It Snowed a Little Bit Today

Something about cities no longer makes me comfortable, but I don't think I was ever comfortable in cities, but as an English major and a part of the learned class and as a part of grownup suburbia, I still cannot escape being a part of suburbia. It it just far too comfortable sometimes. The buildings in the city are all looking over my shoulder, and with old age comes more anxieties that someone will be stealing my answers. They are all trying to pry, but it seems as the people walk past you they don't look at you, and so you get lost in the cement of the sidewalk and you could melt like the wicked witch of the west and no one would see anything. You can't get noticed. You can maybe advertise, but I'd need millions of dollars that I don't have because I'm not working in the city.

So I'm comfortable in the suburbs where there is not as much traffic and there is only gridlock at stop signs that should be stop lights, but we just haven't gotten to that yet. It's not an election year yet. No one has died yet. Where the houses are happy or at least disguised with glitter and pine trees and wrapped in lights, a small blanket of warmth as we run into the teeth of winter. It's where you have loved ones. It's where you have family. It's where you have your contingency plan. It's where you have your family. Sometimes there are sidewalks and awkward smiles from you neighbors, and the biggest worry on your mind is that the neighbor that moved down the street is rumored to be an ex-con, but he seems nice enough. We're ignoring the cocaine bust that took place here seven years ago. Forgetting, actually. There's maybe one black family, the nice Asian couple with the annoying poodle, and those two old ladies that live together who everyone kind of assumes are lesbians, but they keep to themselves. Where there are still an alarming number of people who say nigger because we all feel safe. Yes, yes, where we're all smiling awkwardly to one another.

So I'm supposed to challenge myself, I suppose. I should take more chances, more artistic chances. Break out a bit, at least see more of the country, but here I am in some type of quicksand. I could call it anxiety, but if I could have just listened to Kierkegaard, then I would realize that that is natural in all of us and I should take his advice and worry about things, and I think I could go out in the world with my ax and chop down a tree or four, but then I'd be taking the advice of someone how hardly ever left home and was broken hearted more than not. He traveled to Germany once maybe twice. I can't even say this, not yet. I've been to Canada four times.

Suburbia could be a bad thing if you are alone. It is probably worse in the city. I took some Sociology classes that told me suicide rates are higher in cities. So many people, but so much isolation. Everyone, keep to yourselves. It's on the farm where there is family, friends, and blind faith. You move to the city and lose your innocence, you can get an education one way or another, and you lose your faith, you lose your old friends, and you don't really talk to your family much, maybe once a month, maybe. So if I were in the city, I'd feel that much colder, though the lake next to it and all the asphalt keeps it warmer than the suburbs; the suburbs are blanketed with families and happy or not, there is someone reaching out a hand for my hand, and that seems to be the more important thing right now.

With winter approaching in lands where there is a bite in the air, the buildings grow shorter, the sky grows taller, and those days where the sky is so high, it lasts forever, and the sun is bright, blinding, but I'm shaking with a chill. It's so deceptive. I could have sworn otherwise. This constant trick, it hasn't even begun yet. Some other times the clouds sink lower and lower in the sky and cover some of the tops of the tallest buildings, and maybe if I reach out I can spoon myself some gray matter. The claustrophobia gets more intense in the city on days like these. In the suburbs I can order a pizza and, at most, just glance at the sky. In the country I can imagine the land going to sleep and the blanket coming to tuck us in for the night. And maybe my wife will still be warm enough.

These images of cities have been weighing on me. I'm thinking of a city in the future. Remember the old cartoons with the cities in the future, they look nothing like now. But then again, cartoon technology wasn't so good back then.

A City Pulsing Not on Earth

No oil, no no no money. No engines, no pistons, no valves, no leaks, nothing filled, nothing unfilled, nothing fulfilled. 3 spaces, 2 spaces, spaces, no spaces. Space. Plenty of answers from aliens who willed it all to not humanity. It's not quite breathing. It's not quite time. No time. No, time. Just knowing without thinking, it's not thinking but it is. And there is no knowing about knowing. (trying to paint a picture in words, but synaesthesia failing) (is it?) Buildings that have no foundations, cars that aren't cars, rush hours with neither hours nor rushing, comb-overs that were never necessarily, no sex and no sex and nothing asexual but something. A city of robots that aren't robots, running marathons (it's not quite breathing). No cement, no limestone, no gravestones, no names, no no no money. It's not always green--there aren't any colors. Think. There's no thinking, no verbs, no words, complications or simplicity. But not nothing.

A place where electricity was never an innovation, far beyond those of mortal men, not men, have not been has-beens, not here, no. (trying to draw with abc's, or, rather, 0s and 1s) Colors are but no one worries, where one is no one. One with numbers, no individuals, but not like a Rand novel, not a novel, no novels, no words, no art, but not artless, no words but words unnecessary. So no words, no sentences, paragraphs, pages, books, trees, leaves, oxygen, carbon dioxide, chlorophyll, stomata, cells. Yes, cells. No, maybe cells--doesn't matter. Doesn't matter? Where robots, not robots, but those far beyond those of mortal men don't cry, they don't cry, no tears, no fears, no Tears for Fears, no years, but time, but mortality? Maybe eat, no stomach, maybe sleep, no eyes, but all seeing, a world of gods (ask ask ask yourself here) not walking, not waking, maybe sleeping, but existing. There is that much. There exists.

On Ultra Creative Sensations (Not Really)

I feel like writing something, especially while I have that tired ultra creative sensation running through me. It used to happen a lot to me, though not much since high school. I mention high school a lot, and on some level that bothers me because I often cite high school as not being the most memorable time in my life, and I also don't like to dwell too much on the past. That's what I tell myself often enough. I'm not saying that what I'm writing right now is creative, but it's something, and I used to write a lot of nothing down. If I had been aware of Sartre or existentialism when I was 16, I would have realized that I was writing about nothing a whole hell of a lot. I knew about Kafka. I made a lot of claims about Kafka that I could only back up with a false air of confidence. I'm pretty sure I didn't read parts two and three to The Metamorphosis until I was a Freshman in college. But I was a fan of the creativity, the seeming randomness of that story. I hear that Kafka didn't think too much of his stories, and I assume that it's semi-well-known that he wanted all of his work to be destroyed after he died, though that didn't happen thanks to a friendly but hapless friend who turned out to be a hack at finishing and editing Kafka's unfinished pieces.

I was reading a book just now, about fifteen minutes ago that had a lot to do about death. I really don't think I like death that much, though death is in the future, and I'd much rather think about the future than about the past. Now, what I really should be doing is concentrating more on the present because I have more control over that than anything else, but as a human being with inconsistent and often conflicting and confusing emotions, I must dwell on both the past and future and a myriad of unpleasant thoughts. Not to mention the bad dreams. I have a lot of bad dreams. I'm thinking it's my room. I should probably get out sometime, but where to go? What to do? You see, the present is a boring, yet actually quite comfortable place. I should probably try meditating more often.

But this book's first 40 some pages were good, but they were sad. Sad isn't the right word. There was more to it. It was a nightmare. You try to put yourself in the main character's shoes, and you feel uncomfortable. What would I do if I were surrounded by death? How could I handle this situation or that situation or the dying mother, the dead father? Maybe this is just a sign of a good book, something that rips open your chest and starts to massage it, not in a relaxing way, a menacing, knowing way. It isn't comfortable. Literature isn't supposed to be. What have I gotten myself into?