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Lawrence Hall Oct 2019
Curating...

                         To a Curator who Curates Everything

Today one reads that you curated tea
Before curating a bus into town
To curate your job at the coffee shop
And in the afternoon curating friends

Before curating to the artists’ loft
To continue curating the novel
You’ve been curating on for several months
While curating your classes and career

Your life is not a museum, you know
So DROP the CURATING; just let it GO
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is: Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com

It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  THE ROAD TO MAGDALENA, PALEO-HIPPIES AT WORK AND PLAY, LADY WITH A DEAD TURTLE, DON’T FORGET YOUR SHOES AND GRAPES, COFFEE AND A DEAD ALLIGATOR TO GO, and DISPATCHES FROM THE COLONIAL OFFICE.
To those who say I am not enough:
What box of yours did I not check today?
For that is what you seem to be curating with your life
Empty boxes
Except for those tenderly placed checks that don't even come close to filling those boxes up
I do not want your empty boxes
There is enough emptiness in the world without you forcing yours on others
In my life, I want to curate boxes full of love,
Of hope
Of tenderness,
Of acceptance
Of inclusion,
Of forgiveness,
Of unconditional, raw, fulfilling purpose and everything-ness,
That everyone should find at least once.
For it is when these boxes are full of the good and true things of life,
That they become gifts.
And it is these gifts that should be given to one another,
Not these empty boxes with the ghosts of your disappointed expectations
That I will never be able to check and satisfy you,
Or bring happiness to you.
So I do not care I am not enough to you,
That I fail at checking your empty boxes.
Because here I am,
Bearing my giftboxes that I have tried so desperately to fill,
Hoping that you become brave enough to open them and find
You are more than enough,
And you can leave the shackles of your empty boxes and checks behind.
Jay Jimenez Dec 2021
We are all apart of this beautiful nightmare
The stares never would fight fare
I use to dream under those abandoned stairs
Wrapped up in a blanket from somewhere
I guess I truly never cared
As long as the drugs were around to share.

Do you see me fighting
My demons are winning
I’m unaware I’m hurting
I’m curating my own death

I’m shuffling in the corner
The only light I share is from
My lighter
I wish I could just dream
But my eyes are stuck wide open
Can you hear the demon
It’s laughter
Or is this my own personal nightmare

Do you see me fighting
My demons are winning
I’m unaware I’m hurting
I’m curating my own death

I find solace I’ll be saved
Before I dig myself my own grave
I pray to God he will share his grace
And get me out of this miserable place

Do you see me fighting
My demons are winning
I’m unaware I’m hurting
I’m curating my own death
Mark Rohlf Mar 2019
a medley of mange
this group of misfits
laughing dancing
and grazing the strange

unconventional freaks
outlandish and odd
parroting our priests
and glib of our gods

mocking our trials
poking fun of our kings
curating our flaws
as they jump and sing

bent and dimented
indignant to drones
lippy and pert
these rolling stones

theater people
I'm working on a painting of the title, Theater People. This collection of words will accompany the painting.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BuwHq8cgoYV/
Jamie Cohen Sep 2014
cartography: noun:
engraving your face onto my retinas
--the angle your jawline cuts into my irises
and burns into a permanent membrane;
roadmapping your freckles, curating my favorite ones
Bus Poet Stop May 2015
an annualized vacation in the mountains with her sisterhood, down in the Mountains of Mexico, hiking (up at daily at 5:00am to drink in the rising sun, climb the mountain literally,  and imbibing the wildflowers so delighting), breathing in deeply, yoga-ing, multiple dance classing, and restoring a body/soul impetus that city life makes harder, tho she does do it so well...
yes, she is lucky in life to be open willing and capable of restoration...

arriving at home around 11pm, me in bed, all anticipatory, get a (very) quick kiss on the forehead, and switching my light off, she heads off to the den armed and dangerous with the TV chicheer ( what we call it for so long, I forget the real name), watch 6(!) hours of accumulated TV, with many more hours as yet in need of curating...

which proves nothing
but that she is a creature of the night...
and that nature without fantasy is simply not,
nurture sufficient...

as for me...fantasy is my nature
and my nurture
eye'm happy to see blonde hairs and nothing but
peeking out from underneath the sheets,
and remain
sincerely yours,
Mr. Anticipatory,
but no longer her,
Mr Fantasy
Drinking the vin in vignettes
Em E Mar 2015
This murky grey of the everyday, of the ubiquitous pattern and structured time - these are the illusions, the straws to which I clutch and cling like a child at her mother's skirt. Afraid of the unknown, afraid it will hurt. Looking only backward at my old stories and truths, growing shabby with constant use, poor curating, and increasing age; I wear my willful blinders like a self-constructed cage. Wide roads open ahead, ready to explore, and yet I cringe, I cower:  weak, small and unsure.

Small spikes of... awareness, sharp sudden connections to the divine, in the midst of mundanity I am hit with moments of expansion, of elevation and escape. A soaring stretch of the soul, reaching its arms upward, yawn and strain, trying for something, reaching beyond its usual scope as if hoping to catch a half-remembered dream, yes -- chasing the remnants of a fantastic dream --

Is it still within my scope? This rush of potential, this flush of excited possibility, of hope? Am I walking into it, or waking from it? That feeling of joyful freedom - surely that is our natural state, when the mind and its anxieties are forgotten or put to rest. That heady elation that makes me feel larger than life: I will it to be so, for that stretch to stick, to rearrange my shape, the space I take, to alter the way I think, the decisions I make.

