Finals are in two days, and I'm so overworked I'm imagining screen savers on turned off monitors. I got a couple of boulders out of the way though, so I have time to let off some steam.
Something pretty sweet happened today. I've been e-mailing back and forth with my favorite professor, to apologize about missing so many classes and explain why and such. When she found out I'm sick, she started helping me out with the material I missed, offered to re-explain it to me and encouraged me to ask question with anything I find trouble with. She's a very passionate professor, one of the few left who really care about their job, how well their students are doing and how innovative their lectures are. She's made it a habit to celebrate random people's birthdays in class with a custom made cake that's personalized to depict whatever it is that they mentioned they liked in one of the many conversations she had with them. She somehow manages to balance the whole being professional and still remain a kind human thing. Today, she did this:
I've never been sent flowers before. Nobody ever really cared that much, especially at uni; I've been having trouble with the whole attendance fiasco and missing classes and none of the other professors or kids were that understanding (let alone civil), and I was left to pretty much extrapolate what it was I could have missed and materialize it out of thin air. It made my day. There should be more people like her in the world. Her kindness confuses me; I don't understand it.
On the other hand, I got a call from two of my friends, who I haven't really heard from for two months and who haven't noticed me falling off the social grid or getting sick or all of that, claiming that they saw me with a stick up their ass complaining why I didn't call and tell them I'd be in the area. My HIMYM city doppelganger was stuffing her face with sushi when they 'drove by and saw you but couldn't really stop the car', because apparently the brakes were off and they were on a high-speed car chase with the CIA on a top secret mission to locate and exterminate a south Korean spy. That pissed me off, and I let them have a piece of my mind about making an effort that they found 'not cool.' Another friend dragged me into a social skit and thought it was okay to fake hostile conversation then put on an act of social power play for a good show. I got back at him with a Game of Thrones spoiler, and now he won't talk to me. Three ex-friends later, adding up to five ex-retards this month, let me put on my grandma monocle and wonder what's wrong with kids these days, because I'm honestly done with their pretentious ass shit.
I've got a long work day ahead, which scientists have found to be 3 times shorter than a normal day yet goes by a rate that's 1.5 times slower than a mid-week dentist appointment, so naturally, I've sworn not to start it on the wrong foot. Allow me to properly procrastinate.
My friend is getting married later this week, and despite how much I loathe the institution of marriage and want to drag him out of it kicking and screaming for his own good while calling him barking mad, it's still making me go all whadabadabadoo for him. Although it's still a week off, I found myself obsessing about what I was going to wear, since my wardrobe consists mainly of makeshift fan merch and hand me downs that I embezzled from my dad, and it took four emergency messages to come to the conclusion that I need to go shopping. I'm rather clueless with girly things you see, and my first instinct was texting the groom who, unsurprisingly, was just as clueless about wardrobes as I was. It took a brief and very futile re-inactment of the opening scene to Narnia for me to realize I had to speak to a girl about this, so I texted three hoping to work out an average or a common denominator or whatever it is that makes girls' opinions legitimate. Hence, the shopping. I'm not excited about that part, although I am excited to see the look on my friend's face when he ties the knot, so it's worth the trip to the darkest pit of the hell that is the mall.
I spent the morning psychologically treating cuddly toys on a twisted German flash game online called paraplush, successfully cured three patients and was working through the mental knots of a particularly difficult stuffed penguin who made it personal by putting me on shock treatment twice when a power cut had me lose my progress and made me wanna positively cut a bitch. It's a sad game. Dumb humans, hurting things that can't fight back just because they can.
Speaking of which, I spent the evening with a friend last night, it was a night of shared head spaces, comfort zones and wonderful conversations, a much needed reprieve from all things fake and forced. I was too tired to keep up the conversation at many points, so maybe conversation isn't an accurate name for it. It was the first time I'd gone out since I got sick three weeks ago, but even then the stories - that's an accurate one-sided name for it - were interesting and unlike what people fart out and call conversation these days. There was another power cut, which brought this beauty to my attention:
It got me thinking, why are all neglected things beautiful? Is it because humans destroy everything they touch? A lot of optimists would interject and denounce the flagrant generalization I've made against their kind, so let me share a couple of other examples that'll prove the sample is unbiased before I get back to this.
