Painful/Pain-free.

Sitting in the shade of today's weather is perfect. It's too windy in a good way. My eyes are still half swollen shut after watching 'Earthlings' at 3am in the day. It's tiring how human we are.

"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life". That's what our lives are; appetite over suffering, fashion over pain, death over life. We don't own life, we are a part of it. Why have we forgotten? Why do we not care?

I still feel sadness, I still feel despair, I still feel a bone-trembling anger. I want you to feel it too, I want you to be skinned alive (fur), boiled alive (food), burned alive (medical investigation). I want you to hang from hooks upside down with your heart flooding in spills of blood from your throat. I want you to watch your child, your baby, die like this, and for all family and other friends. I want you to writhe, to scream, to shake and collapse because you are more suffering than anything else. I want to throw blunt spears into your flesh and neglect you of hygiene, of space, of shelter, of food and water. I want to inflict pain on you and foster for deformities and disease. I want you to become a cannibal in your own desperation and bite on the flesh that is as much yours as it is mine. I want you I want you I want you to only know death for as long as you have life. We are humans. We make connections to love but we also make war. But I trust the poison we feed them will be the same poison that kills us and in no manner that is soft, quiet and quick, but one of no anesthesia and complete suffering. That's when we can start talking about equality.


*Dick Gregory

The Issue of Being Serious.

Sometime at the end of last year I began to blog in a different voice. I slashed most of the tiresome metaphors and started to use efficient words (i.e. instead of saying "my insides are preparing for bloody baby making" I now say something more like "I have my period"). While my heart aches to continue my excessive syntax, I realised I started to concentrate more on the way I like to talk rather than what I would like to talk about. That's an important distinction. Now admittedly, my tone of voice sounds a lot more serious which to many, carries negative shadowings. Today I was told - "You look so serious, it makes me worry", to which I replied "Why is serious a bad thing?". (But anyway that could've just been cause I was reading about the psychology of suicidal notes Clicky Click if you happen to be curious too.) I get that being serious can relate to sadness and anger and other things that make the boots heavy but how can you extend upon conversations without a level of seriousness? It took me pretty long to realise I was overusing adjectives and metaphors in the same way people do with humour. 

I'm uncomfortable - Ha!
I don't know how to talk to you - Ha!
That was racist/sexist/ageist/offensive etc. - Ha!  
I'm unsure of what just happened/is happening - Ha!
I can't even describe my own thoughts, ideas or feelings - Ha!
I really have no idea who you are or for that matter, who I am - Ha! 

Basically, a lot of 'Let's talk about things without actually talking about them so that we remain sure of ourselves by being ambiguous and seemingly knowledgable! I realised it came down to vulnerability and that inevitable insecurity we wish wouldn't transcend our screens into the virtual public sphere. It was a subconscious decision to halt getting lost in translating my internal thought to external expression. While this new change understands the idea that [serious = boring], I think personally, being more serious has extended a whole new space for interest. I enjoy doing things seriously, from reading peer reviewed articles daily (not really a part of the nerd trend but plainly curious enough to get educated) to enjoying classical music to having serious conversations about serious issues that impact on a larger scale than me and/or my friends/family to listening to slam poems to of course, writing serious blogs. 

Oxford dictionary says:

Serious


1. Demanding or characterized by careful consideration or application  
2. Acting or speaking sincerely and in earnest, rather than in a joking or half-hearted manner
3. Significant or worrying because of possible danger or risk; not slight or negligible
4. Substantial in terms of size, number, or quality

To me, it seems most of the things I do that are serious entail a quietness, sometimes literally but mostly metaphorical (for the opportunity to think), and that's something I've really come to appreciate. 

Anyway, I am off to manufacture Z's. Night, y'all.