if we move to vermont

i wonder if some other girl might choose my bedroom because it's

blue

blue the color of the ocean.

might as well dye the carpet if it means the house won't sell, and you know

my blue hair didn't fix me.

girls here ignored it anyway--they don't wear their collars up.

they don't dress in darks but they gob on mascara and pull their buns so tight

you don't have to wonder where open mindedness went.

it's in there cinching somewhere.

their hair is blond and brown and red and light, even though it's not sometimes

and belonging is a construct but they've got it constructed as an add on to their homes.

but if i move to vermont, i'll have to box up the black shirts and the pink in the same box

i'll have to use the dye or leave it for some other girl who wants to drown in

blue

blue the color of the ocean

blue the color we paint the chesapeake bay over

brown the color we see the chesapeake bay as

they'll never see me get into college,

raise my longest finger at graduation and i'll splatter my cap and gown with

blue

i'll never ever be changed

i'll never ever be kissed

i'll never ever belong in one place

and if i move to vermont with my faded blue hair i wonder if it'll be easy to forget

the way me and him talked about picking flowers on the water

the way he said my flower was a daisy

if i move to vermont i'll bring him a bouquet on the way out of state,

dye them

blue

(blue the color of the ocean)

dye the water

blue

(blue the color of the ocean)

and if i move to vermont maybe it'll be a second chance to be all alone again.

Let's see, timetable is set, the order intact.

No, the order isn't set right. Still need to make last minute changes.

Why can't things be simple.

Dammit!

All these changes. Mind boggling. Hope this satisfies everyone.

Need to keep this less confusing. LOL ... I'm the one really confused. Need to munch on something. BBQ potato chips, me thinks. I need another Pepsi, too.

Twenty-four hours and it's a go. Am I worried? Hell yeah, I am.

So much to do, but I can make this work.

Now where was I?

Oh yeah ... Chapter One: The Beginning ...

can you help me

when I’m in this state

of unknowingness

not

knowing

what

way is

th e

r igh t

w a

y.

im struggling

cant you see?

im

b r ea k ing

cr a ck ing

like a beat up

mirror.

im

s

h

a

t

t

e

r

i

n

g

im in pain

and I don’t know

how to put my mirror

back together

i dont know

how to see

cl ea rly

anymore.

(can you replace my broken mirror?)

I free-fall into you more because of the moments you are open and vulnerable. I get to see your vein exposed, pumping with dying stars and red diamonds.

Why would I ever stray away from you?

the light overhead flickers

as my sad sad music permeates the air

i’ve been washing dishes for hours

cleaning up messes

that aren’t mine

ceramic and glass merrily dancing

in the sink

the third cup of coffee from earlier

making my fingers twitch

and twitch

and twitch

the back of my neck

prickling

like white hot needles in a place i can’t reach

flicker and

twitch and

prickle and

clink

12am

(i guess this is what my life has come to).

Little balls of flesh. That is all we ever were. All of everything is just a small pile of flesh, flesh that can think. Nothing matters, because when all life dies, all legacies will be severed, all impacts - no matter how far along on the chain they are - will be smashed to little tiny pieces. Perhaps some later generation will come along and try to put those pieces back together. It wouldn’t be worth their time. All they would learn about us humans is that we were a confusing bunch that never seemed to get our act together.

However, the world still turns, it always does. It always seems to be ending, and for the most part, it always has been, but it never does. I look to my cat. Catie is her name. I almost envy her. How ignorant she is, oblivious to philosophy and the fact that we will die and be forgotten unto the poor memory of time and our mistakes will be repeated. No, her only worry is that I will not open the door and let her out. “Well listen, Catie, I am writing. I will let you out when I finish writing.”

“Surely one burden of such small importance would not ruin your night.” We humans, on the other hand, must comprehend the politics, economics, news, and philosophy of each and every day. Is the cat lucky? No, ultimately, knowledge with burden is better than bliss with ignorance.

The form of afterlife to the Ancient Greeks, the good afterlife, was one of ignorant bliss. If one had coins of some sort placed over their eyes when they died, they could pay Charon to take them across on their journey to the afterlife. If they did not have coins on their corpse’s face, they would be left to wallow in the fields of the underworld, longing for their life. After one thousand years, Charon would take pity on them, and ferry them along on their journey.

Either way, both those with and without money would make it to the same place (like life, really. Both the wealthiest kings and the lowest peasants end in death). Then, the fortunate dead would drink from the river Styx or something and forget everything and everyone from their former life. They would then wander the underworld for eternity, in blissful ignorance. Terrifying, isn’t it? I would not want to go to the Greek afterlife.