It could be, can be reality, can be more real than the press of uncertainties, the weight of worries and restless unease.
sheeba balan kpp Jan 2015
I maintain silence
I prefer better questions
I sleep I eat
I drink
I *** I ****
you do that too anyways
We could talk better
Some art curating
Or an evolving idea
I wish no wastage of words
no more energy waste
all that is done
All that has been done
Talk is for birth
for new borns
and for infestations
Steve Page May 2019
We're all sound artists now.
Walking through our chosen concert halls, with or without walls, listening through public spaces, in personal places, curating our own shapes of combinations, constructions, concoctions of sounds and visions, an unwitting contribution to the contemporary audio visual world of sonic art installations.
We're all artists now.
And we're in charge.
Walking through London listening to my playlist.
Culpoetry May 2014
Red sky in the morning
and the shepherds are all fawning

Curating combs for the wool
whilst the slaughterhouse is built.

We bleat in high hopes
for the avarice to abate

and so, at a comb-stroke
we cultivate our hate. -
electric — conflated with
the doldrum of once ignited feeling
on the russet table work
and the stringing aroma of flyblown
coffee painting the morning something
earthenware;

i imagine
  
     women lounging
and displaying their flamboyant dresses
confessing a dull promenade
parading their attenuated *****. reveling
a queendom on recall and this bane,
  merely resolute, gives itself a new
meaning as a hand of forgive

   men resigning their bags on the corner,
grunts, heaves deathly serious disallowing tomorrow's arrival into
  a throb of being in place, folding newspapers to a club and smiting fervently along with the endless waiting,
  
   verses lying cold on the froth of the tile
and the wind ripening the brew of
     contestations — punctuations in their
cupboards still and reserved in hermetic
   space curating silence, giving dins
     their polished ends,

   open for all: churlish boys,
   naked girls, faith-used women, strife-torn men, usual suspects,
     rebels and the overwrought –
  never closes like a hand in cold
      or a rose, its face occulted by
identification sideways torn, inside and out struggling,
      scrunched to squint on some pale light through chinks on the battered
     wall, sipping coffee,
   mmmm, that
   morning ripple transcending the
         heaviness of the city before me.
Fah Dec 2014
Consciously curating the thoughts that stream through
offering a space in mind , working the mind
not just a block of damp cheese soaking up the leftover gruel but a fine fine piece of raw chocolate sweetened a tad by maple syrup and dotted with raspberries

that's me allright.
No matter the folly
It's time to rise and shine
Self consciousness really doesn't suit me
I know I got a few bruises but and I'd rather be amused than some kind of fanatic muse to a ***** artist any day
Humor is the hotline to Unconditioned Love Centers .

Snapping and projecting at other people is really lame self-defense because i'm picking fights with these tactics,
exaggerating anthills with this mindset
and digging graves using two left shoes with this clouded vision
from which
ultimately
I'll have to climb out of
because I'm not dead and no one was attacking me in the first place.

Why is it so difficult to be honest with myself when I'm faced with an error in my judgement or an unhealthy way of life is beguiling me to stay on tap?

Ignorance of Inner life, Inner worlds and Inner vision.
Got me trippin at ego's palace , high on self-pity
Drunk and dizzy on sickly sweet aggression.  

It's a scandal that these spaces of inner lands are vastly ignored as children and youth, blindly wondering the world           confused
with a rhythm that is skewed
because I know more about the gossip of the evening news
when really, this is      where the treasure is, this is
where the wisdom rests
this is where the magic lives!
All inside my beating chest, burrowed back beneath my eyes
somewhere where the 5 senses would be throughly surprised
accessed through quiet stillness or ecstatic joy
known to many as chills along the spine or the tingles of goose bump whispers
access to dimensions unfathomed
all waiting
for the space to become

realized , actualized and known.

I've realized, i'm a seasoned traveller through these Inner pathways and I've been holding myself back for fear I'm not beautiful enough
but
You know, if I hang around and wait for all you lot to catch up or for myself to suddenly be "like everyone else"
I'll never make it back with the goods in time
because
there is something more fun than enjoying depression
it's called not enjoying depression!
Abby Reynolds Jan 2019
he always believed god made a mistake when carefully curating his quiet body with a loud mouth
he said
I wreck what I touch
I feel far too much
I never show emotion for long
and I destroy the ones I love most
he always believed I was a symphony
he said
you're perfectly timed
a pretty face with a flawless mind
your heart is gold, intentions pure
you're far too good to love a soul like mine
and yet the perfect symphony fell in love with the man
who was the color of boom
so boom went the love
then boom went their hearts
but when he said
I told you
we were never going to surpass the nasty
she said
darling can't you see how we've bloomed
you're the man I knew you could be
no longer the color of boom
Branden Youngs Jan 2019
I wanted to control the things I couldn’t avoid.
Growing up, disappointment,
and how my heart gets destroyed.
Pieces shattered in my hands as I tried to hold
moments of my life
created uncontrolled.

Curating a mind grown with unchecked panic.
Thoughts clashing around like violent storms from the Atlantic.
Wishing my words came out less frantic
and more romantic.
Shayan Das Jul 2015
Lavished with qualities i can't define.                                            
Admiring the enigma of what can be us                                                                
Nothing can compare to you're elegance like wine..                    
Curating my emotion,turning it to lust.                                            
Exquisite is your nature by design...

Longing for your attention as if it is air,                                              
Asphyxiated is space without you near...                                            
Painful as it may be, i think this is fair.                                            
Unbinding me from you is something i fear.                              
Zero chance to finding someone so rare...
Notes (optional)
Empire Jan 2020
Just because the bottles say your name
Doesn’t mean it’s not self-medication
You don’t get to pick and choose
You aren’t curating a selection
You need to throw them away
I know you’re not okay
But you will make things worse
If you choose
To self-medicate
So many **** pills...
******* self control...
I’m just desperate and just destructive enough to want to try....
ALI Mar 7
In this world we live in, everything seems muddled, as if we’re floating in a sea of digital chaos. We see only shadows of ourselves, dancing on endless screens, trying to grasp an idea, a feeling, or even meaning. But what if these shadows are all we know of ourselves?

