Boredom

This is something I wrote the other day for my writer's craft class. It's rough, as I haven't edited any of it, but I though I'd leave this one the way it is.

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A world awash with white or gray,
Where nothing changes
And life is but a stagnant reflection of itself.

I watch the world on a screen
From the safety of my room.
Doors shut tight and windows sealed,
I'll stay here and my heart will heal
Alone.

Life was exciting,
Once.
The green, the trees, the vibrancy,
All curled together happily
Until

You happened
Along, a song in your step.
Rainbows danced around your head
While people in the world forget
The secret to true happiness
And I am here and hale and yet

I've forgotten too.

And all because of you.

Backwards, bored and gone away--
The symptoms of our path astray
From life I saw the other day
Softly floating by.

But I didn't think to try.

The End

It was suddenly very dark.
Every muscle in my small body seized as a shiver rolled down my back, calling the coarse hair there to attention. The leftover sound of birds which had been singing their summer songs hung stale in the air, emphasizing the abrupt silence so that it seemed almost ear-shattering. Nothing moved. Wind which was normally so playful and insistent suddenly couldn't be bothered to let out even the barest sigh.
Great, tall trees rimmed the clearing I had only moments before decided to dash across, the alarming stillness stranding me in the centre. Except for the tall grass, I was completely out in the open, an easy meal for anything with good night eyes, and my nerves were not very happy about it. I needed a place to hide and take stock of the situation, and searching my memory the perfect place came to mind; there was a dying tree near the one edge of the clearing, covered in mosses and mushrooms, the roots of which had grown up and around the now-decayed stump of another tree, leaving a mouse-sized cubby-hole that was just meant for strategizing. Half of me marvelled at the idea that I might find this tree in the pitch blackness as I let the rest take in what was happening all around me.
Everything was stuck. It was like life was on hiatus while the world came to some final decision about it. Seemed to me that something important was in the works here, and I just knew it wasn't good. I have a sixth sense about these things—that's how I've survived so long out here in the wild—and this was giving me the same feeling I would get telling me I needed to hightail it outta there, like when one of those vicious, hard-eyed devil-birds tries to scoop me up straight into its stomach. Only this was bigger. Much bigger. So big I didn't know if I'd escape this time.
The soft lilt of voices stilled my thoughts. I could feel the light vibrations of footsteps coming up through the earth, and soon I could hear them too. My mind wanted desperately to make a run for the moss-covered tree, that salvation that was just out of reach, but my body would not budge.
“Oh, it's all useless,” I heard a man's voice sigh out. While most of my mind was frantically and fruitlessly fighting to free my body from its self-imposed stasis, some small piece still registered the hopelessness in his voice. “It was always useless. Right from the very beginning.”
Pure white light seemed to chase away the darkness as the footsteps glided into the clearing. At this point I had completely given up trying to get out of there—I don't know what he thought was useless, but my feeble attempts at running were certainly proving to be. Perhaps he wouldn't see me if I didn't move.
Another sigh escaped his body, and at the edge of my vision I could see his shoulders slump with defeat as he followed them to the ground, sitting in a glum pile against my tree. The light that lit the clearing like a full moon was unmistakably coming from him, making his features and feelings difficult to make out aside from his obvious depression.
Groaning softly he lowered his head into his hands, muttering. “Why didn't I see it coming? I could have. I should have, really.”
A woman's amused voice smoothly cut into his self-pitying. “No kidding, Chief! And they say you're omniscient, too.” Derisive laughter rang in the air. “Huh, what a joke. Doesn't even know what his own creations are up to!” Her voice was coming from somewhere up in the trees, where the light didn't penetrate. I didn't know how they knew each other, but the moment she began to speak, the man tensed up—from annoyance or anger, I couldn't tell.
“So this is it, huh? The end of it all. Y'know, I always thought it'd be a bit flashier; maybe a few fireworks, a few planets smashing into each other. Throw in a supernova or two for good measure—that'd be entertainment for you.” She hummed as if in the middle of fond imaginings. “Seems kinda tame, this fading out thing you have going on, don't you think?”
“What does it matter? The end is the end. It's not as if anyone will remember it afterwards—there won't even be anyone to remember.” His voice was tired; he clearly wasn't in the mood for conversation.
“There'll be you and me,” she spoke softly, a serious note entering her voice for just a moment, until she burst out in happy tones, “I'm sure you realize, O Omniscient One, what this means.” You could hear the smile curling around her lips as she spoke.
Head still in his hands, he groaned out a single word, humouring her for the moment and probably hoping she'd shut up soon. “What?”
