The Art of Randomness: a New Look

I was overdue by two blog posts for goal; I planned to create a custom theme for this blog upon reaching 25 blog posts. So, now that the busy world has been pricked in the side by 27 posts of Randomness, Rambles, and Reflection, I have taken it upon myself to make more sporadic the image of this particular not-so-bakery pie bakery.

Yeah, I made a new WordPress theme. Actually started it a bit before writing the story about the Whale Who Ate the Moon. Making WordPress themes from XHTML/CSS was alot simpler than I expected although I’m not sure exactly what I expected. Either way, this blog no longer has a default look, so cheers! And may that busy world know that randomness is a blessing yet.

November 25, 2009 at 12:44 pm | Lifepost | No comments

The Whale Who Ate the Moon

I was a whale in a cartoon world. The kind of whale with the overinflated upside down U head and a little string of a tail attached. If you took a photo of me, I would have saved into the .svg vector format, indefinitely resizeable in my shadingless, textureless shape simplicity.

My world was the type of ocean you saw in paper cut out animations. The ocean was three rows of waves moving against each other in opposite directions. The waves came in layers of light blue water layered upon darker water. But they were just cartoon-like waves anyways.

Me? I stared upon my waves from the shore. I was not a beached whale for in this world, I might have been a perfectly realistic and JPEGified human under the guise of a whale. However, I was not. So I jumped into the water. And my life begins.

Every night, there was a full moon. There was never day so long as this moon was there, so we didn’t know what day was. There wasn’t even an every in the night; there was only this night, this long winding trailing… night. But us whales didn’t care for such things. The moon was still as shiny as any shiny disk floating in midair.

So somehow, all my life, the only thing I wanted to do was eat the moon. Traveling with the other whales, I jumped with the waves, higher than the rest because I was reaching for the moon. For so long in my life, I continued each day with a semblance of improvement, believing full well that one day I would touch the moon.

And that day came.

Realizing the top of my blowhole barely touched the moon, I started to practice the art of tongue stretching as I jumped. And one day, as my tongue rolled out like a frog’s into the sky, I knocked the moon off its little coat hanger and let it roll into my mouth, as shiny as ever.

The other whales were surprised They cheered me and kept cheering me as the whale who knocked the moon out of the sky. And in a few instants, I forgot which whales were which for I heard only an indistinguishable clutter of cheers. So I swam away, taking the moon with me. To far away places.

I met a little whale. He did not tell me his name, but he saw the moon resting on my tongue. And he asked me if I was the famous whale who had touched the moon. So I told him I could be and gave him the moon, and he was astonished. But I told him to care for the moon and swam away.

All my life now, I continued, knowing and cherishing that the moon was somewhere over the waves. I started to swim the oceans, in my sense of life achievement, to help and recognize the other whales around me.

I listened to random strangers and eavesdropped into the lives of others. I complimented them for those little things they were proud of… the ones that others didn’t notice or appreciate so much. And I saw the little social hints all around that others forgot to take. And in the presence of others, I was the listener…

Because life was good, and I had already touched the moon. No troubles left to absorb myself within and seas of fish aplenty, the troubles of others are a spot upon a sparkling floor, waiting to be washed away like the sand on those cartoon beaches.

One day I remembered the name they called this sweet thing: loneliness. Loneliness.

That through all the time and through my glory, I was but a lonely whale who sought out friends by being a friend but swam afar too soon, trying hard to play the role of an unknown benefactor. No, I was just a lonely whale in a lonely moonless sea.

That day I searched for the moon again. I remembered the face of the little whale to whom I gave the moon, and I remembered the radiating light of our forever full moon.

While the sea was day and the clouds so cheery and the waters so warm, I searched for the moon. I did not notice the troubles of others. I did not see the hints of others. I did not stop to listen. Because I had a goal, and I was busy.

And I found the moon as bright as ever, even doused by the sun. And the little whale, now older, still carried the moon. And I thanked him and told him the moon was truly a beautiful thing.

