Just before leaving work I hear someone in the office kitchen go in and clatter coins into the vending machine. The sound of a packaged item falling, the clunk of the little door on the bottom, and then the most ferocious noise of this mystery person attacking the plastic wrapper, ripping and tearing into whatever innocuous modular food item was inside.

It occurs to me that we humans are domesticated.

We're living in captivity, and we're the ones who've put ourselves there.

Every day I feel muscles I used to use every day atrophy while I sit in this wobbly office chair. I feel like I should be leaping from rock to rock on a wooded hillside somewhere cool and crisp, scrabbling with my overlarge boots at dark earth and golden leaves, grabbing on to something sturdy as the earth rolls over itself into nighttime, and then I sit and watch stars slide across the sky.

Am I just getting older? Is my vitality seeping from me, a slow loss of blood over a distance?

I think I need a vacation.