Not only is it a shitty movie featuring a too-good-looking Leonardo Di Caprio, It’s also a feeling of isolation.
Fewer drug dealers, for one.
The feel goes like this.
I am on an island.
It’s just large enough to survive on. Fresh water. Fruits and foods. Shelter from the weather. Places to sleep. Nothing fancy. It’s life.
But there’s nothing here to build anything with. It is existence on the most basic level.
Across the bay, what seems like meters away, is a small group of other islands. These islands have multiple people on them. I can see them laughing and sharing food and stories and generally getting on well.
They have boats and bridges and can pass onto each other’s sandy atolls with ease.
I can see them. They can see me.
The ocean between us is fast and loud and full of creatures too horrible to look at. Monsters that do unspeakable things to those that dare trespass on their territory. They hate light and noise and life. And they huddle around my island waiting for the day I am careless enough to fall in reach of their arthropodic grasp.
My island neighbours wonder why I will not join them on their islands.
I try to show them the sea and the monsters, but they can only see the placid waters on their own shores.
I try to explain the lack of resources – the scarcity of life over here. How it is base living. And how it takes all my energy to get by on a daily basis.
But we can’t quite hear each other. They only know of their own resources. They think everyone has what it takes to brave the dark currents and build bridges and visit their neighbours.
They think that because I do not do these things, that I want to be alone.
This is not true.
I want the light and life I can see happening on the tables islands across the cafe ocean. I just can’t get there with what I have.
I need someone to bring me the materials.
I need help.