The umbilical cord has been severed,

ceasing the life-giving flow.

I am given to the wind,

directionless to blow.

To and fro, I twist, and spiral, and mesh

into a heap of like souls,

with crisp for flesh.

A crosshatch of veins

marred by waning youth.

A somber descent,

a disquieting truth.

For my days are now numbered,

the hours tick down.

I feel the stiffness encroaching,

vitality impounded.

My color is missing,

echoes of memory taunt.

All the love I beheld from overhead

like a haunt...

And now I am haunted,

hemorrhaging prose.

A violent resistance—

I haunt my ghosts.

All the love I beheld in the park

on those days,

from burgeoning souls

in life's greenest phase...

I watched them revisit.

Their visits still play

in the dredges of memory,

on fractured display.

Little I wouldn't give to recapture

those days,

but I'm aware forward is

the only viable way.

My exit is swift,

an unfelt guarantee.

I shall melt with the grasses,

and then cease to be;

a future green to feed.

Vestiges of defiance

flash in my eyes.

I am wont to feel abandoned,

cannibalized.

Stranded in myself

as discolorment climbs,

chilling my marrow,

scaling my spine.

I fall away at my edges,

trampled underfoot

by the young loves I once sheltered.

I cede my input.

I crunch to catch their ears,

a futile bid for attention.

But my presence eludes both

their minds and their mention.

My voice dries to dust,

as I slowly fold in.

Flesh gathering taut,

resistance pulled thin.

I reach for the mimic-sun streetlamp.

Pain skewing my thought.

I opt to revive

and not fade on the spot.

But the echoes of Fall are fallen,

fading with me, and soon shall impend...

The ground will turn to December's

spotless-white skin.

And the driven snow will drive me

to a place I've never been.

My future cemented, I grapple for poise.

How shall I handle this—shall

I weep or rejoice?

Rejoice that, while unnoticed, I held the rain

from the heads of the lovebirds

who caused me such pain?

That though I may falter, and though I may grieve,

I looked after the homeless

and gave them reprieve?

That the little girl who used to talk to my tree

and cry into its waist

is now hopefully in a better way,

in a better place...

Maybe one day the billboards

in the park will wear her face.

Lawyer, doctor, pop star...

May she never be erased.

Shall I rejoice that I have the foresight

to know

how short my time is,

as the seconds go and go...

One final eve, that's all I ask.

To watch sunset bruise the skyline,

and heal toward a nightfall vast.

And may it pour itself out

onto my bruised heart,

and grant me kindred peace.

May my dissolution bring about

a blissful, soft release.

And may my descent leave

an echo that rings still,

in just one tiny mind.

This is my testament and will.

And if no human eye will blur for me,

may the heavens briefly cry.

For now,

I bid a soft farewell.

thoughts sinking

mind slowing

goodbye

The umbilical cord has been severed,

ceasing the life-giving flow.

I am given to the wind,

directionless to blow.

To and fro, I twist, and spiral, and mesh

into a heap of like souls,

with crisp for flesh.

_________________________________

(Old-ish poem of mine from Wattpad. Some alterations made.)

How do you accidentally become an assassin?

Leave it to me to find out. One minute I’m driving down the fourlane and the next I’m being pulled over, silently cursing my lead foot (again). Many don’t believe me when I describe the leaden-ness of my foot. Can’t really blame them. I suppose the inability to distinguish between sixty and a-hundred-and-forty miles an hour would be hard to believe, to one on the outside looking in. And with a condition this unbelievable, your only recourse is to keep your mouth closed and take what comes. Explanation is futile.

Twelve tickets in six months.

I tense to think this might be the one that gets me time.

*****

Imagine my surprise when a mitigating opportunity presented itself. I say mitigating because this option allowed me to forgo a court appearance. All I had to do was follow some government guys to a shady looking outpost (that looked more like an outhouse) in the middle of nowhere, and board an elevator car wherein I descended into an enormous underground compound replete with all kinds of futuristic tech.

They told me if I agreed to this super important mission all my tickets and subsequent charges would be waived forever. I should’ve taken the fact that they didn’t tell me what the mission was as a hint. If it was something pleasant, the payoff probably wouldn’t have been so generous. When I learned what it was, it was too late. I’d signed on, with no chance to renege.

The mission, should I choose to accept it—and stupidly I did—was to be a guinea pig for time travel. But not just any guinea pig. I was to travel back in time and assassinate none other than Ted Bundy, before his killing spree began.

Them twelve tickets weren’t looking so bad right about now.

I loaded into the time travel pod thing (I made straight Fs, so don’t judge me for not getting more technological), and prepared to probably die, but lo and behold I didn’t. The circles of light slid up and down my body, no de-atomization or nuthin. When the pod split open I found myself in an empty field. The giant oaks having surrounded the government outhouse (sorry, outpost) were twigs, and even the sky had that sepia-old look.

Now I’d been armed to the teeth with a bunch of gear, so I wasn’t totally defenseless in the belly of this new world. They’d printed and minted a bunch of money with the dates changed so not to rouse suspicion. Why couldn’t they have just used real old coins, you may ask. Well, real old coins are rare. They’re collectible for a reason. And I needed a lot. So the fake ones had to do. And it was the government that did it so…I don’t guess it’s illegal.

