Many a tough and yet sorta' dull (and listless) sensibility crossed the flattened mountain; too bad they had to run it all over to death with their third or fourth generation box analysis. Though I'd swear there was now a trough starting to form... ah you know. It's still confounding to me why the mill has run the way it has. I haven't tried to get a job there, so I won't presume to understand how it works, even though all the while, it's pretty goddamn obvious. But I peek in the windows all the same. They seem to be similar folks in there... when they get out and we run into each other in the street or the bar, there are friendly-enough exchanges... but I can't shake the feeling it's all insincere. Or perhaps the joke is there and the apparel is slightly off. Or they're afraid. Or just rather sad, almost as if still in high school: believing every succulent lie on social strata and would-be interaction. I cannot shake it, lately. And so I stare and peek even more. The losers in the group still wrangle out a win or two, curiously enough. They know the right choice of words to get a discussion going, hoping someone will notice their brilliant mention of some more popular member of the tribe; get a chorus going, that type of thing. Even the intellectuals of the group get in on the act, quoting something verbose and bullshit that does equal damage to the chance that things will change. I guess I begin to understand where I stand, and I never would've imagined all turns would result in this dead-end plain. It's not that I feel dead, quite the opposite. And it's not that they're dead, either. It's just the way things go. You're either a sheep or serious at herding the sheep. The ol' flat mountain range has resulted in a barren, brown Wyoming-looking place... some place exhausted from being drilled and bored and prodded too much. The products are moot as well: the gems and fossils are archaic, useless figments of a past that never existed to begin with (only romanticized by the shrine builders and mill drones). Good and green? Hardly.