We are now in a state of constant consumption—not just material, but intellectual and cultural too. We feed on algorithms that claim to know us, that pretend to draw closer while drifting further away. They create a parallel reality we don’t know how to escape, a reality that shapes our desires and thoughts as if imposed on us.

Have you ever felt like you’re not you? That the persona you think you inhabit is just a reflection of everything you’ve consumed? Our identities are built from our experiences, but what if those experiences are counterfeit? Repetitive, lacking real distinction. We live the same moments, are influenced by the same things—but have we truly changed? Or are we just distorted copies of one another?

Life in this age has become a labyrinth, deeper and deeper, yet endless. We chase ideas, hunt desires, and with every step, sink further into this digital vortex. Are we the ones creating these desires, or are algorithms planting them in us, tailoring them to our metrics?

Sometimes I wonder: Are my thoughts truly mine? Or are they just echoes borrowed from this digital age? Do I love the color black because it reflects a part of me, or is it merely one of the hues these networks have stolen from me?

Am I a musician, or just an image of someone battling these crashing waves of “content”? Are we following our passions, or just trying to be part of the show—part of this unending game in an era accelerating unnaturally?

When I reflect on all this, I feel like a stranger to myself. I search for myself in everything, yet find only shadows. The harder I try to be my best, the further I drift. Does this mean I’m not who I think I am? Are the personas I inhabit what make me me? Or do I exist only at the heart of this chaos?

The Psychological Struggle Between Desire and Algorithms
In the realm of social media, where our preferences and inclinations are dictated by what algorithms deem most engaging, the urgent question becomes: Am I truly choosing what I love, or are these platforms choosing for me? The more I scroll through Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, the more I feel I’m not where I want to be. Algorithms relentlessly push me toward trending images, videos, and campaigns, drowning me in a whirlwind of visuals I must follow to belong to this digital world.

But are these desires arising within me truly mine? Or am I just adopting what these algorithms impose on my mind? Every time I hit “like” or share content, I’m nagged by the uneasy sense that I’m not shaping my choices as I once believed. With every new trend, my mind begins to think differently. Do I actually love this type of music, fashion, or even the ideas spreading online? Or have I just been swayed by what these apps bombard me with—content that mirrors what everyone else assumes I should like?

Over time, the line between “me” and what’s imposed by algorithms fades. I ask: Am I the person I chose to be, or just a replica of everything these platforms have planted in my mind? Does what I share with the world reflect my true self, or am I performing a role that fits the image they’ve forced on me?

Here lies the internal conflict. Part of me feels it follows its own inclinations, while another knows these inclinations aren’t necessarily authentic. These struggles grow sharper at the crossroads between what I want to be and what algorithms want for me. In the end, will I find the courage to break free from these digital molds and choose my own path? Or will I remain trapped in the game of images and interactions controlled by algorithms until they define me?

But what if these algorithms reflect my deepest desires? Can I distinguish what’s real to me from what’s merely a reaction to the external world? And could my urge to follow trends be a genuine desire, or just compliance with what’s in front of me?

If I’m following what others impose, am I losing myself? Or am I adapting to the world I live in—is this simply how I’m meant to be? Sometimes, I feel stuck in a maze of contradictory choices: Should I abandon these consuming apps? Or must I stay because the world can’t function without these spaces? Can I truly be “me” here, or am I fundamentally just a digital avatar?

Why do I constantly compare myself to others? Is it genuine need, or have algorithms learned to fuel this impulse? Why has every moment, every thought, become a competition, a race against time, something I must showcase to the world?

Occasionally, moments of clarity strike—I feel I’ve found the way—but in the next breath, conflicting thoughts creep back: Am I just adopting what’s popular, or simply choosing what suits me in the moment? Are these real thoughts, or echoes of what I’ve been told? Do I need external pressure to exist? Am I independent, or forced into this vortex?

At every corner of this digital world, new ideas, choices, and doubts loom. Is this truly my life, or am I just a spectator in an endless show I can’t escape? Can I be real in a world of prefabricated choices, or am I a puppet in the hands of algorithms shaping me to their will?

As I keep interacting with these platforms, questions multiply: What if I stopped posting? What if I set my phone aside? Would I feel relief, or emptiness, because I’ve become inseparable from this digital entity feeding on notifications and endless engagement?

Every choice spawns new questions. Every step toward an answer spirals me into futility. Am I me? Or a reflection of what’s shown to me? How do I separate the real from the imposed?

So many questions. A headache. Unbearable complexity. Am I truly me?

Imposter Syndrome and the Shattering of Identity
This turmoil isn’t just a clash between self and others—it’s a reflection of an ancient syndrome called “imposter syndrome.” It makes us doubt our worth at every turn, convincing us we don’t deserve our achievements, that we’re mere dolls moving to society’s imposed standards.

But it doesn’t end there. This self-doubt drowns in far greater chaos. Every moment of life becomes a question: Do we deserve what we have? Is this truly our life, or are we just playing a role the world assigned us? Where did this conviction come from—that we have no right to be as we wish? Don’t we see that, in the end, we wear masks? Our celebrations, joys, even failures—all governed by others’ expectations.

Now, blame isn’t directed inward alone, but at the world that bred this tension. We’ve trapped ourselves in cycles of failure and insignificance—not because we’re incapable, but because we were raised to believe success lies in mimicking others. What sets us apart if we’re just repeating the crowd? Society planted the idea that success requires conformity, and when we deviate, we feel excluded. But was this our choice? Or an external imposition?

**** the world! Let it shatter these stereotypes that cage us. Let it demolish the ideas that imprisoned us. For in the end, the world endlessly reinforces the image we should embody, while the truth is we’re all living a delusion, mistaking what we see for reality, when we’re victims of algorithms tethering us to alien beliefs. We need immense courage to break free from this grating repetition, to rebel against ready-made molds—because, ultimately, we lack true freedom of choice in a world that dictates everything.

