In Five Years Time

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. – Shakespeare

 

Five years.

Half a decade, sixty months, 5% of a century or how every you would like to represent it numerically. It doesn’t matter. Humans like seeing patterns and five just seems to scream its aesthetic value to us.

From the past, the future of five years seemed vast and never ending. Go ahead and ask yourself where you were five years ago- physically and metaphysically. What were you doing? Your plans? Your friends? Who did you admire, crush on, love or hate? Where did you live? What did you know?

In five years, who has lived and died? Who has gone from your life without kicking the bucket? Who got kicked out? Who did you trust? Did you think God was still there? Is he now?

What’s happened around you? Where has the world gone? What’s changed? Have you?

I have. Or at least, I believe that I have.

I must have since five years ago I’d never seen a naked girl in person. Five years ago I had just written my first short story and an open mic was just a daydream of the future, let alone doing 15 minutes opening for a member of Saturday Night Live.

I had never touched a cigarette aside from hiding or throwing out my mother’s. I never hosted a radio show aside from that one my best friend and I made up in 1^st grade on those bus rides home. We would pretend to be callers with names like Seymour Butts and would sing the songs ourselves. We I’m famous, this will be seen as brilliant. As of now, it seems like I should have been medicated as a child.

I couldn’t grow a mustache and had never worn a real kilt. I hadn’t fallen in love with and on St. Patrick’s Day. I hadn’t walked down a Brooklyn street with a freshly broken heart at 5am, Tom Waits singing in my ears and whiskey and beer heavy on my breath.

I couldn’t wait to turn 18. Now I can’t believe I’m going to be 23. In five more years, I’ll probably have a crisis about how close 30 is. In 100 years, I’ll hopefully be dead. You probably will be too. We could be dead in five but I hope that’s less likely.

Four of the past five trips around the sun were the best and last years I had ever spent in school. The last five years I feel I had learned more about myself than in the previous seventeen. That may just be perspective, but from where I’m looking I can see more of those years than anything predating them.

We hope that each year makes us stronger and smarter. And by we, I mean me. And by me, I mean I have seen things in the last split decade that were never anything but fantasy prior. That includes the tragedies, traumas and downfalls just as much as those grand and glorious glimpses at bliss. I want to say that the happy times will last longer than the bad, but those revelations regarding mortality I’ve had will hang around until I’m facing down my own, I’d imagine. Some things can’t be forgotten, even if it would be better to let them go.

For now, I work at the college that I recently graduated from. They had the first new student orientation today and yesterday and as the go-to A/V guy on campus, my participation was forced for the sake of microphones and video presentations. These young men and women are of the same age and generation of a few of the kids I used to teach karate to. To me, I saw mostly young slutty girls and dopey, dipshit young men. I don’t figure they see themselves as such. They never do.

But when I wore the shoes they find themselves in, a young man, all foolish and doe-eyed was far too excited, wore the same skin wrapped around me now. He was starved of fresh experience. He wanted to dive in head first, smiling a shit-eating grin from ear to ear. And he did. Eat shit, that is.

He ended up getting tossed around by the first current that caught him. Dripping wet with saltwater and hints of blood, I discovered how shallow the water can be at times. You know, like a metaphor and junk.

From there I made a monster, who very much like the one made by Dr. Frankenstein, was adored by his creator. The difference is that lots of other folks seemed to like my monster too. He was charming, talented and good looking- and for a time he was unaware of it. Though that didn’t last and the monster was let loose into the world, some part of that doe-eyed young fool could never die.

He still hasn’t. And although he doesn’t make as many decisions as he used to, he still makes many of the important ones. So perhaps, despite all the thoughts and sights of change, the core remains the same. Or similar, at least. I do hope that some minuscule part of who I was as a young man hangs around for all my days. I wouldn’t want to become totally lost.

But what do I know of time and all it’s comings and goings? I couldn’t even tell you everything that happened yesterday, so forget about what will happen tomorrow.

I don’t know man. Happy birthday, or whatever.

Josh was an Alien

One score or so centuries ago, a sentient being sat on a hill. I would say he was a man but that wasn’t technically true, despite all those he knew and those who knew of him believing he was of the same species.

His eyes were fixed upon the stars. His mind was fixed upon existence. Not his own though, he knew he would be fine soon enough.

He was called Josh in the tongue of those living in this particular sector of this particular planet. Josh was not called Josh where he came from but he figured there was no point in ruining the fun now. They wouldn’t be able to pronounce his true name anyway. Their ears couldn’t pick up such a frequency.

Yet even with the astonishing simplicity with which their minds operated, he had grown fond of a good few of them. And those he wasn’t as fond of still triggered a very sincere pity within him. He was concerned for them as a whole for while they were generally capable of passion, potential ability and wonderful heaps of kindness, they all would act incredibly stupid more than once in each of their lives. Some never ceased to be moronic. But even those at the highest mental capacity for their species at that time, could be so unbelievably stupid.

However, their primitive cognition is most likely what made Josh’s parlor tricks such a big hit. Most would listen better after they saw something they couldn’t quite understand. Similar to the effect dog treats have on dogs. The issue that had been becoming more and more prevalent, is that not all of them liked that they didn’t understand things going on in the universe around them. Josh knew they were going to do something about it. Just like how some dogs will bite someone that they don’t care for, or if they’re told to. Sad but it is true, some dogs don’t stand a chance.

Josh called them parlor tricks because that’s all they were to him. Everyone who had seen them thought they were much more miraculous.

Sometimes his parlor tricks were just to cancel the result of something incredibly stupid the locals would do. To give an example, there was the time that a whole mess of people travelled pretty far out of their way to listen to Josh talk and no one thought much about bringing food for the journey. To give another example, a wedding he was at once ran out of wine. In both instances, a few of the gadgets he had salvaged from his wrecked ship were able to rearrange and reproduce atoms to make more food and much more wine. To them it was mind boggling. To him, it was child’s play.

If Josh ever struggled on this planet, it was trying to understand how someone could be so stupid and cheap as to not get enough wine for a wedding. As he saw it, there was no point to weddings besides drinking way too much wine.

Other times, he would do something to prove a point. Josh hoped that they might be inspired enough to seek the answers to their questions and not just hope something happened that made it go away.

To show them how malleable their physical world can be, he once jumped from his friend’s boat and floated above the water. Where Josh came from, everyone could manipulate and concentrate their bodily energy enough to counter a relatively weak source of gravity as was found on this planet. His friends in the boat were thoroughly impressed but he often thought they didn’t understand what he was trying to say with his actions.