I found the beat I was supposed to walk and lingered there a while. Bundy apparently frequented that road.

It wasn’t long before a rust-bucket paid me enough mind to slow. A young-ish man with brown hair called out the window.

“Need a ride, Ma’am?”

I climbed aboard the rattletrap and settled into shotgun. The government dudes had given me a special needle of stuff to inject him with. Shooting was out of the question since any bodily trauma might damage his brain in the long-run. Oh yeah—they wanted me to bring his head back for scientific observation. Guess I forgot that part.

Anyhoo.

I still brought my own gun, just in case things went south. At ninety-three pounds soaking wet I’m not exactly apt to fight off a hulking man.

I smalltalked with Ted for a few minutes, an attempt to get his guard down. But before I could strike, the destination I’d made up came into view. Huh. Guess Boswell Gas Station was a real place.

Our ride now shortened by this unforeseen hitch, I reached for the needle. It was now or never. So, in other words, never. Ted read my movements a little too well and swerved his rust-bucket sharply, sending my head bashing into the window. I don’t even think he saw the needle, which meant... All the while I was planning to move in, he was apparently planning the same.

Regrets ebbed and flowed, as he slowed the car to a crawl. My original plan had been to force him to kidnap me at gunpoint. And before you say that sounds stupid: That way he’d have seen the gun from the jump and known not to mess with me. Also, nobody would’ve believed him if he managed to get away.

“Officer, it wasn’t my fault! She forced me to kidnap her—at gunpoint!”

No chance of that flying.

Alas, I’d gone with option B. And I was paying for it.

We wrestled back and forth, him grabbing me by the wrists and holding my arms apart. A headbut later and I was nearly out. Through my disorientation I could see him drawing a big hunting knife. He smiled at me, jaggedly.

“This is for your vocal cords, little deer.”

I didn’t know which half of his sentence I felt worse about. The part about severing my vocal cords or the creepy “little deer” addendum, which were it a physical being would need to be killed with fire, the ashes launched into deep space with twelve nukes attached.

Sorry. It just creeped me out.

In the throes of sadistic revelry (or maybe he had a stroke—I dunno’ what that was), he hesitated.

I swung my stiletto up and kicked him square in the neck, my heel possibly puncturing something. So much for no damage. But the government could suck it up. It was him or me.

As he sputtered and spat, blood slipping from the corners of his mouth, I took the wheel and hit the accelerator, launching us off into the grass, past a shabby treeline, and into a big reservoir of water.

Whoops.

I can’t win, can I?

As the waterline climbed up the windows and slowly immersed us, I rushed to open my door. Ted had me by the ankle, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I shoved and it parted away, sending a surge of muddy water gushing in. The tide smacked him upside the face and knocked him off me. I writhed my way out, swimming and swimming until I felt the ground kiss my feet.

From the grassy shore, I watched the water slowly suck Ted’s car under.

I was grateful to be alive—but hoo boi the government was not gonna’ be happy.

Then, something weird happened. Which in the context of this story, is saying something.

The tide coughed up a big hunk of something. I rushed over and poked it. It didn’t move.

Upon closer examination, I realized it was Ted. He was dead—waterlogged and bluish.

His brain probably wasn’t in the best of shape. I realized this.

But still.

I brandished the metal plate the government dudes had given me, holding it up to his neck. A click later and a blade had discharged, severing the head and encasing it in a bubble-like, malleable skin. The coating would preserve it.

After some time walking the backroads, a severed head tucked neatly under my arm (guess that’s why nobody offered to pick me up), I found my pod and climbed in. I was pretty eager to get back to the present, all things considered.

When I stepped out in the lab again, I presented the head. One of the scientist dudes examined it carefully, a look of great displeasure crossing his face.

I was quick to justify myself.

“He was gonna’ cut my vocal cords! I had to drive us off into that reservoir—”

The displeasure intensified.

“It’s not that…” the man garbled, indignantly.

“THIS IS NOT TED BUNDY!!!”

“Oh. ……………..………………………………………………………..Wups.”

“You incipid, brainless embarrassment of a human being!”

“Do I still get my tickets waived?”

The scientist sent me a glare that was scarier than the one not-Ted Bundy had sent me.

“I can make this up to you,” I shrugged. “Maybe I could go after Jack the Ripper, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or the Zodiac Killer…”

“The who?”

“Wut?”

“Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, and…”

“The Zodiac Killer?”

“What is a ‘Zodiac Killer’? You’re just making killers up at this point,” he pinched the slack between his eyes, exhaustedly. “You know what—get out.”

I tried to object, but he’d already shuffled me to the door.

“Out!”

“But dude! I think I—”

“OUTOUTOUT!!!”

Long story short, the government wasn’t too terribly impressed with my work.

And my tickets did not get waived.

Sad.

Writing and I have a difficult relationship.