Society forces us to be “imposters” every second, wearing masks to convince ourselves and others we belong, when in truth, we’re strangers in our own world.

The Child Who Dismantled Toys
Yes, I’ve asked too many questions—but that’s my nature. I’ve always been intensely curious. Since childhood, I sought the unconventional, never satisfied with what the world offered. My father noticed my love for remote-control cars and brought me one on every work trip. But what fascinated me wasn’t play—it was dissecting their mechanics. How did the battery work? How did electronic parts sync to make the car move?

Unlike kids content to play in parks or bedrooms, I sat amid disassembled toys, prying open circuits, asking: Why is this piece here? What if I modify it? I hunted details others overlooked, convinced every machine hid a secret. When stumped, I’d scavenge wood and plastic scraps from my uncle’s workshop, building something new—as if I controlled my world, seeking the best way to connect things.

This mindset set me apart. While others played tag or hide-and-seek, I turned play into learning and innovation. I refused daily routines, driven by an inner sense I could offer something unique. I ignored popular games, drawn instead to creating.

At 12, when toys lost their secrets, I coded small games and uploaded them online. These weren’t just for fun—they were bridges to share my ideas, to craft a world beyond the ordinary. While others chased tradition, I designed, programmed, and found peace releasing my thoughts into the digital void.

This childhood wasn’t easy. It brimmed with insatiable curiosity, a world of endless questions, hunting answers in every cranny.

I wasn’t isolated—I made friends in my neighborhood, inventing new games. One, called Random as Hell, blended popular games into chaotic rules. Now, revisiting memories, I wonder: Was I truly creative? Or just rearranging borrowed fragments into new shapes?

Creator or Fraud?
This doubt haunts me even in my music. At my computer, sifting through sounds and rhythms, I can’t stop wondering: Is this genuine creativity? Or am I stitching scraps of what I’ve heard, repackaging them as new?

Every track I make is shadowed by this question. Sometimes I listen proudly, then suddenly feel it’s all derivative—a trick, passing off recycled ideas as original. Maybe the algorithms surrounding us are part of this game, curating videos, music, and images, leaving me to wonder if my work is just an extension of them.

Am I the musician I aspire to be? Or a mirror of mainstream taste, of trending sounds? Do I choose notes out of love, or because I’ve seen others do the same?

Each attempt at innovation becomes an internal battle. I delete tracks and restart, fleeing the fear that my work isn’t “me” enough. But can anything ever be fully “me”? Are we all just accumulations of what we consume, fragmented like the toys I dismantled and reassembled?

Maybe creativity isn’t invention from nothing, but rearranging pieces with our own imprint. Yet even this thought doesn’t silence the question: Is that imprint enough? Or am I still haunted by the bigger query—Am I a creator or a fraud?

Stereotypes and the Deconstruction of Identity
The story ends in a foggy moment where nothing is clear. Reality feels alien, as if things overlap confusingly. One moment I write about childhood, the next about identity, my mind, or impossible adaptations.

This isn’t a book or a coherent idea—it’s solace I offer myself, comfort from an anonymous source. Perhaps that anonymity is what philosophers call “the observer.”

That I keep writing after all these lines surprises me. It feels like another escape from myself, or a psychological war I’m enduring.

Is this feeling from abandoning music? From my homeland’s post-war liberation? Or just missing those I’ve lost?

I can’t pinpoint my emotions. All I know is something new is sweeping through me.

I’ve always hated books—too long, stealing my “precious” time, though my days are empty. I feel emotionally shattered. I don’t understand these feelings spilling into strange actions, unsure if they’re real or my interpretation.

I’ve always crafted a private world where I’m the hero, the genius, the only real one. I search for it online but find only ads urging me to see a therapist.

I miss music, yet here I am, accidentally rhyming in this text.

Is this a real book? Will I show it to others? Or keep my fractured identity hidden?

Amid these emotions, I recall a song I wrote called Stranger, trying to capture the perpetual sense of alienation—not from a place, but from people, even myself. Alienation from family despite their closeness, from responsibilities that feel hollow.

In the song, I focused on how estrangement shadows me everywhere. But the lyrics were often shallow, unbalanced—as if grasping at the inexplicable.

Like this book.

One verse:
"Why am I the one my head always calls ‘you,’
I wouldn’t exist,
Sleep,
Sick,
A teapot and death."

It seems random but mirrors my inner chaos—scattered feelings I can’t order, puzzles unsolved. The song, like this text, was an attempt to express, to escape, or perhaps to reach honesty.

When AI Became Trendy
I gravitated toward chatbots—maybe because people found me hard to understand, and these emotionless mechanisms made it easier. My first message:
"Can you explain this song to me?"
I attached lyrics to one of my songs. Illogical, I know—how could a soulless algorithm grasp words? But for me, it was the closest path to understanding my own work.

I didn’t stop at lyrics. I explained how I composed melodies, as they were integral to the idea. I wanted to see if the machine could link words to notes, emotion to structure—if that was even possible.

It became a habit. I analyzed every song I’d written and composed, one by one. I wanted to see how AI dissected these works that were direct reflections of my inner world.

Each time, I’d ask:
"How did you reach these conclusions? What made you interpret it this way? Are there other ways to understand it?"

My questions weren’t technical curiosity but a journey into self-understanding. How could a feelingless entity see something alien in me? How could it explain what I couldn’t?

This experiment grew more philosophical than I’d imagined. AI is a cold mirror, reflecting me without judgment. Yet I sought answers to lifelong questions:
Are we more than patterns and repetitions?
Does my music express something real, or just document chaos?