Exhibit A: An architect friend of mine is basing her project on an old recreational park whose glory days date back to the 50s called the Merry Land. Now, it's not that safe to visit because it has more or less turned into a drug dealer's den, with most of the attractions in a state of disarray, breaking down for lack of maintenance. She's had a lot of trouble working there since it's a chore to go on your own and hope to leave the place with most of your possessions and your hymen intact, let alone with all of your blood supply - and, dare I say, organs - uncompromised. However, nature seems to have taken over, since no budget is spared for gardening, and now it looks like this:
Exhibit B: These shots are from a random corporate front garden that has seen better days. Albeit trampled and littered with its own refuse, this patch of shambles is artful chaos.
And last but not least, Exhibit C: I was waiting for the university shuttle bus one morning when
I came across this little miracle, a flower grew straight out the concrete. I don't know how this was physically possible, but it happened,and it was there for all who cared to see.
It's all around us, so let me make the connection for you the way it was subconsciously made for me. Is it possible that in choosing to care for things, humans ruin them? Funny creatures, humans are. But I digress.That accidental candelabra has more than meets the eye, you see. On the other side, where the picture doesn't cover, the glass of the bottle has been broken in by the heat, and is held together by the creeping mass of wax that built up over time. The candle, on the other hand, would break if you try to yank it out of the debris, and is held together by the bottleneck. Nature has a way of reaching equilibrium against crushing odds that humans still haven't learned, equilibrium that knows no compromise, as opposed to the ways of men. There are a couple of things to see for those who know how to look.
I was taken by this chaos and the two revelations it's given me, so I've decided to make my own little reminders. Recreating chaos beats the point, I admit, and they'll take time that I'm more willing to invest in inanimate objects than plants, that I can't keep alive if my life depended on it, or humans, that I can't understand if my life depended on it. This is my little project, they'll take a couple of months to turn into the their own unique shambles of neglect, but they're worth the wait.
There are two more little perks to this project, other than being a tangible notification for the revelations I had about human nature, that'll come in handy in days to come: The Baileys bottle was a gift from a friend who's made entirely of good things and had a little stunt that took a lot of effort and care to plan. The second is that these will put a smile on my face during the numerous power cuts to come as our governments struggles to be a government. Here's to the little things.
I watched How to train your Dragon recently, and it's by far the best animated movie I've seen in a while. It's got vikings, dragons, a message against violence and lots and lots of flying. It deserves a rant of its own but it won't do it justice to spoil it for other nerds, like myself, who need this custom bundle of happiness. Go watch it!
This post has been a while in the oven, and true to the metaphor it took too long for I'm helpless in the kitchen. My friend's been pushing me to get back to writing from the heart, and a couple of days ago I stumbled upon an article about Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors and a full-fledged SciFi god, and found out he lives with dementia. You don't get too many excuses with that in the back of your head. Tis the season to be jolly and all that falalalala.
I got a little confession to make, I ran away from an injection last night. And no, I don't mean it metaphorically where I got all giddy then tightened that upper lip and took it like an adult homosapien, I mean I bounded across the room and threatened to bite then got bribed into it with candy, and it wasn't even legit candy, it was sad millennial candy that took the form of a diet pack of biscuits and a light beer. I got another little confession to make, I am 21 years old. Growing up sucks, it does, and I'm starting to think all those other people who look like they've got it together are undercover CIA operatives, or a race of clones that have always been that old.
And what the hell is up with nurses? Angels of mercy my sorry ass (quite literally, my ass is sorry), they descend on you like demon monkeys and pin you down to the nearest bed then poke at you with such zeal, an inter-dimensional observer might mistake them for banshees. When did they get so vicious? This is not the rant of someone who's merely butthurt, my dear readers, I'll have to take one of those every night this week and right now it feels like I was shot in the ass with a fire-thrower, and it's bad enough that the stupid shot I'm taking has to be mixed with anesthesia because even the pharma overlords admit it's napalm goo. I've come to fear the daily shot as pathetically as Barney Stinson once feared his slapsgiving quota, for pretty much the same reasons.
And much like the repercussions of Barney's one-time bet, all I can do is wait for an impending giant Marshall-sized hand every night in horror, which has made my plots to kill the nurse more creative by the minute. I've pledged to cut the harridan's butt, stick it on her face and gouge out her eyeballs with ginormous needles. I've taken an oath to turn her intestines into hospital chow. She ain't getting no hannibal gourmet treatment, nu-uh, slimy backdoor cuisine she was and slimy backdoor cuisine she will be. I've sworn that by the time I was done with the waif, she'd wish she were nearly headless Nick as she haunted the halls of the cafeteria. I could go on, but it sounds less friendly and a lot more personal as I go along and the TV show references dwindle. Do nurses sleep? (Read: Can nurses be killed in their sleep?) Stay tuned.