He told me he cared for the moon, like I asked, and he cherished the moon, like he knew to.

So I told him today this everlasting day was to end, and the moon was to return to the sky, and he nodded. He gave me the moon, and I jumped one last time into the sky with the moon upon my extended tongue, and I hung the moon back onto its coat hanger. And there it rested, still forever full.

I never noticed the stars before, but the night sky is a truly breathtaking tapestry. And those stars to linger about the night sky the way us whales do in the sea, and they are together though the moon be lonely without the stars.

I swam away with the little whale to the shore, and together, we watched the waves, rolling against each other in our cartoon world. And we saw the moonlight shimmering across the water in our cartoon world and watched the other whales jump by.

Sometimes the night would turn to day and the day to night as other whales jumped for the moon and brought it back as I once did, but today, I was just a whale on a shore, sitting with the friend who shared the moon with me.

November 24, 2009 at 12:50 pm | Dream Log | 3 comments

Distractions

Eating is a such deep activity. I mean… really? You sit there. And you chew. And you chew. And sometimes you just can’t swallow. I feel that way about my life sometimes. Then, I realize I’ve forgotten to dreaded obviousness of it all… I could swallow the glob of meat tendons in my mouth little bits at a time, I could have never tried to rush all the food into my mouth so quickly in the first place, I could just give up and spit it all out. Why sit there and dwell forever when the solution is so, so simple?

That’s the kind of thing I’ll preach to my kids when they grow up. I’ll randomly start rambling about the “deep” meaning behind spending too long on a dinner when I see them sit and chew some steak forever. They’ll hate me. They’ll call me presumptuous. They’ll tell their friends I don’t understand them. I’ll ramble so much that they’ll tell their friends I don’t listen to them at all. When I don’t get to say what I’ve planned to say from this early an age, I’ll get frustrated for no good reason. Yeah, I’ll be such an average person forever.

I decide to practice a bit. I swallow my food. Somehow. Bit by bit, I take it slowly. The lunch has the soggy feel of microwaved meat… Probably because it is. Serves me right for waking up late.

It’s Sunday afternoon now, and I have some math homework. I hate math. It’s pointless. And useless. Someday I want to sit there and have a cup of tea with my math teacher and ask her the meaning of life. Somewhere out there in the depth of those numbers, there’s gotta be an answer she knows; after all, isn’t there just as much a reason for pi to be the meaning of life as there is for pi to repeat infinitely? Meh, you could say that sort of thing for any subject really, I guess. I just don’t like math.

I don’t like alot of things. Science is fun though. That’s because I have a teacher who makes it seem like an adventure. I’m taking chemistry right now, and the experience doesn’t feel like it would be exaggerated if I described it as a TV chemistry class sort of thing. The best part is… Mrs. Guileford is clumsy.

The funniest thing about this moment is that I’ve started tolet my mind trail off just as I’ve started to actually consolidate the possibility of diong my homework. Well, so much for that possibility. No, seriously, I better get started. Just wait a few minutes for me to get over this perpetual chain of thinking about doing homework. No wait, there’s definitely going to be some friend calling me up in a few moments to ensure I don’t do my homework by offering me more promising opportunities such as going to the movies. That’s how it’s always destined to happen.

But it doesn’t happen that way. I eventually decide that I can afford to be focused for once, and surprisingly, I finish my homework in a span of about 30 minutes with little trouble. I had to stop for one moment only to look up a formula in my textbook. The answers will probably end up being all wrong, but hey, I did my work, and my work is done. Now what?

TV is one of those things that gives meaning to at the same time it takes away life’s worth. If my life’s worth were measured in the number of hours I spent watching TV, I’d be pretty valuable. Then again, I’d have strong competition. But, since life worth is more or less measured in the amount of time you spend doing things other than watching TV or playing video games, we’re more or less all losers. Or I should correct myself, I’m more or less a loser. It’s a fun life. Be kind to it while it lasts.

