finding a porpoise

On a rather boring day of a boring week in the middle of his boring life he decided he needed to do something different and so he additionally decided he needed to look for a porpoise because he heard they were plentiful in the seas but in all actuality he had never seen one in the wild. He considered his options for porpoise searching and wondered if he would need apparatuses such as rafts or row boats or motor boats. He had none of those things and began to feel his hopes of finding a porpoise drift away much like a school of porpoises swimming off in the sunset at hypersonic speeds, because he knew porpoises were fast. He resolved not to lose all hope and ran to the beach and striped off his shirt and pants and shoes and socks and ran and dove into the waves and swam out towards the horizon in search of a porpoise. In his excitement and enthusiasm he didn’t anticipate his body’s need to recover from the exertion he compelled himself towards so he stopped for what he thought would be a brief moment to catch his breath, but his mind took a brief assessment determining that his body was fatigued and relayed a message to his consciousness to take the appropriate measures. Upon the appearance of thoughts to find a place to rest he looked around himself for the shore because he knew he would need to swim back but was disheartened when he realized it was beyond sight. His mind began sending rapid fire messages to his consciousness to do something to give himself some rest, which caused a slight panic within him but he willed himself to slow down his thoughts and floated on his back while he tried to put himself in a state of mind where he could find a solution to his predicament. The shifts of waves and currents caused him to struggle and exert further energy and effort continuing to tire him when what he wanted was rest, but still he tried until he realized that in that moment what he wanted more than anything was to live. He realized he had forgotten all about finding a porpoise but he began to remember his quest to find one and thought about how his search brought him into his current circumstances. As his focus began to shift from holding onto life to finding a porpoise, his body slowed down and relaxed and sank down to the point that his face was all that remained above water, just barely able to breath, tasting drops of salty water and licking his lips. He didn’t realize it but he was compelled to only one or the other. As he thought about his desire to find a porpoise, he forgot about holding on to his life and he stopped trying. Without trying, he soon slipped under and succumbed to the weight of his exhausted body. Instinctively he held his breath and a panic began to build for search of a way to breath but then the thought of porpoises again filled his mind and he smiled underwater and it was the last thing he ever thought.

even fish hate mondays

the greed

It had been decided long ago in ancient tombs as they buried their dead, in the embryonic days of time, to forge a mechanism by which they could maintain power for themselves and their kind. They realized that desire was as strong as anything they could create on their own and so they wrapped their intentions in the folds of the fresh milky white flesh of desire and cooked their creation in the darkest hollows of the earth from where their predecessors first crawled prior to the dawn of humanity’s birth. They marveled at their creation and called it greed and were taken with its appearance because it was infinite black, knowing no limits, able to continuously devour without satisfaction and they placed it in the unsuspecting hearts of nascent people who misunderstood the greed to simply be a moral justification from beyond their own minds. The last of the ancient ones eventually died knowing the knowledge of their hand in the creation of the greed would be buried in their own tombs but they also knew that the greed had been buried in the hearts of so many and that it would go on spreading to others without end because the greed was without end and the people who carried it were largely lacking in the ability of self-reflection or at least that ultimate bit of self-reflection that allows one to admit that they might be wrong. While the greed went on to corrupt humanity’s interactions, causing distrust, fear and destruction, it also went on to propel humanity to great feats of civilization and technological wonder causing humanity to also marvel at itself and sacrifice forethought of consequence in favor of seemingly ever greater achievement. The ancient ones looked on from beyond the tombs where their bodies were buried with quickened vision, unencumbered by their previously finite minds, and they looked on with a fullness of vision they hadn’t previously possessed. They were pleased to observe that the blackness of greed had spread to so many in such diverse ways from the innocent and well intentioned to the most hardened and gluttonous but ultimately only advantaging an elite few who they longingly admired and originally intended as its beneficiaries. They were eventually also surprised to see a light that they had never noticed during their living days and whereas the greed was infinitely black, the light shone infinitely within as well but also radiated infinitely out and beyond itself forever, sharing a brilliance beyond anything they had ever thought to desire and it shared itself freely with all who were willing to see it or who happened to find themselves within its warmth and shine. It even displaced the greed where ever it came into contact with the greed. The only place it did not shine was within the darkest shadows of greed where some purposefully withdrew not wanting to ever know anything other than the familiarity afforded by the blackness of the greed. The ancient ones who created the greed were among those lost in the shadows, the only difference between themselves and the living being that they could observe the light as well as the dark and be conscious that the light existed and further conscious that they had never experienced the light in their lifetime. Still possessed, not only of the darkness but also of an innate desire to experience the unexperienced, their satisfaction of the accomplishment of greed soon began to share space within the realm of their own desire with the curiosity and wonder of what the light might be and they wondered what it might be like to experience the light. Their satisfaction of the greed continually diminished in the light replaced with a dissatisfaction for their inability to know the light and the tombs that forever possessed their bodies seemed also to forever enclose their existence in such small dark confines as they had not anticipated and which saddened them as infinitely as the greed they created. 