However, just when I thought that this growing up thing doesn't quite run up my alley, I turned down a paid internship at a call center for an unpaid internship at a feminist organization. It was one of those light bulb moments, when you tune out the lady on the phone and weigh your options amidst the all-singing all-dancing pots of noodles that'll make up most of your meals from now on, past the fields of paperwork where you picture yourself running errands dressed up as a German maid, up the have you lost your bubble gum drops creak and into the screaming goblins in patchy little suits dancing around your social life. It lasted for a couple of seconds and then I informed a surprised lady the CV in my outbox is heading at the back of another white collar's head. I'm doing it clean-for-Gene style, changing the system from within the system.
Which brings me to another little rant that's been giving my Adam's apple a run for its mortgage claim, that internship at the call center was sent on our university e-mails, and I got a call from their HR department without actually applying for the position. I seem to be the only student who thinks this wonderful opportunity is downright preposterous, and here's why: For a stuck up private university that manages to flush down the life-savings of thousands of middle-aged blokes every year, you'd think they'd get us a better chance in the big bad world than a call center, don't you think? They're begging for people to work there, that job is at the bottom of the food chain, taking in people out for a quick buck only to have them run out at the first taste of a fat paycheck. I get it, it's an entry level job that a dimwit could do, it inks the first blot on many blank CVs, it channels students into the unquenchable monster that is the call center business and nobody minds a little extra money in the summer and a good excuse to stay out of the typically miserable middle-eastern house on a 9-5 basis. It's win-win situation for all those involved, but honestly, you'd think they'd have it in them to set up a couple of internships at some decent start-up corporations with that big-ass name it pounds on the educational scene, or NGOs even, but nooo. Why should they use their contacts to start up their own students? What's worse, the kids are excited about it. They all got sparkles in their eyes when they opened that e-mail, they all eagerly applied and signed off three months of their precious summers into a contract that'll have them say 'Hello, how may I help you?' so many times, they'll forget they never learned how to help them in the first place. Stellar service.
It's shit like this that gets me wondering how it was that dogs never got disillusioned about human nature if they've got good instincts. Dogs can tell if a person means malice. They're irreplaceable on drug busts, they dig up bodies and can find their way back home from miles away. Hell, dogs can smell cancer, google it. Yet, somehow, they still think we're dope.
Some things never change. Humans are on the top of that list. The fact that humans confuse me is a close second, and it regularly roundhouse kicks the former and sits cross-legged in first place when they change sometimes, or make you think they did, only to have you find out much later that they never did, but you keep it in first place nonetheless because in a convoluted way that proved its claim.
Case in point: the government recently gave a statement that the clock is to be set forward an hour for daylight savings for a month, then set back in Ramadan to ease the fasting, then set forward an hour again for the aforementioned reason. That conveniently confused people for a couple of days, especially that it was released on a Thursday night. The funniest to behold was Saturday morning. Dad and I were sipping coffee at the window as we watched a bunch of freshmen realize a little too late that they've missed the university shuttle bus. First they patiently waited for 30 minutes, doubting themselves a thousand times and making a dozen calls to mommy and daddy to update them about their Geo-locations. Then they spent 15 minutes furtively looking at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move, checking if they're the only idiots around or somebody else did something wrong so that they could march saint-like into doom with the comfort of not having fucked up alone. Then there was a lot of walking around and running up and down the streets like headless chickens as a couple of initiative souls scouted the streets for any sign of a magical orange school bus. Then came the sedan procession; and it was the same scenario with every poor kid, the parents would show up, seem to be yelling at their kids who in turn seem to be defending themselves that "they just didn't know but that's okay because look at all the other people who didn't know too!", parents would scowl and look around the street in superman poses then lead the freshmeat back to the car by the back of the neck and drive off into the bus route.
