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The mechanics of existence are hard. The actual functional bits of the day are fine to get along with but the repetitive things just get me down; the drive to and from work, even just getting up in the morning now. As writing this I can always choose something different to write, (indeed it would not be worth writing the same thing over and over), I feel happier now. My possibly irrational worries about what will happen to the world build up over time rather than being limited to a few tears over an impossibly heart-wrenching news-report. Cry over the death of the Tsar or the holocaust and then go back to your meal. That is not the way things should be but it is how they are. Maybe we can't all emote for the problems of the world but it builds up in me. It has been building up for years, ever since I started reading the papers.

How did I get here from the mechanics of existence? Sometimes I want to go to some form of secular monastery where I can sit in a cell and read, occasionally coming out to mop a floor or dig a garden but deep down I know that the mechanics of that existence would become as bad as those of this. So what is the solution? There is nothing easy I can write down here. So many people have tried to define ways of getting around this, from religious ideas to deeply existential philosophy but nothing works for everyone. We are all banging the rocks together and getting nowhere.

All this is of course my own problem and does not have any bearing over the problems of everyone else; they all have different problems and their own solutions. Nothing I can say can make their lives any better and likewise nothing they say to me will help. Well maybe it will but it would have to be very good.

Now tell me whether this is fiction or some sort of prose poem. I am not sure myself. It may be some solution to a little local problem which will resolve itself by lunchtime or it may be a long decline until something turns up, and something always turns up.