“I win!” There must have been a grin on her face now, but it was too dark to see. “What is it that's got you so down in the dumps, Chief? Whatever it is, I need to thank 'em! I mean, I barely even had to put up a fight.”
The light emanating from the man was beginning to grow brighter. Maybe it was feeding off his annoyance.
She sighed theatrically. “Bout time I got a vacation anyhow! Just the other day, y'know, I broke a nail when I was trying to reopen that damned girl's box. Thought there might be something left in there for me to play with. Maybe you know her? Pan-something, I think. Or maybe it was Dory...?”
Slowly raising his head to lean back on the deteriorating tree, a look of horror twisting his face, he whispered, “Pandora?”
“Right! That one. I remember her, y'know. She was nice, for a human, but more than a bit of a pushover. Gave in too easily. Really wasn't much fun to toy with.”
He was ignoring her at this point. From somewhere up above me I heard a huff as she went on. “But, that's beside the point. Just why exactly do I get to skip to the end of the game? Not that I'm complaining,” she added hurriedly.
As he took a moment to consider her question, I watched as the man took a deep, steadying breath, visibly reigning in his annoyance before he responded.
“Because I've failed. This world I created has been utterly bastardized—and by my own creations, no less! Whoever invented free will should be shot,” he spat. “Oh, but wait, that was me too!” Sarcasm dripped from his voice like honey swimming with thorns.
Laughter floating down from the darkness of the treetops stopped him from continuing. “I never thought I'd see the day!” She had to stop talking as giggles assaulted her. “You're pretty much hope personified, and it's you that's lost all hope,” she broke off as laughter overtook her once more. Leaves were shaking their way out of the trees she was laughing so hard. I was hoping some would fall in my direction, cover me up just a little. “How's that for irony, eh Chief?”
But he just continued on as if the interruption had never happened. “Absolutely no excuse for it, either. Can't even say I didn't know. Because I did—I was just too confident that I was right to believe anything could go wrong. Hm. That's irony if anything is. I suppose I really did create humanity in my image—they make about as many mistakes as I do.” A reckless but determined look crossed his face. “Not for much longer, though.” He tilted his head back further to glance up at the treetops, vaguely facing the woman, waiting.
It seemed like she was carefully considering her next words. “I'm curious, y'know, if humanity is so prone to mistakes as you say it is, Chief, why don't you just wait it out? Really, you might as well just let them exterminate themselves. If they're all that bad, it probably won't take long.” She muttered something bitterly under her breath. I don't think she liked what came out of her mouth next. “You'll like this, too. You let them be, and there's always that small chance—a little hope, if you will—that they'll come out alive at the end of it all. Maybe manage to start anew. Like that tree you're moping against.” He sat up at this, and turned to examine his temporary backrest.
“It's already risen up out of the ashes once, hasn't it? What's to say there's not a chance it will again?”
Sitting there, staring intently at the decaying tree, he contemplated in silence for what seemed to be hours, with the darkness and the soundlessness and stillness stretching the moment indefinitely. Finally he turned around, and his internal light had dimmed to the point where I could see a slight smile flicker across his lips.
“And if I let the world run its course? What do you get out of it? It's not in your nature to help me,” he spoke wryly into the dark world outside his small sanctuary of light.
Shuffling sounds carried down to my ears, and a moment later I faintly heard the woman land on the leaf-covered ground a few feet in front of me. I could only see the back of her as she approached the shining man, a dark silhouette which fractured his illuminating presence. Her height seemed to rival that of the trees which watched the entire scene with held breaths.
Mischief lined her silky voice as she bent down to his level to answer. “What do I get out of it, Chief? Well, I couldn't let you do my job for me, now could I? And besides—humans are entertaining. Even you would be bored without them, I'd bet.”
She straightened and I watched as she promptly faded into the darkness, as if she was a part of it all along. The man's light now lit up the entire clearing as from under my few protective leaves I saw him ruefully shake his head, then stand. He stood there a moment just looking at my tree, so completely covered in fungus and dying as it was, then a moment later, he, too, was gone, and noise erupted all around me.
Life continued, never even stumbling over its momentary obstacle. The leaves tumbled off my back in the soft afternoon breeze, and as my body finally thought to obey my mind, I raced for the shelter of my tree, scurrying in between its healthy roots which supported a towering trunk. It proudly displayed its leaves, and showed not even a hint of the fungus that had so recently plagued its existence.
I guess I did escape this time. Resting one small paw on a protruding root, I thought back to the shining man. Death would not take hold this time; and I would live to face it again and again. Everyone would.