But there he was, looking up at the stars towards the closest cluster he could see in the direction of home. He had received the message that his emergency beacon had been picked up by his comrades and they would be on their way. When this would happen he wasn’t exactly sure, as they had to travel a bit through time as well as space to get to him. He had only been stuck for about 30 or so trips around this particular sun, which to him wasn’t much at all.

After he’d gotten caught in a rather testy wormhole, his ship was tossed off course and crashed in an area with a good bit of sand and rock and scattered grass. This sand and rock and scattered grass was on the outskirts of the area conquered by the people from a boot shaped land. With the last bit of his ship’s battery he did two things. First, he sent out a distress signal with his galactic coordinates. After that, he ran a scan of the planet and the dominant life forms. It took so little time for the results to emerge that the ‘ping’ the machine made caught him off guard. When he read what the scan came up with, Josh couldn’t help but laugh. To him, these folks had just barely crawled from the mud.

His species had over the course of several thousand generations developed the ability to alter the size and shape of their physical manifestations to blend in whenever they needed to not be noticed. So Josh made himself look like a baby and found his way to a nice, but rather poor family. He knew that much fewer people would ask where he came from if he was a baby. They adopted him as their own and since they were not able to conceive a child themselves, considered little Josh a gift from the deities they worshipped. Or so they would tell the people who met little Josh.

From his analysis of this planet, he was able to time out his growth to match that of the species he was using as his disguise. Only on a few occasions would Josh slip up and start talking about enlightened ideas with those whom he met. They would never quite understand him but they enjoyed what he would say and knew that there was something very special about him. So he kept it up for a good few years until he had spent enough time feigning development to reach the mature form of the native species. It was around then that he received a response to his distress signal. The message was this:

Apologies for the delay, it took a little bit of time to pinpoint where you had gotten stuck. There is literally nothing out there, so we didn’t believe the signal was coming from such a place at first. We’re looking up directions, grabbing some lunch and then we’ll be by to pick you up.

Since he knew that he would still have some time to kill, especially in the scale of the tiny lives of the tiny people on this tiny planet, Josh thought he might do some good and try to help these homely folk get a little further out of the mud.

So he would walk around and talk to people and do his little parlor tricks. He never went far from his ship, to make sure he could still catch his ride out of here. Josh would tell people to be nicer to each other and to work together to solve problems. He knew they all had so many questions but they weren’t ready for even a fraction of the answers he could give them. So he kept his talk vague but as inspiring as possible. He made sure they knew that ‘creation’ as they liked to call it was vast beyond their imagination but if they worked at it generation after generation after generation, they could explore far beyond this miniscule portion of the universe. There was a good chunk of the local population that listened and tried to follow his advice. But as his popularity started its meager growth, he noticed that certain people in the regional social structure were not too fond of his talk. These folks would make money and power with fear and that fear depended on people never knowing that they truly had nothing to fear.

So Josh took a deep breath and let out an even deeper sigh and stood from the rock he was seated upon on this particular night. He went back down to where his friends said they would stand guard while he was up on the hill. The lot of them had fallen asleep and Josh was a bit peeved.

So he woke them up and raised his voice a bit. He told them that if they wanted to sleep, they should have stayed in their beds. They told Josh that they were worried some people were coming after him and they wanted to stop them. Josh told them that it didn’t matter who was coming for him because they wouldn’t really be able to do much to him anyway. He told them that if they wanted to get better use of their time, they should look up at the sky and wonder about what is out there.

He had told them earlier that evening that he would be leaving them soon. Josh didn’t want them to be afraid and even though some people were going to try and kill him that he wouldn’t die. To explain how his species is able to regenerate would be too much for their delicate minds to handle, so he left that part out. His friends said they would go to war for Josh and he told them they had better not.

These people who wanted Josh dead were never fond of him from their first hearing about him. But as Josh’s talks and parlor tricks began to get bolder, they grew more concerned that he might actually be a real threat to their livelihood. The final straw happened when Josh went into one of their bigger clubhouses and flipped a bunch of tables over and did a whole bunch of yelling. Josh told the people there that they were wasting their time with all this buying and selling and gambling and that they had better start appreciating the beauty and bounty of the world around them. After that, the club that at first had only a mild distaste for Josh had grown to brew murderous intentions.

Josh knew they would be coming to the hill soon because one of his more terrified and confused friends would tell this club where he was. They would come with torches and swords and few members of an even bigger and more powerful club and drag Josh away. From there, he knew they would accuse him of a whole array of things and sentence him to be beaten and strung up on a carved up tree. So he would let them do it and he would pretend to bleed and die. After a few days, his body would regenerate and he would go back out into the world to wait for his ride. He worried whether it was the right thing to go back and see the friends he made on this planet after they believed he died or if it would be best to just disappear. Josh figured he would have to make that decision after all this business with his public execution had settled down for a bit.

He was already concerned that he had gone too far already with all his parlor tricks and talk of the universe. He feared that despite his best intentions, people would skew his ideas and use them to do bad things to each other. He worried that over time, these skewed ideas would be used as a means to control and influence others and how they chose to live. He worried that people would take these skewed ideas and argue and fight and kill other people whose skewed ideas were different from their own. He worried his friends would be too bent on revenge and forget all those things about kindness and compassion he had tried to tell them about. Josh worried if he had done the right thing trying to help these mud people out, or if he had just given them more excuses to be mean to each other.

But while Josh was worrying, the flicker of torches and the sound of arguing and yelling grew at the bottom of the hill. He heard swords being unsheathed and knew he couldn’t stargaze any longer. So Josh got up from his rock and began down the hill picking a few olives from the trees to munch on along the way to the bottom. He thought that maybe if he told them he would be coming back someday they might not lose sight of all he’d been saying all this time.

“Well,” Josh said to himself. “What’s done is done. It’s time I got going anyway. They were on their own before I showed up. If they have it in them, they’ll keep going just fine without me.”

He looked up one more time before the glow of the torches drowned out the stars. Josh was really just glad to be going home.

The Truth (hidden in parenthesis)

I suppose that you could say that I’m jealous and that this is a result of jealousy. But saying such things would be redundant, would it not?

