The Written Word
Day in the Life
As she biked she looked up and saw a school bus full of prisoners. "What?" she thought, "Where could they possibly be going?” She could tell they were prisoners because they were wearing orange jumpsuits and she wondered when prisoners as a whole had stopped wearing stripes. She decided to mentally take note of looking the info up on Wikipedia when she got a chance.
She wondered about Google and Wikipedia and how the world had come to an agreeance that everything they saw on the internet was true. She thought it would be a particularly nice thing if everything on the Internet was actually true and that people could somehow trust each other on it was a really beautiful thing. Then she missed her turn.
He looked out the window of the school bus and saw a pretty young woman riding her bike. Her hair was flopping around in the wind and she looked so free- much freer than he had been in years. His jail sentence had been 9 years but he'd been in for 3 and if he continued to "not fuck up" he would be out by September of this year, just in time for his birthday. "The whole system is fucked", he thought. Just then, Roger, next to him, punched him in the face. This started a whole bunch of rowdy commotion and fighting and the bus driver had to pull the bus over.
"I should be used to driving prisoners around by now," Stu thought as he drove the prisoners to their annual theme park outing. But he wasn't and he knew it. "I'm such a coward" he thought, "Why didn't I stay in nursing school after the war like I wanted to?" But then he had gotten Becky pregnant and he couldn't support her on his student loans so he quit school. And now he was driving a bunch of fuck tards to a theme park outing that they didn't deserve. All of a sudden there was a large raucous and he realized the prisoners were fighting again. "Fuck" he thought, and pulled the bus over, the security went towards the back to find the cause of the problem. As security moved back Stu looked out the window and saw an 30 something year old man walking a mid-sized dog with a baby tied to his chest.
As he walked Ross thought about how happy he was to get out of his house. Judy had been nagging about this and about that for the house and he was just sick of it. But he was too fat and too old to try and start over and anyways he was about to get that promotion soon and then he could just pay someone to make his wife happy. That sounded weird to think, what he meant was someone to fix the house for her.
Also he was a dad now, and although it severely depleted the amount of sleep he got, it still cheered him up when he needed it most. He looked down at his son and thought about all the things he would teach him, like this strange fact he read the other day about prisoners and the reason they wear orange instead of stripes having to do with a the fact that stripes had a negative association to chain gangs. Then he thought about how they were both pretty much the same thing and in the future that orange might be associated with something else negative and they'd probably change it again. Similar to the fact that "negro" was a word, then it was switched to "colored", then "black", and now "African American" or the word "retarded" to "disabled", to "differently abled". It's all the same shit he thought.
"What is truth?" he thought miserably as he looked down at his son's patchy haired head, "How can we spend all our lives trying to find it when we know from Schrodinger's cat that truth isn't really what we conceptualize it to be. As kids we are taught boy/girl, rich/poor, good/bad, black/white, but really none of those are actual truths or how the world works. Why do we try to force our world into these buckets? Are we so small that we can't comprehend that everything is a paradox?" He let out a sigh and turned back home to kiss his wife.
Douglas
Douglas decided to take an impromptu detour through the beach on his way home. He had woken up earlier for a Saturday, around 9, and had gone to the library to return his murder mystery novels. He had sped through them on Friday night- in the tub. He always knew who the killer was right away and so he never fully read the book- unless of course he couldn't guess it by the third chapter, or if he guessed wrong when he skipped to the end, but this time he had gotten them all right.
He read while he listened to classical music on the radio and his cat meowed occassionally to be let out of the bathroom. However, he liked to have company while he bathed and refused to let him/her out- he wasnt quite sure if it was mae and hadnt bothered to find out.
He walked along the beach with his khaki pants rolled neatly up so as not to touch the waves and his button down shirt securely buttoned. This was making him somewhat hot but he decideed it would be good to get some sun- his mother was always going on about how pale he was and how this didnt help him in getting a girlfriend.