A Small Part of the Big Picture

I can remember being told as a child that during my lifetime, though perhaps not during my parents', the world would change. I think they meant technologically, like the world would become something out of a science fiction novel; but right now I'm only nineteen and I feel like the world is already poised at the edge of that big cliff of change. And not necessarily change for the better--it's a long drop down to the base of that cliff. Watching the world today, it scares me to see how similar reality is becoming to a dystopian novel.

While the States are at war, again, and the price of gas is rising, and people are earning just enough money to get their houses forclosed upon, and the world economy is aimed for a fall and heading there pretty steadily, and global warming is failing to kick our collective asses into gear (or it's at least kicking us in the wrong direction), a worldwide food shortage just falls into our lap. Out of nowhere. Right?

Hardly. Admittedly I am not incredibly informed on the subject, but I have a few ideas about how this happened. First off is Globalization. The world, now, is like your street block. You can go next door to borrow that cup of sugar, just like a country can import food. And it only makes sense that you would give them that cup of sugar, since you have extra sugar anyway. But it goes wrong as soon as profit is entered into the mix. When the government, hypothetically, subsidizes barley crops, because they can make more money exporting barley, well, why shouldn't every farmer switch their crop to barley and make a bit more money off it? It's not as if farming is a particularly lucrative business in the first place. And as barley crops start popping up, other crops start to dwindle in number, and the people who those crops used to feed are suddenly stuck with high prices because there is both more demand for less supply, and a higher cost to import crops that had previously been locally grown.

Less hypothetically, corn crops, I believe, actually are being subsidized for their use as an alternative fuel. Biofuels made from corn are being touted as a potentially viable alternative to the oil we currently rely so heavily on. But that's just silly! Even before this world food shortage came so much to our attention, or even started affecting us at all (rice rationing and such), there were still millions of people in the world, many in third world countries, without anywhere near enough food to sustain them. Famines were certainly not unheard of. People died, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, because food was so scarce. Is so scarce, I should say. None of that ever stopped. So why are legitimate sources of food now being used to fuel our cars, and not our bodies?

Other reasons abound, I'm sure. It's not a happy picture, and the picture of the future that's beginning to form is not an uplifting one. What I thought was indomitable optimism has failed me today--the world's just a bit too grim for me.

There's always hope.

But I wonder whether it will do us any good.

Laughter is the best medicine.

My mind has been off somewhere strange lately. I think it started a few days ago when I was thinking about time travel. It occurred to me that if time travel was possible, then everything, ever, must already have happened--because how can you go to a time that does not exist? And if everything, ever, has already happened (where I'm just living out my moment within it all) then one of two things (it seems to me) must be true: either time must end, since everything has already happened, or time must go in a loop, and come back to the beginning again every so often (like the 'wheel of time', "the third age, an age long past, and an age that will come again"...or something like that). I suppose there's always other sorts of interesting possibilities, like the idea that time does not travel in a straight line at all, maybe it's cube-shaped or something, multi-dimensional--who knows?

It seemed like an interesting thought. Another thing that's been in and out of my mind is this story I've been trying to write which I posted part of a short while ago ('The Beginning, aka The End') . The major conflict revolves around whether or not to end the world. On the one side is 'God', who sees how the perfect world he gave free will to has devolved and corrupted and how the sinister tendrils of itself have slowly wrapped their way around its own proverbial 'neck' and begun to squeeze. He doesn't think the world deserves to continue--he might as well start from scratch again, maybe this time impose some rules though, keep everything running smoothly, and the world as pure as the day it was born. On the other side of the ring is the 'devil', though not in the traditional sense, more as the antithesis of 'God' than as the evil creature wanting the world to descend into chaos. She (the devil) looks at the world and sees buried deep within the corrupted souls of the people a seed of compassion, a small ray of hope. More than that, she tries to show her alter ego that a world without free will is incredibly dull, mapped out, and at least not half as entertaining, that it's an idea born of frustration and exasperation, and one which would be regretted if ever followed through with. And at the very least, shouldn't humanity be given the chance to exterminate itself?

