Role-Models.

I think that mostly, we're all of us growing down. We're sinking into the floor. There's this bottomless drop-out in our lives that we can't crawl out of.
And then we look up at the one person that somehow hasn't fallen yet, and we think, "There they are. There's the person I'm always going to depend on."

So we dig our claws into the blackhole, into the drop-out, into the big gaping nothing. And bit by bit we crawl out. And bit by bit we get closer to them.
Bit by bit, we strip away the layers of us that have always made us individuals. Bit by bit, we give ourselves away.

And when we finally get to this person, this diety that we haven't yet managed to take our eyes off, we realize that the person standing in front of us isn't a person at all.
It's a cardboard cut out.
Ant at its feet is a big red 'x' that melts away as soon as we notice it, becoming another blackhole. Another drop-out. Another nothing.

We're sliding into the pits of our lives-- into our pant suits and ties; our starbucks double frappe mochachinos; our breakfast-for-diners and diner-for-lunches. We're slipping into this abyss, this drop-out, this nothing, this blackhole, and we're thinking of all the things we shouldacouldawoulda done if we'd only seen this moment coming. We're promising ourselves to do it differently next time.


And then we look up, and at the edge of the hole is someone that hasn't managed to fall in.