bennlen

[bennlen]

The village next door is so small that everyone is related. That old saying, it takes a village to raise a child, well, here it’s for real. Everyone is someone’s cousin’s spouse. One of your uncle’s nieces. Say you’re here for their cousin’s wedding and when you pay for a coffee they’ll slide you back some change with a wink. If you know someone, you know everyone.

[bennlen]

“The last thing you want to do is to be hit by an asteroid with an STD. A thousand years from now aliens with seven toes and three eyes, they’ll find what’s left of your body and question your contraception approach. They’ll point at your gonorrhoea. Those crabs you caught. Syphilis. Chlamydia. Or worst, you could die pregnant.”

[bennlen]

“It’s so dark you can’t see if that tall shadow staring at is a drunk maniac or just a tree. Pop music coming out of the rented speakers inside with everyone dancing their headaches away.”

[bennlen]

"I fractured my ribs and strained my diaphragm. That aside, my life was going as scheduled. Everything was great. 

Until it was not."

[bennlen]

"If you pay attention close enough, your life is a thick spiderweb of curious coincidences."

[bennlen]

“Over the years I realised that what is special for you, might be absolutely meaningless for everyone else. Most of the time you’re only special for the people you love. And that is more than enough.”

[bennlen]

I lost a mortadella sandwich once. I was young. My superpower, back then, was to squeeze my belly and make two doughy bread rolls pop between my belt and my chest.

[bennlen]

He called his shrink and she said, "Is this an emergency?" Touring your own house in an endless loop of despair. These days if you don't need a respirator your sense of emergency becomes all of a sudden relative and pointless.

[bennlen]

I really enjoy crying, but let’s be honest, you can’t cry all alone at the movies. It’s an untold rule. Like why hairdressers are always closed on Monday.

[bennlen]

Because it turns out that life is more or less always the same. It’s just your eyes, how you look at it, that makes a difference.

[bennlen]

There’s no way you’ve ever seen an Easter egg like the one I got when I was a kid. Seriously. This was when I had hairless armpits and everyone in my family was still alive.

[bennlen]

That guy at the café who, when you ask for the bill, he smiles behind the counter and always says, “Cashy-cashy or tappy-tappy?”

[bennlen]

Being a better person has never been so easy. Before technology took over I would have been a saint. Now, I’m just in the way of everyone’s online yoga classes.

[bennlen]

If reincarnation was a thing I doubt that a slot machine would be your first option.

[bennlen]

The Forgotten

Hit half of your goal and then it’s all muscle memory. Body inertia. The motor of that zombie-life you never ought to hit. Those great life dreams you had when you still knew how to dream. Time scoffs them all down.

Available on Amazon

[bennlen]

You finally got paid and your friends say, Let’s go for a pint, maybe two. And you wake up in the morning with a giant spiderweb crack on your phone wondering where your wallet is

[bennlen]

This is a full lockdown. Leave your home and you’ll need to explain a man in uniform where you’re going. Everything is a stretched version of the freedom you used to have without knowing it.