The Secret to Immortality

The whole thing scares the shit out of me.

The pure chaos of living.
The impermanence of all life. Of everything.

We want to believe there are ways to live on. Ironically, some cannot even function enough to live without thinking more living is possible. Without the comfort of immortality. Life after death. Worldly legacy - a hook we throw out for the world to hang onto and remember us. But there are not always happy endings.

Take, for instance, the life of the man trampled to death by holiday shoppers. See his world played out on the big screen.....his birth, his parents faces, his siblings laughter and fighting - family - their pets. Where he lived. How much money they had. Fights about new sneakers. Who he made friends with. Who were his enemies. Who he crushed on, thinking about them together instead of algebraic functions. What opportunities were open to him? Which ones did he seize? What regrets did he have? Passions? In the end, who did he really love?

We know his name, his age, where he worked.
We know how he died.
And that's all we have, all that identifies him.

There's not always going to be this inspirational book-movie-adaptation. The romantically bitter sweet ending set to epic music - so powerful it seems that your soul will echo through it until the end of never - does not happen.

For most, life - from start to finish - is mundane.
It's a day to day struggle of everything on every level. Our biological impulses against our psychological values, who we are vs. who we want to be vs. who we can be.
And for all of that, we still die without even scratching the surface.

Where is the memorial for humanity?

We are a world. We are cultures, ideas, wants, needs. We are clusters of individuals who never asked anyone's permission or favor to exist. At least, no one remembers asking for this.
And if you can't remember, does it really matter?

And hence the desperate importance, and futility, of remembering - of trying to reach immortality.

Maybe all we have is comfort. All we can hope for is some type of happiness, contentment, acceptance - of our fate. Just a moment's peace. Especially the poor, the talentless, the ugly, the sick. We who are not in fashion at the moment. All we have is each other. Our unrecorded dialogue, laughter, love, drama, envy - our own little world made to be forgotten in the shadow of the better lives lived on TV.

Maybe there are just too many damn people in the world. We can't all be important. We can't all be remembered. And everything eventually fades or corrupts. Nothing and no one, by life or legacy, is permanent. "On a long enough time line........"

Do what you want for today. Don't just try to be happy. Be fulfilled. Be realized. Do everything you can't do when you're dead. Exist to the most extreme degree. Change something. Even if you light the fire just to watch it burn.

The Secret to Immortality: It Doesn't Exist.

Something Few Will Read

A man died today.
As he opened the gates at a Wal-Mart on Long Island, he was trampled to death by a crowd of Black Friday shoppers.

There are many ways that someone could react to this.

First, there is disgust.
I want to be disgusted. I want to be angry. I want to be justified in my hatred for those ignorant and greedy consumers who - even after they realized what had happened - did not want to stop shopping. Those people so focused on all the things, things, things that they had to buy for their parents, their children, their brothers, sisters, cousins, lovers.....all at discount prices, holiday specials, once-in-a-lifetime-deals.....that a life outside of their little world could not even register on their radar.

Are the shoppers evil people?
No, probably not. But they are blind and they are careless.
They are products. We all are.

We can't help but be influenced by the world in which we live.
TV, Radio, Internet, Blogs, Forums, Movies, News, Games, Cellphones...
The-next-big-thing.....the millennium of money....Cool America.
The more we expose ourselves to it and the harder we try to understand it only helps us to control how we personally choose to survive in it.
It's easy to make someone angry, it's very hard to make them fix the reasons for it.
Very few of us can truly change anything. We don't even know where to begin. No one person can change it on their own. No - it would take a force to change people - an industry with advertisements covering the cities reading:

"THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT, MORE BEAUTIFUL,
AND MORE TERRIBLE THINGS IN LIFE THAN THIS."

But we forget, especially around the holidays, that while people may be ultimately good - we are much more complicated creatures than that. We love being important, being the best, being loved, and being wanted. The world we live in today tells us that we can be all those things with just the right gift. We don't see this as a bad thing, we're giving someone else a present after all - but that's how the cycle begins. That's how a man's life becomes so much less important than getting that damn man-made-whatever that so-and-so has always, always wanted.

