Unsettling Sound
The Puget Sound is an unsettled sea that lies above the tectonically active western edge of the North American Plate. This large body of frigid water is separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Olympic Mountains to its west and the Cascades to its east.
Glaciers crowded into the Sound during the last ice age, advancing from the north. When they retreated some 13,000 years ago they left behind deep deposits of interglacial sediment. These sand and clay remnants, in turn, were carved by frequent rain, sea and wind erosion to form high, unstable coastal bluffs, which were soon blanketed by dense evergreen overgrowths of cedar, hemlock and fir, and undergrowths of alder, blackberry and fern.
As erosion progresses this cover slides from high bluffs in slow cascades that often take decades to complete from hilltop to shore. The process is sped up when the northwest rains are heaviest. Landslides can carry trees and their understory to the beach in an instant. Once arrived on the shore, the upended forest enters the marine ecosystem, where it functions as nutrient, shelter and barrier.
In the last centuries, human structures have been added to this tumult. Houses perched on bluffs afford spectacular views and command high prices, but they face the disturbing prospect of being splayed across the beach following a prolonged downpour. Slides in the Northwest earn frequent headlines, and were even the subject of a popular book and film set on the slopes of Queen Anne Hill.
Much hilltop construction in the area occurs with little immediate awareness of the role erosion plays in maintaining both the geological and biological integrity of the Sound. A common response to the inevitable is to line the bank with black basaltic stones quarried from ancient lava beds. The proliferation of these bulkheads throughout the Puget Sound has resulted in a phenomenon called “shoreline hardening.” According to some government statistics, approximately 30 percent of the Sound’s shoreline is now armored with stone and concrete reinforcements.
This happened along the beach where my family has lived for nearly a century. in the 1970s and 80s, property owners piled stone bulkheads to shore up against sliding —attempting to fix in time something that’s always in flux.
The results of our obstinance has been devastating. Within years this beach began to lose much of its value. As a child, I can remember clawing a hundred Native Littlenecks from the sand and clay beneath beach rocks. We let these clams sit for a couple of hours in a bucket of seawater. My grandparents taught us to sprinkle in cornmeal so they could spit out stomach sand as they fed. Once full, they were transferred into a steaming pot where they open latticed shells to offer up their tenderness. Today I’m lucky if I find a single Littleneck after 30 minutes of raking.
When I visit the Sound, I think of Sue and Payne, who were privileged to live on this shore and loved what it could yield to any of their grandchildren willing to put some time into it. They left us more than 20 years ago, and a new generation of family has built modern homes on the foundations of those Sue and Payne left behind.
In time, ownership may be handed to successive generations, or we might drift away, passing the beachfront to someone with no memory of what it meant to a family that gathered there. And while the Sound may retain much of its scenic beauty, this too is fleeting. The tides will rise and fall revealing stretches of rocks and sand, again and again, and still something will always remain unsettled until it’s gone.
I don't often talk about myself, and I have to start doing so elsewise I shall never talk back again.
I am at my very core, a petty, disdainable woman.
An intimidating, unsociable, rude woman yes.
But a detestable woman nonetheless.
My only pleasures, are taken manually our of any forms of art. I love art, thrive on art and words. Even the words I speak as I write soothe me. I act, I act very well. And even so, people do mask to hide their inner person or fears to the faces of society and social surroundings to protect their feelings.
Yet moreover, I act too. I am indeed a part of a troupe, a stupid as it sounds.
And I do art. A lot of art. I draw a ton, and an unfathomable kind of ton. Anytime I can grab a pencil, it always is the first thing that crosses my mind. To the point it pisses off most people around me, and does get me some mockery. Although I care mildly.
I also play the piano. Although it got hard on my fingers on the long run, and pushed me to take a break that has been stretching on for over a year now.
My art, wether it's about writing, reading, acting, painting, drawing, storytelling, daydreaming, music, all of these ways fuel me. I live to express myself, yes.
Most usually not to an audience. To myself, over and over to reply and rethink and reconsider.
Technically yes, it could be called "overthinking", "maladaptive daydreaming", "self soothing" or many many more fear-induced appellations that people nowadays slap on like a bow on anything that feels unhealthy.
But I *do* abuse it, shamefully. Creation of tons and tons of people, dialogues, acts, scenes, even conversations I wish I've had before, moreover with futures, lives, worlds and pasts.
(It's a painfully shameful fancy, for someone deemed as haughty and cold as I am said to be.)
And for how much I do daydream, I cannot contradict it gets on my life. I am not someone you should love, feel for, sympathize or even look up to. I've done things, regrettable things. And seen appalling acts, heard foolish words, lived upsetting experiences.
I do not like my readers, I don't even like my writings. I live unhealthy. I live messily, untidily ; all objects I own are scattered on the bed I write on, I have none other than my cat I value, I live solely and only for my goals, and deny anything that doesn't interest me. I don't even talk to people other than professors. I don't even greet; tacky isn't it?
This isn't meant to please, but to get out the words I never say elsewhere than my mouth;
A piteous flaw of mines, really. I won't dwell any more that just yet. Not just yet.
