Free Range

How to live knowing that you might never know joy in day-to-day life? That you will never know the true pride from your work? That there is no meaning, no goal, no hope for improvement? That life will continue and you have to get used to it and also to the idea that it might go on for a long time and, worst of all, it is almost impossible to put up with it in a dignified way? I am referring to shoddy housing, meager food, poverty and the extensive coarseness below and stolid indifference above, and to the dreadful machinery that minces its way through the lives of most of us, evermore efficient, ceasing little by little to even pretend that this is not our murder, packed and sold to us in variable forms. Where should we head to, cattle for slaughter, and how is it possible to participate in all this, without losing our humanity and the last bits of our lust for life? Fred (29), an aspiring writer, is thrust into the middle of these questions – his girlfriend Susanna (23) is pregnant and intends to keep the baby.