The Edge of Squalor

I’m pretty sure I wrote about this before but I can’t remember. In any case, one of my favourite themes is what I’d dean The Edge of Squalor.

One could reduce it down to the “fall of pride” and that’s all, but I do truly think it’s worth dissecting. A typical demonstration of the trope is when a prior aristocracy loses everything. Though that’s the more common form of it, and a little boring.

The one I’d like to talk about is the same as you drive through your suburban neighborhood entrance. Maybe you have one, maybe you don’t — maybe you go around a few bends and then you’ll begin to understand. That at first glance everything seems clean enough, pristine even. But the first crack begins.

Looking a little closer the paint is peeling off five houses down. Ten houses more and the sidewalk is fending itself against the weeds, the fountain has long since stopped working. Here you are, in what some would be convinced to be the apex of wealth displayed, a hubris paved across the nation, but your neighbor shuffles out with the roughly scrubbed barely noticeable tomato stains. You notice, and you notice you got some stains the same.

It is this teetering and inability to genuinely commit to some sort of “noble” lens. That no matter how much the mass populace tries, it deteriorates inevitably, it pokes out unsuspectingly however much one would dare to desperately deny it. And it’s not that I think the fountain must be working, or that the grass must be neatly combed. In fact I prefer how it is: but some wouldn’t, don’t you think? Some could even find it mildly embarrassing.

Instead I find it entertaining because it’s a cousin of mortality: everything disintegrates however much others want to convince you this is everything. Amongst the melting so pride melts the same, distilled and poured into the term “has-been” and the fence is all rusted now. It can seem morbid of a perspective but if you want anywhere you look and you can understand how effortlessly could one’s spirit break if you bother a pride about anything: the same to how growing old is a ceaseless exercise in humility, so the The Edge of Squalor serves as its sigil.

Crooked product lines with stuck shopping wheels. Ignoring the dotted mold flushed along the cauliflower. Carefully curated social timelines with the blackout curtains; a car that sputters a bit before starting. Looking past the public tantrums, looking past your own flares of anger, looking past all the years that have pulled at the sutures holding together this sense of decorum.

The world lets you know: most are descended from peasants, and with one mis-step so the button shall burst to reveal a beer gut. However much you could dress it up otherwise so houses shall fall apart, and it feels like we’re all dressed up for a play to convince ourselves these aren’t the blocks and a subterfuge sort of welfare to shield a fragile pride that, perhaps, we could be an angel’s paragon.

No matter how hard you can try, peasant roots you could have, you may find The Edge of Squalor tracing behind. Maybe not! Perhaps you read this with disdain while you fan through your ledgers.

Yet however most you scrub it away, convince yourself otherwise — adorned with lofty titles and big numbers — one may instead feel their bare feet lathered in mud.

As one aspires for the propriety life so Nature rages an endless campaign: and the beauty is accepting that.

It’s far more fun to be of mud and a paragon of squalor than to be any sort of nobleman. In this sense, The Edge of Squalor is our Force of Nature gently reminding one to breathe, swing, and enjoy the waves.