In the end, I realized bots aren’t here to interpret feelings but to push deeper self-reflection. Somehow, in this lifeless metal mind, I found a silent friend… listening, analyzing, never judging.

Documenting Internal Chaos
I’ve always felt an inner conflict, as if trapped between layers of consciousness and emotion. I know I have awareness and feelings, but I don’t feel them directly—they lurk in shadows, watching silently, emerging only through spontaneous actions.

When I write lyrics or compose, I’m not fully conscious. Sometimes I’m swept by vague ideas, emptying something indescribable. Odd behaviors, inexplicable acts—all reflections of a deeper struggle.

For me, emotions aren’t lived moment-to-moment. They’re scattered fragments surfacing unpredictably—in a song, an idea, a meaningless gesture.

Maybe this is what I call documenting chaos. Every melody, word, or cryptic step is my attempt to understand the hidden thing inside. A personal ledger, hoping one day I’ll look back and grasp it.

But can chaos be documented? Or does trying mean admitting I’m not in control? That I’m a reflection of greater chaos I can’t master?

Perhaps these spontaneous acts are my only truth. The problem lies in my relentless need to dissect what wasn’t meant to be dissected—only lived.

But what if this chaos is my nature? Part of being human? I’ve long wondered: Is it a flaw to purge, or part of my identity?

The German philosopher Nietzsche said: "You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star." Maybe this inner turmoil, this maze of emotion and awareness, drives me to seek meaning in the mess.

Sometimes I feel I inhabit parallel worlds: the conscious one where I interact with people, and the inner one I don’t fully understand. A gap between mind and feeling, experience and interpretation.

Once, in a café, watching people, I suddenly wondered if everyone harbored similar inner conflicts. A strange sensation—as if viewing the world through another window. Maybe loneliness, empathy, or both. In that moment, I realized I sometimes feel through observation, not directly.

Odd as it sounds, I discover my emotions through actions—arranging books, walking in rain. These moments reflect inner struggles I can’t articulate.

Freud said: "The unconscious will always emerge, but in twisted ways." Maybe these acts aren’t random. Maybe they’re my subconscious trying to parse internal chaos.

Even my thoughts resist me. Focusing on one idea, ten others intrude. Different mind-parts war to speak, but I can’t assemble them.

Sartre wrote: "We are not what we are, but what we make of ourselves." Maybe this conflict isn’t to be solved, but what defines me. My chaos proves I’m alive, experiencing, trying.

Heidegger saw human existence as anxiety-ridden because we know we exist. Maybe this chaos, this existential dread, is proof I’m living authentically, however exhausting.

Sometimes I feel like someone assembling a puzzle blind. Every act, emotion, spontaneous moment—a tiny piece. I don’t know the final image, maybe never will.

Love and Confusion
There’s a girl far away I used to talk to daily. No one else excited me like her. Once, she said she loved me, but I—perhaps not understanding love—didn’t know how to respond.

Being together seemed impossible for two reasons. First: She seemed far better—aware, smart, beautiful, radiant. Me? Just… me. Inadequacy blocked me from imagining us. Second: I couldn’t envision an emotional future. Looking ahead, relationships felt too complex, beyond my capacity to plan or conceive.

But here’s the problem: If I don’t understand love, why did this feel different? Why did talking to her ignite a part I thought dormant? How can I feel what I don’t comprehend?

I don’t know if it was love. I just loved spending time with her. Our chats sparked a strange excitement. Hearing about her day, I clung to every detail. Though she spoke little, her voice felt like the only sound in the world.

Some might call this love, but I’m unsure. I’ve always believed love must be unique—distinct from friendship or attachment. But isn’t this difference what makes me consider love?

I told myself: "If your actions toward someone you love mirror those toward friends, you don’t love them." But this logic may be flawed. Love might lie not in actions, but in how they feel different, even if simple or repeated.

Heidegger wrote: "In the presence of the Other, my existence becomes more authentic, for it lets me see myself through them." Maybe that’s what happened. Through her eyes, I tried to grasp the indescribable.

Yet I felt lost. How can I define the indefinable? One day, pondering: "Could love be a reflection of unacknowledged desires?" As if love isn’t pure, but a mix of human contradictions—need and freedom, longing and fear.

Love might be organized chaos. Once, she asked about my favorite movie. I paused. Her question felt like an attempt to know me deeper, to find something I couldn’t see.

But isn’t that love? Seeing in another what they don’t see in themselves? Or living in perpetual contradiction between understanding and confusion?

Camus said: "Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, trusting they won’t." That’s love’s paradox—danger and safety, beauty and fragility, closeness and fear.

Maybe I’ll never fully grasp love. But talking to her, awaiting her messages, dissecting her words—it gave me a unique feeling I still seek to define. Maybe love is eternal searching without certainty.

But this is contradictory, messy. Why must I live in opposites? Shouldn’t love be pure, simple? Here begins the endless loop: I question, then drown in doubt. Is this love? Or something else?

If love’s so complex, how do others declare it so easily? "I love him," "I love her"—phrases tossed effortlessly. Why isn’t it complex for them? Am I stupid? Or just too self-unaware to decode basic things?

Once, I experimented. I tried to make myself love another girl—perfect in every way: kind, smart, beautiful. We talked for a month. I forced myself, thinking: "Maybe the problem’s my approach." But I felt intense jealousy and self-loathing—a distorted desire I’d never felt.

Confusing. Did I fail? Am I emotionally broken? Was I seeking real love or feeding ego?

Nietzsche wrote: "The lover wants to possess; no doubt, but no one wants to be possessed." I felt this contradiction. I craved to be loved but couldn’t be honest. Maybe because I didn’t know what I wanted.

Is love finding someone who embraces your contradictions? Or accepting ourselves without forcing change?

That experiment taught me: Maybe the problem isn’t love, but my overthinking. Love might require surrendering to life’s unanalyzable truths—even if it means facing unbearable chaos.

