Friday 23 July 2010

Melancholia and post-mortem cruelty

My wife and I went for another evening walk. It was later in the evening and much darker. We stopped at a local café for a drink, then carried on. I still had that feeling that we will not stay here for all that long. I am going to miss the town, some of it at least, but not all of it. Seeing all the people on the main street going clubbing, young and old, I felt like an outsider, belonging to neither age. People go clubbing everywhere on Friday night, but it just seems more strange and unnecessary in a small town, like it is somewhat fake.

We walked to my former working place. Not the school, the company that is now bankrupted. Losing that job gave us a lot of anxieties, so I was glad they paid for it, even though I think they did not suffer enough. I say "they", yet many employees probably suffered a lot more than they deserved by staying there. I am of course refering to the bosses when I say "they". Certainly, "they" didn't suffer enough, didn't get humiliated enough, even though they went down pathetically. Looking at the abandoned place, I had a strong feeling of schadenfreude. We came here because of that lousy job which I lost too soon, when we didn't have time to even get settled. Yet, they are the ones who went down first and left town. I felt that I survived them, if that makes sense. And it gave me a lot of pleasure tonight.

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