Our relationship has been especially difficult as of late, since my return to Wattpad. Wattpad and I *also* have a difficult relationship, but to stop this from becoming a five-thousand page tome I won’t comment, apart from: it’s *really* hard to get noticed on bigger sites, despite the quality or social relevance of your work. You submit what you believe to be your magnum opus for editor’s pick, just to get no response. So you write another magnum opus, more tailored to what you believe acceptable. Second verse same as the first. At the end of the day, I will not relinquish my authorial experimentality. If I can’t write my weird heart out, I don’t wanna’ write at all. And if I have to write what’s wanted—i.e. good girl/bad boy romances and BTS fics—then I’d just as soon relocate. BTS is great; I just feel the fic market is saturated enough without my input.

My interests lie elsewhere, in the philosophical, the spoopy, the bizarre. I’m not a romantic by nature, so that puts me at odds with WP from the jump. Interestingly enough, these interests once put me at odds with talent itself. Should I go into that yet? Why not.

I’ve written for the majority of my sorta-brief life on this planet. As a wee lass I’d scribble my fantasies. The fascination was always kind of a fixture for me. A hiatus found me a bit older, rustily returning to the game, ambitiously trying my hand at a concept a decade or so too mature for where I was at. I am convinced the result was one of the worst, most bloated acts of pretension ever committed to paper. It was AGONIZING.

The warm-up was better, a story about abused animals turning against humanity. That one was neat. But this one—an endless diatribe packaged as a character study, affectionately dubbed “The Love”—was unclean on a cellular level. It centered around a gritty young orphan, from losing her mother to consumption, to being snared by the streets, taken in by an orphanage, befriending a sheepish boy, and defending said boy when bullies tried to rob him. That defense culminated in a few of the bullies being killed. So by nine the co-protag is a killer, hauled in to a sanitarium, and forced to live among every shade of mental illness imaginable. Her story elapses in tandem with the assassination of the country’s king, and the ascent of his young son to the throne after spending his early childhood in hiding. A royal ball is thrown and Warri, the co-protag, manages to escape the sanitarium and attend. It’s there she actually talks with the young king, and they strike up a bond. But the king is soon arranged to marry another girl, who’s really spoiled and bratty. A bunch of stuff happens, that I don’t care to remember. The spoilt princess ends up dead at Warri’s hand, igniting the ire of her father. To save his mother in exile, and of course the guilty party Warri, the young king gives himself over to be punished for the killing. But at the last minute Warri steps in and rightfully takes the rap. And they bid their farewells as she’s flown away to prison.

The concept, as mentioned, is decent. Flawed, but decent. The story...is mostly just flawed. Younger me seemed to conflate “wise writing” with “endless big-worded rambling” so that’s what you usually got. Younger me also seemed to conflate descriptions of nature (and the neverending onslaught of metaphors and similes it entailed) with...prodigious writing. And that’s okay to an extent. I’m not one to knock a good metaphor. But when you spend like thirty pages describing the sky, it tends to wax tedious. The sky descriptions were probably longer than the actual scenes they encompassed. Though I don’t know for sure. It’s been a small eternity and I’m not going back to check. I know characters did like to monologue, so it might’ve been a tossup. Adults liked to monologue. Children liked to monologue. I think there was even a toddler that monologued, and no, I am not making that up. Younger me tried to naturalize it by playing her off as a genius. In reality I just couldn’t write for a toddler. I also couldn’t write for nine-year-olds. Or adults. Or humans in general.

The interactions were probably mind-numbing.

Another one of my problems was hoarding. That’s not often a word you hear associated with writing, but let me explain. I was a hoarder of sentences. I’d describe something decently, and be so impressed by my own description that even if there were two other close-proximity descriptions describing the exact same thing...I’d still keep the third, and fourth, and fifth. That was probably more of an ego thing, in hindsight. Imagine! A girl so young stringing sentences together so beautifully! Sure, she’s saying the exact same thing over and over, but every iteration is so majestic we don’t care.

I filled so many notebooks with this story. I should probably apologize to the trees for that.

Hopefully my wordletting helped expel the cringe from my system. It didn’t expel all of it, by far. Cringe runs deep for a young, aspiring author. I tried my hand at a bunch more stories, but they usually fizzled out before the end. I could complain about those too, but then this post would balloon to unnerving lengths and I think it’s already ballooned enough.

Instead I’ll just leave you with this factoid.

The first sentence of The Love mentions the sun. I think it’s setting. Rising? Setting? Whichever one it was, I got the direction wrong. Either the sun was rising in the west or setting in the east (I still had to look up which ways were right, ngl).

So if openers are supposed to be indicative of things to come—this one succeeded.

Whenever my high horse discovers stilts, I have to remind myself that for every “the gunmetal sky was already beginning to tarnish” I still have ten ‘suns rising in the west’, so to speak. I’ll stumble across the dumbest mistakes, which shall in turn re-rouse the adage of a wise philosopher: “Sit down. Be humble.” (Kendrick Lamar)

*****

(Oh. And the genius toddler was Warri. Warri was a genius.)

The world went dark on July 20.

Fortunate for my family and I, we still had some of our garden left. By the time the supermarket shelves were ransacked and the riots hit, we’d gathered four twenty-gallon buckets of tomatoes, seventy cucumbers, four dozen banana peppers, ten plump bells, and nine watermelons. We wasted no time dragging it all inside; we knew it wouldn’t be long till the riots overflowed from the city and came our way. They’d sweep through, a wall of greed and disorder, and ravage our land.