So I quit. Maybe love isn’t for me. Why exhaust myself decoding an unsolvable riddle? I’ll live free of this feeling.

But can I truly ignore every moment I felt something? Every reflection of myself in another’s eyes?

Why does it feel like escape? Like convincing myself to flee because confrontation’s impossible? Love’s a battlefield, and I’m a soldier defeated before the fight. What bothers me most is preemptive defeat—the belief I’ll never understand, never love or be loved.

How do I live with this? Knowing a part of me might die unfulfilled? I want to scream "I don’t care!" but it’s a lie. A tiny voice whispers: "What if you could love? What if you deserved it?"

But this voice deepens my pain. Songs, movies, strangers—all scream: "Love exists, but not for you."

Why me? Is something broken inside, making me unable to interact like others? Sometimes I feel like a machine analyzing emotions instead of feeling them.

But even machines break. Now I’m a shattered piece, straining to prove I function while crumbling inside.

Breathe, Don’t Think
Recently, I met people who seemed kind but absorbed love in ways I couldn’t grasp. Two stood out: a 36-year-old man and an 18-year-old girl. Despite the age gap and social norms, their “love” seemed pure—a mutual infatuation they called "true harmony."

Observing them, I couldn’t understand. Secretly, I asked each: What draws you? How did you meet? What’s the foundation? Their answers revealed minor life changes, nothing extraordinary—just new, relatable experiences.

The girl once said: "I love him because our bond is rooted in faith. With him, I feel closer to God." I didn’t get it, but curiosity plunged me into reflection.

Could love be this simple? Or is there hidden complexity? Their love seemed transcendent, while mine drowns in overthought. Maybe love’s pure for some, but remains my unsolved riddle—a search for self in every detail, even when all seems clear.

Amid this internal collapse, I lived moments of paralyzing confusion—unable to distinguish true love from fleeting thrills. In these moments, I wondered: Am I overcomplicating? Emotionally inept? Or just self-ignorant?

As I spiraled, I realized: Maybe the answer isn’t chasing love, but surrendering to life’s unanalyzable truths. Sometimes, we must breathe deeply and let things flow—even if it means facing breakdown.
My mind and heart are both cold...

Do you sometimes feel like you’re living in fragments of multiple selves? Do the shadows you see on screens truly resemble you, or are they distorted copies of what you consume?
When was the last time you wondered: Are my thoughts my own, or are they echoes of algorithms filling the voids of my mind? Do you believe you choose what you love, or do platforms plant desires in you like seeds in fertile soil?
When you look back at your childhood, do you find the seeds of who you are today? Were your hobbies attempts to decode the world, or just escapes from a reality you didn’t understand? Are you still that child who dismantled toys to see what’s inside, or have you become part of the game itself?

Have you ever doubted your creativity? Do you fear you’re just a collector of borrowed pieces, arranging them into new shapes you brand with your name? Is the music you make a reflection of your chaos, or an attempt to tame it?
Do you know that feeling of loving someone but not understanding what love means? Is love a philosophical riddle with no answer for you, or just a series of actions you perform unconsciously? Have you ever felt that love might be an escape from yourself rather than a closeness to another?
Do you think algorithms know you better than you know yourself? Do you feel watched—not through screens, but through thoughts implanted in you like unsolvable puzzles? What if all your decisions are just reactions to digital stimuli carefully engineered?

When facing internal chaos, do you try to document it or escape it? Do writing or art mirror your fragments, or are they masks hiding what you can’t confront? Is chaos an enemy to conquer, or part of a beauty you don’t understand?
Do you live in two worlds: one you interact with, and another hidden in the folds of your thoughts? Do you feel like you’re watching yourself from afar, a character in a game you didn’t choose?
Have you ever conversed with AI to understand yourself? Do you trust its cold analyses, or do they deepen your confusion? Do you believe machines can see what you cannot?

Are you still trying to be the "best version of yourself," or have you surrendered to being a shadow among shadows? Does success in a digital age mean matching standards or distorting them?
Finally... Are you ready to face the ultimate question:

Who are you when all masks are removed?

Have you ever imagined sitting in a dark room, peeling off mask after mask like Russian Matryoshka dolls until you reach the core? What do you see there? A solid nucleus of certainty, or a void dancing with a single question: Who am I, truly?
In a world that forces you to wear masks as a condition for existence, the question becomes an existential crime. You remove the "success" mask for employers, the "calm" mask for family, the "fun" mask on social media, the "strength" mask on the street... But when the machine stops, screens go dark, and you sit alone with your naked self, what remains? Are you the faint whisper beneath the noise, or have you lost the ability to hear it?

Masks aren’t just tools for hiding—they’re tools for survival. We wear them because absolute truth might burn us, because the world has no space for our fragility. But what if masks become new skin? What if you forget how to breathe without them? Sometimes, when I try to remove one mask, I find another beneath it, clinging tighter... As if I’m searching for my true face in a forest of mirrors, each reflecting a different version blended with others’ imaginations.
Have you ever asked yourself: What would I do if no one were watching? You might discover you love painting but paint what followers want. Or that you prefer silence but speak to avoid being labeled "weird." Masks don’t just hide us—they reshape us. Algorithms turn us into characters in a game with unknown rules, chasing "likes" like puppets, forgetting the only genuine admiration we crave is our own.

But what if you decide to stop? To refuse being a copy of your profile, a number in statistics, a filtered image? Here, true horror begins. Without masks, you might discover you don’t know who you are. You might face meaningless chaos or a void like a desert sprawling in your heart. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, "Hell is other people," but perhaps real hell is being alone with a self you don’t understand.
In rare moments of honesty, you might ask: Aren’t masks part of us? Are we a seamless lie, or does truth leak through the cracks? When I sing, I wonder: Do I choose the words, or do the words choose me? When I love, I hesitate: Is this feeling from my depths, or an echo of stories I’ve heard? Even our emotions might be borrowed from a public library of human existence.

