Subways Run On Hope.

I don’t like being a grown up, I don’t. I’ve been getting a whiff of what the real life is like out there and all I’ve seen has been hope-sucking. If growing up is about knowing how to diss people and calling it pragmatism, or how to be a heartless bastard and calling it professionalism, or about lying and calling it sociable behaviour then I’m not sure I want to be part of it. Too bad nobody asked me to sign the dotted line before handing me the life-sized fine line-choked contract. What’s scaring me is that I’m taking part of it, that I’m not minding it, that I’m not feeling things like I used to anymore. I now know better than to appreciate things because I automatically see the ulterior motive in flashing lights. I don’t feel love towards people because my head has automatically run a statistics scan and decided the profit margin isn’t worth investing in. I see people changing to the worst and my automatic reaction is not worrying about them, but blaming myself for taking the precious time to see that in the first place. I don’t care about people because my head knows that nobody gives a shit and there’s no changing that, so there’s no point in caring for them. I’m no longer pissed when someone’s rude or flippant because I never expected any better. It’s been like that for so many things, so many gestures have been soaked dry and I can’t blame the empty gestures on anything but the growing up process. I’m changing into a heartless asshole and the world not only doesn’t seem to mind it, but calls it normal human behaviour. Not even I seem to mind it.

 

 

Something happened on the subway today; I was caught in a death stare with an infant. There’s something about starting contests with babies, and it’s not the odd fact that they hardly blink – it’s true, they blink every 5 minutes and I think that’s alien – it’s the fact that while I was looking into her eyes, it wasn’t an empty stare. It was the stare of someone who knew everything there is to knew, the stare of a Jedi, a misplaced demigod who got lost in our dimension and doesn’t feel the need to speak his wisdom out of knowing that nothing they’ll say will make a difference, it was the stare of someone who was seeing into your soul. If there’s any truth to the whole ‘I know what you did last summer’ line, the guy who made the horror movie had probably just had a baby.

 

There’s so much to see if you’re willing to look, like for instance that baby on the subway, his parents were an interesting sight. The father was the mother and the mother was the father. Despite the fact that they were a regular lower-middle-class couple whose sex life ends at the point of conception, the typical stereotype didn’t apply for these two. The father was holding the baby like it’s precious, being extremely cautious with the applied pressure and taking care of every spit and groan the child was making, going heavy on the PDA and incredibly unaware of his surroundings or anything that is not directly baby-related. The mother on the other hand, which I personally believe should have been appreciating her family more concerning the state of other families in the same social faction, was staring blankly ahead, taking calls, fixing her clothes and getting obviously pissed that she had to close the window on her own and not have her husband close it for her since he didn’t seem to hear her when she asked him even though she was sitting right next to him, all because he was indulged in the baby’s spit ball formation talents. He didn’t notice that the worker standing next to them spent the entire ride trying to look down his wife’s shirt and looking into her bag and phone screen, and he didn’t notice when it was time to get off at their stop, which I assume should have been routine behaviour by now. While I was marveling at the father’s ape-like tendencies and mother’s short-of-being-human tendencies, the baby tried to suck on her woolen-gloved thumb, didn’t like the taste of it and started crying. What happened afterwards is the interesting part, despite the fact that she had a bag full of baby stuff, or that’s what I thought, she settled on giving the baby a plastic bag to play with – despite the choking hazard, 101 for parenting really – and got a picture on her phone and shoved it into the baby’s face – despite the fact that babies thinking abilities do not bypass those of a spoon’s, and even if they did and technology failed to record it, they are scientifically proven to have the memory of a challenged goldfish. I didn’t know what I should be pissed about, their incompetence, their lack of care, their sub-par intelligence, their failure to evolve from primates, their ignorance of basic hygiene precautions that started with the father kissing the baby’s face although her immunity is still weak and ended up almost killing her three times by being cretins, their immaturity or their nonchalance, but I did manage to sum it all to this: Just because you can fuck, doesn’t mean you should be allowed to have kids. Japan was right.

