Duty and Obligation

Duty and obligation.

It's what keeps me where I am.
I've got to live a little first.
Before it kills me. And it will.

I remember the first time I hit London's Underground.
King's Cross.

Do know what I saw?
It wasn't the dirty tiled walls.
The crowds.
The suffocating low ceilings.
The beggars and drop-outs on the steps.

It was opportunity, man.
Endless opportunity.
In faces.
In eyes.
In the constant flow of humanity.
No one gave a fuck - but everyone cared.

The passion was for life itself.
Not for some stupid provincial idea of class
or some fucking football team.
Not for family or caste or tribe.
Fuck that.
London operates outside that.
It operates for now and what you want to be.
It operates for potential.
For what you can be.
For what you can do.
For who you might meet.
For who you might fuck.
And it doesn't care.

That's why I miss it.
It doesn't have the comradeship of the Loiners.
It doesn't have the shared loss of Railway and Eboracum and a city that made Emperors of Rome (once upon a time).
It doesn't have Arthur and his promise of a New Camelot rising from the marshes.
But it has now.

London has a world on which you can turn your back.
It has a family you can forget.
It has true love that lasts until the morning
and no one sheds a tear for it.
It has eyes that stare across the Tube and see everything but hold no opinion.
It has cafes to stir sugar into grey anonymous daylight.
It has sex and style and pain and loss and riches beyond the dreams of every See in the land.

It has freedom and success any way you choose to measure it.
It knows no bounds.
No shackles.
No shame.
No conscience.
It has no duty.
No obligation.
It is life.