Phones were down for the few who still had landlines, and cells were inoperable for loss of signal, which meant no 911. (Criminals...were acutely aware of this.) I took plenty issue with the notion of being inevitably robbed without recourse, but in times like these you kinda’ had to suck it up. We were thirty miles from any police station. Smith and Wesson was our only fallback.

This was social anaphylaxis, an allergic recoil from the sting of primitivity. And like anaphylaxis I figured it would eventually subside.

It didn’t.

Scariest were those who depended on technology like a lifeline. We didn’t have news to tell of the suicides. I would’ve been afraid to ask anyway.

A week in and you had stray influencers wandering the streets, lost and despaired, looking like something the cat coughed up.

And I wondered. Had we fallen so far as a species that survival hinged on something as recent as electricity? I kept telling myself how two-hundred years ago there was no such amenity, and the residents endured just fine.

My mind kept circling back to a show I used to watch. Dr. Stone.

A mysterious flash of light leaves humanity petrified, and a handful of humans awaken 3,700 years later to a world devoid of modern means, reminiscent of a Stone Age. Aided by the supergenius Senku, they have to start over from scratch, meaning relearning everything from agriculture to architecture to the reinvention of more luxurious articles like automobiles, phones and cola. I loved that show; I just never thought I’d have to live it. Had I known this was coming I would’ve taken notes. But the extent of my note-taking was when I’d recorded the ingredients for cola on my Pages app. Which was now out of commission. Bruh.

Maybe I don’t really have room to judge the technologically bereaved.

The Stone World residents had it a bit tougher, I’d dare to say. At least we still had standing civilization, skyscrapers, cars. We had battery powered fans; we just lacked a way to charge the batteries.

What ground my gears was knowing all the writing I had logged away on my Pages app. All I knew was, when signals were restored my work better not’ve been lost. I probably had over three-hundred documents.

My anger dissipated a little when imagining the scope of effects brought about. Hospitals would be in trouble. Generators could only get them so far. And what about winter when farming was an impossibility? Hunting would have to suffice, but with the population so high could wildlife really sustain us all? I chose to be hopeful. It was really all I could do.

TV made this look easy.

There was an Amish commune a little ways from our farm. Dad bought wood from them regularly, so we had something of a rapport. Three months in we drove out to see if there was any wood left they could sell us. Winter was coming and our furnace supply was lower than usual. We’d had to start using it early for the cold nights. I met Isaiah out by the barns and he looked nothing like what I’d remembered. He was always so jovial for our wood runs, a man with a countenance of steel. But all the while he was explaining to us, he looked so beat down. He said some outsiders had hit their commune about a month back, and killed a couple of their men. The looters made off with as much as they could carry.

Fear does things to people. Things you can’t really explain. More than just fight or flight, these things hardly ever make sense. Perhaps it’s a narcissistic, impatient, nearsighted drive that fuels it. Why vie for cordial discourse when violence could get you so much further so much faster?

Isaiah told us the names of the dead. A few of them I’d known.

One of them was only a year older than me.

They could only spare a quarter-load of wood, but we were grateful. Isaiah refused money.

Dad gave him a gun and told him to protect his family. Reluctantly, he nodded and took it.

Driving back in our family pickup, I watched the sky. It looked so dreary anymore.

Again my mind circled back to Dr. Stone. Just a few of the petrified had been revived, and even then they managed to find conflict. Enemies were quickly made, and a war eventually followed.

The first thing I heard was the sound of shattering glass. The window at my right shoulder exploded. Dad gunned it but we didn’t make it far. A loud popping noise sent us rolling, ground turning to sky. Next thing I knew, I was in a ditch, about a hundred feet from the truck. I could hardly feel my body, my mouth tasted like copper, and my sight was barely clear enough to make out the faces eclipsing my periphery.

“She alive?” a gruff male voice called.

“Yeah, looks like it,” another replied. “What about the old man?”

“He ain’t moving. Big dent in his head. I’d say he’s a lost cause.”

“I got ’is wallet. He only had about seventy bucks.”

“You think she’s got anything on her?”

“Na. I don’t see no jewelry. And she looks about fifteen, so forget cash...”

“Wanna’ check? I mean, what would it hurt?”

By then, all I could see was black.

I felt myself being rolled over.

“Nothing... Told you.”

“She looks pretty bad, man. You didn’t tell me it would go like this.”

“Well, how could I have known?”

“So what, we just leave her here?”

“You got a better idea? Wanna’ take her to a hospital?” Sarcasm. Even concussed I understood that much.

“What, you feeling guilty now? If you don’t wanna’ leave her then be a man and just put her out of her misery.”

Silence. He’s thinking about it. I don’t know how I can tell, but I can.

“I can’t... I’ve never actually shot someone...”

His voice...he sounds so young.

“Fine. Just leave her. We’re moving out, though. I ain’t sittin’ around nursing some stranger’s kid till dark.”

Footsteps. The grass is rustling. They’re leaving.

One’s staying.

I hear a click, and with a fresh fear I realize he’s made his decision.

“I’m sorry...”

I hear the first fraction of a gunshot.

Then I hear nothing.

