No one cares
I resign from tumblr, but I will leave all my posts for reminiscing purposes.
If you dare, find my new page that I will most likely not be showing anyone.
Farewell.
I just want lovingnessaysofnayserswhoforgetlove
Fresh To Death.: The creative battle
“The willing endurance of pain is a key factor not only in human dignity, but also in human creativity. It would seem to follow that individuals who spend their lives in the persistent avoidance of pain are not likely to amount to much… The process of achieving their professional…
What is commonly called ‘falling in love’ is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.
—
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth (via nirvikalpa)
I’m reading this out of context, so I might not know how this contributes to other points.. but I disagree with the Ego part. I’m guessing the author may have a complex with their ability to give and receive love. Maybe a hard moon-Saturn configuration natally or by transit when this book was written. Spiritualists have made “Ego” or any kind of longing on the part of the personality (irrespective of what that is- e.g. “want” and “need”) “superficial”, “irrelevant”, to be controlled and sublimated. I disagree. We can’t inhibit human bodies and expect ourselves to transcend basic human needs. What we yearn for in a material sense is here for us to learn from and relationships are about growth.
They’re about drawing out and confronting qualities in ourselves and others that are hidden or dormant until they’re activated by another person or people. (Relationships) are self-awareness and mirrors into the parts of ourselves we have disowned or sublimated. Jung described it as the shadow, dark and light animus/anima. It’s not practical for 99% of the population to hide away in caves or ashrams and channel our need for love (connection with source energy) into something non-physical.
I am a spiritual person, and I always will be. But I have learnt the most from the times in my life where my attention has been focussed on what I am doing in an earthly or “real world” sense. The more engaged I am with the world, the more I learn about myself. Putting one foot in front of the other, whether I’m working/studying, dealing with the ups and downs of every day life. Periods of retreat are about untainted consolidation, but without an outlet to apply what I’ve learned in practice, insight is useless. To deny our wants is to deny our humanity.
(via antisocial-network)(Source: paperbackreiter, via keraf)
NYU Tisch School of Art Submission
The purpose of this essay was to provide a sample of my creative writing by writing a ‘short story’ about an experience that changed my point of view on myself or others. Here you go. Also, it should be said that I wrote this very quickly and only had four pages double-spaced to do so, so there was no room for much detail. Okay yea. Spencer Garrison 12/8/1993
Nearly everyone experiences something that will define his or her life for years to come. These life-changing experiences come few and far between, but when they do arrive, the weight lying behind that particular moment or experience is extravagant. Whether it’s some various mission trip to an impoverished country or a meaningful relationship with another human being, these defining moments are the ones that people carry with them to their deathbed, but what about me? Sure, I feel like I’ve done some fairly important things in my life thus far. I’ve lived a very spontaneous, charitable, and fulfilled lifestyle, almost taking up the ideals of a ‘yes man’, yet I can’t help but think that the affects stemming from this lifestyle aren’t necessarily long lasting or defining in any way. Rather, what’s more defining is what began this entire outlook I have on life. So let’s say I’m an eighty-year-old man lying on my deathbed. Just before my moment of death, one of the nurses asks me a very heavy question.
“Spencer, what moment defined your entire life?”
Will anyone be able to take me seriously if I sincerely tell them that the one true defining moment of my life consisted of defecating myself in the seat of a movie theater during the summer of 2007? Probably not.
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The monitors of room 528 in the Senior Ward of the Noblesville Medical Center were flickering again. The man residing in room 528 enjoyed the radiating strobe affect of the monitors when they went into these fits. There was no real explanation for the pleasure he gained from the malfunctioning of technical equipment, maybe it was the flashbacks to his youth. He stared deep into the monitors, keeping track of his own heart beat, noticing the slight changes in number and figures when the monitor blinked off and then on again. In the back of his head, the time was ticking, his body rotting. Maybe this was all just a distraction from his impending death.
Awakening from his trance, the man whispered to himself, “This will be the day that I die…” quoting Don McLean’s famous apology.
The nurse who took care of the man from day to day entered the room and could feel the eeriness within that the whimpered words of the man omitted.
Rising upwards, interrupting the gloom surrounding the room, the man hurriedly stated with a smile upon his face, “Nurse, nurse, I’m dying today!”
