I wonder if, in the future, you'll need to be rich to afford privacy. 

The Child

 The child plays
With a set of mismatched paints,
Strewn across paper
On a classroom easel. 
No rhyme,
No reason, 
No meaning beyond
What the child thinks
Is beautiful.
 
The teacher nods sagely.
The parents beam in approval.
The older sister groans
At the latest masterwork.
The cousin wonders how many more 
They'll make
Before they give up on art 
For good. 
 
The child cries,
Hungry for approval.
At the encouragement 
Of their parents
They soldier on.
New works are brought home,
New stories written with
No rhyme,
No reason,
Nothing but the hope
Of one day being seen. 
 
Authority holds out hope
That the child will give up, 
But the child has parents 
Who give them everything they want.
 If the child had any idea
Of what the world was like
Their work would be inspiring.
But instead it's derivative,
Boring,
Pointless. 
 
Time passes by
And the child soldiers on
In pursuit of praise.
Pen goes to paper,
Paint goes on canvas,
Work is created with
No rhyme,
No reason,
Nothing beyond
A bid for attention.
 
The world is unlucky,
And the child never grows up
No matter how much time passes.
Family connections mean their work goes
From the front of the refrigerator
To the front pages
Of social media. 
 No one likes what they make,
But the world is full of people
Who long to create
Without the risk of judgement. 
 
The child hasn't grown, 
Their work is the work
Of their younger self,
Without the benefit
Of wisdom.
The child,
In a bid for attention,
Builds a world a child cannot live in.
 
The child,
Like all children,
Believes that belief
Is all it takes
To make something real.
The child believes
That if enough people see their work
And tell them that it matters,
That means they must be 
A Picasso
Or a Van Gogh.
The child,
Like all children,
Doesn't want to grow up. 
 
Adults stand from afar,
Mocking the child
For their childish work,
And for learning nothing
About life
In the decades that 
They've been alive.
They're baffled
By those 
Who say that the child's
Work 
Is golden.
 
Somewhere out there,
Someone loves 
Everything the child
Says and does,
But to the rest
There's no rhyme,
No reason,
Nothing but a commentary 
On the folly 
Of the human race. 

    I've been reading through old American Girl magazines on Internet Archive. It's a nice bit of nostalgia, but a lot of them didn't age as well as I expected them to. 

   Am I the only one reflecting on how much has changed since 2014? It's strange, things were bad back then, but it felt so much more hopeful than things are now. We were out of the quagmire of the pandemic, there was a presidential candidate who spoke the language of socialism, we hadn't elected Trump yet, and it felt like things could get better if we just held on. I can't help but think back to the 2016 election, where Trump faced off against Hilary Clinton. I know people say that Kamala's going to win, but I'm honestly a little dubious. Hilary made a lot fewer mistakes, but she still lost. Kamala doesn't have enough insight to see just how important cutting of Israel is, and that's a much bigger deal than the Emails were. It's not people voting for Trump that I'm worried about, it's the people who are now convinced that both sides are too awful to vote for. What if enough people feel like they can't vote for anyone? What happens then? 

Collector

 You horde memories
In boxes,
Untouched by human hand.
The world keeps forgetting 
The things you collect,
But you hold onto the past
As though it were a priceless jewel.
Who else 
Would avoid drawing in magazines
Made to be disassembled?
Who else 
Would try to keep books
With outdated advice?
Who else remembers
The world that you do? 

      At the front of Fred Meyer, there’s a stand where you can buy jewelry for forty bucks a pop. No one in Fred Meyer believes that what they’re selling is worth forty bucks, but they believe that they can convince you to buy it for forty bucks, and the reason they believe that is they know that the people buying jewelry at Goodwill for three bucks want it to be worth forty bucks. 

     I grew up believing that anything you found for cheap, in one of those capsule machines at a grocery store or at the counter of a gift store, could be worth something if you wanted it to be. It didn't need to be worth anything to anyone else, it just had to mean something to you. I still think that, but I've started noticing that there are charms and necklaces being sold for a lot more than they're worth. I'm learning that a lot of what I thought made me unique is actually very common, including my belief that worthless things can be valuable if you like them enough. But I don't think that means we should charge forty dollars for jewelry that will only fetch three dollars at Goodwill. Just because something can be important doesn't mean that it will be. 

Forest

 Sky filters through trees
As summer gives way to fall
Bringing a new world

    I think that both of our presidential candidates have crossed a line. I know the democrats aren't fascist, but on a gut level it feels like they are, or at least that they're complicit with fascism. Would it be more moral to vote for Kamala next election instead of for no one at all? Probably, almost certainly, but my heart doesn't agree. It's not even about punishing, it's this voice in my head saying that a world where both choices are this bad should not exist. I don't believe in this world anymore, and the fact that people are insisting I participate regardless infuriates me. 

Trust

 I know someone hears me
Though I do not know who,
Are they good?
Are they evil?
Will they be led astray?
How do I let them know
Not to take me at my word?
I do not wish to mislead them,
I just don't know the whole story.

Everyone has an opinion,
Everyone knows
What they think on
The matter at hand.
Read between the lines,
Find the sources you trust,
All well and good
When you don't know the bias.

I don’t want to hurt people,
I don't to force someone
To be something 
They don't want to be,
But I can't stop people
From using me as an excuse.
All I can do is ask
That people take a step back
When reading my words.
I may be good at talking,
But I don't know everything,
However much I try to learn. 

     I hope that our future is full of people who use the fact that our world is subjective to make it a better place. I want people to see that even if we think that we're checked out, or that we can't do anything, we can do something to move the world in the way that we want it to go. Am I being overly optimistic? Yeah, but I believe in it regardless. 

