too much too late
What happens when we all have too much? What happens when we are so mired in shit we can no longer move? What happens when we cut down all the trees, conquer every mountain, mine every ore, drain all the lakes, catch all the fish, hunt all the animals? What happens when we've finished polluting the atmosphere and destroyed the ozone layer and carefully, with kindness, integrated every indigenous tribe into a consumerist society like ours? What happens when everyone has everything, when we've got different clothes for every day and enough makeup to cake our faces in every hour and a car for every week, a new house for every year? What happens what happens what happens when we've run out of things to sell, when all the fleeting happiness at losing a pound is lost because everyone is cookie-cut beautiful, hair volumized and face clear and breasts perfect? Will we sell emotions outright, not as a byproduct of some prepackaged material? I know what we can do: tax emotions, tax public displays of affection, tax crying when your lover breaks up with you via text message. Marriage proposals are $500; weddings upwards of a thousand. Romantic dinners just $20 if you opt for the "diner+movie+necking in the car" package, but if you want to dress up and go to a nice restaurant and maybe dance a little to the slow jazz played live, you've got to shell out $100, at least, and then pay for the dinner and tip the musicians and the waiters. Tax feeling, because ultimately people are going to get all the stuff they've yearned for and then they're going to sit surrounded with the shit they've bought and paid for, wondering at how little the human body truly needs. Tax love, because at the end of every sale and every purchase people will realize all they've ever wanted is a little piece of heart, the pulse you feel when you press your ear to your lover's chest in the darkest hours of night.