_

to put things in perspective

Your job sucks.

Your clothes and shoes are made by overexploited underpaid children in a sweatshop in China.

Your feelings were cast, directed and produced in a dingy studio in Bombay. Your first love whored herself out in this very place.

Your aspirations are second hand American. So is your idea of feeling good.

Your favourite film is ripped off from somewhere.

The guy who sang your favourite song was just pretending.

Your education was at the hands of cynical discontented failures.

Your Diet Coke is part poison.

Your god is dead.

-

There’s this one shot in a Wim Wender’s film called ‘Wings of Desire’. It shows an angel standing on the roof of a tall building. He’s on the edge and leaning forward ever so slightly. You can see the skyline in the background, but it is blurred and indistinct. Everything looks slightly grimy, as if a dust storm is brewing. The wings, however, retain their delicacy - they are white, almost transparent.

Whenever I see this image I feel a strange kinship. I keep getting this feeling that he and I are in some way similar. We are both in purgatory. He is condemned to saving souls, but instead wants to live a normal life. I am stuck with a shatteringly normal life, when I’d rather be saving souls.

He’s on the edge. So am I.

He’s leaning forward. I am too.