Red-Bummed Buzzer

Today I was walking to the bank and my sister and I saw a bee on this little stone bridge. We were expecting it to buzz away when we walked by but it stayed there, stalking about in tight little circles. “It’s dancing!” My sister said. And so it was, its measured figure-eights a biological map for its hive-mates.

We trudged along through the soupy, humid air, chastising ourselves for not taking a picture. It was quite a pretty fuzzy little bumblebee, with a strange reddish bum that I’ve never seen the likes of before. Then again, most of my experience with bees involves madly dashing away from them in a jerky and embarrassing fashion. Anyways, we arrived at the bank and I cashed my check and deposited most of the monies (except for a nice little hunk which is being used, at this very moment, to purchase Pokemon Black. Ah, pokemon, you rule my wallet.)  As we left the delicious coolness of the building, my sister wondered whether or not the bee would still be dancing when we crossed the bridge again. “It probably flew away already,” I said, effectively dashing her hopes.

We approached the concrete bridge, with its wannabe graffiti and strangely placed poles, and witnessed a family of five very blonde people crossing over. A little girl smiled gleefully as she hefted a strollerfull of plastic baby, and of course, being the pessimist that I sometimes am, I said that the bee had probably gotten crushed if it had stuck around. And lo an behold, halfway across the bridge we encountered a mangled yellow body, its legs waving feebly in the heavy air. My sister frowned. “Should I put it out of its misery?” She asked, and I nodded. Into the air flew her chunky flip flop, and quickly she ended the suffering of that poor little bee.

But then, just as we were about to step onto the sidewalk, there was our little red-bummed friend, flopped onto his back but very much alive. The other bee, I realized, had been much too yellow. And so with a gentle breath we set him onto his pollen-laden legs, and he stumbled about before settling back into his perfectly executed, geographical figure-eights.

I’m Feeling Incredibly Hopeful

Lately I’ve been finding more and more people who are willing to talk to me about important things. About the world and change and humanity, about love and words and life. I think that at this point in time I am at my happiest and my saddest, my saddest because I am finally realizing all that ails the world and its inhabitants, happiest because I am not alone, because people exist who can with their sounded thoughts make my heart soar with weightless hope, past the physical and into the realm of initiative where I feel like I can do something, we can do something.

To change, to heal, to create and to revive – I realize that I need these people, because they help me gather my thoughts and if I didn’t have them to put my words to they would sit in my head and stagnate, and that can never happen, no, no, no, I want my words to flourish! I want them to evolve, to move my hand and to move others.

Oh, I am so very sad. I am so very happy. I love people. With all our wreckage and smog and pasts, with all our dreams and grins and futures, I love us.

I even love people I don’t know. I love Stephen Fry, he is a great man. I love this guy –> http://www.youtube.com/user/Blade376 for what he is doing with his Universal Solutions Project and you should watch his videos because he is good and his plan is fantastical yet at once fully achievable. I love people who are no longer here, like Sylvia Plath though I’ve only just begun to read her stunningly crafted works, and Oscar Wilde who wrote The Portrait of Dorian Grey which is quite good and you should read it.

If you are reading this, I love you. If you are not reading this, what the poo, I still love you.

Tongues

I wish, sometimes,

that my tongue was

sharp and precise;

carving words into

blank air canvases

with ease.

But then, I find,

a tongue that is

heavy moving and

a little dull

relies on the

mind to guide it,

while a tongue with a

razor edge may slip,

unbidden,

from its sheath.

Revolution of the Mind

I’ve been feeling rather philosophical lately. I’ve been drawing conclusions about things that have long dug at my mind.

Last night some of my best friends came over for our “Rapture” Party. We were supposed to watch Doctor Who and do some crazy end of the world crap, but then one of my friends had to go home. So instead my other friend, me, and my brother ended up involved in one of the deepest and most fulfilling conversations of my life.