memories

They were syrupy memories that kind of oozed down his brain slowly and seeped down deeply causing him to occasionally stop whatever it was he was doing and pay attention to each detail that made itself apparent in all dimensions of sight, sound, feeling and significance. Those dimensions coalesced together and aged so finely that they eventually began to glow causing a paralysis within him as he savored these old memories of friendships long deceased.  Maybe those memories wouldn’t be so disruptive if they didn’t stand in such contrast to the watered down future that became the daily routine of his life. He wasn’t even sure if it really was his life that was so watered down or if it was just the future in general and whether those old friends were living watered down lives as well.  He wondered where they were and whether their memories where nearly as thick and syrupy but while he might wonder he really didn’t want to know so he never attempted to contact them. Maybe they weren’t living as some diluted version of their younger selves and knowing that would place the blame squarely on himself for the choices he made that ultimately didn’t follow the trajectory he had begun so long ago. In the back of his mind he might actually know that the blame was his but that was too painful a truth to bring into his conscience; although, he also wondered where he went wrong. What bad advice didn’t he think through and adopted as his own because of a blind faith assumption that people knew what they were talking about? He could think of a few but it all felt too late to do anything about. He could throw out those assumptions now and in part he already did, which is why he knew he went wrong somewhere but there were too many consequences piled on top of consequences that he had to sort through before he could ever be free and from the bottom he was looking up from, it all seemed too far away to try to do anything about so he went on living his watered down life, watered down every day just a little more.  

the best ceviche in the world

All he really wanted was the best ceviche in the world but instead he somehow ended up with piles and piles of the unwanted detritus from circumstantial consequences. Eventually it got to the point where he felt so cluttered with stuff he never even asked for or wanted that he began indiscriminately hauling thing after thing to the curb where it piled high and was obviously visible to any passersby. When he finally finished carrying the stuff out he noticed a sense of vacancy that he looked forward to enjoying. He looked at the pile of stuff and it seemed like more stuff than he had ever remembered taking possession of, as if it had expanded and multiplied once out in the open. He had hoped that people would want his unwanted things and would take them from the pile to keep as their own. He left the pile alone for a while and eventually wandered back to see if anything had been taken and to his satisfaction he noticed the pile had somewhat diminished and he felt a further satisfaction that maybe other people could use the things he wanted to get rid of. Eventually everything was gone except for some scattered papers that he thought he should pick up and put in the garbage. He picked up a few of the papers and noticed an unfamiliar bowl of average size that appeared to having something in it. He picked it up and examined it looking at it, smelling it and eventually tasting whatever it was in the bowl and it was exactly what it he thought it might be. It was ceviche and from what he could tell, and to his surprise, it was the best ceviche in the world.

the generation of the destruction

Not everyone of the generation of the destruction clung to the memory of how things were. Many people did and they were miserable because they could not adapt to the new reality but there were others who hadn’t been served well by the false notions of progress and superficial happiness of consumption that was unreasonable and unsustainable. There were some who celebrated the destruction because there were aware of the lies and had always struggled against them but their efforts seemed futile until the destruction. The destruction was the great revealer of what was important and what wasn’t. Subsequent to the destruction, it was necessary to build a new foundation of principals and security. Those who experienced the freedom offered by the destruction adapted well and quickly found meaning as they engaged to establish the new foundation. They also felt a sense of satisfaction in their accomplishments as opposed to a sense of loss for what had been destroyed. For many, the destruction lifted a burden from their shoulders and cleared their schedules that previously kept them from what was truly important. Those that were saddened were the same who had been, prior to the destruction, preoccupied with avoiding the emptiness of the world they had built, incorrectly believing that they needed to continue to build and build and build upon what they already built so that they could outpace the emptiness not realizing that no matter how much they filled the world with their ideas that it would still be empty. Their ideas were an insatiable cancer that caused the emptiness and so the emptiness grew until the peak of emptiness was reached, the peak beyond which it could be sustained and the destruction naturally emerged as a consequence. Eventually, those people succumbed to the secondary destruction, which was more subtle in that those people eventually just disappeared. They couldn’t reconcile what the destruction revealed about themselves with what they wanted to believe. Before they could create their own truths by merely wanting to believe, but ultimately, the truth of the destruction arrived and dealt a justice that was truly blind and also cruel and without mercy because it didn't care about anything and just was. Mostly those that were willing to face an uncertain future remained together with those that were always uncertain. They simply focused on what could be done in the moment finding that they stumbled upon many moments of peaceful happiness along the way and they found that sufficient to continue on. 

wishes and honesty

Halfhearted attempts at recognition to simply appease rather than appreciate what he offered in revealing sincerity was all he could gather for an audience. He accepted their insincerity in return hoping he was wrong but all along feeling that they never really look at what came from his heart. He was willing to give it all but it didn’t seem to matter and so he wondered if everything he had to give really wasn’t that much in the end. He was as sure of his mediocracy as he was at their insincerity, a nagging truth that he could avoid but which colored the backdrop of everything. He looked for the nothingness of black velvet but the uncomfortable glimmer was always there illuminating and casting shadows. That’s just how it was he determined, some were and some weren’t and he just wasn’t. He just wanted to be but wanting to be only amounts to wishes and wishes were as ordinary as most people including himself so he wondered why he even bothered to try. He wondered if it would just be better to exorcise his wishes and replace them with the acceptance of his limitations. Save his time and energy for the indentured work that always called and from which there was no release and wish only for numbness from the aches and pains that graceless service offered. He would appease the Gods just like everyone had appeased him. Halfhearted attempts at the life they destined for him regardless of whatever sincerity they offered.