He hadnt so much trouble getting a girlfriend, when he wanted one, it was more about keeping her around. He looked across the ocean as he walked and thought about the last girl he had been with- his girlfriend Valencia . She had been plump with soft eyes. But she- like the others- had left him. They always disappeared and he was tired of it. Like an unsuspecting victim of a collapsing beach chair, it happened pretty quickly but all laong it had been his fault. Not checking to see if the chair had been properly placed, or if the shiftting in/for comfort had put a strain on the foundation.
Thinking of this made Douglas angry and he furroed his brow against the increasingly hot sun. Just then, some older thin tan women passed him on the beach. Some of them had smeared sunscreen on their lips and he amused himself by thinking they resembled zombies- like from his favorite TV show.
Appart from going to the library to drop off the books Douglas had also stopped at the Panaderia and had bought a baguette to eat with his lunch- which he was hungry for already.
Hungry like he had once been for Valencia. although she had been plump she was the right shape and he appreciated that about her- perhaps he hadn't been clear enough.
The beach had started to fill up and couples under umbrellas and dads playing with their children and moms holding toddlers in the water were little but trees in the forest to Douglas as he continued to think about Valencia.
Occasionally he would see an orange butterfly glide towards the ocean horizon and he would whisper for them not to go- it would not be safe there for them, the would surely drown, but like Valencia and the others he could do nothing to stop them.
As he walked across the beach a child ignorantly ran right in fron of him and again he furrowed his eyebrows as he had to stop his pace to not run into the child.
Again he realized he was hot and now thirsty and he wanted to get home and eat lunch. He looked at his watch and it was 12:15- would probably be getting sunburnt from the noon sun, but at least his baguette would be nice and warm and the wind had picked up so he didn't feel as hot as he had.
Suddenly he locked eyes with a little boy, must have been 5 or 6, ducking his squirt gun into the water but instead of aiming it at his younger brother as Douglas had peripherally watched him do as he walked the boy aimed it at Douglas.
The boy aimed it at Douglas and sprayed him right on his crotch.
Enraged, Douglas ran at him and when he came to he was holding the boy's little shoulders under the water. He was waist deep and the baguette layed sprawled across the sand, plastic bag rippling in the wind. What looked like the boys mother was screaming and both parents were now running towards him.
But it was too late. The boys shoulders had ceased to thrash about and there was a stillness to him that Douglas found calming.
Some Poems on People
you've always been naive
but you have crossed the line
dont ruin your life
by marrying the first one who asks
stop copying me
and then
start being you
or maybe thats who "you" is
what do i know
ive always wondered
what is wrong with you?
why do you always act?
what?
are you hiding something?
I doubt you would know it if you were
I've never thought you were smart enough
you know what you want
at least thats the way you want it
but you sometimes get lost
like anyone would
except you cant accept it
and its hard to fix things
you cant accept
you cant spell either
your positivity baffles me
in a great way
im afraid one day
ill look at you with different eyes
how can you so smart at math
but so dumb at life?
its hard to get close to you
you might be a poorly built robot
you live in a square
but it fits you
sometimes i wonder if your friends w/people like me
for your vicarious amusement
you are the definition of an artist
emotional, unstable, self absorbed, easily enamored
i appreciate when you uncharactersitcally
leave self-centered at the door
it must be hard for you
bejeweled
you use to cover your round fingers
like black clothes
and your desperate
and accomplished
attempt at being ordinary
its the most you could strive for
youve got a sour face
it keeps ppl from approaching you
youre really not that sour
your just not very much fun
do you beleive you are open minded?
you refuse to accept theres more than one reality
i refuse to accept an open minded person would feel that way
impatient & arrogant
you think your shit dont stink?
probably less than most
you would answer
you are so beautiful
but your ego weighs you down
it derails you from who you would be
if you just set it down
you'd see yourself more beautifully
your pessimism suprises me
because youa re so willing to tke flight
your thoughts impresss me
but your actions leave me disgusted
As she biked she looked up and saw a school bus full of prisoners. "What?" she thought, "Where could they possibly be going?” She could tell they were prisoners because they were wearing orange jumpsuits and she wondered when prisoners as a whole had stopped wearing stripes. She decided to mentally take note of looking the info up on Wikipedia when she got a chance.
