AN INDEPENDENT STATE OF ONE

I will no longer affiliate myself with any of you bastards. I want no part of your nations or your systems or your beliefs. I refuse to passively endorse your willfully naive values, cosy hypocrisies and murderous ideologies. I am a deist, although often doubting, and I worship at an alterless church with the sky for a roof and sermons delivered on the breeze. I have created my own flag too and I speak a new language that I have invented for my use alone. I have composed my own national anthem and I have declared myself to be in an independent state of one.

You do not fill me with wonder. You just make me wonder what it's all for. You have broken my heart but I'm not broken yet. My defences are up but I will continue to trade and negotiate. I will participate in your customs but I will no longer pretend to fully appreciate them. I'll just be there like a visiting dignitary. That is, I will try to be dignified but I can't guarantee anything. I might get nervous and drink too much and there might be an outburst. I might suddenly announce that this is a farce and that I want to go home and then I will go home and there will be relief all round. I might talk to a homeless man that I meet on my way back to my sovereignty. I'll find him crouched in his cardboard kingdom and bidding me welcome in exchange for some small token. I'll give him a smoke if I have one. He'll tell me how you beat him and how you fucked him and how you now fear him and he'll ask me my story and I'll tell him that I just lost interest.

And he'll offer me a drink and I'll take it without knowing what it is and he'll fall asleep but I'll stay awake and watch the sun begin to seep through the clouds and the litter running down the empty street and I'll see the best amongst you, in high vis jackets, sweeping up your shit. Making the world presentable again so you can continue to make it a mess. I'd consider a complete trade blockade with you bastards but I know I'd starve to death. 

Gone From Here...

HAPPY MEAL

I got a Happy Meal. It was very cheap and I thought it might make me feel happy like they are in America. The Happy Meal came in a little Happy Meal box. I carried the little Happy Meal box over to a little seat and I opened the little Happy Meal box. I bent over the little Happy Meal box. I kind of hunched over it. I kind of enveloped the little Happy Meal box like a black fog might envelop a lost child. I looked down inside the little Happy Meal box. There was another little box inside the little Happy Meal box and there were chips, ...sorry, ...I mean fries in it so I took this other little box out of the larger little Happy Meal box and I ate some of the fries. There was also a little burger wrapped in a paper shroud in the little Happy Meal box and a drink in a cardboard drum with a circular plastic lid that I stabbed a straw through. A big red straw. I put the big red straw in my mouth and sucked the drink out of the drum. It gurgled. Then I unwrapped the burger and took some bites out of it.

I remembered this documentary I saw about how they eat abroad. Abroad, in strange places. There were all these Asians gathered around a lazy susan, having to negotiate the people on the other side as they attempted to turn whatever portion they wanted next toward themselves. They were meowing at each other in their weird tongue and sounded like randy tomcats. I thought it was crazy. It was all noisy and busy. They were just spinning dinner around trying to get the best bits for themselves. There were old people and kids and regular adult sized adults. All spinning and meowing and grabbing and carrying on. They wouldn't get my dinner. I'll tell you that. I said as much. I said as much out loud right there in McDonald's. 'They wouldn't get my dinner', I shouted out all of a sudden and to no one in particular. I got a funny look from a couple of teenagers. I looked back at them. 'They wouldn't get my dinner', I repeated and the teenagers looked away. I resumed eating, bent over my my little Happy Meal, hunched over it, enveloping it like the black fog I mentioned earlier might envelope the lost child I mentioned earlier.

I finished up the Happy Meal and looked at what was left of it. The little Happy Meal box was emptied and stained with ketchup and mustard and some other less identifiable substances I squeezed from sachets. The little Happy Meal box was torn and crinkled and it was creased. It was somewhat despoiled. It was a tad ravaged. I had done a right job on it. I had given it a right seeing to. I regarded its remains. I hovered over the defeated little Happy Meal box as a predator drone might hover over the scattered body parts of smouldering insurgents or the scattered body parts of what might well be smouldering insurgents or the scattered body parts of what might just be smouldering people, including children, from the same town as possible insurgents.

The little Happy Meal box was on a little plastic tray. Being a civic sort, I stood and carried the tray to a bin. I tilted the tray at the mouth of the bin and the corpse of the little Happy Meal cheerfully slid off the tray and plummeted down into the dark chasm beneath it - where forgotten things go. I watched as it went. I belched. I was satiated. I was satisfied. I was satisfied in a way. I was kind of satisfied. I was being thoroughly Occidental in any case. Probably happy, like they are in America.