Journal Entries
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Old Poetry
Posted Aug 25, 2001
"The Search"
by Dihybrid (Written, if I recall correctly, in October of 2000)
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Do I really need
this much space?
Do I need to have
this cool breeze on my face?
Is taking a nap
the best use of my time?
Surely without them,
I'd be fine
Somehow our world never feels quite right
And as I look into the sky
under the pale moon-light
I think perhaps somewhere
up among the stars
is a Garden of Eden
looking at us from afar
So I take my time but then
there's something to be done
and when I realize I stop and think,
Why not? Why not indulge myself?
Well, there are earthly things to be done
'Things to do, people to see,' they tell me,
and I realize why
Nobody understands
This is not the end
This is just the beginning
Above the flame, above this earth
Perhaps under a distant sun
Under an alien sky
There's something bigger
I've got to leave
Find a way out of this place
I look inside of me, but there's nothing to be seen
I'm merely a shell
of flesh and bone
Perhaps I should
There's something more
Fulfillment, an answer
But where?
The more I look Outside,
the farther away I get
Why? Nobody understands
me least of All
I'm blinded by the darkness
The far bank calls, but where?
from Where comes this voice?
and Now there's nothing to be heard
The candle flickers,
The fire dies
but in my mind it's still alive
Somehow, I'll be there
Somehow, I'll go there,
this Place,
perhaps it's not so far
this alien sky
It lives, it breathes, it sees
through the fire within
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Any comments - analytical, whimsical, constructive, degrading, awe-inspired, contemptuous - are - more or less - welcome.
Note: I am no longer in the state of mind that I was in when I wrote this, and don't plan to be for some time.
Discuss this Journal entry [6]
Latest reply: Aug 25, 2001
Deanna
Posted Aug 25, 2001
Some time after I had worked my way to the back seat of the bus, Deanna told me something that - had she been someone whose opinion I valued more highly - might have stuck with me for the rest of my life. She had come on to the bus after the rest of us, when the new stop had been added, and so I got to know her in the same way I had gotten to know everyone in the back of the bus - I watched, and I listened, and I remembered. I didn't speak; in what was essentially a whole school year of riding home on that bus, I uttered probably something close to five whole sentences. The only time someone bothered me personally was near the beginning of the year, before it had been established that I was not someone to be bothered; it was Jamie, as it would have to be. Jamie was the kind of person who couldn't resist temptation unless someone was paying him to; he was unrestrained, boisterous, and annoying, and these traits endeared him to no small number of people in the back of the bus, but only for a short period of time. Over the long term, most people began to understand what the words "unrestrained", "boisterous", and "annoying" really meant. The one time he bothered me I was squatting on the pavement, waiting for the bus to arrive, when he ran up from behind and tried to stick his foot up my butt. I put my hand in the way without thinking twice, and other than that, didn't move a muscle. I heard Kevin mumbling something in Jamie's direction about me kicking his ass, but on the whole I was far too lazy for such a blatant waste of energy.
A few months after that, a new stop was added on the route, and Deanna came onto the bus. A few months after that, in fact probably less than two weeks before the last day of school, Deanna talked to me directly for the first time. She said, "Don't kill me or anything, but I think - " and here she paused, and at this point everyone was looking at the two of us - "I think that if anyone on this bus came to shoot up this school, it would be you." I merely smiled, took off my sunglasses, winked (for I have what is something akin to a chronic eye twitch due to the fact that I wear only one contact lens), and said something to the effect of, "Well, that's nice."
Thinking about it now, I would say something like "I'm not that stupid" or "You really don't know a whole lot about me, do you?", but all I did was wink, smile, and mutter something trivial under my breath. Jamie, of course, said, "_OH_, she gets a smile _AND_ a wink," and grinned malevolently, but I knew he was only jesting, and in the spirit of good fun, I chuckled politely, despite the fact that his racist, prejudiced, ignorant ramblings and actions had driven me to fantasize about smashing his face into one of the windows on countless occasions. It's not that I was incapable of something like that, and I think now that most of the people on that bus thought I was capable of far worse (except maybe Yvette, who understood a little bit about me and didn't like me), but the trouble involved in what might be considered an unprovoked attack would require me to put in far more effort than it was really worth to extricate myself from the situation. In short, I was just too damn lazy. At any rate, I told myself, he wouldn't be the last bigot I ever met, and a year listening to his ramblings has brought me to a new understanding of the word "patience" (of course, I've reached even deeper understandings of that word this summer, teaching little kids martial arts, but that will come later) - it was just Jamie being Jamie, and someday, he'd say the wrong thing to the wrong guy, and he'd get what was coming to him. I didn't have to do it.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Aug 25, 2001
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dihybrid, bringing you 100% natural chaotic disequilibrium since 1986 | no war on Iraq
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