It started with music. We were listening to Tool, and if I might geek out for a moment, Tool is utterly brilliant. Their music is tear-worthy, and the way they utilize words as instruments themselves just astounds me. It was those words that plunged us into our adventurous conversation.

We talked about society. How we are all manufactured to fit into a tidy little mold, under the pretense that we are doing what we are meant to be doing. Going to school, to college, getting a job, paying bills, bills, bills, raising a family to do the same, retiring, and ultimately dying. When you look at it, and truly think about it, we spend all of our lives trying to get to a monotonous stability.

Society will judge you on how you reach your monotony. People will look at your GPA and from that, make an assessment of your intelligence. Intellect and booksmarts do not often keep the same company. My friend was saying how you can talk to someone in the oh-so-prestigious Honors Society, and their conversation doesn’t run deeper than the superficial. Many people seem to hold in their minds that the judgments of our teachers on our intelligence is absolute, that a rubric can determine our worth. The problem is that school, for many of us, lacks passion and motivation. As I said in my last post, what if I don’t want to pour my efforts into their classes? Certainly some of the subject matter is interesting. Biology and chemistry are astounding, but the rote-learning method of high school puts an incredible damper on learning almost anything, and the narrow spectrum of subjects puts us all in a rut that we must learn to climb out of.

Due to the fact that this was, indeed, a “Rapture” party, the conversation took the inevitable turn into religion. I don’t believe in any god. I do acknowledge that for many the thought of a god and an afterlife is comforting, but, scientific evidence aside, I cannot and will not ever be able to accept a god that would condemn me to eternal torture due to my skepticism. Some people will assume that we who do not look forward to an afterlife must be incredibly depressed, but it’s just the opposite. For the religious, much of their lives are spent working towards an unlikely salvation; but for me, my life is spent working for now. For my happiness. That may sound selfish, but I don’t think that the word “selfish” should get as much negativity as it does. We are all selfish. Trying to get into Heaven is selfish. It is buried in our instincts to put ourselves above others. But I am not only concerned with my own happiness; I am concerned with the happiness of the many people that I love as well. Not believing in an afterlife only serves to motivate me to make the most out of my life that I possibly can.

(this is an incredibly disorganized post, but meh. No matter.) We sat outside in the dark and talked about how hopeless it can seem. How impossible it feels to escape the template that has been set in place for us. We talked about how things need to change. How we need a revolution. Look at our world. The government is regulating what goes on in women’s bodies, it is regulating who is allowed to fall in love with who, and it is representing not The People, but the rich and the mega-corporations. It is the time for change. None of us knows quite how, but at the very least we, a group of barely-adults, are able to recognize these problems. Recognition is the first step to solving these issues. And so perhaps we need to make as many people aware as possible, to have more deep, shiver-inducing conversations. But some people just won’t listen. My brother and my friend are about the only people who have so openly communicated in this way with me, and when i have tried to talk this way with some of my other friends, all I got was blank stares.

Our conversation covered much, much more than what I mentioned here, but I fear that if I try to add any more it will come out sloppier than what I’ve already written, so I’d like to say that I’m not going to stop trying to get others to think.. I won’t stop talking. I don’t know how helpful this post is, but hopefully it will get you thinking as well, and kick-start your own conversations that might evolve into speeches that might reach the ears of millions and, because dreaming big is good, billions. Please, please, please let me know if my rambling inspires you, and tell me how it inspires you, and perhaps someday soon we can take that inspiration and turn it into action.

I’ve Decided

Just now I decided many things for my future. I decided that when I have kids we will not celebrate some man’s supposed zombification by stuffing ourselves with overly-processed chicken butt treats.

I have decided that we will not celebrate said man’s birth by waiting in huge lines of screaming people to get some object that will later be tossed away. Christmas is douche. I’d rather surprise my family with gifts throughout the year BECAUSE I LOVE THEM. Not because some girl went all teenmom and had a shitfit and claimed to be a virgin.

