Memories

Memories can be bittersweet or they can be memories of something bittersweet like when your dad told you the next "home run" meant you'd go inside and on the very first pitch you launched one out of the yard and over the street and into the neighbor's yard across the way, your farthest ever home run and a crowning achievement but already then it meant time to go inside.

Memories are now all you have of the people in the hostel in Chicago and drunkenly talking to them and making connections and laughing, laughing, laughing and sharing stories and talking about life and other things, and the vodka bottle still lingers like the sunrise you saw that morning as you crawled into bed only to wake up a few hours later.

Memories can be sad and frustrating like the time you were hit or choked or yanked or made fun of. Memories of school and friends who weren't really friends but who you hung out with any way because it's all you knew and had.

Memories can be of missed opportunities like the time in Austin, Texas when the girl said she liked you and took your glasses and walked inside the bar and proclaimed she was "way too fucked up" and you could have followed her and her friends and who knows what could have happened but you were embarrassed and said you had work the next day and that was true but now you wonder.

Memories can stir up feelings of self-worth and possibilities but also melancholy and feelings of youth and time lost and things that will never happen again and they'll haunt you forever until you're old and memories are all that you have but time blurs them together.

Memories are what you should try to make but perpetually avoid because living in the past does no good and how can you make memories unless you're living in the present and preparing for the future but sometimes it becomes too much and the past swallows you whole anyways and now the memories lead to tears and that's ok because at least then you know that something real and beautiful happened.

Childhood

Childhood is a series of events in which one is told that they can't have what they want by a parental figure.

It is then apt training for adulthood, in which one is told they can't have what they want by society.

Time, Who Has It?

It's a simple matter of arithmetic, really. If one, as a statistically normal adult, were to work the statistical average of 40-45 hours a week, and sleep the statistical average of 7 hours a day, one finds that an average week already has 90 of its 168 hours taken up. This leaves less than half of the week in which one can pursue leisure activities, but even that is a bit of a red herring, because there is housework to do, driving, grocery shopping, and much more. In reality, only about 40 hours of a standard week is one in which a statistically normal adult can pursue enjoyment. This seems rather stunted, and I often wonder, if given the choice, would humanity be willing to give up 50 years of technology and production for, in turn, 20 more hours a week of leisure time? When we live in a post-scarcity economy, have terraformed planets, and conquered aging, what will the balance look like, then? I suppose we will not know, alas, burdened by still living at a time when the mode of production has not diminished. So we work away, tirelessly, as we have for decades, knowing that the future will have it so much better.

50 Shades of Grey

It is ever present. The grey sheet that washes over the sky and fails to reason or dislodge or co-operate. It will cover the skies and prevent sun, stars, or moon from whisking you away. From it will come condensation, frozen, cold, layer upon layer of it. Inside the claustrophobic walls of your house is where you will be, shielded from the grey blight, huddled with blankets for warmth. The breeze will no longer be cool and refreshing but instead will be harsh and uninviting. Waking up in the pitch black of early morning to remove the hundreds and thousands of pounds of snow from driveway and sidewalk alike. Having to leave for work earlier. And still doused in the grey, grey, grey, everywhere, sky to ground, trees leafless, snow a polluted mess of mud and grime from cars caked with salt. The greyness could be permanent, for all you know, stretching on beyond the horizon as far as the eye can see. Only time will relinquish the hold it has. Only time.

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What began as breathlessly escaping
Effervescent, trembling, shaking,
Goosebumps arisen to meet the touch
Of quietly huddled, mumbled "hush-"
But clumsy is as so it may,
To be a youth in throws of day,
And night whose quiet, cold embrace
Did cause a heart to shake and race,
But as with all that flowers soon
There left an awkward, silent room
And timid closeness shared and hovered
From sweat beneath the fitted covers,
Arise, at last, to stumble gaily
Out amidst the hallways, stately,
Of flesh consumed and flesh remade,
In the dying sun of bloom filled May.

Sooner Rather Than Later

It occurs to the present author that a significant part of one's childhood is spent listening to those whose dreams haven't come true tell you not to give up on your dreams. In many case, these very instructors and teachers and parents and adults have given up on their dreams, for they have realized the impossibility of accomplishing them. Given that the realization of futility is an all together depressing and melancholic affair, it stands to reason that the sooner we can attribute this event to children, the sooner we can get the hardship it creates out of the day. With that in mind, it is perhaps best that we never tell kids to pursue their dreams, or to dream big, for not only are we lying to them, we are creating a scenario in which the teens and 20s - ages where depression is most common - are that much more difficult and hopeless to navigate. This author suggests that, from an early age, and as early as one can conceptualize the idea, we should inform children that their dreams will not come true, but instead they will live a life of repetitive mediocrity as part of a larger system of values and production that reduces their importance to the world to a simple dollar value. Once the children have overcome the malaise that this brings about, they are much more freer to accept mediocrity and not be weighed down by the impossibility of expecting greatness.

The Futility of Attempting

It's been said that one must at least try to accomplish their dreams and goals, for if one does not even attempt to achieve them, then how can one complain about not accomplishing them? But given the futility of results that come about when one pursues their dreams, and the massive energy one must expel in order to, ultimately, come up short, one has to wonder if the utilitarian response is simply to never attempt to achieve one's dreams, and instead attempt some sort of apathetic mediocrity. Not only does this preserve energy that could be used in the pursuit of leisure time, it also prevents one from pouring their heart and soul into a fruitless pursuit. That this very author of this very blog is pouring copious amounts of time into a novel goes against this very post. That said novel will never be published, read, or edited by anyone else, however, supports the fundamental thesis of the futility of attempting to pursue one's dreams.

Conspiracy

It's not hard to think - if one were predisposed to do so - that the world at this time of year - this time of year involving several holidays dedicated to the act of both A) eating junk food and B) spending money on consumer goods - is perversely against you. That for over two whole months, candy will be left out in dishes, adding calories to a daily count, tryptophan will be imbibed amidst endless carbs and saturated fat, and hard earned cash will be spent on things that, as already established by this hereto blog, do little to assuage the human condition of suffering. And yet, to go against these very events, holidays, gatherings, and their concurrent proliferation of consumer spending, is to be labeled an outcast, a cynic, a loner, or even worse. To wit, this seems to suggest that a world that goes against you; frothing with calories and unhealthy consumption, both literally and metaphorically, is the preferred order that has been established by the multitude of collectivism that we call society. That this renders these times appreciably destitute is merely another facet of the human condition.

Clothe Me

Given that the present author grew up in a household in which the clothing of said author was pre-ordained by one parental unit, and that this meant that the author could never truly acquire and wear clothes that the author truly wanted, it goes without saying that, given independence, the author found an entirely new world opened up to them in terms of purchasing, and wearing, selected clothing. And while the job of the present author requires button down shirt, business khakis, and belts, and not, say, skinny jeans, or trendy t-shirts, the limited freedom that the weekend offers is something that should be taken full advantage of. Given, however, that the present author lives with his sister, and does not want to seem extreme in choices of clothing and jewelry, the end result of clothing choices is such that the author dresses still rather conservatively, not too unlike he did as a kid.