The nurse was used to the man’s joking antics, so she replied, “Oh shush, Mr. Garrison! You look healthier than ever this morning! Would you like to talk?”
“Oh yes ma’am, I would love to talk. I could talk for ages; after all, I need to tell you my life story! I’m dying today, you see, this doesn’t happen every day. I’ve got one shot!”
“Well, for a man that’s about to die, you sure do seem quite giddy, Mr. Garrison. Alright, what is it that you would like to speak about?”
The man, Mr. Garrison, sat puzzled. He had nothing much to say really, for he was expecting a more serious reaction from his nurse. He slowly replied, “Well… what would you ask a man lying on his deathbed…? These profound pre-death thoughts don’t just pop up without a little inspiration!”
The nurse decided to play along, “Well … tell me this; Spencer, what moment defined your entire life? What do you carry along with you to this day?” She often enjoyed initiating these types of conversations with her patients, for everyone tended to have something interesting to say, but she wasn’t exactly expecting Mr. Garrison’s reaction. He erupted into laughter, rolling onto his side, nearly falling off the side of his bed. Rolling back over, he looked into the eyes of the nurse. His eyes filled with tears of happiness and then he proceeded to burst into joyous laughter once again.
“I pooed myself!” he screamed.
The nurse stood up quickly, “Oh my, okay, uhm… Let me run and get some things to clean you up, uhm…”
“No no no no!!!” he began giggling once again. More contained, he said, “Listen, listen, I’m speaking of years ago, my apologies, my apologies.” Continuing to release little spurts of giggles, he continued, “Oh my, oh my, it’s been ages since I’ve told this story! Please, sit back down and listen here.”
“So… You didn’t just defecate yourself?”
“No, by all means, I’m not completely helpless! Okay, listen, will you listen? Listen.”
The nurse sat down, “Yes, yes, okay, what is it?”
“Alright,” Mr. Garrison sat up excitedly, “long, long ago, in the summer of 2007, I was just a boy, a fairly silly, apathetic boy at that, but a boy nonetheless…”
The nurse could tell that he had rehearsed and shared this story hundreds of times before.
“… I was going to the movies with my dear friend at the time, Tayler Milbank… Did you know back in those times a ticket to the movies only cost us $8.75? $8.75! Oh, how the times have changed! Well, being the thoughtless little punks we were, we hadn’t planned a proper film to see. You see, we ended up getting stuck in some film starring this African American actress named Queen Latifah, who actually gained success through a thriving hip-hop career in the 90’s, but gave it up and became a lackluster actress that appealed to every middle-aged woman of the early 2000’s. But that’s not important. What’s important is that about halfway through the excruciatingly painful film, I felt a disturbance in my stomach. I knew immediately that I had to pass gas, and being an impolite, boyish boy, I thought I’d simply release a toot or two and be on my way… but things just didn’t go as planned.”
“You don’t mean… ?”
Mr. Garrison looked at the nurse with laughter already on the verge of breaking loose, “YES! YES! I pooed my pants right there in the middle of the cinema!”
The nurse opened her eyes wide and let out a chuckle of disbelief.
“Oh my, was it a surprise! Back then, you see, we called it ‘sharting’, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I sat stunned in my seat for about a minute. I couldn’t move! I just didn’t know what to do!”
The nurse clutched her sides in a fit of laughter, “I-hahaha- I – I don’t believe it! What happened next!?”
“Well, there I was, a thirteen year old boy sitting in public with pants full of poo. After gathering my thoughts, my dear friend Tayler peered over at me. He said, and I quote, ‘… what smells like crap?’ Oh, the embarrassment! I told him I had simply farted and needed to go use the restroom, so I waddled my way through the theater and into the restroom, stripped down, did my business, tossed my underpants, and went on my way!”
By this point, the nurse was trying to catch her breath, unable to speak clearly from such a rage of hilarity. She keeled over, peered up at Mr. Garrison and said, “Mr. Garrison, I just… Oh my, you… You amaze me sometimes, Mr. Garrison. What a wonderfully, disgustingly humorous story, but I don’t understand. What significance, if ANY, does this little anecdote contain?”