My true self, which is very juvenile in truth, is upset that other people have blogs and get an exponential amount more views than mine ever does. It could be said that such pettiness provokes me now. It could be said that my whole existence is very petty but only because it very much is. It’s not that I thrive on such pettiness. It’s just that when it comes down to it, you consume whatever is available to you. This is what I have, so this is what I’ll end up vomiting out.

This may have to do with my slump which was admitted into existence on a post now a few short ages ago. That post doesn’t have a clever name or any clever tags, so you probably haven’t seen it. If there were any cleverness, it has now worn off as it enters its fourth year of being. It’s tough to shake traditions, just as it is tough to shake habit. Yet then again, those could be seen as the same thing. And there goes me and my redundancy.

Yet my madness has quelled to a point that leaves me with a constant feeling of discomfort. I itch and have been ignoring the obvious reason why. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. Or so the TV has told me all these years. Just the same, here it is.

I am growing up.

There is no sentence that is more heartbreaking that one and trust me, I’ve tried. Not that I’m changing who I am, I’ve just changed occupations. The days of inconsequence that comes with being a full time student are over. They have been over for a very long time now. It just takes time to adjust. It will take a whole lot more than this, as well. The craving for progress is going to be become entirely insatiable, unless of course, I start doing something about it. This is only an attempt and I would be a liar if I told you that everything was going to start picking up miraculously from here. I’m old enough to know there is no such thing as miracles. There are only stalled tragedies.

But what to be mad about?

There was a pop-scientist who had to debate some moronic individual who swears by a book poorly penned by tribal members of some thousand year old cult and edited by medieval control freaks. My rage builds at the very thought of having to put up with such counter progress but my rage will spark no instant change. A fury could be built by a murderer being promoted to a celebratory status and getting a chance to publicly fist fight over racial in equality for the guise of making a few bucks for some people who don’t have much at all. I could get mad about my government watching my every move on the phone and in cyberspace in order to propel an illusion of freedom. I could get mad about that but I dread being held captive to such specifics.

The trouble with these things (blogs) is the idea that I (we) have the belief that my (our) struggles are unique in some way. I (we) believe that sharing my (our) woes will make things better somehow. I (we) believe that I (we) are alone and that trying to share this loneness will bring about some sort of philosophical revolution.

But.

The truth is, that none of this is true. The truth is, that we (I) are all in this together. The truth is that I (we) may have had a few drinks and not eaten for a few hours.

But.

The truth is that there are those (not me and probably not you) who haven’t eaten in days. Their lives are ravaged by true plagues and not just the fat building around their lower abdomen and a mild discomfort due to the weather. These are things that need fixing and yet so few help without their own gain. Not excluding myself, or most of you for that matter.

Sunday Morning Thoughts 3.10.13: Job Posting Confessionals

So it’s Wednesday, big deal. So the last one of these was a month ago? Wanna fight about it? I’ve been busy… sort of. It’s a story whose details are not terribly exciting or anything like that. Besides, the more relevant point would be where I am standing now.

Which is… huh… ummm… good.

Yeah, crazy as that sounds I’m doing pretty damn good. Some parts of my life are great, or grand, or spectacular. Others are not so much but that matters not, as the overall standing and feeling as I click away now is pretty damn good. Which for those of you not savvy with the hip lingo, is better than just doing good, or ok, or swell or anything like that.

How did I get here? Well that is none of your damn business friend. No offense intended but… no actually, offense intended. Sorry for the slip up there.

But seriously though, I’m not going to tell you how but I will tell you why. It diverges from the point, you see. I’m not going to waste this here moment in the present for something idling off into the past. This moment is for the future which I am now dangerously hurdling myself into.

I don’t know how to stop it, or slow it down, or reverse it but judging from how things have come to be, I say fuck it. Let’s ride this thib out and see where it goes.

So we have things to attend to which we will discuss now.

First, the spring is upon us and any true sentient being should understand how damn important that is. The dreary winter is ending and we are going to be infested with life all around us where there was once so much dead. Beautiful dead, those few times when we managed to get some snow on the ground. But that death has brought life and the cycle continue, which to me, has to be a sign that things are still doing ok.

Winter ended up being a reminder that things are not well, holding high temperatures and a few renegade snow storms. A rather dreary spirit all around.

Second, though this is in no particular order of importance, would have to be the pressing matter of you, the universe, getting me employed. I would preferably like to have a job that pays enough so I can live and occasionally have a beer or six, like a responsible adult is able to do. Now I know it seems like I should be the one making the effort but I figure that I have so much work to do beyond these first few steps of life, that I could just skate by. You know?

Not happening? Well, it was worth a try. Alright, you damn universe, I’ll play your game but prepare for endless pranks and shenanigans once I reach my power. My trickery shall know no equal.

Not buying that either? Fine, I’ll do all that ‘get a job’ stuff that the rest of the humans my age are doing.

Pardon my lack of enthusiasm but I just don’t really like those odds. Can you blame me though? Things are bad, even here in the empire, and no one is talking about anything getting better. Here and there, little victories pop up only to splash drops of light on the huge and vast landscape of corruption, waste, hate and violence in this world. You can’t ignore it and yet everyone does.

And what am I supposed to do? Work my way up the ladder and watch as everything starts to fall around me? Reach the top to hold nothing but ashes in my hands?

Well there I go, potentially exaggerating again. I should have just immediately professed, simply, that I am afraid. Petrified really. I have to take part in a lot of the things that I’ve only been speaking of with oh, so much zeal from the safety of books and classrooms, with a few glimpses of the dysfunction in the adult human world. So I just have to adjust, as I’ve known I would. It just is, dig?

Third, and of equal importance to all the rest, would be this matter of one maintaining a soul is such a treacherous land. I live in a place that has gotten so fat on its own self righteousness, they have forgotten what made them anything even close to right in the first place.

This nation o’mine was created on the idea that the guys who made it might be wrong, and probably were, and probably hoped to be. Yet they knew enough, that if they created a place where a man could exist in comfort, without excess, and worked at something that could feed and sustain his fellow man, in all areas of healthy human life, that whole peace thing would get figured out. They considered a bit of philosophy and existentialism to be vital for the continuance of man.

Of course at the time, this would have only applied to white males who already owned stuff but this flaw was known. Sacrifices, breaks eggs, fight omelets with fire. You know, that sort of thing. Shitty reasoning but hey, times were shitty. But they trusted that the future would continue to bring enlightenment to the lives of all, or something like that.

