a an old tin can sending shivers through my spine.

Looking closer, a woman with short black hair that seems to blend into the night moves graceful from side to side, plucking the pegs off the line like apples in an orchard and placing them gently into the old can. Perching myself on the rail of the stairwell, I angle myself closer to see which number she chooses to inhabit. Edging myself closer, I see her disappear around the corner and out of sight.

Regaining my balance, I move back inside from the harsh realities of my environment. It's strange to think at one stage of our evolution we were at one with nature: living in it, sleeping in it and breathing it. All I seem to breathe these days is the polluted haze that falls over the city like a thick blanket from the industrial estate just out of town.

Although we live in this polluted state, we direct our attention away from the gas guzzling cars, the torrents of smog we inject into the atmosphere from the numerous industries that sustain our modern conditions, thus turning our eyes on to the individual- like we are the ones responsible for all the cancers, tumours and respiratory diseases that plague humanity. We smoke too much, drink, use mobile phones, microwave our food, sit too close to our televisions, eat processed food... and on it goes, placing the responsibility firmly in our own hands.

So if one day I do happen to get cancer, I won’t be able blame it on the multinational corporation, the gene-tech organization or the petrol syndicates; the responsibility will be with me because I smoked too much, enjoyed a drink and wanted to keep in touch with my friends and family. The irony is that the only thing that gets the filthy taste of the petrol-guzzling cars and the polluting factories out of my mouth is a crisp clean smoke of a cigarette, which furthers my predicament.

Sitting down feeling jaded by the injustice of it, I reach over to pour myself a stagnate crimson glass from a bottle of pinot that is sitting on my desk as the words fall out of my mouth: 'we're all fucked'.