 

Another interesting subway specimen was a lady, for lack of a better word, who managed to shout at everyone for no less than 30 minutes about politics – which she was incredibly ignorant of, as well as anything else that involved the world, and by world I mean anything outside her kitchen – then faked a leg pain, hijacked a seat from a student, talked to herself for 10 minutes announcing her domestic problems, then proceeded to shout at everyone just to let them know of her badass ability to take their seats or let them keep it, according to her impulsive whims at the time. The scene was surreal, almost like it came out of a low-budget Khaleeji musical, and it viciously consumed what little hope I had left concerning the humanity of the Egyptian majority. I realized I was detached from life just by being born into a good life, and then I realized that was probably the case of most people out there, and couldn’t see a way out other than communication, which means there is no way out because she didn’t seem to register the whole communication concept like we do. I was reluctant to type we, since it’s impossible to group people into like-minded factions in the Egyptian community – yet another thing that I found out today. I don’t remember wishing I get out of this shitdump a lot of times, but what I do remember is this: The few times that I did, I was using public transportation.

 

I need a source of hope, one that I can register at this newfound state of grownup being that doesn’t seem to be willing to absorb as much as spit flat out.

Of Dem Shuffling Digits.

Well, 20’s been taking me by the storm. Ever since I turned 20, grown up problems have been coming up that I’m supposed to know how to handle. I don’t know about other 20 noobs but I gotta say, this shit wasn’t in our textbooks. Most of the time, it feels like somebody shoved onesie-wearing kid me in a corporate office while the kid screamed ‘you’re making a mistaaaaaaaaaake!’, leaving me to feel like this most of the time:

 

 

Other times, this has been my reaction to any sort of sudden change that accompanied the growing up process:

 

 

However, I’m not exactly complaining, at least not yet anyway. I've managed to balance three jobs with freshman year so far, they used to be five but turns out I lost my cape when my speech capabilities afforded a little more than goo goo ga ga-s.. It’s true that I haven’t quite figured out how to fit in the whole sleeping and squeezing out a dookie in the process, but I’m getting there.

 

There’s this trending hashtag on twitter called 2012 Highlights, and I couldn’t help but take part of that universal update of thinking up your clean slate on the rubble grounds of your old slate’s smithereens that happens every year around December. I’d be lying if I said 2012 has been free sailing for me, but then again none of the changes, albeit important, were exactly accompanied by flashing billboards. As I sit here trying to think of how 2012 has redefined life as I know it, I can’t quite ignore the urge to punch an innocent kitten in the face as I force-feed it another puppy’s, otherwise ingrown, tail.

 

So here’s the message people, it’s never good to look back on things and expect some sort of life-changing revelation to kick you in the mental nuts; it doesn’t work that way for several reasons. For instance, nobody really cares about your problems unless you’re a handsome guy in a late-night, low-budget Hollywood indie movie at worst, and another one of those includes the fact that even if you were, the director would be too busy trying to get him laid with a hot part-timer and side-track the audience from the actual problem at hand rather than giving the script wright the little extra job of, you know, trying to solve some of life’s mysteries in his torn down basement office.

 

What’s good however, even though I’m positive I’ve said this before on here, is seeing life for what it really is; the second longest running show after cats that people take way too seriously. I mean, look at it this way, if the few of us who actually tend to make life interesting with their nonchalant view on things and non-existing sense of shame died out with the turn of the new year, what would be left to wake up to in the morning other than, well, a joke-free umpteenth time run of the second longest running show after cats?

 

As I sit here, I’m struck by my complacent composure about this whole new year thing. For once in my life, I’m not getting the urge o make a far-fetched new year’s resolutions list because again, for once in my life, I feel that things are going by as planned, even though there was no plan in the first place. I’m not known for possessing that certain glimpse into the future talent so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing just yet. What I can tell you is this, I have a good feeling about this..whatever it is. There’s nothing I’d rather have differently and I think that’s nice. Or at least a nice template to work with.

 

I’m happy.

My Life In A Picture.

“I’m going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I’ll be dead. you know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or wait a minute. It -- with the time change, I could be alive for six hours in New York but dead three hours in Paris. I could get things done, and I could also be dead.”
― Woody Allen

Early Christmas Cheer.

A Round Number.

How do I feel now that I’ll be 20 in ten days?

 

Like this. Pretty much.

 

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast.  They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement.  Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

- Kurt Vonnegut.

Let’s Doogie.

‎

I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hoppa  you don't stop  the rockin’ to the bang bang boogie said up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie the beat.

Hope.

The Highlight Of My Day.

I saw this walking home today from yet another variation of my not-sure-wheres. This owner re-defined what it means to pimp a ride. Come to think of it, getting lost is turning into one of my favourite pass-time activities. Here’s to the little things.

