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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
April 21, 2011
Somewhere around paragraph six of distinction by ~SocraticSynapses I simply stopped breathing. The use of repetition in the piece is astounding. Truly wonderful nonfiction.
Featured by Halatia
Literature Text
This is what I cannot understand.
There is an understanding that nothing is ever black and white. Good can be achieved through bad means, what's wrong can sometimes be right, and if you turn right for long enough, you eventually go left. Boys can be girls who fall in love with girls who sometimes think they are boys and the lines between everything end up irreversibly blurred.
Or so I've always thought.
But this is a line that cannot be blurred. This is the only remaining clear-cut line that separates black from white as perfectly as a color wheel. And that is the fact that everything is until it isn't. We are until we aren't. We breathe until we don't. We live until we die. There is no gray area, no matter what the talk of doctors and comas and life support and brain death might say. Your heart beats until it doesn't.
This goes beyond just life and death. Emotions are until they aren't. As are moments, definitions, seasons. Two people falling in love, well, some of them inevitably crash land and then it's over. It's nighttime until daybreak. I'm an infant until I'm a child until I'm a teenager until I'm a young adult until I'm an adult until I'm middle aged until I'm elderly. It's spring until it's summer. And though it may seem like countless gray areas stretch between them, when you are unsure whether a man's appearing gray hairs deem him worthy of "middle aged" rather than "adult", there is always a moment. A clear, inarguable moment where everything changes. Where everything is until it isn't.
We buried my uncle seventeen years ago this February. He was eighteen and his life was punk rock, graveyard shifts at the gas station, the girl who got away who came back, and dreaming of getting out of his small town. That was his life until an off-duty cop went barreling through a red light and sent Jimmy careening through the windshield until he was nothing but a red stain on the right-most lane of Street Road. He was in the passenger seat until he was on the asphalt, and he was my uncle until he wasn't. I was nine months old and don't remember the sound of his voice. His acceptance letter to UCLA Berkley came three weeks after the rabbi from Beth Chaim unveiled his headstone.
Sometimes my grandmother looks at me with a reminiscent sort of melancholy and whispers to me "you are so, so like him." It's moments like these that keep me in front of mirrors for a split second longer than I should stay, so I can study my face and speak into the silence and wonder if I talk like him, if our eyes are the same color, if my teenage rambunctiousness is just what he left me in his astral will. Everyone is until they aren't. Jimmy was alive until he died. That is black and white. That was black and white until my grandmother saw him in me, and I became his gray area.
There is an understanding that nothing is ever black and white. Good can be achieved through bad means, what's wrong can sometimes be right, and if you turn right for long enough, you eventually go left. Boys can be girls who fall in love with girls who sometimes think they are boys and the lines between everything end up irreversibly blurred.
Or so I've always thought.
But this is a line that cannot be blurred. This is the only remaining clear-cut line that separates black from white as perfectly as a color wheel. And that is the fact that everything is until it isn't. We are until we aren't. We breathe until we don't. We live until we die. There is no gray area, no matter what the talk of doctors and comas and life support and brain death might say. Your heart beats until it doesn't.
This goes beyond just life and death. Emotions are until they aren't. As are moments, definitions, seasons. Two people falling in love, well, some of them inevitably crash land and then it's over. It's nighttime until daybreak. I'm an infant until I'm a child until I'm a teenager until I'm a young adult until I'm an adult until I'm middle aged until I'm elderly. It's spring until it's summer. And though it may seem like countless gray areas stretch between them, when you are unsure whether a man's appearing gray hairs deem him worthy of "middle aged" rather than "adult", there is always a moment. A clear, inarguable moment where everything changes. Where everything is until it isn't.
We buried my uncle seventeen years ago this February. He was eighteen and his life was punk rock, graveyard shifts at the gas station, the girl who got away who came back, and dreaming of getting out of his small town. That was his life until an off-duty cop went barreling through a red light and sent Jimmy careening through the windshield until he was nothing but a red stain on the right-most lane of Street Road. He was in the passenger seat until he was on the asphalt, and he was my uncle until he wasn't. I was nine months old and don't remember the sound of his voice. His acceptance letter to UCLA Berkley came three weeks after the rabbi from Beth Chaim unveiled his headstone.
Sometimes my grandmother looks at me with a reminiscent sort of melancholy and whispers to me "you are so, so like him." It's moments like these that keep me in front of mirrors for a split second longer than I should stay, so I can study my face and speak into the silence and wonder if I talk like him, if our eyes are the same color, if my teenage rambunctiousness is just what he left me in his astral will. Everyone is until they aren't. Jimmy was alive until he died. That is black and white. That was black and white until my grandmother saw him in me, and I became his gray area.
Literature
Older
Time is a lonely bastard child. I know
how it feels.
I explore the spaces inside, moist hollows
where the angels once worked
their mischief. Strange
what you can grow accustomed to. I probe
the old scar tissue: smooth, numb
in places. I imagine I can feel
their shades, tactile afterimages: a zombie
reflex, a longing
for a longing. It pulls
at the center of my chest.
I miss the certainty of need.
I examine new possibilities, take
steps, show interest, craft a proposition,
cut a book deal. I have always been honest,
good
for others, even at my worst. I read. I write.
I observe, offer advice. Business is easy
to come by.
I have my way with w
Literature
The Sea
When you make the two one, you will become the Sons of Adam, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away,' it will move away.
Thomas 106: 1-2
Thumos
When I returned to town, I heard the stories:
That you'd walked the oak path,
And past the angel with the flaming sword;
Beneath the river,
Behind the trees
And through a pantheon
Literature
on not knowing.
this road was ten miles long.
i traveled barefoot.
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i wrote this based off a prompt from 's poetry class that i sometimes attend with her
(this means i do her homework)
for jimmy.
i hope i make your memory proud.
=======
holy freaking cow. a DD. i can't even believe it.
thank you, thank you, a million times thank you to absolutely everyone who has read it, commented, thought about it, or even skimmed over it. thank you. this means the world to me.
and, of course, thank you to ^Halatia for featuring me. this was out of nowhere and i don't even have the words.
(this means i do her homework)
for jimmy.
i hope i make your memory proud.
=======
holy freaking cow. a DD. i can't even believe it.
thank you, thank you, a million times thank you to absolutely everyone who has read it, commented, thought about it, or even skimmed over it. thank you. this means the world to me.
and, of course, thank you to ^Halatia for featuring me. this was out of nowhere and i don't even have the words.
© 2011 - 2024 SocraticSynapses
Comments114
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Wow. Just wow. I'm speechless... And I thought my writing was good and complex.