"If you haven't done anything wrong, you wouldn't be afraid of the cops and you wouldn't run/fight/resist."

Alright then. Think back to elementary school. You are sitting in your red plastic chair, reading your SSR book when the principal walks in. "(Your name), follow me to my office," he says in a booming, authoritative voice. Your head spins. You always do your homework, you never copy anyone else's answers, you sit still and listen, and you don't take other people's things. "I didn't do anything wrong!" you think, but then you second guess yourself. Maybe you forgot one of the rules. Maybe there was a new rule that no one told you about. Maybe the principal could read your mind and knew that you said naughty words in there! The entire class stares silently as you walk out. You are now convinced that you've committed a million different infractions and scared out of your mind.

The principal stops in the middle of the hallway to chat with a teacher. He is turned away from you for a full thirty seconds. If you were to run, you would be out the door in ten or fewer. You are eight years old and terrified. What would you do? 

If you were a more level-headed child, as I doubt many of us were, you might have realized that the principal might be pulling you out because you've done something good.

Police rarely stop anyone to point out how well-behaved they are.

You are fifteen, walking to a convenience store after dark because your parents aren't home yet and you really want some Fritos. All your lawnmowing money is in one pocket of your black hoodie, and you're walking fast because there have been muggings recently and you're a bit on edge. You aren't paying much attention to your surroundings. Suddenly, a police officer hustles around a corner and directly into your path. You are startled. You try to move past him, but he orders you to stop. Your head spins again. Your father told you once that the police were useless in your town. They didn't care who was guilty or innocent, everyone was a criminal in their eyes. He said that the best thing to do was to stay out of trouble and never give them a reason to notice you. Whether or not that's true, you are afraid. You don't use drugs, shoplift, get into fights, or drive unlicensed. You wonder if the cop could have somehow found out about the beer you sneaked at your friend's house last weekend. Or maybe he knew that you knew your older brother smoked pot on Friday nights and didn't turn him in. But you are a bit more rational now, and you realize the cop has no reason to hold you- but he could find one if you stick around. While running through potential reasons, you have missed the officer's instructions. When you take off, the only thing in your head is pure fear. However, while running through possibilities in your head you have missed the officer's instructions, and he now has reason to hold you.

Fear is a basic human reaction, and it occurs even when there is no rational reason to be afraid- more so when one has been taught to be afraid, whether or not that fear is warranted in reality. When people are afraid, they distort and misjudge situations and even surrender to the fight-or-flight instinct. This is a basic fact of human nature. Instinct works first, conscience works later. Reasoning and higher order thinking are severely compromised when a person is afraid.

Furthermore, if it is reasonable for a highly trained and experienced cop like Darren Wilson to become so irrational under fear that he sent six bullets into an unarmed man, then how can we expect the average citizen of a protesting community, raised to distrust and fear the police and entirely unaccustomed to high-risk situations, to hold on to their rationality when approached by police? Resisting arrest is a crime, but is in no way a sign of an unclean conscience.

(tumblr repost)

I wonder...

https://seventhvoice.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/the-gas-lighting-of-women-and-girls-on-the-autism-spectrum/

Writer's block.

After an exciting evening of bright lights and loud applause, I sought to relax the only way I know anymore - the TV blaring, every light on, holding four conversations at once. Turn everything on and shut it out.

Mindless, totally mindless. I open a window and close it again. I will not change tabs until something is written.

Make sense of the static. We treat increasingly more stimulating things as background noise for our indolence. How, then, are we to learn to turn our minds off?

Here in the silence, every idea that had formed melts away like frost on a sunny day.

You cannot pull poetry out of a void, it comes from the world and into you. Every image and analogy already exists somewhere in the aether. Your job is only to channel and transcribe it.

I think there might be some ideas somewhere, pushing against the boulders I haven't figured out how to move yet. I can see their spindly black legs poking out from the cracks. They haven't the room to fly. Perhaps if I seek to begin something else they will find their way out.

Things have ends.

Let them end.

symptom check: 9 for 9

just a little bit relatable

Check your privilege?