Mr. Garrison, with a smile upon his face, stated, “Well, you see, that moment changed the course of my life forever, nurse. I didn’t know it at the time; there was no way I could know, but that particular series of events created me. Sure, at the time I was petrified, embarrassed, and ashamed… But later on, as I matured, as I grew, I learned to embrace that embarrassment and use it to my advantage. I became completely shameless, sharing my story with every new individual I came across.”
“You mean to tell me that you told this story to complete strangers?”
“Of course! It was quite funny, wasn’t it? It broke down social barriers between others and me; it created an entirely new, previously inaccessible atmosphere that followed me everywhere I went. I can’t tell you how many friendships were formed beginning with this anecdote. This experience, if you can call it that, taught me to be careless, free… It taught me to be myself! I was taught to fear nothing, to shoot for something bigger than myself and achieve it. I was unstoppable, spontaneous, and ambitious… I felt more like ME. I was the most me that I had ever been. The significance didn’t hit me until my early high school years, but when it hit, it hit hard. I still have a hard time comprehending it!”
The nurse smiled, a little more understanding, “So, that is how THE Mr. Garrison in front of me came to be, huh? I’ve got to say, Mr. Garrison, that is a remarkable story…”
Mr. Garrison sighed and laid back in his bed, folding his hands, “Yes, yes, it sure does take me back. You know, I’ve lived happily, nurse, very happily indeed…” His eyes slowly began to flutter and close in exhaustion.
The nurse stood up slowly, “I’m sure, Mr. Garrison. It’s been a pleasure…” Now standing at the doorway, the nurse stared at the man lying in his bed with eyes closed, serene. “Have only the sweetest of dreams, Mr. Garrison.”
At peace, Spencer Garrison slept alone with the monitors flickering on and off beside him. The numbers and figures fluctuated and in the distance, the sound of music could be heard,
“And in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed, but not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken…”
The monitors finally flickered off… Shameless.
In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up
When a doctor came to tell me, “Enough is enough”
He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted)
And told me something that I didn’t know that I wanted to hear:
That there was nothing that I could do to save you
The choir’s going to sing, and this thing is going to kill you
Something in my throat made my next words shake
And something in the wires made the lightbulbs break
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling
It opened up the scars that had just finished healing
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur
(I thought that it was beautiful, it made me a believer)
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room
But I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew
When I reappeared and tried to give you something for the pain
You came to hating me again and just sang your refrain
You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
“Eighty-seven pounds!” and this all bears repeating
Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy
Wearing silver rings with nobody clapping
When we moved here together we were so disappointed
Sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed
It killed me to see you getting always rejected
But I didn’t mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected
I didn’t mind you blaming me for your mistakes
I just held you in the door-frame through all of the earthquakes
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night
And I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight)
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you
From stomping out that door
Coming back like you always do
Well no one’s going to fix it for us, no one can
You say that, “No one’s going to listen, and no one understands”
So there’s no open doors and there’s no way to get through
There’s no other witnesses, just us two
There’s two people living in one small room
From your two half-families tearing at you
Two ways to tell the story (no one worries)
Two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry
Two people talking inside your brain
Two people believing that I’m the one to blame
Two different voices coming out of your mouth
While I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout
You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
“Eighty-seven pounds!” and this all bears repeating
—Two by The Antlers
I was really happy here. I am really happy here.
Warmth of Embrace
I’m cold.
I lye in bed surrounded by the silence of recent events and ghosts of too recent love.
My body rises in temperature as my mind recollects pieces from the previous night and slides them together to form a vague blur of dim lighting and horizontal/vertical collages.
I’m cold again.
Fog swells and forms the edges of a picture frame, subtly engulfing the images it contains.
Now gnawing on chapped lips, I can imagine the warmth.
Tearing apart the lips of another, shredding the skin between, pouring across a lovely fragrance.
Bare.
Cold to the touch, but my body is oh so warm.
Warmer until the film around the inside of my mouth falls apart.
My hairline recedes and disappears.
My eyelids become heavy and swell shut.
My fingers stick to one another and pull apart like wads of chewed bubblegum.
Opening my mouth to whimper, “Love, take me away”, but my emotions are welded shut.
The flames rise and engulf my bedside.
I’m suddenly surrounded by ashes.
What are these ashes?
Who are these from?
Are these my ashes?
Or are they yours?
I feel apart from everything.
Forgotten.
And still so goddamn cold.