I'm not saying that we should burn (or better yet, recycle) all our material goods and create a socialism state of peace, love, and home-grown vegetables. But we should do something - what can we do?

Maybe all we can do is just care about each other a little more, and our own egos a little less.

Happy Holidays.

Old Things

I used to love, really love, old things.
But now I just don't see them in the same way anymore.
They're destructible.
I guess the fact that they've stood for all this time is one accomplishment. They're strong, or lucky.
So maybe there's still charm left there after all.

No Witnesses

How many people die each day.
Everyday.
People I don't know. People I might not even have liked.
People no great amount of people will ever remember.
Maybe two, three tops until they die too, of course.
But it all goes on. It's nothing personal. Nothing to get too offended about. It's just how it is. If everyone were famous - no one would be famous. All we can do to stop death is to manufacture more life. Seek permanence in books, art, industry, children. Maybe money isn't the root of all evil - maybe life is.

Everything must belong somewhere.

Step outside and take a look.

Somewhere out in America, it's starting to rain. Can you tell me one thing you will remember about me?

* I reference songs a lot, if you hadn't noticed *

I'm one of those thousands of people out there. I belong here in the world. Another face, a tourist's passover shot with a hand held camera. I'm an american. The people on this bus. The expanding world outside and beyond. Blips. Beautiful, colorful, momentary blips.

The world requires no audience. No witnesses. No witnesses.

I am just so much.

What if I were to be suddenly diagnosed? What if this bus crashes, or aliens invade the earth? Will I be able to live with my own death? As long as I keep writing, keep believing, I think I can. I can survive my own death. And so, I am everyone I write about. Everyone I write for. Heroes and strangers and friends - together we will all live forever through letters.

America

By the look of the number of people on the bus I get on, I can't help but think I'm going to nowhere anyone wants to be.

I started to think that I really lost sight of what was really the whole purpose of going to college. The whole process of growing up and becoming an adult - I took for granted all my moments of strength and maturity, forgetting that there's more to life than rules and pretty phrases. I've been a brat. Good adults know that everyone has pain. That these boundaries aren't as solid as we think, on either side. I need to remember my dignity. My powers and my weaknesses equally, and to just sit back and enjoy.

"I was walkin'.... all by myself"

Pride in Independence.
I think that's why Boston calls to me. I can be more independant there. More focused and free. More alive.

A fog of grime is coating the world outside the bus windows.

If I could do anything, I think I'd like to be a traveling writer. Document today's America. Maybe I could assemble a documentary crew, and we'll spend years going from town to town. My role would be to write all the narration. We'd take turns driving.
Visit towns, interview people. Always be nonthreatening, a blank slate for them to write on. For us to document on camera. Subcultures. Landscapes. Expose poverty and pollution. Show the faces behind the polls.

What is America? Modern America
And what we found there....

It Never Really Goes Away

I am detached.

In the way that clouds and stars are detached.

I look from the mountain top into the valley, and from this height I can tell you, with perfect clarity, all the workings and meanings and mechanisms.

But I cannot tell you what the apples taste like.
The apples below, in the valley.

Nor the temperature of the water on the first day of summer.

What If [We are a generation of thieves]

We are a generation of thieves.
We steal each other's time,
Beauty. Freedom. Choice.

Our ability to live any kind of adventure is greatly diminished. Only the strongest ones can catch the train now. Only the lucky ones.

The love inside of me is there, I know it, deeply suffocating. It's fighting.

Oh god, how I long for a time that is older. Whether myself being older or just going into the past, the wrinkles I remember in my Grandmother's face remind me that I do not truly belong here. I overcompensate my youth, substitute it with quirky humor and broad smiles. But I am not so young. Unless romance is only for the young...then I suppose I'm wrong...what if I'm wrong about everything?

What if there is a God?
What if there is an afterlife? Oh how much easier living this life would be.
To know that you will see them again. Talk to them. Kiss them. Touch them. Feel Them.
What if nothing were ever over? What if it never ends?

You're a sparkling ball of electricity, bouncing through the black cosmos until you collide with - anything - and life explodes on impact.

