TOMATOS THICKENED AND THIN
loose shoe fast smoke
loose shoe fast smoke
TOMATOS THICKENED AND THIN
TOMATOS THICKENED AND THIN
Stop eating your own flesh
We are selfish apes fighting for steel bananas in the jungle
Don't vomit it out
I only have three cigarettes left.
loose shoe fast smoke
In my memory, London never really snowed.
Most of the time, it was just a blur of white mist,
or damp streets that seemed to sweat back yesterday’s rain.
But the sidewalks always dried faster somehow.
People say the city is soaked in endless drizzle—
That’s not quite true.
The air here is dry, almost brittle,
and the wind cuts through the alleys like it's late for something.
Cigarettes burn quicker in weather like this.
I don’t mind racing the heavens for a smoke—
It’s not like we get many chances
to share anything with the sky.
Still, sometimes I do feel reluctant to finish one.
No one but the sky knows
how many cigarettes you’ve got left in this life:
tens of thousands, a handful,
or maybe just a few.
And in the end, you’re nothing but a smear of ash.
The abscess of love and envy bursts in silence,
its pus mixing with cigarette dust,
melding into the dirt—
No more position.
No more choice.
No more passive endurance.
Maybe it’ll feed something new.
Maybe.
Though honestly, manure would do a better job.
As long as it satisfies,
who really cares.
I never remember what happened the day before yesterday—
and even yesterday fades like fog.
But that’s alright.
It only matters for those few seconds
when someone asks.
And silence is enough of an answer.
I don’t have a broken mind.
It’s just the world—too loud to listen through.
One must always remember where they come from.
That grey room with peeling paint,
where a dying lightbulb flickers in a building
that should’ve been torn down years ago—
That is your home.
That’s where you belong.
There are times when I want to make different choices—
perhaps to be unconventional,
perhaps just to feel like I’m not fading into sameness.
But no matter what I choose,
I remain ordinary.
These so-called differences don’t make me stand out,
nor do they change the shape of my life.
At best, they ignite brief, meaningless flashes
of self-indulgent narcissism—
small illusions that make the dull hours pass easier.
Being momentarily “unique”
doesn’t make my existence any closer
to becoming some metaphysical ideal.
Like this afternoon,
when I walked to a nearby restaurant
to eat breakfast at noon.
How “quirky.”
No one noticed.
No one cared.
Just like most of my decisions:
empty,
but made to please myself.
Thinking a little less heavily—
maybe that’s enough.
菜根谭 once said:
“Fortune cannot be pursued.
To nourish joy is the root of all blessings.”
And maybe that’s all an ordinary person
should be concerned with.
To be the same as others isn’t a flaw.
Accepting your mediocrity—
that’s a process.
I still remember a few days ago on the street,
the leaves kept falling—
so many that they nearly buried the city.
But when I looked up,
the tree was still full, still green.
It had lost some leaves, sure—
but it would grow new ones.
But I am not a tree.
I am a leaf.
I am not the desert.
I am a grain of sand.
I am like most people.
But there are always a few—
the exceptional ones,
burning loud in the noise,
setting the whole forest on fire.
And the leaves cheer for them,
celebrate, worship,
until they too become ashes.
We are the fuel.
Fuel born of mistaken self-awareness.
Drink more water.
I went out today wearing too little.
It wasn’t exactly cold,
just colder than I’d imagined.
The cigarette still burned fast—
though this time, not because of the wind.
I’m not the kind of person who spills everything outward.
Not one to broadcast my emotions—
good or bad—
to those around me.
But in some way,
that too is a form of self-expression.
I know it doesn’t change anything,
not for them,
not for me.
Still—
the shoelaces came undone on their own today,
and weirdly, it felt more comfortable that way.
Loose.
Ungrasped.
When I feel like saying something,
I just say it.
I don’t expect anyone to understand.
Or care.
But I still check the comments.
Just to see—
if someone said anything back.
Humans are contradictory.
Messy.
Too complicated to box into traits.
They keep inventing new names for what people are,
to classify,
to tag,
to sort.
But they forget that at our core,
we are contradiction.
We are noise.
We are chaos with skin on.
And so,
what’s left is just a shell—
empty taxonomy,
no person inside.
Yesterday,
I was talking to someone.
And I asked this:
When we read,
are we shaping our self?
Or just stitching together a superego
made of thousands of ethical fragments
from a hundred old men and their books?
Maybe growth
is just accumulation—
a museum of borrowed thoughts.
And society keeps defining growth
as becoming digestible,
socially compatible,
balanced between self and system.
Maybe that’s good.
Maybe.
But it’s no longer me.
Life here feels a lot like the tomato beef soup I made.
I chopped far too many tomatoes,
piled them into the pot—
it looked full, almost indulgent.
But I couldn’t shake the anxiety:
store-bought tomatoes don’t really taste like tomatoes.
So I added half a tube of tomato paste.
Then a few packets of ketchup.
Now, I told myself,
I wouldn’t need to worry about flavor—
sweetness? checked.
acidity? checked.
And yes, it looked a bit thicker now.
But something still felt incomplete.
So I added cornstarch.
To thicken.
To stabilize.
Now, finally, I told myself,
nothing could go wrong.
Boil it?
Boil it.
Is there enough water?
Maybe not…
Add more.
Too watery now?
Boil again.
Adjust. Repeat.
After all that anxiety and tinkering,
the soup turned out alright.
It looked decent.
It even tasted fine.
But there wasn’t much beef flavor left.
Balance, after chaos,
often results in absence.
And still—
it was nothing special.
All the rebirths, all the revisions,
couldn’t change much.
Behind every seemingly insignificant decision
was a spiral of clutter and worry.
Life became more exhausting
with each choice I made.
And yet—
that quiet, unremarkable chaos
wasn’t entirely bad.
Because it reminded me—
just as I always say:
pain never really leaves.
It just simmers beside you.