     I could be wrong about this, but I'm beginning to think that capitalism deeply resents the ordinary. It wants us all to believe that not only can we be extraordinary, but that we should be extraordinary, at least as it defines the term. What that means is that we wind up copying everyone else, so that ordinary winds up looking weird and uncanny, while the freaks of the world wind up looking a little mundane. Capitalism doesn't want people to be loners, it wants people to believe that their lonely and unfulfilled. It doesn't want people to be different, it just wants people to believe that they already are. People who know who they are and are happy with their lives are the bane of capitalism's existence, because those people never want the things capitalism sells the hardest. 

Wishes

 Why am I wishing for things to get better and worse
At the same time?
Why do I want someone to tell me that I'll have it all
And that I'll be nothing
In the same breath?
I want a reason to mope,
But I want to believe 
That someday,
Somehow,
I'll win so big 
That I need never play 
This twisted game 
Again. 
I can't have it all.
So which one will I pick? 

     I have no clue if Infinitelism as a term will take hold, but I'm completely certain that the philosophy behind it, or something similar, will dominate if we don't go extinct first. My reasoning for this is that we currently believe in two types of worlds. The first kind is what most of us think of as religious; a world where everyone is working towards some nebulously defined goal or serving some nebulous being. They're falling out of fashion as people begin to realize that these beings can't exist and that the people they're following are humans like themselves. What's replacing them are what we think of as secular worlds; worlds that work towards peace and contentment for all of the members, with the idea being that at the center is a world where everyone's happy. The thing is, that world doesn't exist, and in fact it can never exist. We figured that out pretty early on, and the past few centuries have been centered around trying to convince people that there is such a thing as paradise on Earth only to then fail in spectacular fashion. That means that there's only one option left; find an ideology that most of us agree is reasonable and then work like hell to make it as real as we can. Regardless of if you're one of those people who believes in physics, that's the only way our world is going to go. We can't have paradise, and no one wants to live a world they can't change. Whether the people in charge like it or not, our future will belong to everyone. 

Cat Statue

 Frozen in time,
Staring out a window
Watching the prey fly by.
Cursed with eternal life,
Or blessed with the greatest gift
One could have. 
Looking into its eyes,
One has to wonder
What it would think
If it was alive. 

    I'm going to admit this publicly, because either I'm right and I'll be able to say that I called it or I'm wrong, in which case I'll have been worrying about nothing, but that's probably a good thing. I think we're rapidly approaching the moment when we learn that physics is no more real than society. I don't mean that in a "science is just a construct of the world around it" way (although I do think that's more true than we want to admit), I think that because I think that physics is made up of subatomic particles the way that society is made up of people or ecosystems are made up of animals. All of those are systems that are only real because a bunch of things are following the rules. We even think that's true already, and I've read at least one pop science article that says that we might be able to change the laws of physics. What I haven't seen anyone grapple with, at least on a scientific level, is the idea that our world might not be real in the way that we psychologically need it to be. When not even physics is external, objective, and unchangeable, what do you have left? 

The World of Tomorrow

 I swim through time,
A river someone diverted
Away from my home. 

I travel through space, 
A land of forever
With no place for me to live.

I travel through history
Where my name's been erased,
And I can't help but shout,
"Who did this to me?"

In Reality there's a place
For every lost soul,
For every human 
Without a name.
In our Universe time
Should move past us all,
Not be concentrated 
Around only a few. 
In a world built
On injustice and lies,
I refuse to be forgotten,
Refuse to be undone
By the world of tomorrow.

I fly through the skies
Of the worlds yet unborn,
Through metaphors unwritten
And stories untold.

I climb the structures
Of races long lost,
Of a place that history
No longer cares about.

I leap through the continuum
That keeps us together,
Through the laws that bind us
And keep us whole,
And I can't help but ask,
"Why do you not know my name?" 

In Reality there's a place
For every lost soul,
For every human without a name.
It is said that history
Will one day be erased
No matter how great we are.
In a world built 
On injustice and lies,
I refuse to be forgotten,
Refuse to be undone
By the ending 
Of all that I know. 

I stand before the world of my creation,
Looking at a husk
Nobody knows the name of.

I watch as people
Go about their lives,
No longer remembering
That they died long ago.

I see the outside
Creeping in,
Consuming us,
Turning us from a husk
Into the dirt upon which it will grow. 

Is this all that I am?
Something to be consumed?
Someone to be destroyed?
I refuse to believe that.

In reality there's a place
For every lost soul,
For every human without at name.
I won't let my life end
With the world that birthed me,
The world that never cared
To remember my name. 
If our future is built
On injustice and lies,
Then I refuse to be forgotten.
I refuse to be undone
By this new world,
The world of tomorrow. 

     I'm worried about our world. We're not quite at the point where keeping the status quo is the worst thing we could do, but we're getting close to that point. In my estimation, depending on who wins the next election we have maybe a year left, probably a lot less, and unless you're rich you're probably going to be one of the people changing history. Hell, if what I hear about Germany is true, soon you won't have a choice but to change history. I specifically didn't sign up to write history, but here I am, twenty-nine years old and watching as history writes itself in front of my eyes. No one is safe from the textbooks of tomorrow, assuming that tomorrow arrives. We're all being written, be it as a hero, villain, or bystander. I used to think that'd be cool, and part of me still thinks it will be cool when it's all over and we can talk about our experiences. Whatever the case, I don't think history will forget us, though when it's over, at least some of us will wish it did.