 

Reported Missing On Accounts Of Audaciously Sleeping.

Today has just started, as far as I'm concerned, and it got off to quite an edgy start. You see, apparently, I'm such a hardcore insomniac that when I actually fell asleep, people thought I was dead.

 

 

I woke up midway into the body search that was orchestrated by a caring soul a continent away. When it comes to social and cellphone networks, those were covered, and I believe if I'd woken up a couple of hours later, I would have found people in the apartment checking my pulse. I won’t be lying if I said that every insomniac cell in me felt so guilty that they curled up into a snowball and rolled down to crush me on the greatest guilt trip I’ve felt since my touch phone accidentally dialed my mother 71 times having her inevitably think that I was kidnapped and was subliminally trying to SOS.

 

Mistake me not, I’m incredibly touched by the efforts. It just strikes me as rather sad that the whole ‘maybe she’s sleeping’ option wasn’t, after all, an option. A friend suggests that I may want to consider sleeping more often just to get people used to the practice fire drills. Well, I guess if you walk around butt naked, you’ll get owned by anyone who wears pants.

 

I have an interesting life, no doubt about that.

 

You know what else I think is interesting? When they asked astrophysicist Adam Riess how it felt like to win the Nobel prize, he said ‘Well, you get called by Swedish sounding people, and unless you ordered some furniture from IKEA then it pretty much means you’ve won the Nobel prize.’

 

I’ve come into the recent conclusion that most things in life are interchangeable, like for instance you can do away with all the meditation tapes if you tune in to late night radio stations halfway across the universe quipping their way out of creativity’s possible reach, and how pizza delivery boys do a better job than most suicide hotlines, you know, just until the middle east comes out of the dark cave into the light ages and actually offer that service, and last but not least, who the hell needs to call coffee coffee when you can call it java? I mean come on, ‘IIIIIIIT’S JAVA MAAN! SWOOSHING IN ONCE MORE TO SAVE THE DAY!’, ‘Aw man, I’m running low on java.’, ‘Hello there sweet cheeks, want a java refill?’ Java infuses action, in all its contexts, into everything! Can you see the possibilities?

 

I got lost again today. I took the wrong bus home, except this time I knew it was the wrong bus before I got on it but it still sounded like a good idea to get anywhere populated and then worry about whether the populated area is right or not. The bus drivers helped, as usual, and it occurred to me that, considering my rate, they’ve sort of illegally adopted me. Chivalry ain’t dead yet. The bus was so heavily decorated that it almost felt like I got a free ride into the haunted house, and coincidentally, the chick fate sat me next to reminded me vaguely of the Christmas spirit, strictly fashion-wise. If anyone gets visited by the ghost of Christmas past, it should vaguely resemble this scenario.

 

I’ve been walking home from all sorts of no-idea-wheres lately, and the walk is always relaxing. I owe the use of this adjective to my, sometimes, inexistent survival instinct, considering the country’s going batshit crazy and what not. Let me put it that way, did you know that 73% of the planet is invisible, and 25% of it is dark matter as well, we don’t know what the hell that is either. We’re kind of the frosting on a cake whose filling is yet to be identified. The comforting part is that we have names for everything. What applies to astrophysics should apply to a parliament-free, judiciary-abandoned, constitution-less country such as this one. My latent canine abilities manage to get me home eventually. I also owe the adjective to the hopeful run-in with a street bookseller who actually reads his own books. Out of all the people I’ve had a random conversation with, that know-it-all hidden from the mainstream society under the pile of dusty outdated books he reads before he sells, was without doubt the most touching. It is true that hope comes in all forms.

Of Chum Chum, Mostly.

I can’t get myself to start working quite yet. I have a midterm tomorrow and my brain’s tanning on an imaginary beach somewhere. I’m not worried, and that’s a good thing, or I choose to believe it’s a good thing. I found out that you can take a vacation without going anywhere, and I just spent three whole days with JD, Turk, Carla and Elliot, re-watching Scrubs and feeling grateful for my goldfish memory that obliterated the plot turns even though I watched the entire 9 seasons three times before. Oh and I found my soul mate, his name is JD and he’s a fictional character who talks to himself in a medical comedy that stopped airing. Yeah.

