Topographic whores
There is a lot of sky in my city but nobody looks at it because they can’t turn their necks anywhere else but at each other, measuring the level of success on others. There is a lot of brain wash on the billboards which only a fresh eye can see. Those billboards advertise mortgages and saving couple of coins by paying less for a particular toothpaste, they advertise taking bank loans to pay bills (this add I saw in the cinema before watching a Hollywood movie with a voiceover!)
film photography by tinalevyz, Lisbon, Portugal.
This place will never change because nobody really understand that they have already become a part of the grinding machine of the government. People lie to themselves that they are not a part of this system but they still use an IphoneX in a tram to work. Women prefer to spend money on fake lashes and ugly nails instead of getting out of the city for a weekend to spend some time in nature. Sad, sad reality.
I already don’t feel comfortable during the transfer to hometown flight. People stare at me, dressed like the rest of the world. I don’t wear fancy purse, I have my old Iphone 6 which I purchased to myself on silent, I don’t wear make-up after 12 hour flight, like other women, I have chocolate from duty free instead of 5 bottles of fancy perfume. I am polite with officers at the scan, am not rude to other foreigners, who can’t read Russian signs, I don’t talk to them in Russian like to a cattle. This is my reality.
“It’s not smart to burn bridges” my mom once said. But somehow bridges got burned. There was no land remained on the other side, just a field full of garbage I used to think was something good. Sad, sad reality.
There is lots of sky in my hometown, lots of trees and very good cultural life. I am talking about high quality theatre plays, music, literature, cultural events, art, dance, opera, ballet, good food and very reserved, educated people. But it is not the reality people want to planish. Unfortunately, they want to buy a new Iphone, they want to get better deals for beauty products, they want, want, want. It’s so sad that they can only feel good by making their wishes become a reality. And their wishes are to get better things than their neighbor has.
Doesn’t matter where I live now. Doesn’t matter where I build my world, where I am happy about my reality. Doesn’t matter, what it looks like. But I finally got “sober”. I finally became an adult coming back to a place I once knew and clearly realizing a great change in me.
To all those people who don’t go home for Christmas, even if you suddenly do, take that place as the only competition you once had and you have won it.
We are not “topographic whores”. We strive to become. And the process matter. We do belong, but not to a place, but to ourselves.