I've been wrong. So incredibly wrong. She didn't tell anyone and nobody could understand why she was doing this to herself.
My God Maggie.
I'm sorry.
I'm just sorry.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
To one of my best friends... I'm sorry for this
I’m about to be very hard on you, so be prepared. Know that I love you to the roots, but you must know what I feel. You need a slap in the face, so here it is:
You stupid, arrogant American. You shut yourself in your room and wallow in a luxurious puddle of self pity. What a perfect life you lead and yet you can’t stand it. I’m sure you have to look really hard to find something worth the blade.
You think you’re deep? You are one of the shallowest kind out there, one of those selfish suburban teenagers trying to find a place among people who suffer, people who have a reason to suffer.
Oh, but here’s something new, a distraction from all that simulated hurting. Something to drown you and make you feel strong, like you’ve had to endure, like your life would mean something. You’ve been waiting a long time to drown yourself. I can imagine how great that would feel.
I understand the curiosity. Hell, I’ll be next to you for a while if you don’t come across this, but your weakness has made it a need. You need an excuse to suffer, otherwise you’d be in danger of growing out of it. You’re such a conformist. You’re so pathetic.
Do it for the good time, not for the lifestyle.
Oh, and get over yourself.
You stupid, arrogant American. You shut yourself in your room and wallow in a luxurious puddle of self pity. What a perfect life you lead and yet you can’t stand it. I’m sure you have to look really hard to find something worth the blade.
You think you’re deep? You are one of the shallowest kind out there, one of those selfish suburban teenagers trying to find a place among people who suffer, people who have a reason to suffer.
Oh, but here’s something new, a distraction from all that simulated hurting. Something to drown you and make you feel strong, like you’ve had to endure, like your life would mean something. You’ve been waiting a long time to drown yourself. I can imagine how great that would feel.
I understand the curiosity. Hell, I’ll be next to you for a while if you don’t come across this, but your weakness has made it a need. You need an excuse to suffer, otherwise you’d be in danger of growing out of it. You’re such a conformist. You’re so pathetic.
Do it for the good time, not for the lifestyle.
Oh, and get over yourself.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Happiness like a smooth stone
February 17th, 2008
Elise:
Please refer to this letter often. You frequently need reminding as to why you should live your life the way it will, must be lived.
Understand that you are ignorant. America is a vast realm of ignorance. It isn’t real. Our borders keep out the world like it is an unpleasant secret. We live in a cocoon of meaningless business and politics. The life you have lived so far is not a real life. So far, your life means absolutely nothing. You have done no good and you will always be hollow if you do not escape.
You say and love to believe that you have a kind of internal strength beyond that of most who surround you. I now believe this to be true, but you must also fear that, if it isn’t put to use, you will let it vanish. I hope this fear will give you incentive to leave, to do hard miserable things in your life, to push you out of your ignorance, no matter how cosy and bright it is. I hope you will learn to find the meaning of pain, so become selfless like you only pretend to be.
To live with no physical comforts and no dependency on pretty things will allow you to feel the internal happiness you have always groped blindly for. Not an airy, momentary bliss, but a deep, spiritually dense happiness, a happiness like smooth stone.
Until you have the age to drive your own life, the airy bliss of your youth will suffice, but when you are finally able to search for something more permanent and more concrete, please, please go searching for it. Don’t fall back because the concept looks relieving and delicious. Go searching for your life’s meaning, even if you don’t want to, when you finally reach the brink of it. Find that meaning in other people or in the sky or somewhere else. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t dismiss this because I am young right now. I currently have a clarity that I my not find when I reach the brink, so I am leaving this to give you a forward shove. Don’t waste it.
Elise
Elise:
Please refer to this letter often. You frequently need reminding as to why you should live your life the way it will, must be lived.
Understand that you are ignorant. America is a vast realm of ignorance. It isn’t real. Our borders keep out the world like it is an unpleasant secret. We live in a cocoon of meaningless business and politics. The life you have lived so far is not a real life. So far, your life means absolutely nothing. You have done no good and you will always be hollow if you do not escape.