We messed up at some point after that. I can’t tell for sure when. History says one thing but I’ve only been around for a few trips around the sun and really only remember the events of the last ten years or so. And even then, and really, even now, I have the lens of the point of view I currently hold. I just like to think that has developed a little bit.

Fourthly, and possibly most important but that’s up to you (my money is on most important), would be remembering a little something when dealing with your fellow man. All of them. And I mean humans, not gender specific.

Whether you want to believe that we are all the same or that you are more special doesn’t matter. We are stuck with each other on this rock. Whatever imaginary borders or beliefs we make up doesn’t change our circumstance. Until we figure out somewhere else to go and how to get there, on Earth we shall stay. Unless of course, you know, doom, destruction and all that.

How? This time you shall get it, or at least as much as I have to offer.

We as a species are unbelievably irresponsible with our technology. We are also irresponsible with our values and our treatment of others. We have, as a total species, harvested enough energy to literally, not figuratively, destroy a planet. This planet. We have that kind of power and yet my parents are still going on to each other about the electric bill? I don’t know who came up with this use for massive amounts of energy, but if you do, kick him in the crotch.

We are addicted to entertainment and of a truly awful quality. I thought I broke my phone and went a few days without one and I tell you, I remembered what freedom felt like. No one could get me. But the isolation that occurs today without one is noticeable.

To fix it would be simple, and is simple. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten very bad at simple things. You just have to stop and look around. Forget everything you think you know and look around. What you see is your reality and you are responsible for it. Play nice with others and don’t be greedy. That’s all it takes.

And if by any chance you are an employer who is potentially looking to hire the human being you suspect is behind this rather drawn out rant, I would like to share something with you. If any of these words resonated to you and share at least the very vague belief that all of us and no one else have to fix our own world, then you sound like the kind of person I want to work for. And please, trust me when I say that when I want to work on something, it gets done.

I will not confirm or deny my identity, though it may already be known.

Sunday Morning Thoughts 1.27.13 – 2.3.13: Post Apocalyptic Groundhog’s Day Eve Celebration

Such peculiarities plague me and yet I thrive on their sweetness as it drips from my delusion. I have a kind of power that can only exist to a narcissist. I am almighty, therefore everything is my fault.

You have to understand though. It is a terribly delicate skill, being able to kill off characters. Well actually, allow me to rephrase that. It is difficult to properly kill off a character. Any numbskull with a pen and too much leftover angst could commit literary murder, but to glorify the particular victim’s demise in a painfully elegant scream of desperation, followed by the resounding yalp of purpose, well that is something all to itself.

I’ve run it through in my head so many times, yet I hesitate to further dive in that direction. I may have made a terrible mistake. I may be making the most wonderful mistakes that lead to nirvana, or at least a girlfriend. I may be just so petrified of all these lies I’ve made myself to be, that the very thought of marching forward into my own existence seems a dark and dangerous proposition. Maybe I’m not as brave as I once thought myself to be. Maybe I was born on a different planet where these sort of problems don’t even exist. Maybe my species only focuses on playing funk music and places every other matter as insignificant.

I don’t imagine that I will ever know the answer. As I look out on my tiny metropolis that is now lightly covered in melting snow and salt stained streets, I find that I have nearly no time left. Geologically of course, but time is still pressing on biological matters. The main difference seems to be that a rock doesn’t need to eat but if I don’t have caffeine to replace all that nicotine, my whining will only grow less carefully crafted in an attempt to remove all veils holding up the disguise. In reality, I just want things to seem bad. Maybe looking for pity from others, or perhaps just in myself. Maybe because I want the story of this self made hero of mine to seem even more grand once you know from where he came.

Is any of this important? I imagine not. I just can’t quite understand being an adult yet, despite all my talk in the other direction. Talks of academies and demo reels are what stand before me now. The only crave I have is for things beyond that but I have to earn such standing. The terrible job I’ve been doing since then is only a reflection on the few child like behaviors that I have yet shed, although it would be very important that I do so. This should not suggest I don’t plan on holding on to boyhood values, just not the ones that do little to nothing towards progress.

It’s important to remember that children are much more progressive than any adult could ever be. They live in a world of learning. The younger they are, the more they will crave knowledge that catches their fancy. We all had something that vastly interested our budding young mind but this does not have do with schooling at all. The school system in the civilized western empire is rotting and as the maggots feed on the last remains, another generation has no choice but to be accused of stupidity. Each passing generation seems to have less and less of a chance, and somehow it is their fault. It was and is our fault somehow.

I must say, no generation has been able to craft lies quite like the Boomers. Sucking the teat of the Greatest Generation, they have quite possibly squandered the entire planet away, let alone economies and debt and starvation and that lot of issues. But blaming others will get me nowhere. Or rather, not where I would like to go.

Then again, I’m not really sure where I’d like to go. I have thought about things and have only been able to decide on about a half dozen, all of which seem too grand and too extraordinary for a person to seriously consider themselves doing as we inch away from the dawn of the 21^st century. We have hardly even begun this here millennium.

Strange how we are able to measure time, isn’t it? It doesn’t exist like this everywhere and yet here we are, defining our entire existence around this benchmark. Four years have come and gone and I’d spent a solid three of them chasing ghosts. I’m looking to get out and away and above all of this, but that will seem much like a lie when I talk about how much I will miss it. I have spent my time and gotten something from it. I can only see what it is after it has gone though.

Phil didn’t see his shadow, which means an early spring. Symbolically, that has to be one of them most idiotic human practices. Symbolically, spring means it’s time for bold action as cool, crisp air fills my lungs and brew in my belly. Symbolically, all of this means nothing, as I warned it would. My flesh grows weary but any mind that at least find humor in all of this, can reach me at communicate such grievances. Until then, I bid you sweet dream and fare the well.

Sunday Morning Thoughts 1.6.13: Species Survival for Apocalyptic Circumstance

Hark and hear the call, ladies and gents, because we are reaching those breaking points with each unrequested march forward. Now dig, I’m a big fan of endless reflection of the past but we can no longer afford such things. I’d like to say if I could go back, I would and if I could pick where I’d like to go to, I’d know where. Imagination plagues me with the wonder of what might have been in so many instances and yet I know that just couldn’t be.

For you see, mistakes are only a matter of perspective and if you allow them to be seen as such, they most certainly will. I could whine on and on and on and on and on and on and on, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever until time ends or something of the sort but if I recall correctly, which all my time thinking about the past suggests that I might, every time I’ve missed something it was because I was too busy staring, or crying, or groaning and moaning about some other bellyache that no longer means that much to me.

