How thoughts begin to look when your brain is running on empty. 42 hours.
So tonight was one of those nights of idle mindlessness. You know, where you just do things, not because you want to do them...but, maybe because theres no apparent--let alone urgent-- reason
not to. I had finished my final project for psych, and cosequently felt about 8 years younger. The satisfaction I get after completing an assignment, I feel, is a very odd and at times transcendental thing. I don't usually find myself caught up in the demands of my education, in the small little things we are lead to believe to be imperative when, in a week, aren't even worth remembering. After basking in my mood for about 2 whole minutes (Literally. 2
whole minutes. Like, ONE-mississippi... TWO-mississippi...and so fourth. The "breed" of two minutes when you're waiting for your food to be done, as opposed to the two that are nipping at your heels as you scurry around your room in the morning, half drunk off sleep, after you slept through your alarm) the realist in me kicked in and decided to ask, "Why wallow
mindlessly in euphoria when it could be used as the backdrop for reflection?"
Capitalize on the opportunity at hand! I am a seasoned veteran regarding moments like these, mainly due to the fact that my life is a haze of chronic procrastination; I more often find myself suprised, and very pleasantly so, when even the most trivial of assignments are completed. I consistently am in awe of myself. Heh.
I have come to know that the moments after such a completion aren't the usual voids, the little vaccumes whose job is to suck the infinitness from the world left by the one who came before. No, these moments are just the opposite...we become the void, being filled by each subsequnt moment with those truely pivotal feelings...where the disintigrating world around you, with all its greed, temper and brevity, becomes a utopia...they are the plotholes of our fabric reality, where the light seeps in and gives us a taste of...well...forever. Or, less figuratively stated, for those who might say forever is useless, these feelings are a reaction of sorts to those times when the subjective and the objective eclipse, and where the shadow cast obscures relativity.
In that moment, all that remains purely is this feeling; that reality, or our constant drive to relize the purpose in a world where we exist only in relation to everything that is not us, is an obstacle of relations that prevents us from falling into the idleness of bliss while distracting us from our unyeilding mortaliy. To us, as finite instances, it is a reality of finity and strictly limited to what is possible... Well...actually...the only relative certainty is that it's unexplainable in any relative sense, and there inlies the catch.
I have so, so often been to this place and I have become weary. I am afraid I am convinced I have forever in my pocket; it falls upon me like a beam of soft yellow sunlight, I sigh and close my eyes, gripped by a warmth like a womb...and by the time I open my eyes the moment is gone. I slide from weightless back to my senses. The listless transfer has been missed; a journey occurs completely benieth my awarness so smoothly that when I re-open my eyes it has passed by and evaporated, unquestioned. I have been re-born, and reamain completely unaware of what has happened, again without asking to come back into the world. It always leaves traces, though. It washes over everything leaving a residue of newness, the punctuation mark ending the brief experience and signaling me to move onto the next phrase.
This is my subjective, drawn out and mostly inadequate description of relief and the gratification of personal achievment. I can look back on just the past week, littered with activities bringing closure to this first term...I realize I was foolish in thinking its something beneficial to me anymore. Whatever it is...something as intangable as love or as sincere as a promise...presents it self as forever, and then silenty slips away. So it happens, many things that bring us happiness tend to occur no differently.
These moments are no longer necessary anyways...feeling good after completing something has become less rooted in accomplishment, internalized confidence is no longer why we float on air. It is becoming more often a temporary crutch in which our load is lightened. And once your efforts have graduated from the self-refining, perspective-attaining endeavors of education and become a repetior of stranger's projects and capital gain, it's a poison. It makes you feel good about being reduced to a small photo, paperclipped to a file in which you are simplified to a label they stamped on you and a list of qualities in which they judged you, whom you eventually won't even recognize.
I needed to make this new...a frosting on a cupcake I, myself made from scratch.
So my mind, fully loaded with an aresenal of doubt...began to stir. Why should I risk spoiling the moment? I need to apply myself a little more...find a way to shift my motivations toward something that will move me. Apathy may help me get by in a world where impositions exist around every corner; but in my psyche, it has become a unnecessary presence that often will thicken the fog in my already clouded mind...a sediment slowly curroding a sea of prospect, whose tides already no longer fluctuate. Losing depth was never in the plan.
Most of my apathy can probably be traced back to all those times it seemed the world would be coming to an end, just to be blinded on awakening by the sunrise the next day. More days came, convening into weeks which rallied into months...doing as they do.
Time, as it turns out, is the only empirical way to measure existance. It was a little presumptios of us, even for the earliest and most primitive, to know that they would come to an end whilst believing in forever. Nowadays, time is no longer an intrument of understanding and proximity, no...not anymore. It has followed suite, it was intended to be a tool to understand and progress and it now has become another oppressive, abstract posession. It is just another one of those things we invest, spend, waste and never have enough of.