Oh how fortunate we would be. This modern life has been clouded. We no longer value the important things, the real things, on a day to day basis. Gap is the God of Love. Oil is the God of War. Money is a deadly sin, a necessary evil we all indulge. Adventure has been written off, adventure is for those who can afford it. We've thrown it to the movie stars and Hollywood to interpret for us in 120 minute blocks of light & sound & sex. That's our escape. When we blink back into our reality as the lights come up, we forget. Everyone forgets. Promises are broken, honor is lost. Follow the masses! Fall into the pit. We're all so lost, so unhappy, so screwed, and all so alone among the sea of everybody else.

But what if I fight back? What if I don't listen to the magazines and the logical minds that tell me "love like that doesn't exist." "lower your standards" "be realistic".
What if I keep my dreams, never let them go, pursue them with every cell in my body?
What if I write? Draw, create, organize, lead, revolt, win? What if I choose love? What if I choose happiness? What if I could get everyone else to do the same?
Perhaps then, fear would not be so scary. Love would be more daily than expensive jeans. Humanity would rule over technology, instead of being ruled by it.

New Ways to Watch TV

*heavy edit 6/27/19

The major events of our lives will be seen and experienced differently in the lives of those who will exist in the future.

Examples:

Titanic (as in the ship) ---> sank. many people died. very sad. really happened. Year: 1912
Titanic (movie) -> Hugely successful. Wildly Romantic. Won loads of awards. Inspired us to care. Year: 1999

-What would those lost on the actual Titanic think about the movie?-

George W. Bush ----> President from 2000 to 2008
Movies ---> W. (2008) and movies about 911
That's now. What will the future see? With what lens will the future use to look at us today?

I want someone in the future to think of me and say "You know, Laura would have loved this" and maybe in that way I will be there. Part of me, somehow, will be there experiencing it with them. And I will never miss a thing.

The Fish

Next to the curb, snow was falling on the oversized orange and green fish shoved unceremoniously between the community garbage cans. Full of last month’s Thanksgiving paraphernalia, people forget to recycle at Christmas time, as though the only synonym for “useful” was “new”. As wide as the cans were tall, the fish was one of those prizes you win at a carnival game; the kind where you spend hours sending a little hoop clanking over old-fashioned green glass soda bottles just for the victory of it. Even I was guilty of begging my father to win me something like it once.

This particular fish’s stringy fins must have held sequins not long ago, and surely it didn’t come with that ketchup stain on its belly – or was it a heart? Gray, fluffy stuffing was escaping from the side of its fat lips, which where perpetually puckered in style of an Aunt’s big, wet kiss. The most pitiful part of its appearance, however, was the enormous brown eyes. Bigger than even the lips, the eyes protruded as giant globes. Like crystal balls which tell only the past. At one point they had said, “Love me! Fight for me! Win me! Take me home!” But now they stare at me, shocked and betrayed; making me feel guilty – as though the whole creation of itself was my entire fault.

Stitched and stuffed for profit, without children, who would want such a thing? What motivation would any adult have for owning something so easily abandoned? Say they were pressured by friends to win it, just to prove they could. For a lover perhaps… no, true love would not need such a display of wealth and trivial eye-coordination skills. Of course, no one would take a person very seriously who entertained an oversized, hideously colored, stuffed animal in their office. A giant fish isn’t really a trophy to anyone but a child – the one thing that can relate to it the most.

There are children very much like carnival fish. Obtained as a means to hold together a relationship, for pride, by force, or by accident – they are more like discarded trophies than beating hearts. Each has their own set of torn threads and stained patches, each a personal set of eyes, averted in shame for their exposure. What makes an unwanted child any different than a carnival prize?

Of course, please excuse me; this example is far too specific. Most prizes are very much wanted and hard earned. The vast majority, in fact, are placed on little shelves in little glass boxes and admired for years. How few carnival prizes are actually ever won? How many could possibly be discarded in dumps and landfills, hardly distinguishable from all the real trash out there. Didn’t watching Rudolph at Christmas teach you anything? Didn’t your mother explain the significance of The Island of Misfit Toys – that’s where all the unwanted things go! No one ever expects them to come back.