I’ve had this habit, or addiction, or illness, or whatever term you’d like to describe my talking out loud and imagining what conversations with certain people may go like, in fictionalized circumstances and I can tell you that my words always fall short. Now if my own fantasy seems to be at odds with myself, what am I left with? My dreams have been strange and dark and uncomfortable for a long time and I guess if Freud were here, he would wipe the white powder from his nose and say that is how they are intended to be.

Sigmund can suck an egg. I don’t trust people who do blow regularly anyway. They are always just looking for their next fix. You can hardly even trust stoners these days and they used to be such a reliable breed.

Yet that persistent ticking continues on as I listen to the compositions of yet another dead man. He lives on, as I while away the hours with an unfinished novel and a half empty soul. It may be temporary and I know that the state of the novel certainly is. The soul I’m not as sure about, as one of the big portions missing is that bit about being in love. That whole thing that was supposed to happen for people when they were young, for me has only been spread out in many short, but quite fantastic glimpses and greedy ol’ Brian just wanted more.

But with that persistent ticking of the clock that dwells in my mind, I suggest we look a bit at the present before we dive into ideas about the future. The past is dead. So it goes.

We’ll start with the news. Congress doesn’t care about the people who elected them but is relentless in their support of those who pay the larger portion of their salary. You know, all of those giant companies that keep us convinced of our industrial age shackles.

Small town rapists are fighting against cyber vigilantes, while some radio host in Ohio claims that gay rights are leading to the untimely death of children. It’s ok though, because you can buy your little guy his very own toy Predator UAV just like the ones that kill innocent people over in Pakistan, including children!

And that’s just domestically. Across the rock, you can see that women are either being raped, beaten or beheaded in India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to name a few.

The Syrian President had a speech where he said he is seeking an end to the civil war over there through… that’s right, more war. Radioactive waste was dumped into rivers over in Japan when all those reactors had those problems a little while back and there are massive protests against the government in Iraq.

Although this be grim stuff, you have to understand that it’s all your fault. Fret not, it’s mine too. It’s all of ours because you see, we as humans, as siblings of the same species, have failed to work together when and where it matters most. We fight and argue over things that really don’t matter while we waste our tremendous abilities on making stupid phones that help governments spy on people and cars that still pour filth into the air, cooking us all slowly.

We have the means to harvest enough energy to blow this rock up so many fucking times over and yet have a global energy crisis. Can someone please fucking explain that to me because my feeble mind just can’t seem to understand how that works?

Well, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You are now marching forward into the great unknown of the future. So come and take my hand and we shall skip into the dark unknown eternity until we can no longer muster the strength to skip. At which point, we will walk.

The future is an illusion of sorts, as we are constantly looking for it and yet only find the present. I know when I expect things to happen, they usually don’t. Unless they are things that I don’t want to happen, then they usually do. You should ask me to bet on horses and pick everything that I don’t, you’ll be rich. But that is not the point, nor a concern of mine. I have come to some sort of terms with the chaos that engulfs events and will no longer let it plague me.

The goal from here is fairly consistent with the ones of the past. In fact, it really hasn’t changed at all. Only the conditions have changed and even those tweaks have been only slightly monstrous.

The goal, and you should feel free to join in with this, is to make tomorrow ever better than today. But not for myself, or yourself, if you are taking the oath. You, and when I say you I mean I, have to spend every effort we can muster making the world a better place for everyone. If you feel the need to include yourself in that, go ahead. The only condition is that you not limit to yourself.

Now would be good for me to clear a few things up about this. I’m not expecting utopia, especially not in my lifetime. You could call it one of those things I’m doing for myself. I don’t want to live in a perfect world. Heaven is boring. I’m not a hippie, nor a complete beatnik. Unfortunately, Kerouac was bumming around in much better economic conditions than today, it being the start of America’s great leap into false prosperity. I’m an idealist but have been disappointed enough to know what is possible from where we stand.

I should also stress that I’m not really talking about political reform, as that can only be a product of ourselves in this nation. All of us are responsible but the older you are, the greater the guilt. I know my generation hasn’t been around long enough to make too many profound decisions, though I must say we are fucking up on the ones that we do. Reality TV? Really people? Get a fucking grip.

I and you and he and she and we and they need to start changing the way we think. We need to stop thinking that we need to step on others to succeed and that some people are better than others. We all crawled from the same swamp not that long ago. We need to start looking around at our world and wondering what’s going on. We should care about each actions we make, and the words that we use. We should stop being so sensitive to nonsense and quit being so numb to the things that matter. We need to grown the fuck up.

But hey, I’m young and according to the counseling center, very privileged. What could I know right?

Sunday Morning Thoughts 10.28.12: The Naturally Occurring Disaster & Co.

What is this, this place that I have reached? Its peculiarity is only upstaged by its strange serenity. I could power toasters for days whilst millions around me live in darkness after the sun. I am the Toaster King. I have a roar, would you like to hear it?

I can’t recall exactly, but I believe it went something like this…

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost my mind and the following ordeals that would come to follow that, seem to have come. Whether this holds any kind of worth is not up for debate as of right now. Yet as the saying goes, ‘you cannot be found, unless you first get lost.’ I think Abe Lincoln said that after opening night for ‘Rent’. No, wait, that can’t be true. I think it some other play.

Regardless, my hurricane induced vacation will be drawing to an end. Not too soon, since Con Ed is on the job, but soon enough. And when that happens, the world that had so conveniently shut down for me will be churning at full force. The grind will start and my dark streets for wandering will become lighter. These are facts, or I imagine they are. Truth is quite elusive after all, being right in front of us and all that.

I would worry about what might have been if natural disasters had not been, but there’s no point in that. There’s too much to be done and I have to take the time to do it. Take your prayers and shove them up your ass, I want action. But that depends on the actions of I, as I see no one else who would like to at least imagine that they have the audacity to take on such an deed. Not just play one on TV.

‘The world sucks man. Let it burn. Why would you even want to bother with it?’

‘Because if I don’t, who will? The spirit of the people is distressed and too confused, or uneducated, to know why. I have, or so I’ve been told, some sort of means or abilities or charms to make such an impact.’

‘But you’ll fail, just as everyone else has. Look to your idols who sought the fulfillment of such lofty ideas. Yes, they had effect but even Gandhi failed. He got shot and now there are nuclear weapons as peacemakers in his stead. What could you possibly do?’