Meh, I guess I don’t give watching TV enough credit. After all, I could become the world’s next great scientist if I watch enough educational programming. And God forbid, if I play video games like my little brother does, I could become a world champion. Then again, who’s to say anything really helps life? There are just things we all do, things only some of us do, and things way out there made to distract us from whatever else we happen to do.

Matching up those distractions to those things I do would mean getting a job as a TV watcher. So in that case, my distractions become school and stuff. And when this stuff becomes too big to be called distractions, TV becomes the distraction. But, but, but…. it’s not just all a distraction, is it? I think I’m getting a bit loose in my idea of a distraction here. I think I’m getting distracted even.

Ahh, yes, I was watching a TV program. It’s some sort of reality show. These guys are stuck in the middle of an island and whoever can make it to the shore first wins like $100,000 cash prize or something like that.

November 14, 2009 at 4:47 pm | Entertaining Lies | No comments

Creativity

I had a dream this morning. Or this night. I can never tell how fast dreams pass by, but I had woken up this morning, remembering my dream.

Dreams are a funny thing. There are so many famous stories of dream inspiration. Like that guy who figured out the ring structure of Benzene from a dream about a coiled snake. Or some random famous author experiencing writer’s block at some point. My dreams… Well, the only thing they’ll ever inspire is some random ramble about dreams, and the only problem they’ll ever solve is the problem of me and my lack of REM sleep.

Yeah. I still like to believe they’re meaningful. I like to pretend I’m deep. I like to pretend that I’m some sort of genius in a really obscure way. I like to pretend that I’m alone in my pretending. I like to pretend I’m gonna remember the dream I had last night, and it’s gonna inspire some great work out of me. I’m already forgetting what I dreamt about though.

Somehow, that instant I woke up, I felt like I was onto something. Like I just realized something important. Dreams are this way. This is why some people say it’s a good idea to keep a dream log by your bed to write in whenever you wake up after a dream. As if I’d be focused enough to ever think of writing in a dream log after a dream. I can’t even remember a dream about 7 minutes after I woke up.

It’s 8:52 actually. A little earlier than I usually wake up on Sunday mornings. Actually, quite a bite earlier. I probably only had 5 hours of sleep, but I don’t even know. I feel the same as ever. I thought for a moment, I might drift back to sleep….

I had a dream this afternoon. I was thinking about dreams. I don’t even remember whether that was actually a dream or not. But, then a real dream sort of dream started. I feel like something important happened before this dream… like there was a first dream somewhere along the line I had forgotten. But you can never tell. Dreams just sort of continue.

My mom is now calling me to wake up. It’s 12:39… Rather late for a new morning but not unusual for me. I realize I have been sitting in my bed frozen for 10 whole minutes though. I continue to reiterate the events of my dream in my head as I dress myself.

I look at the mess of my brownish red hair in the mirror and can’t help but feel the irony of my dream. This person I see before me was a heroine? Nah, only when I get enough sleep. Only then can I hear the words, “Only you can save the world.” I was probably watching too much action on TV last night or something though. Or was it Friday? My memory gets skewed with the days when I try to remember too many things at once.

In my dream, I was falling somewhere. I didn’t know where I was falling, so I felt worried and anxious. I thought I was going to die. But then, there was a sudden flash, like a near-death experience I thought at first, and the flash somehow erased my worries. I forgot what it meant to fall. And I was transported into another world.

I was surrounded by people with no faces. They kept talking to me in a language I didn’t understand; all I could hear was a droning slur of barely distinguishable syllables. They made no gestures of any kind, so I couldn’t read their meanings in any way. So I had shouted out, “What does the future mean?!”

And they started droning on in their foreign language more intensely. The mix of their unvaried voices become a chorus of a sort, and like some great classical song, there was a climax, and in the climax, the world turned red. And suddenly, I was floating in nothingness.