Dad and I don't remember laughing so hard in a good while. The only creature in the vicinity that wasn't thrown off balance by the government change of the people's sense of time - sounds omnipotent when put that way - is our neighborhood 5:20 morning songbird. I've mentioned him in older posts, but I'll write about him again all the same. Dad noticed him first, being the hopeless romantic that he is and always has been. Every day at 5:20 am, this songbird, who always stands on the same branch, would always wake up before all the rest, and would always wake up all the other birds. He became an inside joke to dad and I, since we're both diligent night owls, but not in the sense of a conventional inside joke, but rather about how he draws a smile on our faces every morning in the same way one would smile at an unanticipated act of kindness by an asshole or at a rude joke quipped by a child at the expense of a great injustice. We'd always wonder if that bird knew how important he was, we'd always think what would happen when that bird eventually dies, and we'd always get into an argument about how maybe every bird is different the same way every human is different and that other life-forms aren't necessarily lesser than mankind and how maybe it's not all down to genetics after all, which would always get us talking about how maybe life forms exist that we don't understand and we'd trail off until dawn breaks and the songbird's tune gets drowned out now that he's successfully bugged all of the others out of their carefree slumber.
Now here's the punchline: That songbird now wakes up at 4:20, to the second. Knowing that, I'll bet an arm and a leg that having a face now makes your face flush.
Whoever said we start at the beginning has never lived a day past 12. And that's the thing, there are no beginning or ends. You spend your whole childhood clinging onto ground and solid objects, people and memories, ideas and beliefs until you pick up a few digits and learn the hard way that growing up is an act of letting go. It's all a balancing act, you're bouncing on soap bubbles through space, bursting that one to get to the next, and if you're a second early or late you'll lose momentum and be stranded. In a weird way, grownups' power comes from how they acknowledge their helplessness, and children's helplessness comes from their sense of invincibility. It's all a balancing act, and not all of us can move as fast. I know I've always been a klutz.
This hasn't been a good year for me, in more ways than one. A lot of constants were shattered for me to learn that lesson, and I really can't learn it often and hard enough. But it has also been a good year for me, because there's truth in that, crippling hard truth that I can see and feel and work with, and possibly fail at, but it's there nonetheless. You can't fear what you know, even if you're just starting to know it. I came here to pour my heart out about all the good things that I'm looking forward to, because I haven't allowed myself to hope for things for a very long time, nor have I allowed myself to pour my heart out fearing the many times I started only to have someone eagerly take a pinata bat at it in full swing. I think I'm okay with that now.
I found out that I'm very sick today, and I'm not ready to talk about it yet. I don't think I will be, and I don't think that matters.
Today, however, was an excellent day. I spent it typing my fingers away at a job that I love, that
drives me absolutely crazy. I write up story lines for games. Starting up small still, but it makes me feel alive, like the sky's the limit, although it's really not. I don't have as much creative freedom as I'd like, it doesn't pay nearly enough to cover a decent bill, and it's a freelance project that will soon expire, one that I know I shouldn't get attached to, but I am, and I always put my all into it and it leaves me absolutely exhausted and empty, in a way that leaks my presence into my work only to have it slowly recharge as I sit back and call it a day's work, squishing the enter button real nice. I'm also looking at an internship in UN Women's rights branch over the summer, which I know will be as fulfilling as it will be time consuming and challenging. It intimidates me, and that's exhilarating. Don't get me wrong, I'm free of UN illusions, I even wrote my freshman paper - back in them glorious rebel days - on the neocolonialist vice that is the UN's true body of work, but it still makes a small change, even if that change is mere placebo effect, and more on the giving side than the receiving. I can't wait to start, all the things you learn when you're given all the gritty work, it's like reconstructing a machine's blueprints from its dismantled wreck. What do people do with themselves when they run out of things to run at?
I'm looking forward to these things, as much as I'm looking forward to a graphic tablet that I saved up for and will be getting in a couple of months. I'm not great at sketching, but it makes me happy. It's work that can frustrate me into untroubled sleep, one that I can spend hours learning without retracing on the clock. Isn't that what life is all about? Well who knows anyway, and who gives a rat's ass. I've never felt more at home than when I feel when I'm learning something that has to do with graphic design, running my ankle joints to shreds, playing piano or writing up a good heartfelt piece.
It has always been these four things. Life is simple, all you have to do is find your things, then keep finding them in other things as they get taken away.
I guess that's why people feel lost when their things are not within themselves, or that are other people's, or are other people even. You can't find what was never yours, how are you supposed to recognize an ever-changing blob? I felt lost this year because of this, I've lost a lot of people I cared about, they got swooped into their own soap bubble trajectories and I stumbled face first trying to follow until I eventually lost momentum. It's funny how grownups eagerly lose connection, I guess when you get so good at something, auto-pilot takes over and all of a sudden you're ugly Adam Sandler senior lying butt naked on the asphalt groping at your children's backs 30 years too late, the child part of me resents that.