‘Well… I mean… I have a few ideas but there’s still a lot of figuring out to do.’

‘Hah! See? There it is, right there. Intent may be bold and noble but outside of what you’d like to do, the tide of the world will overcome ye and ye shall be without banner, nor god, and the metaphorical fire will burn your ceiling from inside.’

But you see, there is no god for me and my banner drips with blood. I’ve already failed a few greatly, and one the greatest. These things happened, seemingly, and time moves forward… allegedly.

There is a hum, although these damn generators are drowning it a bit. This hum is bright and soothing, with all the promise of a young politician. But this hum is no such thing. He intends to deliver upon all of his lies. It only makes sense, as he’s spent so much damn time working on them.

There is a point, I’ve seen, where you find the perfect bout of madness and chase it for every waking moment after first contact. It may be frightening and I doubt there is any kind of turning back but that was planned. Those vivid images are faded, although I would never admit that. It has become too far removed and only the idea of having remembered remains. To it, I’ve clung for dear life with the ground only a foot or two below. Nothing that could kill me, but I could fall and acquire a bruise. Still, these moods come and go and blah blah blah.

I sit at my desk now and look at a future wasteland that is burning and burning away as it tries to find itself after the breeze. Though there still be wonder and awe and all that, I feel the quite possibly insane urge to believe that this thing I play around in, may be in a very serious amount of danger. I feel as though the culmination of over consumption habits has brought us to some point that is dripping with the stench of fate. ‘Tis within the stench, that lies a decision.

That would all be fine, if we knew how to make the decision. If you’re going by the species as a whole, most don’t even know about any choices. we’ve removed ourselves from our gift of consciousness to feign industriousness. Thoughts, hopes, desires and the relentless independent spirit of man, these are all things that can’t be taken away. They are given away, willingly most of the time.

I do still firmly believe, that they can certainly be taken back. It is all in the vast capabilities of the mind. Capabilities that I don’t imagine any of us know too much about, myself least of all. It’s not motivation or determination or ambition. Those words have been destroyed by Confucius quote and pictures of eagles catching fish.

I speak to you now about passion. I indeed believe in intending to do all that such a soul can do. Forced along from childhood wanderings about my own mind and fueled by close encounters with grand disappointments. From the shambles, I will come forth, benevolent dictator of my own universe. Now to just convince the citizens.

Sunday Morning Thoughts 10.7.12

Destruction has gotten me right here, to the scene of the crash and the beginning of all this. If there is such a thing, this cyclic debauchery will receive its justice but if that be by the hands of I or another is yet to be seen. By mortal eyes, at least.

Let’s talk about that for a while, mortality I mean. The last time one of these silly little posts happened, I was some sort of grown boy with no real perception on the possibly farced idea of life. I couldn’t know what it meant to die, or loose life without notice, or fall away from life suddenly, or whatever it’s called. All the deaths in my life have been expected.

I knew it all in theory but theories don’t tell you about the shakes, or the sweat, or the smell, or how no matter what that once you start to go down it rapidly becomes just you and your thoughts alone. When the sand is nearly out, you can no longer connect with the rest of the flesh around you as they ask all sorts of questions. When you die, you’re alone. All living things die alone.

“Whoa, whoa there B-ri. Take it easy man. You’re getting pretty dark, pretty fast.”

“My apologies, I suppose.”

“You suppose? What an asshole?”

“It can’t be helped.”

“Listen man, I know what you’re going through, or have been through has been rough but you need to stay positive or some shit.”

I don’t know how really.

I sit across from a seemingly lovely young lady. She is dressed very hip and sexy and has a little dead man being tortured and executed hanging around her neck. Her boyfriend, or whatever is standing a few feet away. They paid cash for the train and will be dead soon. In geological measures of time, of course.

And to be honest, I would probably grow bored with her quite fast. Her boyfriend seems like a wonderfully dull idiot. Let him deal with her.

I’ve moved my attention to the barefoot woman drinking a martini that is as blue as the sea that stretches out before her. She is trapped forever behind a thin sheet of plastic until she is replaced.

Behind her is a man who seems to be in the middle of some constant anxiety attack. Behind him, some old hag reads the Times with a forced face of interest. Some people sleep, most don’t want to be here yet here we all are.

And with that we’re further along in time and I am back on a train, not unlike the one that brought me here. I am heading the other direction back to the place that I woke and will fall back asleep in. Yet somehow, I want to feel different as I rise from my bed in a few hours. I want to feel inspired to pursue dreams in daylight instead of clinging to the dirty, dark and dusty recesses of my mind. I’ve wanted this many times before but it can always seem to fade. You’ll have to forgive this romantic addict, I can’t seem to abandon what I can see as the greatest thing to every happen to my soul.

Whether it was or wasn’t, is irrelevant because it clearly was. Issues arose and continue to arise when I seek some sort of fulfillment for something that had been left so empty. I would wish for something but I know how fruitless that would end up being. Wishes are for suckers and genies.

Hindsight has allowed me to regret what seem to be all the decisions I’ve made. It takes longer to think away some things, whilst others are forgotten with ease. I wonder if genies ever at least try and make their own wishes. I wonder about things for days. I wonder if genies ever regret.

I do. I should have stayed at school that weekend. I should have paid better attention to him. I should have gotten to know him better. I should have never wasted that money on those tickets and I should have never wasted that time in the pursuit of such thinly veiled evil. I should have found out what was wrong before it was too late. I should have gotten over that evil faster because then my timing would have been perfect. I should have called the ambulance myself. I should have been better to him when we were younger. I wish I could have made things work. But I didn’t and now here I am.

So this search continues for that thing that I’ve gotten a handful of glimpses and tastes upon my 5th of a century hanging around this rock. I think I saw another glimpse today but I may never be sure.

I didn’t rise quickly this morning. I seem to be ending a little more solid. It’s been nice to cheat a few more moments, to feel that sadness. I confessed to someone my petrifaction in these, my last moments of boyhood. That all ended a long time ago but I seem to be hanging a few months behind.

This is my announcement of its death. Do not grieve friends, it’s what was wanted. Death to videodrome. Long live the new flesh.

So where to go from here? Well, we could and should start with an issue. A real issue though, not something trivial from my own.