#fiction

I’ve had this floating around in my head for a while. It’s a good idea but I’m nowhere near flippant or cynical enough to do it justice. And there would have to be a lot of flippant and cynical humor in this, or it just wouldn’t hit the tone I envision.

Setting: World War II era, maybe?

The story centers around a disturbed, suicidal young man, maybe 20-30, and his quest to die—rather, get himself killed. He’s wanted to die for years, but something, be it religious beliefs or family-related, prevents him from taking his own life. The assumed ‘loophole’, then: to be as reckless as humanly possible, do the dirtiest jobs, and run headlong into the most harrowing situations. He becomes a firefighter and his lack of regard for his own life imbues him with an unhealthy fearlessness. He quickly becomes a hero in the eyes of the public—a man revered as “brave”. But still, he feels nothing. He’s only disappointed in his own survival. So he proceeds to sign up for a sequence of even more dangerous jobs, eventually being conscripted into the army.

He’s thrilled about this, much to the bewilderment of his family. They mistake his strange ideation for patriotism. He winds up on the frontlines, and watches the other men and their reactions. He notes the dichotomy—his apathy in stark contrast to their horror and trauma. He finds a dull portion of amusement in this, but not enough to make life ‘worth it’.

But then, something happens.

He begins to bond with the other men in his rank. He begins feeling emotions he doesn’t recognize—inexplicable urges of self-preservation, and glimmers of camaraderie. His apathy and loneliness corrodes. And he realizes that he doesn’t want to die. He wants to live, because he’s found that happiness and friendship are possible, even to a social outcast like him.

But he and his band are ambushed, and there he must sacrifice himself to save them. In his dying moments, he reflects on the irony and beauty that he finally got his deepest wish—to die wanting to live.

Dunno’ if there’s already anything out there like this. There probably is, but meh.

Also, I’d want Tarantino to write and direct it. Because Tarantino. :3

And what I’ve seen of Fight Club—that’s the vibe I’d like. It’s not a Tarantino movie, I know, but that’s beside the point haha.

#actionmovieplot

If life had a color, I believe it would be white, if only because spectrally speaking, white is the combination of all visible wavelengths of light, making it in essence “every color”. Which is funny. Because a lot of people don’t even consider white a color. But yes, objects we see as “white” basically reflect the whole spectrum, making plain ol’ white the most colorful color of all.

The irony.

Even stranger? I learned of white’s status as ‘all the colors’ from Rob Zombie. You heard right. That Rob Zombie. One random night forever ago I was watching a part of one of his Halloween remakes and Dr. Loomis was explaining color to a young Michael Myers. He pretty much said that spectrally speaking, true black was the absence of color, and true white was the antithesis, being all the colors. I was just like—cool.

See, I absorb weird pieces of information like that, to regurgitate at random times like this. (With a quick double-check from the handy dandy internet.)

If white is every visible wavelength then that means, like life, it holds multitudes—the blue of sadness, the green of envy, the purple of depression, the yellow of madness, the orange of happiness, the red of anger, the gray of ambivalence, the brown of...brown.

People fail to recognize life’s weight and value as well, and just as white is often discredited as a color, life is often discredited as meaningful by the cynical, the jaded, the cruel, the greedy.

None of these thoughts are really my own, honestly. Maybe one or two or so? Dunno’.

So, among others, thank you Mr. Zombie.

UwU.

#opinion, #possiblyhumor?

As a person who’s never been too far removed from death, this question fascinates me. By that I mean I’ve lost many acquaintances, family members, friends. The first part of my life I believed in the hereafter because I was told. Then I had a crisis of faith, I guess you could call it, did some soul searching for the better part of a year, and landed right back at the beginning, choosing to keep my initial beliefs.

I was pretty young when my 17-year-old cousin hanged himself. I vaguely recall a family member of his having their picture taken at his gravesite, and in review a hand was placed to their shoulder. No one could figure out who it belonged to. I’m pretty sure no one had placed a hand to their shoulder at the time the picture was taken. Was it my cousin, allowed back to comfort the bereaved? Was it an angel? This question was never answered, but I believe it was a sign. A sign of something beyond the corporeal realm.

Another cousin of mine died of cancer in his twenties. My uncle mourned him for several years, before himself dying to a medical mistake, when his diabetes medicine damaged his liver. At the funeral one of my aunts told of a call his family had gotten, from D’s (name withheld for privacy) cellphone. D was the son he’d lost all those years before. I assumed his cellphone had surely been deactivated by then. What explanation could there be, then? Some solicitor hijacked the number? What were the odds it would be that exact one? My aunt said the person who’d received the call answered, only to hear dead silence on the other end. They interpreted it thusly: my uncle was with D, and the call was our assurance.

I believe in Heaven. Hell. The latter scares me more than nothingness ever could, at this juncture. I come from a very spiritual family. There have been a couple accounts of family members having dreams and visions of dead family members shortly before their own deaths. It’s come to be a sort of harbinger. Perhaps it’s to ease the fear of the process. I’ve heard someone say: “It’s not the dying; it’s the getting there.”

(Also these are old accounts and my memory isn’t the greatest so take everything I say with a grain of salt, and allow for a margin of error.)