There's the gist for you...and for me really, since I haven't written part yet.

So the point of this all is that somehow I got to the idea of there being a point to being alive, or having a purpose of some sort. Life is simple. You're born, easy enough. You spend the first two decades of your life living by someone else's rules, under someone else's roof--and no matter how much you love or hate your parents, you are most often conditioned (to some extent) to behave in certain ways, to follow certain rules without question, and without thought. Then you move out, and you either recondition yourself (or break the conditioning) on your own terms or you continue on in the world as you are. Then you spend your life in school, then working, then having a family, then retiring and spending the last of your days old and useless (give or take). Not very profound or interesting over all.

I watched the wonderful movie Patch Adams today, and it again reminded me that passion is a good thing (something which is beaten out of many of us at a young age). Patch Adams is an admirable man.

I want to accomplish something. In eighty years, when I'm old and frail, I want to be able to look back and know that I've done something that will make a difference. Somehow. Something that makes my life more than just existing comfortably. I want to make something happen!

And hopefully I will.

No, not hopefully.

1 2 3 4 STONE 4 3 2 1

I finally perfected looking serious,
So now I never am.

My mind is outside playing jacks
And you thought I was listening?

The Beginning (aka, The End)

It was suddenly very dark.

Every muscle in my small body seized as a shiver rolled down my back, calling the coarse hair there to attention. The leftover sound of birds which had been singing their summer songs hung stale in the air, emphasizing the abrupt silence so that it seemed almost ear-shattering. Nothing moved. Wind which was normally so playful and insistent suddenly couldn't be bothered to let out even the barest sigh.

Everything was stuck. It was like life was on hiatus while the world came to some final decision about it. Seemed to me that something important was in the works here, and I just knew it wasn't good. I have a sixth sense about these things--that's how I've survived so long out here in the wild--and this was giving me the same feeling I'd get telling me I needed to hightail it outta there, like when one of those vicious, hard-eyed devil-birds tries to scoop me up straight into its stomach. Only this was bigger. Much bigger. So big I didn't know if I'd escape this time.

The soft lilt of voices stilled my thoughts. I could feel the light vibrations of footsteps coming up through the earth, and soon I could hear them too. My mind wanted desperately to make a run for it, but my body would not budge.

"...useless, and you know it well enough!" A smooth and clearly frustrated voice rang out in the deadening silence. The footsteps were getting closer, and I still couldn't move. Oh, of all the times--

"Do I?" a second, female voice chimed in, but you could tell she was just as weary and frustrated as the man.

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And, I shall finish another time.... :P
Just like every other story I've ever written.

This isn't worth titling

Fuck I'm good at procrastinating! If it were a life skill, I would be set. I'd be rolling in bills!

Makes life tough though, since it is NOT. More of an anti-life-skill.

Fuck.

Sun sun sun sun sun! SUN

Ha, you can tell I'm ecstatically happy about the weather!

I had the most wonderful day yesterday. Had the day off work, biked to Leith and back. Hardly anyone seems as amazed at this as I was though.

I wandered into my room at around midnight last night, and the moment I stepped through my door I felt like it was summer again, down from the very deepest part of me all the way to my toes! I miss summer incredibly--this summer will be the summer to rule over every summer that has ever come to pass though!

Damn procrastinating. I was supposed to read The Catcher in the Rye this weekend.

Left it at school.

Silly of me, that.

I ought to try some writing exercise though and make like I'm at least attempting to do homework. ---

Izzi is shining his light. Is it bright? If it's within sight, night is hid. His light isn't timid, it isn't insipid, it isn't dim--it fights with night, twisting its shining fists, hitting it. Igniting its midnight mist. Grinding it till its finish, till twilight visits. Is this pitch? With his light shining, it isn't.

I wish I might sight his striking light. Sighing, Izzi insists his light will blind. Still, I wish I might.

Hiking his rigging, tipping his lid, Izzi sticks his light in this big bin. Izzi thinks, in hindsight, hiding his light in sight will bring ill things. Izzi is right.

Izzi isn't in sight. I'm still with his light. Sitting in this big bin with it. I wish...

I wish...

Hm? Is it night? It isn't, is it?

Is it?

Shit.

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And there you have it! Ha that was fun :D