nasty/brutish/short

More and more, I begin to believe there is such a thing as being too poor to appreciate beauty. The thought coaxes a desperation that clouds judgment and clutches at the throat and chest, masticating sanity between the steel jaws of a society that is wont to leave you to wander their streets, unable to live until eventually succumbing to death.

repulse // ripples

I’m not sure I believe in the claim that people need merely to exist. In fact, everything just reeks of privilege now, as if the ubiquitous pressure did not exist; a weighted air, crushing lungs and life. It costs money to seek peace, and those who do not come from wealth–I now abhor the idea that such is a “blessing”, as if some holiness drapes–an insult to injury–on those comfortable enough to cultivate such chutzpah, creating a saintly momentum that propels them up their pedestals.

Fuck you, unproductive.

you are in a cavern (salvaged from old notes)

You are in a cavern.* Before you stretches a network of tunnels, branching infinitely. There is no light save for that emanating from you. You look back: almost predictably, it has caved over, but the spaces between boulders are just wide enough for you to peer through. You peek, sigh, and move on.

You notice that with every hundred or so steps you take, there is a rumbling sound behind you. Each one is the sound of the same material crashing down, but with a variety of distinct nuances in timeline, tempo, and volume: one sounds like a tunnel you had long considered traversing, but thought the better of at the last second; another, much closer, sounds like one you would have wanted to walk tomorrow.

*How you got in is of no moment; such thoughts are the luxury of philosophers, and the exigencies of being in a cavern afford nothing in the way of philosophy.

run

I am always exhausted from dreams. In them, I am always running. Always barefoot, soles scraping against concrete–the setting is always some urban footnote, some memory of corporate drudgery, claustrophobia of brutalist walls, brutal spaces–the effort inscribing itself on every part of my body: panting, sweating, heart beating as desperation. I have never experienced looking back; my gaze is always forward: charging, chasing something to which my soul feels entitled.

I never know what it is; I only know that, in all these years, I have never reached it.

in earth

I believe that I am now scared of change because the last few changes have resulted in nothing but pain, distrust, and disappointment in the world and human nature.

This makes escape so much more satisfying, addicting even. The mere possibility of worlds where things are consistent, predictable, worthy of precious trust, where variables of failure can actually be located, studied, analyzed is so utopic that it inspires the rejection of the present world, so as to serve as the seed of change.

stunt

I fear that I have grown even tired of learning. The statement, while to a degree speculative, is no less painful to write, both because of the possibility of realizing the thing feared, as well, and because of the fear itself; the former connotes a stagnation repulsive to human nature, the latter a concession to a world which forces one to find purpose and direction be fore capital and the capacity to build it runs dry. Words have power, after all: to name something is to give it life, for better or for worse.

There is the temptation, of course, to fall into subjectivity; that there is learning even in the inanities of existence, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. But if everyone receives what is due, what, then, is due the one who stops flourishing, pursuit of eudaimonia all but faded from the eyes?