Another topic that sort of ties in:

Do I believe in ghosts? I’ve actually considered posting about this before. My interpretation of ghosts is that they’re actually evil spirits impersonating the dead. I believe the dead move on once the soul and spirit part from the body. “Absent from the body, present with the LORD.” That kind of cements it for me. And think of it like this: I’ve heard of a ghost encounter where a little girl died in this house and close to a century later “she” was tormenting the new family who’d moved in. What motive would a little girl have to do that, unless it was something evil impersonating her? Another reason to dislike the dark side—they deface the memories of innocent people by impersonating them. But again, that’s just my hypothesis.

I could probably go way deeper with this, but I’m gonna’ stop there...

#opinion

When you’re a kid, you’re relatively powerless. Add being an only child, having a painfully bashful predisposition, and having an eccentric personality that you’ve yet to really grow into, let alone embrace—and you have younger me. I had a crippling phobia of ball so gym became a nightmare. It was a required class too, thus I’d often find myself stranded amid a cacophony of balls flying, kids screaming, and teachers perhaps too distracted to manage the chaos. I’d sag off into my corner and watch, hoping for the chaos to keep at bay. Feeling like a coward. Cultivating a complex that would morph and lead to a smatter of other insecurities. At the core was powerlessness. I was small, even for my age. I knew death before I should’ve, maybe. And then again. Again. Again. Powerlessness became a fixture. And there was no friction to be had outside the escapism provided by creativity. Television. Movies. Other people’s fantasies laid out for me to watch and enjoy.

So I tried my hand at drawing up worlds of my own, a bit more intricate than my past scribbles. Being slightly older, I started putting words to my worlds, serious words—keeping record of the movies that played almost constantly behind tired eyes. They’d fall together, in vague semblances of coherence. They’d give shape to characters, dialogues. They’d imbue in my small hands a sense of power, something I was at a loss for in reality. And for however long, I’d immerse myself and play with my friends my allies my words.

Words were a foothold against the hurricane of early preadolescence. I would hold bouquets of dreams between little ears, given life by my hands, if only on paper. I’d create a role model, an alter ego, a nemesis. I’d take the things that scared me, make them a character beholden to my will, and fight back. In my head I had power. My notebooks were the exhibits.

My worlds collected nuance with age. I’d find myself trying to understand rather than vilify. I think watching and reading and writing has expanded and honed my empathy like little else. As a writer, you become every character, however shallow, one-dimensional, or wicked they may be. You try to find the anatomy of an emotion, the color, the flavor.

You learn there will always be beautiful things to do with words, even when you don’t have much to say. You can talk forever about nothing and, if you’re talented and practiced enough, make it beautiful.

Or on the days when you’re at your most charged and electric and genuine, you can hold a body’s worth of emotion in a tiny sentence, and make it say everything. Words are catharsis. Words are release.

I have to write because if I don’t I get down. Bummed. Overwhelmed. It’s just one of those natural, inexplicable drives that I have, and not everyone has it so I can’t expect everyone to understand. I have been through phases where I hate writing as much, if not more, than I love it. That’s probably in part due to my OCD, and in other part due to feeling like I’ve wasted my time. It’s easy to feel like you’re wasting your time when you write your heart out to little or no applause. When the validation just isn’t there. It’s not so much that you want to be the shallow archetype of “rich and famous”, but you want people to appreciate the results of your labor, the baring of your soul. There’s nothing shallow about that, in my opinion. And I understand.

Why did I write, then, back before I had a place to publish?

I guess...hope. It’s how I am—I have to have something to wake up for, something to chase after. To borrow a phrase from Nolan’s Joker, “I’m like a dog chasing cars; I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one.” It’s the thrill of the chase. I’ve chased recognition since I was young, perhaps too young to even grasp what recognition truly was. All I knew was, whenever the teacher would let me read one of my stories to the class, whenever I’d get to share the thing that I wrote with another person—I don’t think you can really put *that* feeling into words, and I wanted more. Now I’m here and I have 586 followers and that’s amazing to me. But the aspirational side of me tells me to keep going. The day I stop chasing bigger cars is the day I stagnate, and that’s a bit too close to giving up for my tastes.

I found power in the words. I find life in the chase. And really, what more could you ask for?

(An amalgamation of alliteration)

Allen accidentally ate aluminum.

Ashley achieved accolades as an associative adjudicator. Auburn ambition.

Arielle abolished aristocracy, ablated all authority, and abdicated, advocating anarchy.

Alison actualized atrocious affronts, afflicting all associated.

Abby’s animals aestivated, alarming Addison.

Annie agglomerated animations—ambulating artificial aliens.

Amy argued aggressively, admonishing, avenging, and advecting awful avarice.

Alex advertised autonomy, adumbrating administrative abasement.

Alfie addressed antithetical advice, arborizing accusations.

Archie actualized an aquatint artwork.

Amelia amiably accosted Audrey.

Ada amassed acquaintances, ambling aimlessly after asinine approval.

Avery articulated approximations.

Acidic aquaplanes approached; Allen arbitrarily amassed anger.

Aria affixed an addendum.

Amicable Amber aligned, assisting Aiden’s abjection.

Anxieties acute—

Alvin allayed annual anxieties. Albuquerque’s alleviation.

