Something I'd like feedback on

I wrote this for a class and never got around to workshopping it. It's one of the more random essays I've ever written so I'm not sure if it works.

Solace in the Absent Minded Middle

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
-Henry David Thoreau

We all know the end already. Regardless of the middle we all know what the last chapter entails. We die. I could publish a million books, steal a million dollars, or have a millions kids but the ending won’t change. The homeless and the rich and the giraffes are all getting off at the same stop. This thought is consuming me from a balcony somewhere in the Dominican Republic. It’s some real fancy place which gives off the illusion of the country being a desirable place to live. A dome of pleasure on an island of pain and strife. I’m in the center of hypocrisy but in reality it’s hard to care when the food’s included and the alcohol is plentiful. The Dominicans and I are getting off at the same stop, after all.
I once thought that I had gotten my younger brother to the final stop earlier than fate (or chance) intended. Brandon and I were playing basketball in our driveway and decided the only way to have a civilized game was to mercilessly trash talk the other. Back then trash talking consisted of calling each other “retarded” and occasionally calling out each other’s manhood. Neither of us had any manhood to speak of, so the whole thing was a bit futile. After a particularly angry moment he hit me and, being much smaller, ran into the house for safety. I threw the ball at him but he managed to get behind the safety of our glass porch door. Apparently the outrage of having a basketball thrown at him was too much so he turned to come back after me. Maybe if I had looked a bit closer I would have seen the cracks left in the glass, but in my rage all I saw was red. He didn’t have time to notice the spider webs that the basketball had lovingly placed in the glass. He led with his hand to open the door and the glass exploded. It almost looked like someone splashing water and, I imagine, the reflection of the sun through the shards was quite beautiful. In slow motion he fell onto the door frame which swung open and propelled him on the glass covered lawn. My youngest brother, Kyle, began to scream “you killed Brandon!” And, for a moment, looking at him lying there in the grass I really believed I had.
Back on the balcony, in the Dominican, I can’t help but look at the stars. They aren’t what people think they are. We’re just seeing a picture of something millions of years old. They’re just old light. Proof that the present is out of reach. They are reminders that we can only live with what has happened or what will happen. The exception of course being escalators. They are a rare time when one can simply exist. Escalators are mankind’s most precious invention and every day the majority of people misuse them. Never, and I mean never, walk once you’re on an escalator. Where you are coming from and where you are going doesn’t matter for a brief instant. Escalators are the transition between past and future. The ever elusive present. They are the absent minded middle between two periods where you can merely be in peace.

The balcony gives me a view of anything I need to see and all the answers hidden behind the most trivial of things-like escalators. And before I leave to dodge the rain I notice that the resort has a tiny chapel where people can go ponder why they’re on earth or in the universe at all. If aliens exist, and know of Earth then I like to imagine they’ll one day tell their children parables about us. Here’s how one would go: “Somewhere in the infinity of space, a tiny rock floated around a tiny star. People lived there for a short time. They spent most of their time wondering why they were on the rock instead of enjoying their brief time there. Everyone made up a bunch of stories to explain it but no one really knew for sure. In the end they destroyed the rock and themselves.” I’ve come to realize that if mankind could ask the universe the question it is always moaning about: Why am I here? The universe would answer, “Oh hello. I didn’t notice you there. Have you been here long?” And everyone would be a bit offended but have to answer, “No, not really.”