You are lucky if you can study for psychology without being triggered by a clinical description in your textbook.

If you don't see parts of yourself in every diagnosis.

If you can memorize the diagnostic criteria for depression any other way than by checking off the symptom list.

If you have the luxury of having to speculate what it might be like to be suicidal.

If you are able to say, "Maybe they should just get over themselves."

You are immensely lucky if you can sing along to twenty one pilots without feeling as if your soul is fracturing because of their honesty.

If you have never saved a song or a quote or a text from someone special, thinking, "This might save my life next time."

If you have never run off alone into the night, hearing the steps of all the ghosts chasing you that you still aren't and never will be rid of.

If you have never had to hide letter openers and X-Acto blades.

If you are able to live for the now and not worry about where you might be the next time things go wrong.

If you aren't afraid of cycles.

If you aren't afraid of yourself.

You are so unbelievably lucky if you have never been afraid of what might happen in the hours you aren't quite there.

Take care of yourself. You will turn out just fine.

not much worse than being alone with the world while it trembles and vacillates

right now it feels as though
every cell
in my body is crying out under the pressure
of unsaid words

in my place
screaming,
"just say it already"

well, it's not that simple

a weekend passed
then another
enough time to find that "perfect moment"
or maybe not
accumulated words crumble under pressure
metamorphose into leaden silence

at first I could see them
hovering
written out in empty space clear enough
to read from
like a script

now I know I'll never say them

all the right moments passed

the words kept weaving in and out
of each other
filling up the space
until it became a curtain of ink
unreadable
and unmeaningful

but every time I swear I'll say them

each word plucked from the mass
cutting through
the white fog between the world and me
revealing the cracks
and holes
and anything through which I may escape

perhaps this would be less painful
if only
the words spoke for themselves
without the need for
my mouth the interpreter

or if these were words you would ever
ask to hear

the faster something burns the more it resonates

I haven't properly socialized for an entire day and now I feel like I'll never want to again.

Well, fuck.

Depression sucks.

Wasted nights, nights so pointless they may as well not exist. Empty nights, devoid of anything but a persistent compressing feeling, compressing the silent hours into a single point that hums in the way compressed silence does. Endless nights, time compressing into nothing, still everything, existing outside itself even when it should have been destroyed. What would happen if in these moments, time were not to exist? Would the rest of time expand to fill in the empty space, or would there be a discontinuity? Would the empty space pull all the rest of time in like a black hole? Would the future still exist in the vacuum? I want this pointless night to not exist... 

(long story short, I want to leave my room and get some food but social anxiety sucks and for some reason there are still people out at 2 am)

People I know in real life have found me here.

Dare I remain?

My newest theme song, I think.

Orientation week.

So much mindless socialization, I'm screaming inside. I made friends with a few other introverts and we've been bonding over our shared dislike for name games. We rarely have any time to ourselves before 10 PM and each hour seem to be placed in larger and larger groups. Tonight was Playfair, an icebreaker involving all 1,000+ members of the freshman class. Rowdy crowds, applause, confined spaces, static playing over the speakers, all sorts of things I don't do well with... I somehow avoided overload by focusing on a red light in the distance and trying to project my consciousness into it, but I can barely remember what happened around me from that point on. Crossing my fingers tomorrow won't be so chaotic.

Dear Auntie...

"My girlfriend and I (m) have been dating for over a year. She's great in every way, but there's one thing that's making me really frustrated.

We've been sleeping together for about a year. And she's great in bed, but I feel really unfulfilled sometimes. Whenever one of us wants to try something we'll talk about it, but there is one thing she won't try. See, I really want her to blow me, but she's uncomfortable with the idea. We haven't really discussed it even though we have great communication on everything else. The times I've asked why she doesn't want to blow me, she's given a vague answer about being uncomfortable with it or mentions a "mental wall."