She wondered about Google and Wikipedia and how the world had come to an agreeance that everything they saw on the internet was true. She thought it would be a particularly nice thing if everything on the Internet was actually true and that people could somehow trust each other on it was a really beautiful thing. Then she missed her turn.
He looked out the window of the school bus and saw a pretty young woman riding her bike. Her hair was flopping around in the wind and she looked so free- much freer than he had been in years. His jail sentence had been 9 years but he'd been in for 3 and if he continued to "not fuck up" he would be out by September of this year, just in time for his birthday. "The whole system is fucked", he thought. Just then, Roger, next to him, punched him in the face. This started a whole bunch of rowdy commotion and fighting and the bus driver had to pull the bus over.
"I should be used to driving prisoners around by now," Stu thought as he drove the prisoners to their annual theme park outing. But he wasn't and he knew it. "I'm such a coward" he thought, "Why didn't I stay in nursing school after the war like I wanted to?" But then he had gotten Becky pregnant and he couldn't support her on his student loans so he quit school. And now he was driving a bunch of fuck tards to a theme park outing that they didn't deserve. All of a sudden there was a large raucous and he realized the prisoners were fighting again. "Fuck" he thought, and pulled the bus over, the security went towards the back to find the cause of the problem. As security moved back Stu looked out the window and saw an 30 something year old man walking a mid-sized dog with a baby tied to his chest.
As he walked Ross thought about how happy he was to get out of his house. Judy had been nagging about this and about that for the house and he was just sick of it. But he was too fat and too old to try and start over and anyways he was about to get that promotion soon and then he could just pay someone to make his wife happy. That sounded weird to think, what he meant was someone to fix the house for her.
Also he was a dad now, and although it severely depleted the amount of sleep he got, it still cheered him up when he needed it most. He looked down at his son and thought about all the things he would teach him, like this strange fact he read the other day about prisoners and the reason they wear orange instead of stripes having to do with a the fact that stripes had a negative association to chain gangs. Then he thought about how they were both pretty much the same thing and in the future that orange might be associated with something else negative and they'd probably change it again. Similar to the fact that "negro" was a word, then it was switched to "colored", then "black", and now "African American" or the word "retarded" to "disabled", to "differently abled". It's all the same shit he thought.
"What is truth?" he thought miserably as he looked down at his son's patchy haired head, "How can we spend all our lives trying to find it when we know from Schrodinger's cat that truth isn't really what we conceptualize it to be. As kids we are taught boy/girl, rich/poor, good/bad, black/white, but really none of those are actual truths or how the world works. Why do we try to force our world into these buckets? Are we so small that we can't comprehend that everything is a paradox?" He let out a sigh and turned back home to kiss his wife.
Douglas
Douglas decided to take an impromptu detour through the beach on his way home. He had woken up earlier for a Saturday, around 9, and had gone to the library to return his murder mystery novels. He had sped through them on Friday night- in the tub. He always knew who the killer was right away and so he never fully read the book- unless of course he couldn't guess it by the third chapter, or if he guessed wrong when he skipped to the end, but this time he had gotten them all right.
He read while he listened to classical music on the radio and his cat meowed occassionally to be let out of the bathroom. However, he liked to have company while he bathed and refused to let him/her out- he wasnt quite sure if it was mae and hadnt bothered to find out.
He walked along the beach with his khaki pants rolled neatly up so as not to touch the waves and his button down shirt securely buttoned. This was making him somewhat hot but he decideed it would be good to get some sun- his mother was always going on about how pale he was and how this didnt help him in getting a girlfriend.