“Ok, Catie, I’ll let you out.” But then, on the other hand, can you miss what you never had? You can miss some things. For instance, if you have never had food, you will still be hungry. If you have never had water, you will still be thirsty. But if you never had knowledge, would you miss it? You could technically live without knowledge, our ancestors, the Neanderthals and the apes, did so. But then again, they still had basic knowledge, such as how to find food and how to avoid predators. So, truthfully, to not have knowledge would mean to lead a short life. So then to miss knowledge that you do not have would be to miss life after it is lost.

Will we miss life? Will I miss it after I die? Perhaps not. Perhaps I dissolve into nothingness, and so there is no consciousness left to miss life. Or perhaps there is something after death here on Earth, something much better than here. But even then, I would still see myself looking back, at least every once and a while. And what if the afterlife, if there is one at all, is not a good place? Like the fields of the underworld. Longing for my life.

Humans are so foolish. We go about building cities and societies and nations like we actually think they can last forever. Every nation falls, and every empire returns to sand, and all great countries will at some point crumble. Why even do anything at all? Ah, it is the individual experience, that is what matters. Help yourself, help the people around you, help your parents, and help your children. But can one make a difference in the long run? Perhaps not, though I wish it to be so. Time is too vast, and one by one, each legacy will burn out like a candle, lingering in a faint ember before it disappears.

What? No, that can’t be true. Surely…Perhaps…But…Oh, who am I to think that society will forever remember us? Humans, in the grand scale of time and space and the universe and the cosmos and all of everything, are but a tiny blip. We may live for quintillions of years, but we will seem like a small empire compared to all of time, when that time passes. Time heals. Yes, and time kills. Time is such a good killer. Oh, time has killed more things than anyone else ever has.

Gosh, what time is it? Midnight. Too early to go to bed. You’re loosing yourself. No, I’m not. Yes you are. It is this quarantine. I need social interaction. But there is a deadly pandemic virus: it is not worth the risk. What the heck is that noise? Probably one of the cats trying to open a box of food or something. Nothing to worry about. Still, I shall lock my door. Oh, gosh! It stopped! The noise stopped as soon as I heard the lock click! The horrible monster is coming for me! Stop it, moron, get a hold of yourself! See, the noise is back, and it is no closer to you.

Curse these cats’ hunger, frightening me. Now, where was I? Life? The universe? You know, some people hate cloudy days, but I love them. Just imagine how surreal the world would look like to someone who had never before seen this planet. Why are there so many bright colors? For crying out loud, the sky is blue and the grass is green! It’s enough to drive a person insane. If I were not raised here, it would terrify me. Like “The Persistence of Memory,” by Salvador Dali.

Gosh, that painting terrifies me. But, that was Dali’s goal in painting it: to terrify his audience. The droopy clocks, the nightmarish landscape…Most people I know can’t look at it for more than a few seconds before turning away. I can do better - I managed to stare at the grotesque thing for a whole four minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore, the horrible sight. It is one of my favorite paintings. It reminds me how easily terrified humans can be.

It takes almost nothing to scare someone. A little altercation in their environment, and the brain starts setting off a ton of alarms. We crave repetition, structure - and structure is something that is so easily fractured. Just look at this pandemic. Do I honestly think that anti-maskers choose to be anti-maskers? No. They are scared, scared of departing from the normal.

But change is good. We get better because we evolve. Change is good. I welcome change. Wear a mask. Some things shouldn’t go back to normal. Welcome terror, for we need it to survive. To confront terror is to welcome a chance to learn, a chance to evolve, a chance to change, and a chance to improve.

My gosh, it’s late, but still too early to go to bed. Is it? Why does everyone go to bed before midnight? Who made that rule? Little kids typically go to bed in the late afternoon, but are more awake in the early hours of the day. Teenagers, on average, do not become tired until eleven o’clock or later at night. Adults tend to fall in around nine or ten o’clock, as well. So do toddlers and adults run the world? Who cares? Tomorrow, someone else will be running it.

Leaders come and go, and the land stays mostly the same. Nobody has a home, no, we merely live in different places as we journey through life. We may live in a place longer than anywhere else, but that is not our home. Home is eternal, but we will leave it when we die, so nothing is eternal. The Earth is an apartment building, people coming and departing. But hey, free of charge.