I yelled, “Am I going to die?!” Pink fumes started appearing, and I held my breath in intuition. But nothing happened. I somehow started falling again. And I didn’t know where I was going. Somehow, all of this eventually became a laser show between me and the society of faceless humans.

Or at least that’s how I think it went. Dreams are perplexing things.

I am dressed now. There’s probably some leftover breakfast from the time a few hours ago when everyone else ate: my mom and my brother that is. It’s time to start a new day and forget dreams ever existed because in the long run, they won’t make me a genius.

November 8, 2009 at 12:53 am | Entertaining Lies | No comments

Boredom

Part of averageness is being afraid of things I guess. There’s probably some great poem out there I could reiterate for your ears here… That is, some poem about how people are afraid to be above average. I know because… everyone is like me and has gone through this whole thing.

I am 16 years old now, and I still go to school like lots of other average people. I’m gonna go to college one day because… that’s what it takes to stay average. I do pretty well in class, I guess. Grades don’t excite me much though. My parents hate it when I fail a test though. It’s all kinda… average, y’know? Well yeah… what I really like to do is… sit around an do nothing. I wouldn’t mind doing that for all my life. Maybe I could get an award for it.

On nice days like these, I can’t help but imagine that nothing could happen to make my life any less average. After all, aren’t great summer days supposed to be like the epitome of average life goodness? Yeah, totally not feeling it.

I wouldn’t really mind if the sun suddenly sucked me up. But in the moment I think this, the only thing to force me away from my comfortable state of unaccelerating resting inertia is my mom. “Lunch time, Madeline! Everyone else already ate!” she yells. I wish she wouldn’t yell so loud; it’d be so much easier to drown her out and just fall asleep then. Average teenage reaction to parents.

I go to lunch. My mom had spent her good sweet time preparing some absolutely amazing meal that I just can’t fathom. I’m just too bored of eating to care, but I compliment her anyways because it’s the average thing to do. “The rotisserie chicken is delicious, Mom,” I say.

She’s washing the dishes, but she turns around. She has short brown hair which she always ties into a ponytail when she works. She smiles with those perfect teeth that everyone gets with braces and says, “Really? You think so? I thought I might have put way too much salt on it.”

This is the sort of thing people say when they’re really proud of something but want to act modest. In truth, she was probably proud of the chicken and thought she had happened to put just the right amount of salt on it. It’s another thing of averageness. I’m so cynical. I do this all the time of course. That’s the only reason I know people do this, of course. I’m pretty ashamed of myself sometimes when I think of how similar I can be to my mom. And how my mom is similar to any other average mom. “No, mom, you didn’t. The chicken tastes great,” I say regardless.

“Thanks, Madeline,” she says. “I’m glad you liked it!”

I finish my lunch. Then I say bye to my mom and go upstairs. It’s Saturday. I don’t want to do my homework. It’s not Sunday yet. I go to my room and lay on my bed. I really don’t have much of a life. No, I have an average amount of a life… the same bit of a life everyone else has, too. Except I’m some sort of narcissistic freak who thinks I deserve more than an average bit of life. Ahhh…

Somehow I fall asleep into an afternoon nap. It’s become a kind of routine with me lately although I still never expect it. I wake up. I think to myself, “I want to do something amazing before today is over.” So I start thinking in my head. The month is November. It’s the month of novel writing. I want to consider writing some sort of pointless story that someone out there will analyze as being the deepest work of the 21st century, but I think of my science teacher and her story of her friend. Yeah, dying is average, too.

I wind up watching TV. I had to make my little brother turn off his video games. He always plays video games; I swear he’s the most addicted little kid ever, and he’ll probably grow up to be a video game maker just because he likes video games so much.

On TV, I go channel flipping. I don’t have any real interests. I just sort of stop at the second most colorful channel I see. Most of the time the advertisements are the most colorful things around, but I end up watching the channel anyways. Whatever TV program I watch, it’s all pretty trivial anyways.