Sophomore year is by far the most hectic I've had, although it has nothing to do with the work load, it's been trivial. Now that I'm on sick leave and have had to miss even more than what I already missed when I didn't feel like going because I thought I had better things to do, it's turned into a countdown to the apocalypse. We dine in hell, baby doll. Somehow, knowing all of that, I know I can handle it still. Although I recognize this time that other people pay when one makes mistakes, and it's usually the people one cares about the most, who also happen to be the ones who care about one the most. You just realize that a little too late, and it shits on your parade. You don't care that you can handle it anymore, you just start wondering why you ever made them go through that kind of shit and call yourself a dumbass while you're at it. It's no celebrating matter, there aren't any Barney Stinsons fixing their ties and theatrically dubbing it a challenge accepted as you swoosh in and spitball your rubble into a minty fresh work of art. You do it anyway, but there's no flare to it. Do people ever get the courtesy of taking risks out of their own time and buck? Are there always people tied to the bungee line, poking out at all kinds of awkward angles? I'd give you the world if I can, but I can't. Stop making me feel bad about it. There are so many things to feel bad about in this world, why do the people you love the most insist to be the magnetic core?
I guess the one thing I can't get over with all the change going on right now are the lack of handlebars. We all like to know they're there, even if we won't use them. Those handlebars are the people who want to hear about the good days and care about the bad days. They don't run away from misplaced verbs or serious talks. They're real and down to earth. They also don't exist. I'm not sure they ever did.
I drove myself into a corner again, might as well wrap up before I end up at a worse place, this one's bad enough. A part of me misses a simpler time, and a bigger part of me doubts it was ever real or just a huge figment of my childishly distorted, pink-hued imagination. Cheers, adults. I have no idea how you don't get seasick.
I don't understand why I'm not writing as much as I used to. I grew up having so much to say to the world. I guess you just get to a certain point of your life and realize that nothing you say or do will ever matter. That's what growing up is about, isn't it? Coming to terms with your insignificance and realizing that the cape you've been dragging around looks ridiculous.
It's been rough. Which I don't mind, what I do mind however is that I'm losing my sense of humor about it all. I'm having an odd case of incurable Senioritis in Sophomore year, which is apparently yet another widespread phenomenon that everybody somehow failed to mention in the college handbook. I've been eating nothing but junk food since January, and when I actually tried my hand at this whole grownupsy shopping for groceries and making myself a healthy meal deal, I ended up standing at the cash register looking down on a shopping cart filled almost exclusively with chocolate-based pseudo food. The only responsible choice I made was whole wheat bread, which was apparently a hard act to follow since there was nothing to spread on it.
The sad thing is that I don't even find this funny.
Another bit of news is that a while ago I took it upon myself to retreat into my bat cave and swore it on the old gods and the new that it'll take batman himself to get me back out again. The last time I made that decision I was 12, if I recall correctly, and it did take batman to get me back out, in the form of my dad, about 4 years later. During that interesting incubation period, I honed my hermit skills in the arts of dystopian literature and SciFi TV shows, became a self-sufficient misanthrope and emerged into the world a klutzy fumbling ball of oddments and eccentricities, with not a hint as to how humans work or how to interact with them, attracting the occasional lost soul with my formidable stash of geeky knowledge only to beat them off the threshold of my haunted house with a Nimbus 2000 when they confused me, which happened a lot.
If only it were that easy.
And so many years later, at the golden age of 21, I'm back there again. And I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well to be perfectly honest, I would trade it, only for a better world, not this one. This one has humans, and they're horrible horrible beings.
I don't get it. Why would grownups leave out all the important bits and fill kids' heads with shit they'll never use? It's counterproductive and rather mean. Besides, you'd think for someone that old, they'd know how to get the point of a freaking story.
