{"id":204,"date":"2017-11-21T14:03:31","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T14:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cranialspark.com\/?p=204"},"modified":"2017-11-21T14:03:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T14:03:31","slug":"metro-musings-of-mouse-and-maze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/21\/metro-musings-of-mouse-and-maze\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro Musings: Of Mouse and Maze"},"content":{"rendered":"

We choose<\/em> to pack in. And rarely, it seems, do we ever choose<\/em> not to. This is metropolitan life.<\/p>\n

Consider the city a maze. It’s not difficult to imagine it. The row after row of upwards reaching buildings, wall us in and confine us to designated paths with limited destinations.<\/p>\n

Man becomes mouse.<\/p>\n

For every five on the metro, four are plugged in. Plugged into a specially curated island universe. Every mouse has a refuge. Today, I did not jam myself into the first train, but the second was no less crammed.<\/p>\n

It is beginning to dawn on me. A maze makes for a mouse mentality \u2014 seeing nothing of the natural world, save for slivers of the sky above. Moving forward or backward, every day a choice\u2014 the start and the finish.<\/p>\n

What a strange way to choose<\/em> to live.<\/p>\n

A mouse in a maze. Can you imagine the anxiety? It just occurred to me that the mouse might not be looking for cheese. It’s not even looking for a way out.<\/p>\n

The mouse isn’t looking for anything, movement is just mechanical. It is driven by an instinctual anxiety. Move or die.<\/p>\n

So, what if the mouse isn’t looking for the cheese? What if it just comes upon it?<\/p>\n

Panic, disphoria. It eats the cheese, not even because it fears there may never be cheese again. Somehow, deep down, the mouse knows there is always more cheese. Hunger doesn’t compel the mouse to eat the cheese.\u00a0 It does it because theres nothing else left to do, it’s eat the cheese or frantically traverse the maze until another cheese appears.<\/p>\n

Cheese is to mouse as cheese is to man.<\/p>\n

The metro always smells different. Like half-baked ideas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We choose to pack in. And rarely, it seems, do we ever choose not to. This is metropolitan life. Consider the city a maze. It’s not difficult to imagine it. The row after row of upwards reaching buildings, wall us in and confine us to designated paths with limited destinations. Man becomes mouse. For every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cranialspark.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}