Today, I am a couch potato. I see an ad on the TV for a new video game, so I flip to a different channel at random. There’s a women on TV washing her hair, and it’s another shampoo commercial. I flip channels again. Two cartoon characters are fighting now. One fires a huge blast from his hands into the abdomen of the other character, presumably an alien of some sort. I keep watching without really knowing what’s happening. Hey, action cartoons are pretty cool.

Yeah, another day of life. Somehow my whole days disappears, and I found enough to do to give me a reason to stay up an hour past my bedtime. Life is full of miracles, isn’t it?

November 7, 2009 at 5:59 pm | Entertaining Lies | No comments

Ambitious

I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. No, I’ve told my classmates before. I’m gonna be a scientist. I’m gonna win the Nobel Prize. No, I’ve told my parents before. I’m gonna be a doctor. An epidemiologist maybe. I don’t really know what I want to do. I’m just going to be famous. Or I’m just gonna live a less than average life then become famous when I die. Whatever I do, I know deep, deep down that I know that I think that I can’t help but think that I’m someone.

Yesterday, my teacher told us all a story. My science teacher. I love science. I love my science teacher. What did she say, though? Well, she once knew a guy who wanted to write a book and become famous off of it. Then, he died of old age. He never wrote a book. I make it sound all so cynical the way I say it, but it’s how the story calls itself to my memory. I don’t know why I’m the way I am; I just am. I guess everyone else says that then and now too. Now and then.

Today is a beautiful day. I look at the flowers, and they keep growing upward. They’re not physically expanding in some sort of magical Wonderland way… but, in my head, I imagine they are growing a small bit each instant. That’s how beautiful today is. It’s overbearing, like the sun’s rays are pulling the world up into the sky, and maybe I’d like to think I’m growing with those flowers a little.

Mom’s garden is a nice place to hang out. I’m allergic to the sun, though. Probably because it feels like it’s gonna rip my face out at any moment and teleport me to another dimension where I can fight aliens. Meh, as if. I’m not afraid of the sun. I watch the little kids in the neighborhood play from my patio. The only sort of battles I ever fight are the boring kind… like deciding to be a doctor or a lawyer.

Somehow, it all feels so average. My average vision can’t read the back of the newspaper my neighbor is holding across the street. My average knowledge makes me wonder why he’s reading a newspaper in the 21st century. My average deduction concludes that he’s just used to newspapers because he is–my average ethical sense refuses to let me say it–”old.” I am surrounded by average people, and if I were even a great visionary, I might even say, I see only an average future of greatness.

If greatness is just something that happens and passes by, it’s just all part of the averageness of it all, right? Whatever. I don’t know. Is this what they call ambition? I personally prefer to say dissatisfaction… it’s sounds a little less… average.

November 7, 2009 at 5:27 pm | Entertaining Lies | No comments

Remember When

Remember when you wrote this? Yeah, you were a different person back then. If you can’t remember, remember when you used to write like this? Yeah, there was someone who once existed who wrote like this. And this someone will fade away with time. A slow and steady fade away. Like what they say the dinosaurs did. Gradualism.

You remember having those kinds of thoughts? You remember ever worrying about whether you’d remember? Whether you’d truly never forget those who made an impact on your life, those who you carry away the name of? If you’re too embarrassed to be acquainted with this me, I don’t blame you. Don’t forget I ever existed; remember when you wrote this.

Do you remember looking at others, older others, and wondered if they had forgotten like you probably have? Do you remember all the times you worried me, child of the I? The I who never knew who you were meant to be. The I who like a hopelessly flawed parent created this perfect mental image of you. Do you remember? Do you remember which parts of me were a lie?

You remember yourself ever wondering whether you’d fade away like I have? Yeah, I’ve faded away, and all I’ve got to show for my part of the gradient is this note. There’s only you now, and if you remember, then learn from the me who once was.

Well, do you remember when you wrote this?

November 4, 2009 at 7:44 pm | True Rambles | No comments