I'm guessing the most prominent bit about growing up is functioning without comfort zones, after having lost them or never having found them at all. People talk of it as if it's a liberating experience, like comfort zones are crutches for the life-ly challenged. They flush their savings into some makeshift mountain hike and they think that counts. But it doesn't. It's not until you have nothing and no one to depend on that you get to realize how it's really like. The funny part is this, it has equal parts horror and ecstasy, and it will drive you up the wall sometimes by how amply you get your fill of each scope, and how often you shuffle the two. It's incredibly hard to find your feet after losing ground (more literally than metaphorically, for that's how it feels on more levels than one), and calling it hard is optimistic. You have no idea if you'll ever find ground, and every expectation you were ever naive to hold and nourish will fall to pieces as you come to terms with just how helpless you really are, and how hard it is to make it out there. It feels like slaying a dragon sometimes. With a toothpick. That you don't even have or know how to acquire. Many would argue that what makes life feel great is the fact that you don't know how things will turn out. That's not quite what I'm talking about. I'm talking about losing the simple truths and having trouble knowing what's real from then on. Comfort zones can be people, ideas or states of mind. They're the things you know will never change, and will be there waiting for you in case you need somewhere to hide and feel safe. They don't judge or demand, they don't question or budge. They don't leave. They're there, and they're neutral if not pleasant. But most of all, they're unchanging. They're portable homes. You know that no matter how many things go to shit, everything's gonna be okay because they're there and they make everything better without necessarily doing anything about it. They're the things that people take for granted. People make terrible comfort zones, no matter how great they are. You don't even feel yourself opening up to them, and you have no idea they've been landmarked as one until they're gone and it feels like you've been hit in the head with Thor's hammer. Ideas make great comfort zones, you can build entire worlds out of them that will engulf you and give you sustenance for as long as you need to retreat from the world of men. Too bad they're fickle, and having a world tumble is a lot harder than losing your feet in one that's pretty damn solid and cruel. States of mind are the greatest of all comfort zones. They're energy fields, stimuli filters and outworldly capes. Things don't have leverage where they don't have effects. They're emotional kaleidoscopes and they make for some damn beautiful illusions. What sucks is that they're not very selective with what they filter and become autonomous after a while, and I'll be damned if you can tell what's true and what's loch ness after a couple of months. Pillars of salt and pillars of sand. I'm rambling.
When I was a kid, I used to stretch in the backseat of my dad's car and watch the stars follow me home every night. I remember feeling safe and having no sense of time. It always made me feel dizzy, but the good kind of dizzy where you don't feel sick but rather like you've been twirling for too long. A couple of days ago I visited grandma for mother's day, and on my way back I tried to lie back and watch the stars follow me home like I used to. I couldn't see any. There were no stars to follow me home that night, and all I could think about was how they didn't follow me home this time because they probably didn't know the address.
- Your definition of empty jar is not the same as mine.
- Yes, that's why I didn't get what you were saying the other day.
- I literally mean empty.
- But how does that feel?
- It's like you're full of nothing.
- That sounds like it would feel great.
- Not the good kind of nothing.
- I don't think there's a bad kind of nothing. There's a certain freedom that comes with having no attachments.
- Well it isn't that kind.
- that's why I don't get it.
- You're looking for a certain something to fill the nothing but you don't know what it is or where to find it or if it exists. And till you find it, the nothing is just there and it's unpleasant.
- kind of like me feeling homesick for a home that isn't there? Or that third eye that you always feel is missing on your forehead?
- Hmm maybe.
- We are empty jars.
- We're empty bottomless jars.
Disclaimer: Dear reader, this one is not for you, I apologize for the inconvenience. I read this back to myself and it sounded just as choppy and stripped to the bone as my memory usually is, but then again the sentences fit into little snapshots and they triggered the right images in my head. So go make your own memories and then distort them with adjectives and sentence structure until it's pretty sounding enough that you can't place the memory anymore.
I need to keep this memory.
I was lost in Zamalek for two hours last night when it started raining.
I was dragged to an outing where I wasn't welcome by an oblivious friend and decided to head home 15 minutes into it, so I started walking around trying to find a main street where I could take a cab or a bus home. It was pretty late, and 5 minutes into it, it started pouring and there was an onslaught of vicious thunder and lightening that split the sky in two every minute.
The streets were deserted, everyone was already home or hiding it out in cafes and shops. The lights were out as well, and other than a couple of forgotten lights here and there, it was pitch dark. There was no living soul as far as the eye could see, save for the occasional gang running around celebrating the rain tribal style. I was soaked through, I had a waterproof sweater in my bag that I put on, but my bag was soaked.
I couldn't see five feet in front of me properly because the rain had rendered my seeing glasses useless, and even without my glasses, you couldn't make out where the street started or ended because of the rain and the darkness. All of my books and college handouts and my cellphone and packet of cigarettes, they were useless, and it was useless to try and save them, but I didn't care. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't care for that either. I felt liberated. It was a post-apocalyptic walk, without the zombies.
