Posthuman Blues

Sometimes I like to do nice things for strangers. Tonight, for instance, I offered to take a picture of a solitary camera-toting tourist, an offer she readily accepted.

But I'm not doing it for them. Rather, I'm perfectly aware that I'm doing it to make myself feel a little better, to breathe some ersatz life into into that consummately mammalian part of my brain that pretends to get off on altruism. It's a functional arrangement, if not necessarily all that romantic.