1: here's to growing thin

ef·fete
1. lacking in wholesome vigour; degenerate; decadent: "an effete, overrefined society."
2. exhausted of vigour and energy; worn out: "an effete political force."
3. unable to produce; sterile.

Every youth gives up its ideals eventually. In younger days, I had cataloged my beliefs: there were those that I could indulge in until some grim revelation tore them from me, and those that would no doubt persist into my later, cynical life. It helped to know that it was coming, but it was still a shock to discover what needed to be surrendered. I lost everything, even what I had thought was cautious realism. I suppose it would not have been innocence if I had been unsurprised when it died.

Maybe I was unusually unfortunate; after all, people twice my age still believe in human decency. There's a thin line between acceptably narrowed eyes and a jade complexion. Perhaps I've fallen too far, but in any case, I cannot be a judge of that.

Rational dialogue - what a silly concept! In a world of prisoners faced with the chance to denounce a friend for a shorter sentence, no one is interested in working things out. Talk? Compromise? In what paradise? Too much perspective is apathy; apathy is weakness; weakness breeds dominance. Better to side against a common understanding, and to fight to death or victory, than to talk while no one listens. What is truth but the triumph of one idea over another? What is progress but the freedom of the oppressed to oppress someone else? And we talk about morals as if the cosmos gives a damn.

Will we delude ourselves with visions of kings and philosophers, when we're all just squirming in the mud? That willingness was what I expected to discover. But I believed that there would be a place we could all escape to. Somewhere we could bathe, and rest our tired limbs and tear ducts, before we expired in each others' arms.

I took a look outside, and the mud goes on forever. There is nothing but this. That was the innocence I lost.