You say and love to believe that you have a kind of internal strength beyond that of most who surround you. I now believe this to be true, but you must also fear that, if it isn’t put to use, you will let it vanish. I hope this fear will give you incentive to leave, to do hard miserable things in your life, to push you out of your ignorance, no matter how cosy and bright it is. I hope you will learn to find the meaning of pain, so become selfless like you only pretend to be.
To live with no physical comforts and no dependency on pretty things will allow you to feel the internal happiness you have always groped blindly for. Not an airy, momentary bliss, but a deep, spiritually dense happiness, a happiness like smooth stone.
Until you have the age to drive your own life, the airy bliss of your youth will suffice, but when you are finally able to search for something more permanent and more concrete, please, please go searching for it. Don’t fall back because the concept looks relieving and delicious. Go searching for your life’s meaning, even if you don’t want to, when you finally reach the brink of it. Find that meaning in other people or in the sky or somewhere else. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t dismiss this because I am young right now. I currently have a clarity that I my not find when I reach the brink, so I am leaving this to give you a forward shove. Don’t waste it.
Elise
Waking up to the screams of Darfur
February 16th, 2008
Fulton has been wonderful. I am in my bliss right now, though also more than slightly disturbed. Today I bought a book about ending the genocide in Darfur at a non-profit hippie store because I fell in love with the cover. So far I have read a mere 19 pages and already i have a different perspective on life than even earlier today. It is extraordinary how ignorant and bubbled up Americans really are. I am astonished by how little we as a society care about the mass murder and slaughter of innocent human beings. It is called a genocide because entire villages are targeted for extinction and wiped off the face of the Earth every single fucking day because of their ethnicity and religion. I can feel Bob Dylan’s words rising in my chest: “How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn’t see.” I am sickened by our uselessness and blindness. We are really and truly blind. Of the plathura of things Brandon said to me of his discoveries, one means everything to me: “Something Australia made me realize was the extent of America’s waste. All the waste!” Beyond his meaning of physical things such as water and plastic and natural resources, I see now our waste of power. We are the superpower, even if we are to fall, and we do nothing worth-while with that. What are we focusing our efforts on right now? A pointless, expensive, religiously-based war where we meddle with Iraq’s politics. That’s all we seem to give a damn about- politics. Not lives or the crimes against humanity smothering Africa. Well wrap your narrow fucking mind around this, America: 4000 fewer people exist because of their religion in just a part of Sudan. Millions of people have been displaced, millions of women have been raped. The government uses starving as a method of murder, poisoning the wastelands meager water supplies by dumping corpses into them. In is beyond inhuman. In Africa today, human beings are slaughtering other human beings by the thousands.
When will America start seeing? When ill we begin to notice what other people are suffering? The answer is blowing in the wind.
Elise
Fulton has been wonderful. I am in my bliss right now, though also more than slightly disturbed. Today I bought a book about ending the genocide in Darfur at a non-profit hippie store because I fell in love with the cover. So far I have read a mere 19 pages and already i have a different perspective on life than even earlier today. It is extraordinary how ignorant and bubbled up Americans really are. I am astonished by how little we as a society care about the mass murder and slaughter of innocent human beings. It is called a genocide because entire villages are targeted for extinction and wiped off the face of the Earth every single fucking day because of their ethnicity and religion. I can feel Bob Dylan’s words rising in my chest: “How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn’t see.” I am sickened by our uselessness and blindness. We are really and truly blind. Of the plathura of things Brandon said to me of his discoveries, one means everything to me: “Something Australia made me realize was the extent of America’s waste. All the waste!” Beyond his meaning of physical things such as water and plastic and natural resources, I see now our waste of power. We are the superpower, even if we are to fall, and we do nothing worth-while with that. What are we focusing our efforts on right now? A pointless, expensive, religiously-based war where we meddle with Iraq’s politics. That’s all we seem to give a damn about- politics. Not lives or the crimes against humanity smothering Africa. Well wrap your narrow fucking mind around this, America: 4000 fewer people exist because of their religion in just a part of Sudan. Millions of people have been displaced, millions of women have been raped. The government uses starving as a method of murder, poisoning the wastelands meager water supplies by dumping corpses into them. In is beyond inhuman. In Africa today, human beings are slaughtering other human beings by the thousands.
When will America start seeing? When ill we begin to notice what other people are suffering? The answer is blowing in the wind.
Elise
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