And I don't want to be a dick and force her to do something, but this is a problem and it's affecting our relationship. I just don't feel excited about having sex with her. And if she weren't so reluctant about blowing me, that might change. I absolutely understand that she might be uncomfortable with the idea, but I just feel like there's something missing from our sex life. We've tried other exciting things and those are great, but I really want her to blow me. And every time I've asked her why she won't just do it she gives the same vague answers about mental walls and being uncomfortable and won't give a better explanation. What should I do? Do I just drop the subject and hope she feels more comfortable with this later on, or is there anything else I could do?"

------------------------------------------------------

In the interests of not creating a straw man argument, I'm not going to write a response to this hypothetical letter. But if I were going to, what should I say? Should I encourage the writer to wait and respect his girlfriend's boundaries regardless of when they might change, or should I propose an "anything else"? Would I be promoting rape culture if I suggested the latter? What would you think of someone who writes a letter like this in the first place? Are his girlfriend's boundaries and explanations reasonable? Does she owe him more? What does her "no" mean?

Now, what do you think about this?

http://community.sparknotes.com/2014/07/29/auntie-sparknotes-my-boyfriend-wont-do-certain-sexy-things

Has your opinion of the writer and the response changed in any way? Why?

Should it?

Reach for that light, we were told.

They gave us wings so we could. Then you went your way and I went mine.

My light was a small one, ten feet above the ground. It radiated heat all the way to where we had first emerged. It didn't take long for me to approach it, but I am not any closer than I was then. I have never been able to traverse the invisible barrier between me and that light. Every day its radiance grows brighter and every day I take in more. I can only beat my wings against the wall for so long. One day, I will break through and reach the light. This is all I live for.

I cannot see you anymore. You went after another light, a mysterious one impossibly far from where we were. It glowed so brightly at first and you were compelled. Every night after that it faded a bit more, became smaller and farther away... You never lost your obsession. Even when the light went out, you kept flying toward it. I could see you until that night. Now the light grows brighter, and I wonder where you are. Have you come any closer? Or has your light grown brighter because you haven't? I worry about you, about how far you'll have to fly only to hit a wall like I have. But that light is all you live for. Perhaps when you reach it it will envelop you like mine cannot.

Does anyone ever reach the light?



(background: my twisted mind is fascinated with those insects that throw themselves against the porch light til they drop dead. I once heard that moths are so attracted to light that they will keep flying toward the moon until they die, forgoing reproduction and every other purpose of their lives, and true or not this seems to have stuck with me for ten years)

I don't even know... Some things, I really don't understand... I couldn't even tell you what's confusing me so right now. Some intersection of Time and Change and Personality and Oblivion...

On summer.

I love the nights when the inside and the outside feel the same. Tonight, the outside could be nothing more than an extension of the inside; rather than different worlds, the outside and inside are only different rooms. Stars and recess lights are the same things, after all, and I could touch the indigo ceiling if I wanted to. The walls are still there, I am safe, no matter how infinite this house's borders may be...

How fair is vanity... (or, I should really be doing other things)

My head is swimming with rhetorical questions... I'd write some down, but they're in flashes and bits of sound rather than words. I can make out two: "I wonder..."

 

Well.. this one is actually mine. 

Deja vu (a transcription)

It's moments like this I remember how stuck I am. I sit on the porch swing, fabric weathered and grey, and wait for the breeze. My grandfather cracks open the breeze door, a scratched plastic bowl full of the same snack he offered me last time in his hand.

"Try this," he says, "you'll like it."

I rarely do.

But this is not the same moment as the other four hundred, the swing is on the other side of the patio and the bowl is green, not red. And I am not the same as the other four hundred times. This is what lets me know that I am not as stuck as I fear, I am never the same.

I always react the same way. I might as well be.

So many other writers (am I that really?) have spoken of those little comforts, of being home in all those places where things are always the same no matter who they've become.

Those other writers aren't me.

They don't have my mind.

So this time I've found a pen, and a bit of paper, and I'm writing myself unstuck. I'm writing myself out of time and away from the creaking of the porch swing. This is not a loop, I have changed. This is not a loop, though I keep coming back.

This is a new story, despite all those characters who act the same.

This one will be a fairy-tale, because I will write it as such.