He hadnt so much trouble getting a girlfriend, when he wanted one, it was more about keeping her around. He looked across the ocean as he walked and thought about the last girl he had been with- his girlfriend Valencia . She had been plump with soft eyes. But she- like the others- had left him. They always disappeared and he was tired of it. Like an unsuspecting victim of a collapsing beach chair, it happened pretty quickly but all laong it had been his fault. Not checking to see if the chair had been properly placed, or if the shiftting in/for comfort had put a strain on the foundation.
Thinking of this made Douglas angry and he furroed his brow against the increasingly hot sun. Just then, some older thin tan women passed him on the beach. Some of them had smeared sunscreen on their lips and he amused himself by thinking they resembled zombies- like from his favorite TV show.
Appart from going to the library to drop off the books Douglas had also stopped at the Panaderia and had bought a baguette to eat with his lunch- which he was hungry for already.
Hungry like he had once been for Valencia. although she had been plump she was the right shape and he appreciated that about her- perhaps he hadn't been clear enough.
The beach had started to fill up and couples under umbrellas and dads playing with their children and moms holding toddlers in the water were little but trees in the forest to Douglas as he continued to think about Valencia.
Occasionally he would see an orange butterfly glide towards the ocean horizon and he would whisper for them not to go- it would not be safe there for them, the would surely drown, but like Valencia and the others he could do nothing to stop them.
As he walked across the beach a child ignorantly ran right in fron of him and again he furrowed his eyebrows as he had to stop his pace to not run into the child.
Again he realized he was hot and now thirsty and he wanted to get home and eat lunch. He looked at his watch and it was 12:15- would probably be getting sunburnt from the noon sun, but at least his baguette would be nice and warm and the wind had picked up so he didn't feel as hot as he had.
Suddenly he locked eyes with a little boy, must have been 5 or 6, ducking his squirt gun into the water but instead of aiming it at his younger brother as Douglas had peripherally watched him do as he walked the boy aimed it at Douglas.
The boy aimed it at Douglas and sprayed him right on his crotch.
Enraged, Douglas ran at him and when he came to he was holding the boy's little shoulders under the water. He was waist deep and the baguette layed sprawled across the sand, plastic bag rippling in the wind. What looked like the boys mother was screaming and both parents were now running towards him.
But it was too late. The boys shoulders had ceased to thrash about and there was a stillness to him that Douglas found calming.
Some Poems on People
you've always been naive
but you have crossed the line
dont ruin your life
by marrying the first one who asks
stop copying me
and then
start being you
or maybe thats who "you" is
what do i know
ive always wondered
what is wrong with you?
why do you always act?
what?
are you hiding something?
I doubt you would know it if you were
I've never thought you were smart enough
you know what you want
at least thats the way you want it
but you sometimes get lost
like anyone would
except you cant accept it
and its hard to fix things
you cant accept
you cant spell either
your positivity baffles me
in a great way
im afraid one day
ill look at you with different eyes
how can you so smart at math
but so dumb at life?
its hard to get close to you
you might be a poorly built robot
you live in a square
but it fits you
sometimes i wonder if your friends w/people like me
for your vicarious amusement
you are the definition of an artist
emotional, unstable, self absorbed, easily enamored
i appreciate when you uncharactersitcally
leave self-centered at the door
it must be hard for you
bejeweled
you use to cover your round fingers
like black clothes
and your desperate
and accomplished
attempt at being ordinary
its the most you could strive for
youve got a sour face
it keeps ppl from approaching you
youre really not that sour
your just not very much fun
do you beleive you are open minded?
you refuse to accept theres more than one reality
i refuse to accept an open minded person would feel that way
impatient & arrogant
you think your shit dont stink?
probably less than most
you would answer
you are so beautiful
but your ego weighs you down
it derails you from who you would be
if you just set it down
you'd see yourself more beautifully
your pessimism suprises me
because youa re so willing to tke flight
your thoughts impresss me
but your actions leave me disgusted
