When you're born and raised in filth, you cannot even imagine a life without it. You can't fathom it. It's as if the dirt and muck seep into your very bones, as if the filth has always been an intimate part of who you were. A child born in a trench dreams of a better life, but he doesn't dream of one beyond the trench. The trench is the limit of his imagination, of his acceptable beauty. It's the invisible wound that serves as the boundary to where his purest thoughts are allowed to escape to. Filth is what he eats, the taste of his childhood. It's what he pines for, for it is the memento that holds his brightest memories. Therefore, he does not know that there is life beyond his narrow, filthy domicile. Why? Because he cannot possibly know. Who will inform him? Those who came before have all but forgotten. If you asked him to describe a place beyond the trenches, he wouldn't know how. Perhaps he'd compare it to something he holds most holy - a mother's gentle song, or the fleeting feeling of safety provided by his father's presence. But that's it. That place beyond the filth, even as a dream, is inaccessible. It's unimaginable, egregious, fantastical even. We lie to ourselves when we see a family stricken with poverty. We say that their children don't inherit anything from the parents and grandparents. But the truth is that they do. They inherit quite a lot. They inherit the trauma, the sadness, and the filth - unimaginable amounts of it. They inherit the defeatism, nihilism, and the many ailments and sicknesses of their predecessors - a whole legacy of "what ifs", "can nots" and "do nots". And if, one day perhaps, one of these children dares to question the filth and conspires to be rid of it, he might be scolded for his audacity to think that he ever could. What happens if, if fate would so have it, when the child grows and is given the honors and means to dig his own trench, his own filthy shelter-corner of the world, he decides to make it beautiful instead - with whatever he is given. With anything but filth. What happens then, once cleanliness takes over? What might come after, as result of this rebellious act? What does it look like, exactly, when the filth can no longer weigh him down? If you can imagine it, if you can see it - then you can imagine it for him too. To see it into existence - that better world. The place beyond the filth. ![[Pasted image 20260414223132.png]]