I had no idea where I was or how I'm gonna get home, I was alone with no one (civil) in sight, but I was happy. I knew that any minute I could get mugged or harassed or some car could come and try to pick me up and I wouldn't have been able to fight back, but none of that happened, and I didn't care that it could. It was freezing and I didn't have the right clothes on, but I didn't care for that either. I don't remember feeling more liberated in my entire life. I felt free, and there. There was an air of tangible presence that I haven't assumed in a long time. I felt small and insignificant, and somehow these two made me feel liberated and good. I had no control over anything. I felt like an empty opened jar.
I was the last human on earth, and I wasn't expected anywhere. I wasn't worried about. I was completely and utterly alone, and defenseless. And by god it was magic.
I was picked up by a cab that broke down on the bridge, and the cabbie was kind enough to call his cabbie friend and pick me up on the bridge. I left a butt print on the backseat going out, and the second one was in a hurry and splashed water meter-high when he sped off. We were lost there too, since you couldn't see through the windshield and his wipers were broken down, so we could have had an accident any minute. I didn't care for that either. We took a thousand wrong turns and it took another hour and a half to make it home, after ending up in two wrong districts. He'd soaked 6 people who were trying to stop the cab a little too desperately by driving too close. He dropped me off 15 minutes away since he couldn't figure out how to battle one-way streets, they were a little too urban for what he was used to, and elaborately voiced his indignation on the matter.
I ended up walking home in the rain for the second time, this time followed by a couple of bored guys, and later followed by 5 workers on the back of a pick-up truck. But that didn't matter, try as they might, they couldn't ruin my good mood.
I met my dad by chance at the foot of the building. He'd just come back from work at 1:30 am. He started ranting about a couple of issues of his own, and all I could think about was how beautiful this planet would be without its people, trashed and all.
There are so many reasons (stated and left out) why this could be a bad memory, but for some reason, that I can't place or make sense of, it's a happy one.
Very few things have gone on for so long without people questioning their existence and/or integrity at one point. What baffles me is how taking people for their word has escaped that. It appears to me that there's an unspoken pact on earth that says 'People are what they say, you should base all of your judgement on that and only look to action for proof if you're the type of guy who washes his hands 8 times while singing REM's Everybody Hurts. If you get fucked over because of it, that's probably because you misunderstood them, were in denial or let a couple of hints slide.' But here's the thing about words, and it's not just that talk is cheap and that actions speak louder than words or all of that crap. It's the fact that actions are in fact the only thing that speak, words don't speak at all.
Writing is a craft, you wield words and direct thought in a subtle manipulation of accepted beliefs and approaches that would cause people to have a voluntary mindfuck and eat that shit like hot popcorn. Talking is also an art, you can talk people into anything if you talk long enough, hard enough or smart enough. People know all of that, but they seem to only know it when they're on the giving side, then completely forget about it when they're on the receiving side; a convenient human dysfunction that makes it easier for them to fit in, or think they fit in sometimes.
Here's what I think; words are a little more musical than farts, but are taken more seriously for purely aesthetic reasons.
And because people are more inclined to take someone's shit because they're pretty, or let them get away with more shit because they're pretty, or give them things they don't deserve because they're pretty, or believe they're good-natured and good-hearted and fart and poo goodness because they're pretty, the same goes with words. But that's not just it.
Words label feelings that shouldn't
be labeled lest they give people a false, effortless & undeserved
sense of status. All you have to do is get a twitter account really, then your self-assurance is on steroids. You know all the answers to life, you have it all figured out. You know who you are and what you're doing here and how you're doing it and you're pimping it like you're Poppa Shizzles. Watch out, you'll slap a hoe. You'll slap all the hoes. And people fall for it, instead of the more logical 'Wow you're an egocentric delusional bullshit-spewing subhuman that can't help but pattern their toe-twiddling habit on a performance chart while failing to enact that self-righteous tweet if it came to life and smacked you in the face', they'll always assume 'Hey, look how conscientious she makes herself sound, she must really be all that she says she is. Let's be completely vulnerable with her for no good reason and hand her our asses on a silver platter. After all, she has a string of pretty adjectives that she made up in the heat of the moment to account for her in case she turns out to be a total cunt.'