Alfred abnegated authorship, affected at Andrea’s appraisal. Allonym androgynous.

Airbrushed Andy antagonized accusers. Airtight alibi.

Agnes acted auspiciously, abrasively abating acquiescence.

Angela autographed assorted automobiles.

Aurora abraded Anthony, aiding auditory atrophy.

Aaliyah acknowledged and accepted Abbott’s apology.

Adele adopted Apples, an Alabama alligator.

An auxiliary assisted Arielle, adding agents and ammo.

Allen anticipated acrid agony.

Ashley acerbically advocated an acquittal. Agonistes.

Abby adopted Adele’s Alabama alligator Apples after an awful attack.

Amelia’s adroit adulation addled Audrey.

Ada ate alone. Atomizing adamance.

Aria: anguished, alacrity ambiguous, allegiance ardent.

Avuncular axioms assuage and atone. All affectation. Adulation an aegis. Affirm ad hoc algorithm. Affable affront ad infinitum. Ambivalent alienation—animosity alluded, an apathetic aplomb. All Ada’s attributes.

Alkaline ablutions.

Antipathy an antecedent, antagonizing all. Avaricious appendages, augmenting audacity, abandoning agility. Avaricious appendages, all awry. Aberration afoot. Abey and abet. All Arielle, abridged. All Arielle, ammo and anger. Atavistic action. Abysmally abstruse. Ada and Arielle ate alone.

Alvin’s aegis—an acclimatized abomination. Alacrity abases. Ada and Arielle and Alvin ate alone.

Aaliyah and Abbot acquaint and acquit. Affection’s advent.

Allen attenuates: attrition afflicted. Ada and Arielle and Alvin and Allen ate alone.

Andy’s aspersions assault. Andy, alone, abjures.

Ashley accrues accouterments and associates. Ashley’s abode—abaculus art acervated. Allemande allusion. Altiloquence arrayed.

Abby accrues animals, alone ablated.

Amy, an aggressive alcoholic. Archie, an amazing artist. Avery...? Alex afflicted—acrimony. Aaliyah and Abbot, allegiant accomplices. Allied accessories. Allision.

Archie aggravatedly abducents from an awkward abbozzo.

Amy abuses alcohol, asservations absent. Abiotrophy.

Atomic anger. Apathy apropos. Abuse akin.

Atmosphere absorbs and allocates apathy.

American abarcy...

Abby amusedly abequitated, and almost adequitated alongside Angela’s Audi. Acissmus. “Alongside” aborted.

Acquaintance averted.

Abby and Apples ate alone.

Even Ashley’s analects are angora. Abatjour abasking.

Ashley—agerasia adjacent. Amoral akinesia.

Amy—agelast, aggled, alysmic.

Andrew’s autogolpe angered Arielle. Auxiliary aligned. Action affirmed.

Armogan. Abby absorbs aquamarine apricity. Ambience.

Ada. Arielle. Alvin. Allen. Amy.

Atmosphere absorbs and allocates apathy.

America.

Alison’s arrogance attacks. Arguments anorexic, abscinding intelligence. Abseiling reason.

Abby accoyed an angry Apples. Adversity arising. Alabama authorities do not approve. Abby is arrested. Apples is released back into an Alabama afforestation area.

Ashley’s authorial ascent angers Amy.

Allen’s health problems compound; abrupt achromatopsia begets achroous atmospheres.

A subliminal acclimation.

Acicular audacity aligns. Amy is arrested for the alcoholic ambulation of an apricot accented Aston Martin. Arielle is arrested for anarchy, unauthorized accruing of ammo, and attacking Andrew. Acracy ablated.

Ashley’s acropodium fissures and flakes. All adjudiciary authority is ablated.

Alison is arrested. Assault and battery. Allen’s arrest entails.

Allen testifies ardently against Alison. All chance for acquittal is ablated.

Arielle is tried as an anarchist and assailant. Alcatraz? No. Allenwood? Maybe.

Archie advertises his artwork, arranging them along Apricot Avenue.

Abby misses Apples, adynamia rising. Anger in an Aeropostale hoodie. Affreux affrayer.

Aaliyah and Abbot—affined.

Ada awaits an airport arrest.

Amelia and Audrey reacquaint, and set all anger aside.

Allen recovers, ambition anew.

Ashley retires and opens Apex, a charity shelter. Amorality and apathy ablated.

Archie goes to auction, and allots his artwork for astronomic amounts.

Atmosphere absorbs and allocates the ability to excel.

America.

Angela and Aaron argue.

Addy and Avon assimilate. An army of articulate ants, arranging, arraying, aligning, absconding. Ava adorns abridgments; acute abecedarian, advecting amusement. Arranging alphabets and abolishing absurdity, amounting adjectives, adverbs, and advertising aerodynamic advice. Aesthetics alive. Alphabetic architect, aging awesomely. Ava asserts authority.

Albatross ascend amid algae aligned aquaplanes. Agriculture adds ambience. Amphibians and anemones adorn. Airy ambience affixes and alights Amber’s affections. Animals agglomerate; an amusing, anthropological anthology. Archeologically amazing aqueducts, arched above aqua-scapes, amiably align the atmosphere. An awesome achievement. Amber apricates. Anxieties, arrogance, apprehension, anger, antagonism, annoyance—all ablated. Ancient Asian architecture adds awesomeness. Animals animate and audition, as Amber adventurously advances. An adolescent amphibian adjoins Amber’s adventure. An alpaca, an adder, an asp, and an aardvark all abequitate.