 

I’d like to introduce you all to Chum chum. Chum chum is my baby cactus. I think Chum chum is a lot like people, prickly on the outside and mushy on the inside, so in a sense I have a pet human subconscious. And no, Chum chum is my baby and I don’t care what you think, because let me tell you the truth about pregnancy: You’re gonna pee, poo, fart and puke in front of at least 10 strangers who will be staring at your vagina for no less than 40 hours of labor that ranks higher than being burned alive on the pain scale. You’re welcome.

 

 

You’d think somebody would tell women about that little con before  they get knocked up, but no. Life is funny that way, like for instance how you’ve always known that boobs are the answer to everything but only Femen had the guts to use it, for the first time, to women and the whole world’s advantage and you find yourself making the conclusion all over again and regretting why you never patented it. Or maybe how you invest your allowance in a Cheese sandwich griller and find out that it’s probably the best investment you’ve made in a while because happiness is two parts cheese. Another thing I found funny was how celebrated Licia Ronzulli's photos are, and how women all over the world consider her an empowering model for all working moms, when in fact, if she had been a veiled woman in our parliament, she’d be called incompetent and attacked on every level for bringing her baby to work. Admit it, it’s true. She wouldn’t have been as empowering and she would have been perceived as the living epitome of third world countries. It makes you think just how much can be different if you looked pretty and had a foreign passport.

 

Oh, and I recently found out that ants don’t accept sugar offerings, and I’m blaming their paranoia on you, vicious humans. Bad humans!

My Thanksgiving List.