Perhaps that is what happened to this fish. It isn’t being thrown away at all; it’s merely escaping from the island. So then, credit must be given where credit is due! This fish is not a victim of industry or human pride. This fish is a fighter. Those rips and stains are evidence of life, not ugliness or death. I should bring it some hot chocolate, like my father used to bring me, and it can tell me stories of all the places it has been and all the things it has done.

The snow is beginning to pile up, creating a little happy birthday-hat on the fish’s dirty head, and filling the creases of my father’s winter coat. I decide not to get the hot chocolate. Sometimes, the independent ones don’t want to be recognized.Besides, being a misfit is not something to be too proud of anyway. Once so clean and sparkling, swimming high in the air above prospective parents, owners, victors - among others so similar to itself - there was a time when it was a wanted thing.

Now, dragging through this frigid filth, the contrasting failure is the most hopeless and heinous of eyesores. It’s all too awkward and too difficult to understand – better to just leave it alone collecting snow.

Oh, but that’s no way to live, as though the comfort of others is the only goal! Rats gnawing at fins and eyes do so just to do something with them. They’ll eat and tear until everything disappears, and then move on to the next unforgivably existing thing, without a single thought paid to memory. I want to scream at the fish, “Get up! Show them what you can do! Recognize your past! Realize how far you’ve come!” But the carnival fish would not be able to understand me; it probably doesn’t even speak English.

And besides, it’s a fish.

Toys like these have a sense of timelessness. They don’t really belong to any particular place, and it’s easy to forget that they are just fabric and thread. Carnivals themselves are romanticized scenes of mystery, wonder and fantasy. This silly fish is just an extension of that. Illusions and embellishments – lies – there is no real story here, so I might as well go inside. On the other hand, from this distance the fish is my personal side-show. Snow is pressing and piling on the head and fins. Whether the inevitable trash pick-up day, or the molding, wet stuffing - it is a doomed thing. Maybe by watching it, I can learn something about disappearing. This must be an act picked up during its carnival days. A simple trick to make the crowed curious and then leave them waiting just on the edge of discovery.

I wonder if my blue eyes can be seen, spying from underneath my father’s hood, underneath the all-consuming snow. All I can see through the whiteness are bulging brown eyes. Those orbs are no longer pleading. They evoke neither pity nor idolization. In the time it took to win the creature, it is out of sight, lost to the snow. I stand up and heavy powder falls from my father’s coat. I had forgotten I was sitting down. Turning to go back inside, I see the door, closed and bare, to my father’s house. Suddenly, a force of dormant panic awakens and surges inside me, like the thousands of pins and needles electrifying my legs. I rush to the cluster of trash, pushing away the burning snow with bare hands. Can it be saved, the wretched creature? Breath escapes my purpled lips as fog obscures my vision, already impaired in the deep blue winter twilight. Try as I might to fight through the gray matter of snow and paper pilgrims, trying to reach an end to this mess of frozen waste; trying with every drop of heated blood pushing through my veins – the carnival fish is gone. Snow drifts and whispers across the black asphalt on its belly, curving and shifting with the night. Steadily, I retreat down the empty street; looking from window to window at lights and decorations, and shaking a little every so often, so the snow doesn’t have a chance to pile up.

Things That Break

Promises
Hearts
Light bulbs
Christmas decorations
China dolls
Fancy plates
Windows (shatter)
Mirrors
Computers/technology
Coffee makers – of course on early Monday mornings
Dawns & days
Silence
Spines of books – oh how crisply they break
Cars break down on the sides of dark lonely back roads
People break up in public – shouting and slamming doors
Heels break on the way to the wedding
Engagements break
Long fake Fingernails break
Ankles break
Families break – nothing can make you feel so guilty and be so much not your fault
Smashed pumpkins
Favorite cds
Flower pots
Beer bottles – glass
Sea shells kept in drawers for memories
Waves on the along the sea shore
Stitches sown in far away places on clothes sold by the millions. How many little fingers broke from sewing little broken stitches?

Souls – not souls. Souls do not break. They split into pieces. Like amoebas. They split and split, a constant dividing – but no. Souls do not break.