Aria—also adventurous.

And my mind got tired here so...

(And yes I researched a-words. Arranging them into sentences was the hard part tho. :P Also, I think I used a few of these more than once but I assumed it counted as long as the sentence sorta' made sense.)

I must have gone insane. Because I decided to do something so far out of my comfort zone that it’s, like, in another universe. I—having no prior experience as a commentator, having the bare minimum of tech knowledge, and barely knowing how to turn a computer on—decided to attempt to cover an iceberg on yt. So far the journey has been a big yikes. Research is relatively easy; it’s just the other stuff. I tried recording myself talking in GarageBand and quickly discovered that I couldn’t even do that right. Which I should’ve probably figured, as my speech has never been the clearest. Once this notion was cemented, I decided to practice elocution, so I did that for a little while and finally got a few good (read: passable) takes. I was gonna’ do the visuals on iMovie. They were basically a bunch of stills with info—pretty much just a slideshow with me talking over it. But that fell through when iMovie smushed the images down and made the text so little to read that you’d have a better shot reading pinholes. The alternative frames were Ken Burns, which, no. And a cropped full-screen option. Which would only allow me a small chunk of my image to work with. So no iMovie. That being my only editor, I had to search up others, preferably free because I’ve recently spent way too much money on other stuff. I ended up trying to download this thing called Blender, as per recommendation. It took like 20 hours. And my Mac was so out of date that after it downloaded, it wouldn’t run. I needed OS 10.13 or later. So I had to check for updates manually since my computer, which always dogs me with updates, decided to stop dogging me with updates the exact day I needed them*. Bruh. Having located the updates on the Apps thingy, I tried to update all. Several failed, but the important ones took. So I tried to reopen Blender, and...it still wouldn’t open because the update was for 10.12 and, again, it required a 10.13 or later. I waited to see if my Mac would give me the option of a new new update. I shut it down and turned it back on, I think twice. But no. No such result. So I went searching online for downloads of 10.13, as I discovered Apple gives these things out for free. I found one and tried to download it. And when a glitch, I guess, stopped the download, I tried downloading it AgAiN. And when the same glitch, I guess, stopped that download, I tried something else. Eventually I came to a point where I decided to just forgo the stairstep of updates and go for the newest—Big Sur. Stray observation: they name their updates the most random things. High Sierra was my first online pursuit. I’m assuming that’s referencing a location and not a junkie. Probably Nevada. Big Sur is a place (I know because Thompson referenced it hehe I’m smort :^)), so that would make sense. I’m overthinking this. Anyway, I wound up finding a Big Sur download available, so I’ve been shooting for that. You know how it shows the projected time remaining below the download bar. I think that hit like 90+ hours at one point. It’s been like a day(?) and I have over 60 left. Yay.

I don’t even know if I’ll go through with the iceberg, but that’s been my struggle. I’ve been on this thing for such a long time. Gotta’ love how most YouTubers can churn these things out in like a week. Hahaha*cries in three plus weeks*.

*Addendum: My computer probably didn’t dog me with updates because I usually select the ‘remind me tomorrow’ option and I don’t think a full day had passed.

On other fronts, my acne is improving since I finally tried Proactiv. I think I’ve described my acne as ‘an uphill battle if that hill was 100% vertical’ before. It’s sad when you can go down the skin care aisle at Target and be like “doesn’t work, doesn’t work, doesn’t work”. So to find something that is actually working is a very valued feat, since my acne is apparently tOo PoWeRfuL for common products. I have had some really weird dreams since I started using Proactiv, but since my dreams are already kinda’ bonkers, I can’t say for sure if Proactiv is the cause. My body is super sensitive to chemicals and stuff, so that’s the foundation for my hypothesis.

Oh, and Wattpad. I joined afresh a couple months back and I’m up to 154 followers now (but unlike here it fluctuates a lot so no guarantees how long that’ll last). I had a pretty wild experience within my first, like, month I think. Because unlike last time I’m a little more outgoing now and I follow accounts that look cool, which makes me more easily discoverable to others. Well, apparently I got on the radar of a spam account. So they followed me, I guess seeing me as an easy followback. And I did follow them back. Then a bunch more spam accounts started glomming on and following me, and it was super confusing because none of these people were English and I don’t think there’s any translators on WP, so I was just like...I don’t understaaaand why they’re so interested in me probably just for a followback yeah that’s definitely it haha. Tho I mostly don’t follow spam accounts back anymore because more always come and it’s kinna’ stressful. O^O Wattpad is a *totally* different animal from TheProse. The first spam attack was funny. I was freaking out because my followers jumped from I think like 37 to 140-something overnight. I was nooot used to that kind of “fame”. Most of the ones I didn’t follow back then got salty and gradually left. I caught on. It’s just whatevs. *Shrug*

Anyway, I’ve been gone a lot on here, so now you know part of where I’ve been. :3

#hyperbolic, #humor, #random