• I’m grateful for my dad, who has always been there for me even when he needed someone to be there for him, and for always having faith in me even when I didn’t offer the same luxury for myself. He taught me everything I know and he’s part of all that I am today, and it’s because of his altruism and sense of righteousness that I have a hero better than all the crap they sell in Disney fairytales. My Kryptonite and the source of my strength, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t amount to anything.
• I’m grateful for my ability to see the hilarity in misfortunes, for gallows humour has gotten more people by than history dares to admit.
• I’m grateful for coffee that has always been there for me, regardless of how good or bad the day may turn out to be.
• I’m grateful for the little things and my ability to see them wherever I turn, as little as funny online series or a good book, they fuel me when I most need it and they never bail.
• I’m grateful for my ability to forgive, and how it comes naturally to me to not hold a grudge. Even though most of the time I may have to not let people know it because it’s for the best, it’s a blessing not to have it in me to hate someone, no matter how much people may perceive it as weakness, I regard it as true strength not to let things stick on you, eat away at you and eventually change you.
• I’m grateful for all the assholes I met in life, for they taught me how to handle things the way people do in the real world, how to hold myself out there, how to be one when I need to and more importantly, how to recognize them from the head start and know better than to let them into my life.
• I’m grateful for all the friends I have, or had and lost, for they left me with some good memories that have substance, albeit bittersweet, and remind of me of the choices I have to make everyday.
• I’m grateful for all the bad choices I made, for they taught me how to be  responsible for the consequences, they made me aware of the existence of consequences, and gave me enough ammunition to recognize the good choices and make them more often, and handle the bad ones more competently.
• I’m grateful for good conversations whenever and however they may come or have come, for they’re the stuff of life.
• I’m grateful for my sense of conscience, and the fact that I now realize that goodness is a choice you make everyday and never quite turns into a habit.
• I’m grateful for my head, for despite all the nights it tortures me and all the days it beats me up, it has never let me down and never shut up no matter how little I listen to it.
• I’m grateful for my ability to see through people, I now know better than to let its little hints go unnoticed.
• I’m grateful for honesty, and the fact that truth hurts. I’m glad it does because it keeps me grounded and shows me everyday how succumbing to delusion is the easy way out, but never the right way and never an option.
• I’m grateful for how I turned my life around, for no matter how much it may have hurt, I now know that I chose the right path.
• I’m grateful for my utter inability to give up on things. My lack of acceptance changes things when other people give up on it.
• I’m grateful for work, it is the only straight line in life’s loopy parabola.
• I’m grateful for how I always blame myself when things go wrong, for even when it’s not true it helps me become a better person, and now I see that it’s not such a bad thing because ego has always been the one thing that had people hit a plateau and go down from there without realizing it.
• I’m grateful for piano, and the fact that now  I know there’s one at UNI and the music room is available everyday from 9 – 11.
• I’m grateful for all the temporary friendships that got me by, I now know better than to depend on another person for comfort when it’s better to turn to yourself for consolation.
• I’m grateful for change, it has kept the engines running despite all the gritted teeth grinding in complaint.
• I’m grateful for my grandma, for she shows me how age has nothing to do with having fun.
• I’m grateful for my family, they give me examples to look up to that are actually in my life, and they show me that you have the choice not to let life change you no matter what it may throw at you.
• I’m grateful for being eccentric, it has kept things interesting and it’s a blessing to know that I’m not caught up in the all singing, all dancing crap of the world as much as everyone else, it gives me a chance to step back and watch the act, and helps me decide on things that people wouldn’t give a second thought.
• I’m grateful for the internet, for it made knowledge easy to come by.
• I’m grateful for the chances I was given and the opportunities I had, they made me work to be better even though at the time I only thought they served as a reminder of all the things I’m yet to learn.
• I’m grateful for late night walks with my dad, they keep me grounded and they remind me that the world never stops turning for anybody.
• I’m grateful for all the good people I have in my life, you give me hope because it’s never easy to stay good when everyone around you is an asshole.
• I’m grateful for Kurt Vonnegut, you’ve left enough literary heritage to keep me occupied for now.
• I’m grateful for Jazz, Blues, Neo-Soul and Rap. It’s true that you haven’t managed to eradicate all sadness in the world, but you’ve managed to push all that is melancholy in one corner of the room and make it more habitable.
• I’m grateful for never losing my ability to care about someone, no matter how many reasons I was given to know better.
• I’m grateful for being impulsive, it’s given me the initiative gusto to jump into things that people wouldn’t dare to consider, and made life a hell of a lot more fun.
• I’m grateful for all the stupid things I’ve done, they’ve given me great stories to tell the grandkids and amuse me when I’m old and frail.
• I’m grateful for all the things that didn’t work out the way I wanted or expected them to, they made way for better things to come and taught me to do without a lot of things that others are wrapped up around.
• I’m grateful for logic and my sense of skepticism about the givens of life, for they have taught to me to look for hope objectively and not turn into another brainwashed idiot prancing his way off a cliff. It has made me not settle for less even when more was nowhere to be seen by actually working on making that happen rather than waiting and wishing.
• I’m grateful for my balls, even though they got me into a lot of trouble, I wouldn’t have had it any different.
• I’m grateful for all the shitty people I have in my life, you show me everyday who I never want to turn into and are a constant reminder that I’m making the right choice and that the shit that I have to go through because of it is worth it.
• I’m grateful for detachment and my belated reactions when shit hits the fan, they’ve given me the chance to think of a solution when everybody else is panicking.
• I’m grateful for the mess in life, it reminds me every day that importance is an assigned value, that nothing is a given, and that people have more control over their life than they care to admit just by the way they choose to handle things.
• I’m grateful for my insomnia, it has added hours to the day and gave me a chance to learn more and get more things done.
• I’m grateful for being content with my life, and being happy more often than not. It’s a lot more than many others were offered.
• I’m grateful that the answer to life, the universe and everything is not available, for if it were, people wouldn’t have a reason to live.

Brown Baby.

Of Humanity & Lack Of Social Justice.

I was just watching the news earlier and they reported that ex-president Mubarak is badly bruised up from taking a gross fall in his prison bathroom and you see, all I could think about was ‘Man, that’s gotta suck. I mean, one day you’re president of a country, the other day you’re ousted and they’re reporting you dropping the soap on national television.’ Putting all the political dilemmas aside, the guy’s probably gonna cry for a week over this, it’s one thing taking  a fall and a whole other thing having a 70 million haters for audience that won’t let you forget it for as long as you live, it’s gotta be like being stuck on the bleachers in high school for the rest of your life. To make it clear, I’m not pro-Mubarak or anything, the guy was a tyrannical dick and all, but think about it: it’s gotta suck to be him right now.