Turn on the tube and see a story about a soldier with no hand anymore but there he is. He’s in the back of a Jeep, waving away. As it goes down street, the people wave back from the sidewalk. It was sweet unless you thought about it a little bit in context. He still has no hand other than something shaped like it that doesn’t move and it doesn’t feel. Treatment mentally and physically will be pricy. Good thing they’ve been taking such good care of the vets when they get home. These are men who are dedicated to an idea that hardly sees it as fiscally responsible to help them anymore.

So I wanted to get some facts about how care for severely injured soldiers, of which there is no shortage. It’s important. Bill Moyers told me so.

That’s not the point though. The point is when I typed a simple search of ‘injured veteran’ an article about a NY Jets who is injured appeared first. Now it’s important to remember that this may only be strange to me. Or coincidental. But it also might not be what I see it as, which is worth nothing I imagine.

A different channel and an attractive blonde woman is stating that something is ‘crazy town’ in regards to politics. I guess you just have to appeal to demographics, right Ted? Now they are worried about smirks and eye contact from a debate where absolutely nothing was said. Here we are, at the most crucial point thus far in the age of primates and disaffection is spread across the masses. We are so consumed in things and mindless distraction. I think most people that call themselves American are working towards this annihilation. They’ve got the best seat.

Al Gore blamed the altitude in Colorado for why the President seemed to have no answers at this staged argument. His opponent said things, a lot in fact. He was just lying the whole time. I suppose that makes Barry better. How sad is that?

I get why people like him, I do. I used to. He has an appeal, especially to the dumb and young. He just seems cool and he’s set to win. Unemployment just fell to 7.8%.

They don’t count the people who have given up looking for a job. So really, more people could have just given up and no real gain in work occurred. I’ll never know. Well, I might eventually, but I don’t know if you will. You could if you’d like to, but you’d have to do it on your own.

We’ll take a slight direction change. This were thoughts in a pizza place, all hopped on barley:

And this world keeps yielding blanks, with no substance coming forth. I wish there was and there might have even been something worth showing, but I ran away too soon. I can do that is I’m not paid attention to, which is exactly what didn’t happen. I was noticed and held interest for a few young women. I’m not mad at them, I just figured I’d runaway before things got too strange. I may have timed this escape perfectly. 

I supposed that I’m in dire need of a new obsession, but if she can be found here, she’s taken. It is the nature of things that happen to me as of now.

The best part of that little bit, isn’t that I didn’t proofread or correct any of it. It’s that I’m not going to bother with talking about it.

I’m going to talk about how it’s funny to see some place of meaning on the news. Obviously there was a crime. ‘Twas an attempted rape after a bout of successful ones in parks throughout the city. Then comes all the latest updates in terrorism.

I’m spoiled really. I get to sit here and look out my window and not see explosions. I get to come up with ideas in decadent comfort. This won’t last though, so the chance to find the merit of such theories is nearly upon us.

It’s been two years that I’ve been doing this. Over two years now, since it’s been a month since the last one. As I stated before, I am a different person now. I suppose that is true for every single one of them.

No, that can’t be. This line in between comedy and tragedy is only one fake bird head away from becoming nothing at all. There is no difference, it’s only how you see it. It is your grand and self sculpted reality, or mine really. I can’t be sure that any of you are real. I’m quite capable of grand illusion, even still.

Especially so, if you consider the effect of the madness that is being a functioning, if not high functioning member of society. This may only be in display but I think I support my means by that. Pretending all of the time only makes me a better actor.

And I found myself in the wee hours of the morn, dressed in my garb from the evening with the taste of boredom still upon my lips. I have since gotten up and wandered around earth for a bit. What have I learned?

I’ve learned that this life is short and is set up to be wasted. I know that I see this, and a few others but most are blind. I know that I won’t be able to live with myself if I do nothing about it. I am unable to do some things but this will not be one of them.

I may fail and chances are I will. That’s fine, I have to try. It’s chaotic and grand. It’s a sad a beautiful world.

Sunday Morning Thoughts 8.19.12- 9.2.12

Let us start by saying this. I’m not a hipster. I’m just hip and there is as much difference between the two as you are willing to see. I’ve got the audacity to see much and many sorts of things separating myself from any sort of classification, as all of you should. A hipster can only survive in a weak social structure that has been given up on, as far as the chances of revitalization go. They are the only ones who know much of anything, but they wish to stay as the only ones. Dig?

Now that the waste has been removed, we should carry on to larger business. There seems to be a whole array of things going on but as per usual, I can only feel so much. My success is becoming so noticeable that fantasy is drowning in vanity and I feel sick. I haven’t been sleeping all that much, which I firmly believe is exactly what needs to start happening at this point in the production. There is really no time to waste lying about.

A glacier in the Northern part of Italy is melting, as glaciers tend to do when they’re not growing. There was 100mm caliber ammunition scattered beneath the ice when it was frozen. They were used in WWI to kill Hungarians and Austrians and Italians. Someone cleaned them up, without having to blow it up like they did in Munich. I wonder if anyone has learned anything from all of this. Who knows?

So about the water crisis, and how there is not enough of it. Or at least this is what I’m told, I’ve always had water at my disposal. It comes out of the faucet, but you would want to clean it first. It tastes icky if you don’t.

One fourth, or 25%, of the water we use in total goes to the agricultural process and grows food that no one ends up eating. It ends up being something like 100 billion tons, or something like that. Isn’t that a shame?

Dismal? I’d apologize if I meant to, but I don’t. Why apologize for something that I would have never chose to have had happen, if I had ever had the choice. I suppose it comes down to not knowing what to say, or what I should say, if there was even such a thing to say. It’s been quite some time now. Time is valid and valuable and stable, right?

Your silence is enormously comforting. I’m very appreciative.

It takes a good bit of time to kill an ego that has managed to get this big. Whoever let such a travesty occur is quite the buffoon but there seems to be no shortage of those around, inside or out.

Oh, how I would love to run through sprinklers and hide under trees in parks whilst dreaming of some bright future ahead. How sweet and sound would be such days, and I assure you that they most certainly were. But they have died and so with it goes, at least in part, the foolish belief in grand things.

Not to say that I have in anyway given up on grand things, I just know how foolish they can be. I don’t, at all, actually know how foolish I am or will ever be. I can only imagine that these symptoms will develop further along the path that has been constructed, for this to be its sole and soul purpose.

Foolishness aside, there would most likely be nothing left here to say. Only a fool would sit before a screen searching for anything while all around him is chaos and revolution and tragic comedy brewing in real, physical dimensions.