I wish I could live my life as if it was period between birth and death. Use it merely to measure distances and prepare for the next stage in my growth of maturity. To keep track of how many years I've lasted so far. I was put on this earth without a choice, sans any intention of mine, and from that point on the only direction I have been moving has been towards death, as we all are. To feel and to breath could be too much to ask...but because I am here, I might as well condiser my options, stick it out and maybe I'll stuble upon a meaning...life should be a means to humor yourself in a world vaccinated free of ill will. We should all be communists. Okay, I went too far maybe.
That way of life may be successful someday, everyone raised to be honest and to happily give back as much as they are provided with. Ah, reciprocal altruism...an adaption maintained over the years because those who helped their peers and returned favors were the ones that survived and who's behaviors saturated generations upon generations. Until, you would never believe, we got the idea to congregate in excessively larger groups, living parasiticly of the land and eachother...eventually landing us here. We have sucessfully removed ourselves from most any truley natural environment, we are sceptical of any altruistic behavior and we give gifts only on certain days in which we celebrate our overabundance of resources. Yes, now we are given so much time to think about our worth and our status and the color of our hair.
The only element of nature we reside amonst are floral prints, plastic ivy and the images broadcast on select channels, between the images of all the stuff others like us want us to need. Concrete jungles under black skies, toxic waterways and paved plains shrowded during daylight with thick-brown hazy curtains...these are our breeding grounds now. Standing still for too long will find you knee deep, you'll have lost your shoes in the slough, whose stagnance could easily extinguish your soul if you can't find the strength to pull yourself out and keep moving on.
If I conjured an image of nature in which I was raised, it would be the only practical thing I had...my time spent walking in my neighborhood in the fall; paved blocks lined with trees. My head was filled with ideals then, supplied by those older people in the places I went where I did what they asked because I was told it would be worth my time. So I began investing my time because I was unaware of any other option I had. Trusting people was as absolute a skill at that age as training wheels are to riding a bike. So I was spending more time and investing my faith and all I got had ever recieved were judgments, over and over again...we all were rated, asessed and sorted. My imagination then began rating and sorting ideas, based on what I was told I would want. I would be planning out my future, thats where I was told I should invest my time, so, past houses and parks, I wandered and I sorted, my legs working as hard as my mind...going in circles and cycling thoughts as leaves went from green to gold.
Even as an impressionable young person, I eventually understood that the task of deciding and planning a life was a joke, one I had so genuinely fallen for. It was all just part of the process...you start out dumb and filthy rich and immediately begin investing, then you choose a place you want to spend all that time you had (while slowly coming to the realization that you have given up a gold mine for what looks like dirty pieces of paper). The place you choose, whatever it may be, then becomes the role you take on and act out for decades, its the time in your life where time is money...and all the times your not reading lines your job is to spend your money. You can't eat it, it won't keep you warm and it has no shoulder for you to cry on, so give it away and you'll end up with a lifetime of stuff to fill whatever it is you will slowly realize is missing.
The world I live in convinces people that wealth lies in the market, and that everything we are, 'make' and 'do', 'authenticity' and 'sacrifice'...yeah they're really just dollars and cents. 'Wealth of Knowledge' is now a catchphrase for the ways of thought and abundance of perspective we have stuffed into bottles and sold on late night TV; a $79.99 value yours for only $29.99! Call now and we'll throw in a weeks worth of bite sized truth
absolutely FREE!!
Well...what are you waiting for? It's everything you ever wanted, complete with anything they would ever tell you to pick up the phone and charge that Visa.
Bite sized truth...
Time grows shorter and shorter I notice, walking through the neighborhood playing this out in my head. Haha, these guys...they layout such an elaborate prank! Yellow turns to orange turns to red then to brown as I slow my pace and wonder about things, like how is it possible I can
give away my time? And who could honestly claim that it is owed to them and not allow a reason? I could be a more functional member if I kept the time that I have come upon that takes me from here to there, if I even knew how...all I have been able to do so far is save those moments, pocket change you might call it, that retell moments thick with a real purpose, nothing they could ever sell me because I made it myself. I also have those moments with me that are also saturated with hollow sentiments and harsh realizations, yet I know these were worth more than anything they would have been traded for. These are the leaves that cling to the trees long shriveled and dead, the moments spent before they passed. A tragedy of sorts.
I was born in a world where moments tend to fall like half-dead leaves from trees in storms of hours, most often to die before they hit the ground, while the ones rich in color will fall swirling gracefully on the breath of a reminescent breeze. The leaves rise and fall back into place as we clear them from paths and pile them into mounds of years. These sit and stay wherever they are as histories, decomposing under showers of clear wet drops. They glisten for a while, under the glow of a streetlamp, then slowly dissapear.
The young, as we see every passing season, can never help but leap into a fresh and lofty pile of leaves, allowing themselves to be consumed as another gust sends more colors into the air swirling all around them. The chill in the air brings color to their cheeks and the promise of snowdays. These times spent sledding, laughing and sitting warm by a fire are moments so fortified with vitality that they can stay with us, blanketing us with the settiling fidelity of where we once were.
Now, us...the thought may cross our mind but never seems to pass that point. Our time is much too precious to be spent on anything other than paving the road to the future. Yeah, lets forget about everything. Pleasure was never that simple. Let's just pave it all.