I have decided that my children will watch a lot of animal planet and the discovery channel and national geographic because those channels are fabulous and interesting and they were my favorites when I was a kid. They will also watch invader zim, and the first season of pokemon. But only the first.

I have decided that before I even have kids I’m going to finish up school and I’m going to make sure as fuck that I get out of it doing something I love. Maybe I’ll be a translator or a dietitian or – oh how I dream – a writer! And then I’m going to travel around Europe. Perhaps I’ll backpack it. Yes, I’ll backpack through Europe and I hopehopehope I’ll move there.

Then I’ll fall in love with someone fantastic and beautiful and we’ll have late night talks when the stars are all out but no moon, and we’ll drink hot tea in the morning and sometimes we’ll get into arguments because I love to argue but everything will always turn out fine.

We’ll have kids, maybe we’ll have one kid and adopt another one and we’ll love them so so much. We won’t sneak veggies into their food because we’ll teach them that veggies are nommy. We won’t hide things from them and we’ll have real conversations with them and they will be the best children ever.

We’ll all change the world, in some way. We’ll recycle. We’ll compost. We’ll find worthwhile movements and we will do our best to make a difference. I’m not completely sure how yet, but we will.

I’ve decided all of these things. Maybe they won’t happen precisely that way, but I will try my hardest to make those wishes and hopes and dreams come true because that is my purpose in life, to do what I want and what makes me and the people I love happy..

Some Sort of Rant

Quite a lot has happened lately. First and foremost, I passed my Senior Project. Woo. I attribute my success to my intensely flight-attendantesque outfit.

Now that I’ve finished with all of that project crap, I really just want to stay home and veg on the internet until fall when college starts. I’ve come to realize that High School is incredibly and insanely stupid, most of the time. You’re spending all of this time learning math or chemistry and writing about things you’ve read, but what if you just want to write? What if you want to read a book without reflexively thinking, “hey, look, a simile,” or “what a friggin ridiculous hyperbole!” Well of course if you just write or if you just read then you’ll starve. It’s very sad.

Another thing that’s incredibly stupid: tuition. I’m afraid that I’m going to go to college and learn about what I love, but once I get out I’ll be stuck doing something I hate for the rest of my life just to pay for learning. What the frig. This is so stupid. We pay to learn. Knowledge can’t be something free, can it? I wouldn’t call myself a pessimist, but the world is really easy to hate sometimes.

This is turning into a rant, but meh. Rants are easy and relieving to write, even if no one reads them.

On a lighter note, one of the best things I’ve done lately is watch The Mighty Boosh. All of it. In one night. That’s a 10 hour long journey through time and space. If you haven’t seen it, you most definitely should. British comedies are so fantabulous.

Hm. There’s really nothing else to report.

Words

I think that words are wonderful and I really don’t see how so many kids will just disregard them “Oh I have to read a whole book in three months? Woe is me, woe is me, these words thrust upon my weak and withered brain, the final straw, can you feel my pain?” only not exactly like that. Don’t they see that words are monumentally important and great? I like words, I don’t know all words or even that many really I know a few long ones like superfluous but I don’t read the dictionary I let the words come to me and it’s mostly little ones that I really really love like the word dream, oh I could sit and dwell on that word for hours or even the word belly just because it rolls off my tongue so nicely belly belly belly. But words are so beautiful because for every type of thing there are words, if something is indescribable then right there you have described it if something is a little scary it is creepy and if it is a lot scary it is terrifying, horrific, traumatizing! We all use words they don’t even have to be spoken or written because they’re in your head filling it but there’s always room for more you never really and truly forget anything you’ve heard and so the same word is there a billion times but every time it is different like you, and you! And you? And you. And YOU! And you?! Only more more more because you could be you reader or it could be the person over there and once it’s in your head it’s there forever. I love my words all gathered up in my brain and I want to keep them for myself but I also want to share them so read this now and let the words soak into your brain and then maybe you will share some words with me as well, oh that would be exciting splendid quite wonderful really!