Perhaps the answer isn’t removing masks but realizing we are composite beings. We’re a mix of masks worn, choices made, and coincidences survived. The "true self" isn’t a fixed essence but a river of experiences. When you remove masks, don’t search for your "real self"—confront the question: What will you create from this void?
But beware: bright light may blind you. Truth can be cruel, a mirror showing your scars without mercy. Are you ready to see yourself stripped of illusions? To admit you’re neither hero nor victim, genius nor failure—just a being living in contradiction?

In the end, strength may lie not in knowing who you are but granting yourself the right not to know. To live as an open question, an unfinished artwork. When you remove masks, don’t seek answers—let the void sprout new questions. Identity isn’t a hidden face but a journey to discover how to hold the hand of the child still sitting in the corner of the room, dismantling toys to see what’s inside, while the world waits for them to play.

I am not me, I never was, and never will be...

Words rolling like fireballs in the skull’s void. The more I grasp them, the more they burn; the more I release them, the more they devour what’s left of certainty. Self-awareness here isn’t light—it’s a distorted mirror turning every reflection into a new nightmare. How do I recognize myself when I’m just a hole swallowing definitions?
I try to forget "the old me," but the old me is rubble of moments invented by others. When I say "start anew," I discover the beginning itself is etched on glass. Each step forward pulls me back, as if time is a spiral coiling around itself, and I scream at the center: Where am I?

The paradox is that fleeing from the self is the shortest path to colliding with it. When I remove masks to find another beneath, I don’t know if I wear them or they wear me. Even words betray me: When I say "I," who speaks? Is it the voice heard in childhood, or an echo of algorithms teaching me to name myself?
Philosopher Nietzsche said, "We’ve grown strange to ourselves," but we were never anything but strangers. The self isn’t a buried essence but a mirage we chase. The closer we get, the more it evaporates, leaving one question: What if "I" is just a necessary illusion to keep the game from collapsing?

In this vortex, even oblivion is impossible. To forget yourself is to invent a new self with the same flaws. Like changing a frame while the painting beneath decays. Rebelling against identity is like fleeing your shadow—it chases you even in a dark room’s void.
Sometimes I imagine the universe as cosmic Lego. Each piece resembles me, but I don’t know which one I am. When I rebuild myself, I find the original design erased, the rules written in a language I don’t understand. Am I the assembler or the assembled? The player or the game itself?

The cruelest paradox: The more self-aware I become, the more obscure I grow. Awareness is a knife carving me into fragments, then demanding I reassemble them without instructions. I hold a heart I don’t recognize and a mind like a computer filled with uninstalled programs. When I say "this is me," a distant voice replies: "You are version 162. Update now?"
Perhaps the solution isn’t becoming "you" but learning to live as "not-you." To float above contradictions without drowning in meaning. But how do you float when you know waves are moved by an undercurrent called "self"? How do you surrender to absurdity when you’re a child of an age that worships individuality while grinding it in the machine of social metrics?

In the end, I wonder: What if "I" is just an interface for something greater? An unnamed, unknowable, cosmic being flipping human roles like cards—me, a misplaced card on the table. But even this question becomes a new mask. Every attempt to exit the labyrinth opens another.
So I surrender to the spiral. I don’t spin—the spiral spins me. In this eerie game, perhaps the only beauty is that you don’t need to be "you" to begin. All you must do is close your eyes and hear the void whisper: "You’re here because you’re nowhere else... and that’s enough."

I orbit like a planet exiled from its path...

I carry cosmic dust in my pockets and the world’s secrets hanging like dead stars.
I don’t know who I am... but they knew I read the screams of nebulae.
I know everything... yet I don’t know when I was born, or why moons shatter when I breathe!

I’m the forgotten library holding every book’s end.
My pages fall like meteors, each crying:
"Who will rearrange the idea before it becomes a black hole?"
I carried the names of infinities on a school trip,
and when asked about myself, I gasped for an answer lost between my ribs.

I speak the language of the impossible,
translating the silence of stars into shimmering rays.
I hear fate’s dialogues with oblivion at a table of overlapping eras.
They say: "He knows the hour of mountains’ collapse before they crumble!"
Yet I don’t know how to stop a tear when it falls from my eye.

I dance with scientific ghosts in night’s laboratory,
mixing pain with galaxies in a vial.
I search for the meaning of "I" between equations slipping from memory
and a blurred childhood image swarming with asteroids.
Even the map I drew of myself turns to planetary chaos—
whenever I point somewhere, I say: "Here I was... or here I’ll be!"

The universe mocks me somehow,
sending coded messages in nebula colors:
"When will you understand you’re just an echo of a voice not your own?"
I answer with a scream fossilizing in space:
"I’m the one who wrote the questions before answers were born!"

I discover I exist only when lost.
The closer I get to solving the riddle, a thousand new labyrinths open.
I walk a path of past shards, arriving at a future
holding the same question with another face:
"Are you the hero, the author, or just an extra letter in the novel of eternity?"

In the final chapter...
I wear the universe’s skin as a frail coat,
let my questions dangle like drowning stars,
and promise myself I’ll remove all masks tomorrow.
But...
Who can shed themselves twice?

Apologies for all that came before...

I’m not here to rewrite the past but to dive into a moment stolen by loneliness. Sitting in my room, staring at walls cradling my labored breath, I slipped suddenly into a world of words and wrote what I never planned. The draft you read was a spark igniting contemplation—thoughts I never expected poured out. The loneliness seeping into me isn’t fleeting; it’s a living thing sharing my breath, watching from corners, whispering: "You’re alone, but are you truly you?"

