Don't look now, but she just walked in the door, and from the look in her eyes, something has gone wrong.

Wait, what look in her eyes? They're brimming with tears!

It was never supposed to come this way. You didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, and the idiots next door were never even remotely interested in the way things turned out. Pantheism, you know. If I'm my own God, I should be in charge of my own world, including my own life. It's the pantheistic pathway to self-realization: that's all they know.

And we pass each other every day, hiding under some overblown facade of polite political correctness, social conformity, anti-sexual harrassment procedures, pompous and overblown emphases on society's misdirected structure.

And we pass her every day, too chivalrous to look her in the eye, and nod. Sometimes we say "How are you," and she says "Fine how are you" in that rapid tone people use when they are walking in opposite directions and know they have to fit their own greeting in before they've gone more than two feet beyond the other person, so that the other person can respond, just as we always do every morning when the acknowledgement of someone else's existence has been vocalized and responded to, also verbally, with that one last little word "fine." And then, having already passed her, we continue on the ritualistic path to wherever it is that we go every day.

Sometimes we pass her on the way home and again nod, trying to make sure we don't stare at any improper curves. It doesn't really matter; the frictionless ensemble of greetings we have amassed over the years has inflated enough; no one will remember tomorrow which one we used today, including, of course, ourselves. It doesn't matter; they don't mean anything anyhow.

Do you ever wonder what would happen if, in the course of our frictionless vocalized greeting, someone raised their head, stared the questioner in the eye, and replied, "Horrible; my mother is ill with the flu, my father lost his job, my grandfather passed away of heart disease yesterday, my cousins are coming to town for the funeral and eight of them are planning to have a beer bash in my apartment Suday night, which happens to be just before I go in for an interview that will ensure job stability on Monday, since my company is downsizing and only keeping three hundred of their eight hundred employees, not to mention the fact that my ex just called and wants money because he's been arrested for the third time this month and needs to be bailed out of jail, and I'm the only one to do it because his family went bankrupt three months ago; I have the flu and I haven't done laundry in three weeks and there's nothing to eat in the house because I haven't had time to cash my paycheck yet," instead of that commonplace "fine," because, as we all know, that's precisely what "fine" means anyway, and pretending otherwise is ridiculous. We say the things we say because that's all we have time to say.

So now what do we do? We can't ask how she is because the answer can't be honest any more; the trite misguided simplicity of our false response is appalling, and we never know when someone is really fine or when they're just saying that so they won't be a bother. You know snhe says that, at least, because she doesn't want to burden anyone with her troubles; either that, or she can't trust us, or anyone, anymore. Something in her is trying to cry out for help, but there's a distance between that and her external appearance. The only way you'll even get a hint of her troubles is to look at her eyes, which, of course, is impossible because the previously discussed belligerence of society will prohibit it. We might start thinking of one another as human beings; we can't have that.

You can't touch her, either. It would violate every unspoken contract ever made. You know, and I know, and she knows that all she really wants is a hug, but why should we make any gesture of affection when it could earn you a slap in the face or, worse, a lawsuit. No, no. To touch is to contaminate, probably with a more adult version of cooties, only this, at least, doesn't involve fleeing someone across the schoolyard; we now no longer have to make any physical contact whatsoever.

Don't look at her, either; surely don't exhibit concern. Why should we care? We're trained not to. Sympathy implies weakness, which is a mess you surely want to avoid. Maybe watch out of the corner of her eye, but make sure you pretend she doesn't exist.

If you pretend hard enough, you just might get to watch her walk to the balcony and jump. That'd be the fifth suicide this week. After a while they just get to be mundane; if it shakes you up you can add it to the list of hidden meanings behind your "fine" tomorrow morning, but otherwise we'll just drop in at the funeral and look morbid while we avoid touching the family, if they're even allowed to express concern or grief in this impersonal society any more, before we come back here and re-enter the frictionless void until we see another person die.

The cycle's not gonna stop; we brush past unthinking, walk through life avoiding all we stand for, and finally watch impassively as the state of our society drives more and more to ruin. Perhaps in time you or I will be standing at the balcony, ready to conclude another miserable part in the ongoing cycle. Of course, no one can really look, because the person standing there usually has tears in his eyes, and it wouldn't be polite to look.

Nah, don't look. It's not polite to stare.