For the first time, things start smelling a little bit like they are supposed to (summer, autumn and winter in New England do not smell enough; I have been missing the intensity of the seasons in the air). I walk along lake Waban and marvel at the dots of light, very travel-ad-ish, dancing on the water (I did not know that dots like that exist outside of photoshop) and there is this sound in the background, the tap-tap of boats tied up on the shore gently bumping into each other (the exact same sound you would choose if you were to make this scene into a Dawson's Creek episode). I pass red brick castles set against a backdrop of cornflower blue air; fairy tale land. I am walking barefoot, and I think of all the people who believe this is paradise. The same people who argue that Bellamy's Boston, The Giver's world and The Village are nice places. The same people who told me they would give up colors and music if someone released them from the burden of making decisions. I said Are you crazy?!, and they did not understand.



"'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.'
There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last."

(Aldous Huxley, Brave New World)



It is time to leave... Paradise is not my kind of place.