More structural decay

None of the expansion joints are the same, this is, for me a worrying defect on an otherwise beautiful building. Who did the snagging for the client? 

Roof, sky, palms. 

Roof, sky. 

The pleasant remains of afternoon drinks.

The basic truth is that there are very few things in life that are completely enjoyable in their own right. Many things are of course pretty good, occasionally exceptional or fantastic beyond simple description and so that leaves the rest of life's numerous tastes and experiences as mostly tolerable, passable, acceptable or OK time fillers and diversions for the time being etc. Or is that just how you get to be and see when of a certain grey bearded age? I'm not moaning here, I'm just taking stock. That's a thing that happens when I have some time on my hands and I am free to look out of a window.

So I'm watching from this hotel room window as anxious city smokers pad up and down outside a BT building's glass doorways, fumbling with cigarette packs covered in warnings I can read even at this distance, fumbling more to light the white poison and then eventually smoking some of the precious tobacco vapour as they (inevitably) play along with the various mechanical diktats of their gleaming smart phones. This is known as “taking a break” in certain circles. It is also a manifestation of a rich and diverse device based anarchy and slavery which exists hidden in plain sight all around. It can be exhausting and there is no break.

To try to understand this I'm constructing mental Venn diagrams of things, seeing the circles cross, filling in the text, scoring the points and tallying things up. Eventually it becomes a scribbled mental jumble, like all thoughts. I realise that I don't really know what despair is about or anything even like it, I'm too marooned in my own semi-smug and detached observations. I'm vanilla through and through but able to see the sense in points of view I don't hold and wont ever hold but still can empathise with. Everybody is just everybody else caught up in those petty wars and habits that we share and deny and everything outside this window remains busy as ever but brick by brick going nowhere.