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, paints loneliness as a path to the Übermensch: "You must be ready to burn in your own flame"—a fire forging the soul. For him, loneliness isn’t escape but a crucible for the bold. But I feel small before this vision. I’m no match for his ideals, wavering between fearing loneliness and surrendering to it.

Many of us don’t grasp the edges of our "comfort zones"—spaces where days blur into simplicity: your room, phone, laptop. These things swallow us. A friend recently discovered his comfort zone, calling it his "best self," yet drowns in endless gaming. Is this addiction? No—it’s deeper. Comfort zones are shelters from external chaos, but we lose ourselves in them.

In my silent room, where loneliness hugs me like an old friend, I realize it and the "comfort zone" are threads in the same fabric. Nietzsche might see them as tools for self-creation, but I hesitate. Maybe my loneliness isn’t a flame to burn in but a refuge. Here, I write and think, even if I’m fleeing the world. Yet in honesty, I ask: Do I choose this loneliness, or does it choose me? Is the comfort zone a sanctuary or a trap?

Loneliness, at its core, isn’t a transient state but a deep voyage into the self—a journey as painful as standing on embers, yet carrying seeds of growth. Maybe I’m not ready to burn as Nietzsche describes, but I’m learning to live with it, turning it from a silent prison into a mirror reflecting my shadows—those I’ve long fled but still follow like breath.

In this silence, where only thoughts move, words flow like a hidden stream waiting to tell its story. I’m no professional writer, no skilled musician translating inner turmoil into melody—I seek peace in books, ideas, and self-imposed quiet. Perhaps this pursuit is just another escape from the "observer" philosophers describe.

Those inner voices aren’t whispers but living things—ghosts of past and present dancing on the mind’s walls. I built high walls of noise and distraction to deafen myself, thinking busy hands and eyes would silence them. But as with all inner battles, the stronger the walls, the louder they knock, demanding I listen, look, confront.

If I don’t distract myself, if I let the void expand, I fear those voices will **** me—not physically, but a deeper death: the death of comfort, the death of the illusion that I can escape forever. Yet in this struggle, I stand at a new threshold: Can I turn loneliness into a mirror of unflinching truth? Or keep circling questions with no answers?

Perhaps the answer isn’t finding an end but accepting the journey—contradictions, pain, beauty, fear, and hope. In this silence, alone, I write not as a professional but as a human seeking meaning, inviting those distant voices to dialogue instead of war. With each word, I feel closer to myself—loneliness, once feared, becomes a silent companion teaching me to see, hear, and be.

Everything I’ve said amounts to nothing...

Suddenly, the pen stops, ink freezes, and words collapse like sandcastles under wind. Everything I wrote—the digital chaos, fractured identity, algorithmic struggles, endless questions—is just mist evaporating into an indifferent sky. Imagine: books, these paper temples of knowledge, are tired echoes in time’s cave, vanishing like breath in winter air. We write, pant, scream on pages, thinking we leave marks—but truth mocks us at the turn: all this talk is fleeting, whispers lost to oblivion.

Look around. Imagine a vast library stretching to the horizon, shelves groaning under millions of books. Now light a match in your mind, let it devour every page until only ash dances like burnt butterflies. This is every book’s fate—even the text you’re reading now. We write as if carving stone, but we’re sketching on water, lines forming then dissolving. Philosophy, literature, history—ghosts in word-clothes pretending to immortality, crumbling like pharaohs under time’s fingers.

The Shocking Contradiction
Here lies the twist: this book, with its deep reflections on self and world, is no exception. It’s part of the farcical dance with oblivion. You think you’re reading something profound, something transformative—until you discover it’s another shadow on the cave wall, moving by a dying fire. I, the writer, write about writing’s futility yet persist, a clown laughing at himself in a deserted circus. You, the reader, stare at these lines, perhaps seeking meaning—but meaning crumbles like sugar in bitter coffee.

In this world where algorithms shape us and screens consume us, books are neither sanctuary nor revolution. They’re pebbles tossed into time’s river, stirring ripples before sinking. No one takes them seriously, for seriousness itself is a grand delusion. Why write? Maybe because in this absurdity, we glimpse beauty—a falling star dying yet glowing. As these words dissolve before your eyes, ask yourself: Were you seeking truth here, or are you, like me, just dancing in a play with no audience?

Dear reader,
Remember that girl I mentioned? I thought her a philosophical enigma, a love story’s axis or a reflection of my fractured soul. I wrote of her eyes like falling stars, her voice a melody strumming my heartstrings. But truth waits at the turn like a mocking ghost: She was an illusion, a cold mirror reflecting what I wished to see. The love I thought cosmic was a mirage in the mind’s desert, vanishing as I neared. Those kind strangers? Mere passersby in life’s theater, smiling before vanishing, leaving me to face the void. Even AI, which I hoped would answer me, is just a machine arranging words like old game pieces, untouched by what I feel..
A W Bullen Apr 2022
The house bound head
had heard the news

old-money descant
dipped in dog-rose

Tuning forks
for goat-foot Gods
curating song
bedazzled zones

The crown
emblazoned sink estate
retained the annual Pilgrim's rite

where
roundelays
round every door
bore cherry blossom white
n stiles carmona Jan 2021
Just once,
I should like to see
a pretty truth.

I am too used to self-curating
— slipping into silken words —
shimmering golds that complement
my skin just right
(not wash it out
upon the threat
of natural light).

Confessions speed to
halts,
flushed-faced;
pause,
dismayed
they cannot catch the sun
from a gentler angle,
to soften, to lovingly blur
and still pass for the same entity.

From the cradle, I've been
my own ******: half-enthusiasm
borne from rubbernecking thrills
— real-time collisions
at the mirror's appraising edge.
FIRST WRITTEN WORK OF 2021 WADDUP (and first written piece in  six months but we'll gloss over that okay)

— The End —