People are so quick to judge, you know? That whole drill of actually taking the time to put yourself in another’s shoes is not rad these days. Everybody’s cozy in their own little heads and perfectly satisfied about figuring life out and shit, constantly giving people crap over not seeing it the same way they do. They always forget that there’s absolutely no way to be sure whether your way is the right way, or whether there is a right way at all. You just gotta hope it is and take comfort in the fact that it’s a snug fit, at least for you and at least for now.
For instance, there’s this really poor, deaf and dumb vagrant that lodges on the opposite side of the street I live in, and he makes a living selling random merchandise with a sign on top issued from the supposed deaf and dumb organization of the district. My college bus always drops me off where he spreads out the good old money-makers on a blanket, and I regularly gave him the rest of my weekly allowance no matter how much they amounted to because I figured he probably needs them more than I do, making sure to pick up a pack of gum to save him face and ditching before he figures out what’s happening and tries to communicate his gratitude and/or absolute scorn, I never hung around long enough to determine which he goes for. I was shortly caught in the act and called an absolute idiot to fall for a con artist and what not. I stopped giving him money, following the philanthropists’ initiative of calling myself an idiot until one day, I was waiting for the college bus to come and one of the guys at uni who was waiting with me placed the architectural model he made for his midterm project where the poor old guy sits, who went on a theatrical gesturing act worth of auditioning for Cats, moaning unintelligibly to try and tell the guy that he’s sitting in his spot. The guy took him for a maniac, held his model protectively like a newly-born baby, cradling it against his chest safe away from the mad guy  who was met by laughter and aggressiveness from all the other two-bit brats that pass for undergraduates. I tried to make the guy understand that he was merely telling him that he was sitting in his work spot and gave him my seat, and the other chicks took the hint and shut the hell up, settling on rolling their eyes back in their hollow excuse of a skull. That’s when it hit me, the guy wasn’t a con-artist, he wasn’t lying because why would he lie when it was too early to sell anything, he hadn’t set out his merchandise and didn’t show any signs of being bothered or remotely alarmed by the deafening noise that drove everybody away from the curb shortly afterwards when one of the air-conditioner ventilation boxes on one of the shops broke down, he was just a guy that fate got on his knees because the country still hasn’t found away to employ the qualified, let alone the under-privileged. I had a lot of respect for him, watching him try to make  a good life out of the little he was given, even trying to make it pretty by cleaning the tree pot in front of his spot of cigarette stubs and dusting a 5 metre-radius around the place he’s sitting with his own personal broom, even though he didn’t have to. He was human, and he was trying to make his surrounding as humanly habitable as possible, and that kind of impulse can only be produced by someone who had integrity. That poor old man had a life of his own making, he was proud of it and he wasn’t gonna let life get him without a fight. The next day, I gave him all my money like I used to, I didn’t call myself an idiot for it and I gladly walked home for two hours when I missed the bus later in the day because I didn’t have money for public transportation. People don’t see beyond their own eyeballs, when there’s so much to see. I mean, there’s this guy here who’d been stripped of every semblance of a dignified well-off life and he was still happy and had a purpose, and then there are the college brats who didn’t have any of the material covered all year on the morning of the midterm and passed out on the offer of sharing my notes for getting a smoke because although their parents probably spent their life savings to put them through college, they just didn’t give enough of a fuck. Who deserves the money? Those college brats or the hardworking deaf and dumb vagrant who probably got rejected out of every job he applied for by incompetent higher-ups that perceived any and all handicaps as a sign of retardation, all because they weren’t properly informed and/or trained and never really bothered to fill in the gaps of their own lack of education by taking the process of gathering common knowledge into their hands? It’s just not fair. Life is not fair, so many people deserve so many things that other people who don’t deserve shit have effortlessly, and hardly even use. Where’s the karma? Where’s the balance? Where’s the sense of shame that could fill in where karma and balance fell short?

Nobody has the answer to that but people can make a difference, because the money you spend on drinks and salad can very well sustain someone’s household for a week, if only you had the time to look the hell around.

Of An Underrated Hero.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/they-surely-are-not-violent.html

To The Past.

Again you show yourselves, you wavering Forms,

Revealed, as you once were, to clouded vision.

Shall I attempt to hold you fast once more?

Heart’s willing still to suffer that illusion?

You crowd so near! Well then, you shall endure,

And rouse me, from your mist and cloud’s confusion:

My spirit feels so young again: it’s shaken

By magic breezes that your breathings waken.

You bring with you the sight of joyful days,

And many a loved shade rises to the eye:

And like some other half-forgotten phrase,

First Love returns, and Friendship too is nigh:

Pain is renewed, and sorrow: all the ways,

Life wanders in its labyrinthine flight,

Naming the good, those that Fate has robbed

Of lovely hours, those slipped from me and lost.