I wonder what keeps me here when I lack reasons to be.

unending
all ending

in cycles is there any meaning?

pointless to continue
pointless to stop

perhaps i could go on
(but still)
pointless to go on
pointless to not

a smile or a good story are enough to mean something, they say
this is still perfect blankness
no pleasure and no memory
pure compulsion

insanity: try again, maybe you're wrong

how many times will this keep repeating?

sometimes the greyness just comes
(it doesn't call ahead)
it might be good and it might be bad, though grey is the opposite of both
and it devours

but everything is still here
it's just a new filter
greyscale

it looks like the outside but i know it's me because everyone else is still deluded

and now

something is off
something is very off
it's been crooked since the morning
and i know it's me because no one else feels (?) it

how do you know what's true when you believe one thing by day and another by night?

pointless to let the words out
pointless to keep them in

after all, i don't speak of what you might think

they're never enough to say it
(contrived by nature)
(i no longer write for me)
so i just keep adding more
(please let me be found someday)

but it's late
there is nothing left to do
and the blades of the fan creak out a persistent heartbeat

I really ought to create a glossary of metaphors. I suppose I will another night.

On friendship and the need to sleep before midnight for once.

The worst feeling in the world is wanting to talk to someone who's far away, but having nothing to say.

No, scratch that. The worst feeling in the world is wanting to talk to someone who's far away, having nothing to say, and knowing that without something to say that person will have no idea you are thinking of them.

There are friendships in which neither person needs to say anything of importance in order to renew the connection. Blame social anxiety for this, perhaps, but on a good day I would consider myself to have one of these at the most. And there are friendships in which neither person ever says anything of importance, and the bond is never renewed. Why are these so hard to break out of?

I hate to admit that even I, the shadow-dweller, am starved for companionship sometimes. I hate to admit it, but eventually I must, because the alternative is breaking in other ways. And so the cycle begins. I return, find myself disillusioned, fade, and return. I am too inconsistent to break out. Why give in? Because it's only fair to be the first to fade after all this trouble...


I do not know who, if anyone, reads this blog anymore, but I apologize if I have offended anyone. Perhaps I should leave those minutes following midnight for rest rather than writing.

I'm too lazy to write my own post, so here's a link to someone else's.

What is love?

Reactions to the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate.

Every religion has its own form of creation. Ken Ham is unaware of any other book that speaks of the origin of life and society, though the Torah and Quran do just that. Perhaps I have been watching with an eye out for Ham's errors, but he seems quite narrow-minded and rather ignorant of the world outside his own corner of ultra-conservative midwestern America. He seems to believe that even within the millions of practicing Christians on this earth, the majority of humankind is condemned to a fiery eternal life simply for not having the same rigid perspective as him. I believe the issue with the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, is not that it is irreconcilable with modern life, but that it is both mistranslated and taken literally far too often, as Ham so perfectly displayed.

I believe in the union of everything. Religion is not all-or-nothing; one can believe in a God, and I certainly do, but not believe in the literal version of a parable from one of the countless spiritual texts that all seem to converge and contradict at the same time. If you cannot question your beliefs, how will you ever find truth? If you cannot question your beliefs, how afraid must you be that they are not it?

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” (Carl Sagan)

Many of the greatest scientists the world has known considered their work the extension of God's holy vision. Some have even been creationists. The most important trait for a scientist to have, though, is not any specific belief system or lack thereof, it is the ability to be wrong. Nothing was ever proven by someone who mindlessly repeated, "I know I'm right, therefore I'm right".

How do you know what parts of the Bible to take literally, and which are pure poetry? Is this simply a matter of convenience, as much of the Christian world seems to consider?

"One of the biggest facts you have to face, Vicky, is that if there is a God he's infinite, and we're finite, and therefore we can't ever understand him. The minute anybody starts telling you what God thinks, or exactly why he does such and such, beware. People should never try to make God in man's image, and that's what they're constantly doing." (The Moon By Night)

That is all.

Since I cannot draw reality, I aim for perfection.

“I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention and one day I decided I had better things to do."


Well, they're paper flowers, of course. Nurtured delusions. There you go.