I think the most god-awful joke a parent could play on their child would be to regretfully 'reveal' to them over a meal that they were supposed to have had a twin at birth, but unfortunately more or less ate their sibling in the womb. That would be epic.

Why is it
that something which could be said
in someone's journal
and be generally considered
the product of a teen mind wishing to be
deep and dark and tragically introspective,
surrounded by the give-away aura
of purposeful vagueness,
then can be given some line-breaks
and a title,
get published as poetry,
and suddenly be accepted as an all-encompassing truth?

If this is written like this,
does it turn something which is potentially pretentious
into a grain of profound, heaven-quaking insight?



I actually really, really like poetry. But don't tell me this thought hasn't crossed your mind at least once before when you read a particular thing.

(Also, emails. Several of you are waiting on them. Yuki and Uru, I'm thinking of you guys right now ♥ You will get them soon. I'm just slow, and with an internet connection that flickers unpredictably in and out of being, my pace is reduced to a snail-crawl. Sorry.)

A few days ago I was walking to class with an adorkably nerdy male friend, and we were talking about dictatorship and whether he would be a benevolent dictator or not. I think I asked him if he planned to structure his government after that outlined in Plato's "The Republic", and he laughed. Like, literally threw his head back and laughed.

He doesn't have a melodic laugh at all. He had to hold his glasses onto his nose to keep them from falling off, his face went red, and his Adam's apple jumped in a really strange way. There was nothing particularly special about the laugh other than the fact that I'd never heard him do it like that before.

He's smart. Like...according to IQ, I am either borderline clinical genius or just within the bounds of clinical genius, and I still feel like I have nothing on this guy. And I'm fine with that, because sometimes I like feeling stupid. It makes me want to learn. In short; this guy is amazing academically, but it's very odd to see or hear him do much more than smile and chuckle at something he finds amusing. A laugh? That's something.

Sometimes I think that a lot of smart people have a more difficult time letting go than average people because they are the ones who seem to possess the perfect amount of introversion/brain power to think themselves into some form of depression or cynicism. Or something like that. I have much the same problem. But whatever the reason -- perhaps it's just me -- I think that the image of him leaning back and just laughing his ass off without giving a damn whether he is drawing attention or not is going to stick for a long time.

One day I will write a novel, the sole purpose of which will be to torment the AP English students of the future.

The “plot” will double back upon itself endlessly, be dotted with ample holes, and never fully develop into a cohesive storyline. The entire thing will be an introduction to something which never actually begins. The characters will be annoyingly static and never get anything done. They will speak strictly in iambs, and call other characters by their full names every time they address each other directly. One chapter will be comprised of a grocery list of things which none of the characters even bought. Another will be written using only phrases which actually leave my own mouth over the course of one day. Another will be a blank page. Followed by a couple more. Footnotes will be sporadically placed throughout the work, whether or not they relate to the actual material. But everything will relate because there will be no force which pulls the work together into a unit. Each sentence will be just as alone as each footnote. It will never end because it will never begin. Nobody will be affected in any way. Nothing will be learned. It will be a waste.

But it will be such a massive literary disaster that readers and critics alike will be driven mad. What does it mean? Is there a hidden message? They will puzzle over it. It will appear in AP exams, and everybody who takes it will fail because nobody will remember jack shit about the book. There’s nothing to remember.

I will hide away a single document pertaining to the novel. Then, many years after my death, it will be discovered. And it will say simply this:

“Even in death, I’m still fucking with your head. LOL.”

It will make many people very angry.

You know how pregnant women get when their baby starts kicking? How they want everyone within shouting distance to come over and put their hand on their belly and feel the way the baby kicks? I've never been one to do that; go over and feel their stomach, I mean. Call me crazy, but that's a rather--how to put this?--intimate gesture, don't you think? Or is that just me being weird? Probably a bit of both. I guess that's just one of my little reserves that I didn't know about until recently.

All that to say, there is a girl at the place I work who is pregnant. Very pregnant; as in, due in about four weeks. I was in the back of the restaurant with her and some other people, just chatting, and suddenly the baby began to kick. She leapt up, waddled over to me, grabbed my hand and put in on her stomach. She kept on mouthing 'it's kicking!', but it was like she didn't want to disturb the moment by talking out loud or something. And me; I just wanted to pull my hand away because it kind of freaked me out a bit. I'm the eldest of five (the other four are half-siblings), so I know what a kicking baby feels like. But it's never belonged to someone who wasn't related to me. It was bizarre. It almost scared me. Like I had to suddenly stop and realize that there are people all over the place whom I will never meet; never even know they exist; and yet they lead lives just like mine, and maybe even do wonderful, glorious things worthy of having books and songs written about them...and I'll never know the difference. It was just weird. A weird thought to have at a weird moment.

And then the baby kicked again, right under my hand. There were a bunch of people at my back, pushing up against me and breathing down my neck, putting their hands on this girl's stomach also, but nobody wanted to say a word. It was like all of us had suddenly come to that realization. A realization of 'holy shit, there is something alive inside this woman, and it's going to come out and turn into another one of us'.

And with that, I think all of us couldn't help but feel a bit of almost paternal affection for the kid.

I wonder what she'll name it.

Maybe later I'll actually have something important to say.