They can no longer hear this latest song,

Spirits, to whom I gave my early singing:

That kindly crowd itself is now long gone,

Alas, it dies away, that first loud ringing!

I bring my verses to the unknown throng,

My heart’s made anxious even by their clapping,

And those besides delighted by my verse,

If they still live, are scattered through the Earth.

I feel a long and unresolved desire

For that serene and solemn land of ghosts:

It quivers now, like an Aeolian lyre,

My stuttering verse, with its uncertain notes,

A shudder takes me: tear on tear, entire,

The firm heart feels weakened and remote:

What I possess seems far away from me,

And what is gone becomes reality.

- From Goethe’s Faust.

Most zealously I seek for erudition:

Much do I know—but to know all is my ambition.

That brain, alone, not loses hope, whose choice is

To stick in shallow trash forevermore,—

Which digs with eager hand for buried ore,

And, when it finds an angle-worm, rejoices!

The few who knew what might be learned,

Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show,

And reveal their feelings to the crowd below,

Mankind has always crucified and burned.

- From Goethe’s Faust.

To Memories, The Ones That Tickle.

And then I looked up at the sky and I could see

Oh the way that gravity pulls on you and me

And then I looked up at the sky and saw the sun

And the way that gravity pushes on everyone.

On everyone.

Freshman Myth Busters.

Being a fresh freshman, so to speak, I’ve come to have my expectations flopped on so many different departments that I’m starting to wonder whether Alzheimer’s is more common than I thought. It can’t be that all grownups and graduates all over the world agree to tell the same version of one universal lie to all the new undergraduates. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s bust it one myth at a time and examine how freshmen are really like..where I came from.

1. Man, college life is so promiscuous, I don’t even remember how many people I slept with..on the bus ride home. I never even got their names before I crashed..head first into the window trying to dodge their strangers’ shoulders. It all happened so fast, one thing we were sitting there thinking passionately about..what our moms cooked for lunch, the next thing we’re both wallowing in deep..zombie-like slumber. Well, we all know what they say about experimenting..with sleep positions in passenger seats. It’s good to know just how far you can bend..your neck without breaking it.
   
   
   
2. That thing about the freshman fifteen, they were right with the number and wrong with the sign. You don’t gain the freshman 15, you lose them trying to find your way around campus and later back home after you’d unfailingly taken the wrong bus for the umpteenth time.
   
   
   
3. That thing about freshmen being annoying, they’re not; they’re just lost kids, except that none of them has the balls to be a full-fledged Peter Pan.
   
   
   
4. Being a freshman doesn’t necessarily mean you’re broke and up to your ears in student loans. However, you come to learn that’s how it should be when you see how it is when it isn’t. I’m not going on a hate parade against rich kids here, I’m talking about normal kids whose parents gave enough pocket money on some sort of personal fit to even the odds that have them comfortably afford two drug dealers and still have some left over to buy lunch.
   
   
   
5. You know a freshman when you see guys lying about getting laid trying to get laid, and girls lying about eating that chocolate crepe in the deserted hallways to buy a 25-pound salad that they eat in full sight of everyone. Those same girls will later economize on water bottles and not one will have extra toilet paper or even a tissue in the ladies’ room, which brings us to the next point: the only useful appliance in the ladies’ room are not the toilets, but the mirrors.
   
   
   
6. That shit about freshmen being at their highest stimulated point of intelligence while struggling under stress, it’s not true. You’ll notice how it isn’t when you see that the only reason the Red Bull stand got any audience was because the subs were cranking with music, and the only reason the MUN booth was noticed for the first time in two days was because it was strategically placed next to the Red Bull stand, and gave away free food. Follow the glittery fedoras, come to the liiiight.
   
   
   
7. That alley were the cool kids hang, it’s not where the cool kids hang. The cool kids know better than to hang where the cool kids should hang so the other uncool kids can’t find them. And by god can they hide, I’m starting to think there are uncharted nuclear shelters on that campus that only a Marauder's Map could find. Hell, not even that, it would be hidden the same way the room of requirements is. The only difference is that you can actually find the room of requirements when you really need it, and if you really need to find out where the cool kids hang, you never will; for the same way a dog can smell fear, a senior can smell a freshman, and as it turns out, barking dogs do bite.
   