Wait, no it’s not. Life is full of challenges. The noise outside my door stopped. Is it gone? Shall I check what it was? No, why bother? It was the cats, I am sure. But why not go confirm? Blast, I am writing. But it would be so easy to simply confirm and satisfy my curiosity. Yet I will not do so, because I am writing, and I will stop soon and crawl into bed and wonder what that noise had been all night.

Why do I think about these things? Why can’t I just live life and not think about why I am living it. Because I feel uncomfortable about using something if I do not know how it works, and so I must know how life works. I feel guilty every time I get onto a computer, not knowing how it can transmit information wirelessly so well. If the world loses all of its technology, and it is up to me to restore it, we are doomed. The furthest I can go is to the telegraph, that is it. The telegraph is the most advanced thing that I am confident I could build from scratch.

It’s a good thing that things aren’t built from scratch anymore. The person who invented the computer did not have it so hard, as they did not invent the computer. It is a passing of the baton: everything builds off of what came before it. The computer was based off the radio, or something, which was based off the telegraph, probably.

Jeez, how long am I planning to write? Who would ever read this? It is an endless rant. I will post it, of course, because I do not want it to go to waste, and a few people will like it, maybe even ten, and perhaps some will argue with me about my ranting points, and then it will become lost in the endless stream of pure intellectual thought. In three days, it will be like this little rant of contemplation never even existed. So why do it? Why do it if life is meaningless?

Simple. I was once asked: “if life is meaningless, then why write?” Now, only now, am I confident in my reply: if life is meaningless, then why not write?

The fact is, we are here right now. I am here, and you are here. We all are here. So why not simply enjoy the ride while it lasts? Jeez, everyone hates that answer, because that is the answer that is always given. But perhaps that is for good cause. All of this ranting, all of this reasoning, all of this examining and thinking and philosophizing, and I have come to the same conclusion that everyone else seems to come to. Just, enjoy the ride. Hm, shockingly simple. Almost disappointing. But, as I said before, we are humans, and humans are a confusing bunch. Gosh, I love the human race.

#philosophy

#streamofthought

Tired, oh so tired

TIred of waiting, tired of hoping

tired of thinking I'm almost there.

Tired of looking toward the dusky horizon,

expectations of a rising sun--only

to meet with the starless black of night once more.

Endless, formless, fog in my head

it's not a bodily exhaustion, rahter,

one that nags at the mind.

Well, I guess you could say it is bodily,

because a mental emotoin always carries over

to the physical,

whether positive or negative.

Joy or sorrow

hope or despair

worry or fear.

They say that seventy percent or more

of physical illness is

caused by streesss

If so then i'm living proof

Ohhh dang it

Stress---be gone!

WOrry--gt lost

Depression--your dead

I won't be a vicitm of my circumstances

I'll fight you to my last breath/

It's time i rose up and take my stand.

time to brandish my secret weapon.

cause I'm a closet superhero

I know I don't look it,

but great things come in plain packages

or didn't you know that?

THIS. IS. MY. CHALLENGE. It os 5am. I am exhausted. My class is at noon tomorroe but I need to edit my woek because it'a currently rather shitty, and I have like 60 pages to read for my class at 3. Sooooo, whats the logical thing to do? Be up until the ass crack of dawn because thats just how I am. Finally a challenge without the pressure to actually make shit make sense. Making sense sucks. Math sucks. Math sucks because math has to make sense. There'a no magic numbers in math. Which sucks because EVERYTHING should be magical. Magic is fun, which is probably why it disappears when you become an adult. Life goes from rainbows and sunshine to crying at 4am because all you had for dinner was Oreos and your adult body can't just live off of Oreos anymore. Staying up late is depressing. I've gotta get more sleep.

3:33 am

the witching hour.

beware

the night creatures stir,

walking about,

werewolves, vampires,

ghost and demons,

creating terror,

watch out

attacking you in your head

while tucked in your comfy bed

sound asleep, thinking

you are safe from the

“make beleve” dreamworld,

that is a big mistake

scratches and brusies

you will see

when you awake.

one, two, three

open your eyes,

lookup

who is thatover you,

do you see?

look at at

Thos red eyes

you can’t move

can you?

you are paralized.

you can’t scream

either

night terorr

begins

3;33

the withchig hou;r

instead stay up and write a poem.

LOL

YOu have the powr

Well, it's midnight. I am too tired to stay awake, but not enough to go to sleep. I can't help but get the feeling that this is how most of us live our lives. Just functioning enough to get through the day and eventualyy the wekend. Only to repet it all over again. This is what Puratory must feel like.