come up for air only to find bombing planes hovering around, buzzing in your ears, breaking promises of peace. come up for air only to suffocate another way, the air choked with pollution, the lands housing parasites—where fishes should be, you'll find tin cans and cigarette butts and dickheads who mistake the picturesque for nature's best kept gifts. come up for air and acknowledge the break before another descent. what is left? what remains? what is new? what continues? swallow the novelty. move before looking closer. it's all fake; you're archaic and they're all ghosts playing house, only you're the fool who can see through.

run back to the bleak, now dressed in that sweet and sinful nostalgia. you'll think it's home. 

(you're now the fool who looks past.)

...but you see, Mr. Bowling, you're still lucky. you're a man. you could go wherever. you can spend that seventeen quid on alcohol. you can contemplate the inevitable war. you can fancy taking in a woman. you can hate. you can hope. you can even dare to change things. your wife, Hilda, cannot. the kids are at home. the chores are for her taking. the endless meals she must place on the table. the kids and a manchild (you) to raise, to care for. she worries about the immediate future, because her present is eternal.

besides, men like you created the shit show you are in. they're men like you, only they are drunk with power, and you're drunk with low-quality booze. you come home with your stinky breath and false teeth, waiting for dinner and a fresh set of clean clothes. you at least have a life that's yours. Hilda lives for others so suck it up, that air you've rambled on about for 270 pages.

this is me being honest as you've inspired me somehow. you've said a lot of right things. but you don't have to vilify women. you know they have it worse.