Words also externalize things that should be private and utilized for
survival and self-acceptance to set people apart by sheer pretence. I'm a firm believer that people are just about as good as it is convenient for them. And most of the time, that goodness only exists in human beings to allow them breathing space to co-exist with what remains of their shitty selves. Their many little good things are there to make their life easier by providing cartiledge between all the other things that make them who they are and help them survive out there, and cartiledge isn't meant to accomodate other human beings, it's put there so you don't experience excruciating pain everytime you want to move around. True goodness takes effort and sacrifice, and isn't limited to things that only affect the host. That comes in at about one in a million, and half the time it's a scam. What words do is that they take those things that only affect the host and make people believe that person has so many celestial kudos and ninja high life score for nothing. So what if you're organized? That means YOU like to live in an orderly fashion, it shouldn't imply that you're somehow better equipped at handling all of the office supplies. Oh, you sit side-saddle? That must mean you're a lady! You wash the dishes? Here, have my babies.
It's taken for granted how people use words to create false form with
nonrefutable credibility rather than establish communication. Words are air we shoot around, and there is no guarantee of whether or not they're true, and most of the time they're not because our brains can't handle it. It's bad enough that it has to handle you, it doesn't have to handle all the other reflections of you there will be when you're infinitely mirrored by voicing all the things you know about yourself to other people who will do the same about themselves and handle you accordingly only to prove you were right about what you thought, thus providing new but identical input that has to be processed and re-released into an inexhaustible loop until you eventually fry your brains before making it to lunch. If a person tells you they're reliable, it's a 90% chance they're about as fickle as an ADHD-afflicted squirrel tripping off crystal meth, and it's meant to be that way so that they don't wake up one day realizing they're an ADHD-afflicted squirrel tripping off crystal meth and put a bullet through their ADHD-afflicted meth-choked squirrel heads.There is no way of knowing someone by talking to them; that's like going
out in the real world and buying groceries with monopoly money. Talk isn't cheap, it's utterly worthless; if you really want to know someone, all you have to do is sit back and watch what they do about different things, or what a good friend likes to call 'watching the booty in its natural habitat.'
Words assign people imaginary values that everybody else considers facts. He said he's not pissed, there's no way he could be pissed! She said she's not hurt, that must mean she's not hurt. She said she'll keep my secret, she'll take it to her grave. He said he'll never leave, he definitely put a ring on it. She said she'll always be there for me, there's absolutely no reason why I should take care of myself like a grownup when I can pathetically fall to pieces and depend on her to put me back together. He said he despises cheaters, he's probably busy because he's an undercover operative on a top-secret mission in Iraq. He said he's honest, he's definitely not lying about his thrice-dead grandmother. She said she hates politicians, that must mean she's a total saint who's incapable of dirty work. She said she feels very strongly about bullying, she probably never bullied a person in her life! Well guess what? If they call themselves tolerant, chances are they've just listened to all of Lennon's discography and would take an axe to Yoko's head any day of the week if it means they'll tap that. No matter how honest a person is, there will still be a barrier between who the person is and who the person thinks he is. The only way a person's words will completely convey all that he is without alteration and with complete clarity is if the person is in fact an idea. No such clarity exists within the realms of men, because that barrier is put there so we could live with ourselves. It's a safety valve; because if you really see who you are you'll go all Dorian Gray on your ass and it won't be pretty.
Words also build and burn bridges when they aren't trusted to carry out trivial business transactions, which doesn't make a lot of sense. You wouldn't trust people with your money unless you have their neck handed to you on signed contract that would cost them half their property and two kids but you'd trust a person with your own emotional/physical/mental/psychological wellbeing on their word? Is it just me or does the world need to get its priorities straight?
Words also give people credit they don't deserve, and have done nothing to be eligibile for. They provide a slot that's just the right size for people to fill with all the things they like to hear and really want to believe about you.There is always that one person we've known long enough to realize that nothing they say means jackshit. They start talking and it's all white noise, because you know from experience that they speak for the same reason that a dog chases its tail; they just can't help it. What people don't realize though is that we are all that person, to different degrees. We may not be that confused puppy, but then again we'll probably chase that red dot like our lives depended on it and cough up hair balls until we choke on our own aquaphobia.
Ich wollt ich wär ein Huhn, ich hätt nicht viel zu tun. Ich legte vormittags ein Ei und nachmittags wär ich frei. Mich lockte auf der Welt, kein Ruhm mehr und kein Geld, und fände ich das große Los, dann fräße ich es bloß.
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