It’s absurd.

I’m on a train riding from one unknown location to another, watching a beautiful mountainous snowscape slip by me on my way to somewhere new. Sharing my compartment, slouching across from me, is a young traveller who reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age. If I were in a better state, I’d know that’s exactly who it is. I can tell that I’ve perhaps drank a little too much, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m running from something. And I know he is too, but we don’t speak. I watch as he fixes his sleepy eyes on the window, and I know that’s precisely what he’s seeing: the glass of the window – nothing beyond.

Sometime later, we’re walking down a narrow city street, in an old part of town. I’m enjoying the sights, and the safe feeling of the weighty, unfamiliar buildings surrounding us. My fellow traveller has been irritable since our arrival.

He: You see how they do things here? It’s absurd.

I look around to see what he’s talking about, and find him stopped outside of an adult sex shop, its front window papered in pornography.

Me: What?

He: Any child on the street could walk right by and see this!

Me: So?

He: It’s disgusting! I wouldn’t want my kids seeing that stuff.

Me: Why not?

He: They just shouldn’t have such easy access to those kinds of images.

Me: I really don’t have a problem with it - I mean, it’s not like they’re allowed into the actual store, right? Meanwhile, the same child turned away from this store can walk right into the next internet café and actually simulate murdering other people with machine guns and rocket launchers-

He: -well, I’m not talking about that.

[I think we went on to argue about some other stuff, and maybe even travel somewhere else, but my memories get pretty fuzzy right around here. Woke up with a big headache. Just need some coffee, I think.]