   
   
8. You’re not a freshman if you haven’t had at least two fights with college professors passionately over meaningless shit that neither of you cares about but will continue to pretend to care about just to piss each other off because that’s, THAT’S, how it should be. When you pack hormonal teenagers who never knew the meaning of freedom with overqualified college professors who never had a big break and are lamenting their lost lives by overestimating their own mediocrity in an institution that neither cares about your education nor gives enough of a fuck to follow through with the faction of the rules that it doesn’t profit from, which concern you, that’s what happens.
   
   
   
9. Saying that college days are the best days of your life is like saying test drives are the most fun you’ll have driving, gotta love them traffic cones. They’re only fun because you still don’t have enough hind sight to shed light on your own bread crumb trail yet.
   
   
   
10. Sure, you’ll know what you wanna be when you grow up, that is if they ask you that question when you’re 6.  It won’t even take a couple of seconds of hesitation, you know straight up, in all clarity, what you want to be when you grow up. Graduating from high school, you’re still fired by hormones and you feel like you can take over the world, but not quite sure how. Choosing a major, however, is another story, you pay a shitload if you wanna switch majors which makes it slightly impossible for you to change your mind without being homeless. Graduating from college, you’ll be back at square one.
    
    
    
11. None of the courses you’re taking will have anything to do with the major you signed up for during first year, but by the end of first year you’ll be required to choose a major now that you’ve been oriented with the subjects covered. Go figure.
    
    
    
12. And just as you are required to know courses that you don’t actually need to know, you’ll be deprived of other courses that you need to know about. After all, how do you know what you need to know from what you don’t need to know? You should only know what we think you need to know, that’s why they call it higher education, and you’re too short to decide for yourself.
    
    
    
13. Here’s the thing about college, the worst thing you can do is to date someone from college. However, if you can manage to do that, the world will bow down in reverence. You see, every chick comes out of school uncontested thinking that she’s the hottest broad ever popped, and every guy comes out of high school thinking nobody can know he was the nerd if he can emulate the jock who bullied him, which will be easy since he already knows every little move he makes in textbook detail. The result is predictable; there are less rejections in the Bronx penitentiary than there is in college.
    
    
    
14. And after your parents put you through college with the money they’ve made between the present point and the time they graduated from college..
    
    
    
15. ..you get into college only to realize that you could have skipped high school altogether and nobody would have noticed..
    
    
    
16. ..and then you graduate from college and jump into real life only to realize that high school theory applies to college too.
    
    
    
17. And in thinking you can get ahead of the pattern, you’ll go down the same road your parents paid so much to air-hockey you out of, just so you could stay in the same road the three of you want. Proof? This sentence will only make sense to you if you’re a college student/graduate.
    
    
    

The Missing Piece.

What they don’t tell you is that seeing the good in people is not about seeing the good in people as much as it is about how people aren’t strictly good. There are no good people, but there isn’t one person in the world who’s managed to eradicate any and all trace of goodness in them, just yet.

It may be the saddest alteration of a glass half full, but then again, if you’re thirsty enough, you wouldn’t notice the first bit.

The World Would Be Easier.

‘The world would be easier if the homeless were all just lazy and all they needed to do was just get a fucking job.

The world would be easier if evil were a real thing, instead of just confusion, misunderstanding, miscommunication and misplaced desire.

The world would be easier if you could just be happy for what you had, while you had it. If you could eat memories like flowers to keep your heart alive.

The world would be easier if comfort didn’t rest on the backs of the broken, if your swimming pool was dug by soft hands that never worked a day in their life.

The world would be easier if we all just got rich and famous and we were all each other’s #1 fan.

The world would be easier if it were an automatic.

The world would be easier.

But it isn’t.

The world is hard because it requires real human effort to make it turn.

The world is hard because you may wake up today but not tomorrow. And yet no one will accept “fear of death and a futile existence” as a reasonable excuse to miss work.

The world is hard because you will have to fight for the things you love or worse, fight the things you love.

The world is hard because the things you love will kill you.

The world is hard because it was made that way by thousands upon thousands of hard men and no one wants to admit we have no idea why we’re doing the things we’re doing anymore.

The world is hard because it’s hard to forgive and even harder to forget.

The world is hard and you should just give up, right now. Just lay down and die. Nothing will ever be easier.

But, you don’t.’

- I Wrote This For You.

Perfection.

‘Yet you still value the things you’ve lost the most.

Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating.

Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.’

- I Wrote This For You.