And here sits the fool, for the first time in a long time (if you can count three weeks as a long time) and without anything profound. Not that it’s not there, because it most certainly is. It’s just unable to make a large enough move to violently and drastically adjust all that there is to be adjusted.

If these memories be worth anything, I’d like to sell them in exchange for my freedom. I have no use for them much anymore and I could only benefit from having them gone.

So I figured, why not make some cash along the way. I suppose this is the modern way to offer your soul up to the devil for sale. Robert Johnson is now in the bathroom, hurling his brains out. It was that last one that made him just too sick to further continue being any sort of inspiration. I only hope I am able to exhaust all of my idols in such a way.

But I digress, yet again, from nothing. I would like something but my specifications just make it all too tiring. Sell my soul and settle me down.

“But that was never something that you wanted.”

“Oh fucking great, it’s you again.”

“Hey man, I’m just here to help.”

“Is that what this is? Help?”

“Don’t get so sassy with me now, Nancy. I’m just trying to create this large and expansive personality to unconsciously pursue the weakness that is deep inside of your being.”

“I don’t understand why you continue to go on like this.”

“Because what is life besides the pursuit of these massive bounties that may or may not ever be collected?”

“Nothing, I suppose.”

“Everything is nothing, even this dream is nothing.”

I don’t want to agree but I have no choice. I make a good point, or at least I think I do. Or I thought I did. This just had to be done or I think that my soul would have begun to manifest into some sort of beast outside my body and ripped my face from my skull. Something like that at least.

And so I shall carry on without as much as an utterance of what should be. There is only what is and anything else is far beyond what I could even begin to imagine seeing. This illusion may get the best of me, but I can be better. At least, I think I can.

Sunday Morning Thoughts 8.12.12: Ode to Suckers and Their Hope

Another titled post? What say you? Yay or nay?

Well this, as all things seem to be, is not a democracy. Unless of course you’re the person writing this, which unless you are I, you are not. If you were I, then I would understand even further that the illusion of such a state is so nicely made that its guise is nearly invisible. I only believe in the control, for now. Whether it could actually ever be had is up to me, if such a thing is even possible.

I tend to spend my time having conversations with myself about purely hypothetical things. My summer as a bachelor hermit is drawing to a close however. The masses will begin to fall back into place and the machinery will begin to wind and grind and carry on. I will not really be taking place in all of that, while being directly in the center of it. This will also be the last summer of my school boy days.

Now I know you’re asking you’re asking yourself ‘Brian, what in the hell are you talking about?’

Excellent question! Although, the answer will only be a very short bit at the end of all of this, or so I imagine. Or really observe, in my particular brand of poorly imitated style and grace of minds of unbearable greatness.

Almost 60,000 fish died in Iowa yesterday because a river reached something like 97 degrees. I’m sure the smell festered in the hot, stagnant air. It smelt like death, I imagine.

An earthquake in Iran killed something like 300 hundred and shook up thousands more. I understand that was a terribly insensitive pun. I refuse to strike it from the record just the same.

A man in China had his penis stolen in the middle of the night. He said that he didn’t feel anything as the robbers cut it off.

It could be worse for me. I could be in Greece where unemployment for those of my generation, or nearly my generation, is at 54%. It was 41% last year.

Tunisa now has a goddamn anti-blasphemy law now. Christ, people are getting screwed like Mary Magdalene all over the place.

The price of bacon is expected to rise exponentially, as if life weren’t becoming bad enough.

Why list a few of the top stories that I found on the web? Well, I can give you a few reasons, although I can guarantee that almost none of them are true.

The first reason is perspective. Although I see and am aware of many of the terrible things that humans do to each other, I am fortunate enough be free from almost all of these woes. For now.

I was born a white male in the middle class of the US of A, which may have been the last true decade of that class of people. Not the white part, the middle part. I was raised sternly and god fearing, in addition to being expected to solve many of my own life’s quandaries in confidence that my parents would help me learn to do the impossible. I was taught to think for myself through methods of invoked performance and encouragement.

It was because of this ability to think for myself at a moderately young age, that I made it through my public schooling in what may have been the last age of fairly decent public education. I was in the school band, but they were always trying to cut the arts out as far as I can remember.

I made it relatively unnoticed through my early years, and then I started to get more frequent erections which can only lead to more madness in a young man. The fact that I didn’t get laid until 18 explains the development of any peculiar behavior. If I got laid sooner, I might not have been such a strange bird and then we might not be here. I also could have saved on the cost of tissues.

The second lie disguised as reason is hope. This of course, is possibly the grandest lie ever conceived. It is belief in the extremely unlikely based upon the farce understanding that the existence that is hoping for such a thing, is so fucking special that the whole universe consciously changes direction to fulfill a request. This, as you should already know, is horse shit.

I have spent a lot of time hoping for things to happen. I would sit and wait until that very near impossible event would occur, just because I felt that it had to. Sometimes things that I hope for do happen, but it’s just like being decent a gambling. You know how to estimate the likeliness of something occurring. It’s only a guess and I have been wrong. I’ve been waiting for years for something to happen and I will only continue to wait. Until I forget, which is still some time away but in the meantime, we’ll have another round garcon.

Hope is for suckers. So I’ve not been able to stop being at least partly a sucker, but I have taken a few things into my own hands. Soon there will be no time left to sit around and hope. My life of luxury is passing and my work will scream and call that I pay it all of my heart and soul. I will and maybe something great shall be done.

If there is one thing that I continue to hope for besides forgotten youthful feelings to be reborn, is that I and all others can be free. We are not. And if you think you are free, you are just dumb. We are all oppressed, almost all of the time. The proof of this is within yourselves and your lives. Are you going to rise everyday for the rest of your life to pursue and matter that interests you?

If you are like me, you can’t. You need money to get things and resources and time and status. Money is speech and the only key to freedom. The problem is, once you start to get enough to take control, you do just that. We are greedy because we are stupid. We are stupid, because a few well off people got greedy. Money is power, for now.

My hope and it is very much a fool’s hope, is that I can participate somehow in the creation of a truly free world. A world that grows and learns from and for each other and people live full and happy and meaningful lives. Every being will explore the depths of consciousness and become part of the whole.

This marks the end of the last summer of my life within educational institutions. I have learned much and yet nothing. I have learned that hope is for suckers and I hope and hope and hope just the same. I still hope for the same thing that I know is gone. That’s why I get up every morning. Not because I think today will be the day it comes to be, but for all the other things that I need to do while I’m waiting.