Despite talking about myself negatively from this very start, which must have been a... Well, odd start (if I shall not express the fact that it probably is a bit of a bad impression): I, respectfully, think of myself as glorious. Yes, I am.
It really is saddening how many people, intelligent people, people of questioning, delve in their own suffering instead of their greatness.
A surely great lot of people called me "talented", "marvelous", "honest", "beautiful", and "intelligent" during my youth. Such empty words, to me. I am of those that a thousand acclaims cannot rewrite a singular unwanted comment. It's unlivable, the itch of constantly focusing on the bad. Of constantly focusing on the "what if", the bad but so obviously scenario that could make it all go six feet under... And then claiming "It isn't being pessimistic, it's being realistic". I find myself at a point where neither truly fit.
For all that I've said, I, as my person, recognize all these empty, shallow compliments. And confirm them. I indeed am talented and intelligent. It would be a shame to not admit it, and I truly am against humility disguising people's insecurities and desire to please.
I don't write to please, I don't even write for anyone.
I can clearly heed any man's instant reaction to these words, words I've heard so many times again.
That I am so selfish, so self centered, so arrogant and prideful, so full of myself... You can interpret me as and however you like. After all, it isn't like your moral opposition to my pride would impact my heart a tiny bit. These are words, and none of this is engraved in marble.
Yet I shall not change. I shall not seek an "awakening", "healing" or even a singular bit of lousy superficiality.
That is, my phobia or superficialities, that make me talk no word.
Not even greetings in the morning, which make people think of me as asocial or impolite. And they are, as I know myself, quite wrong. I am polite, and educated to a respectable degree. I choose not to greet, because I could not care enough to greet back and pay attention to a person that shall bother me more than rise any interest. Even for an ephemeral tenth of seconds, a feeble thing such as greeting that even the smartest of human beings would eventually forget about.
Even with all that has been said, I oblige to ask you, as not a reader but thinking and feeling soul, to not think of me quite yet.
A lot of philosophers say: The world isn't in back or white, but shades of gray. Although that statement is a realistic belief; humans criticize, as they have always done. Why?
Because for a most of the static nihilists I know, for their situation, they expect philosophy to be a grand revelation. A way to life. A fact so underthought, that people have been missing it for centuries.
Unfortunately for you, my grand declaration isn't the declaration these other cynical wants, just advice:
If your heart seeks grand order and a meaning to life, don't look for it in a philosopher's words.
A religion, a passion, a belief can do... But never demand a response philosopher.
And talking about religion, ah yes I am religious. Proudly religious. It sounds stupid but, the justification of having a God on my side, a creator being the only one above me, makes all the sence "natural evolution" doesn't. And that is because, religion is argued to be humans seeking deeper meaning inside texts delivered by a god.
And that is true, it is exactly what we pitifully do: seek a meaning in a righteous God's words.
To us believers, life is not a life, but a test. Solely to peel off, undress and unravel each one of us's nature when left in captivity with for only semblable; a group of pathetic citizen we call society, a mother, a father, the sinning and the books. That is how it goes. (Not implying each has a mother and a father, but biologically it is obligated. Do get what I mean.)
And by not turning to the sin, where our world has completely accepted and appraised it under the guise of rebellion, I shall "rebell" as they say, by doing just the opposite. As it is the best for me in all sides of the choice.
And to that test, I will do all as I might to walk on a written page for me that occupies my and *my* victory, laced with living for I cannot die, not as I tried and found death holds a grudge against my eternal rest.
Although I cannot blame death: I was born and will die without consent, for I know both abide no reason and cannot be defied.
Yet, here I am, pitifully wrestling with my words trying to make sense of all I've seen, all I've lived and give it a meaning. To give a life to nothingess, that simply does not require a story. I, at my core, purposefully make my mind plead in mercy for life to resonate. For my words to be not words, characters invented by the human to uphold a certain sound and so, word; but to be testimonies of a detestable woman. A woman who drowned a poor, silent, timid, empathetic and timorous teenage girl. Over nothing.
Over a loss, over a loss. Over the loss of promises, the loss of a meaning, a pursuit, my pursuit... That for once wasn't objective, but social.
I hurt her.
Have paid for it, and haven't been forgiven.
And will not be forgiven
.... As I still do not regret the incident; I am ashamed I feel no remorse at all. It's been something I've always wronged myself on; how can I not regret killing this poor girl? We could've been so much better, her an I, as just strangers.
But I loved it. Yes I did, love it.
It's completely human to feel relieved when something that's been bothering, ruining and hurting someone finally... Dissapears for a moment, doesn't it?
I've always been taught, over and over and so on, that ”people, when hurt, need to seek comfort." As for if I believe in it or not, well, partly.
I seek comfort, as anyone does despite all the blabbering and self toughening those wearing a mask can blurb out.
I do not seek comfort in people, is the fact.
People, society, humans, and whatever other annotations for The Human, bother me.
They bother me deeply.
I do not seek friendship, comfort, or even joy in people for the simple and plain reason that I find it elsewhere.
"What's a cat person that likes people?" My daft librarian once said. She may be daft but this is one of the rare truthful things she's said to anyone thus far.
People aren't nuisances, oh not always. Their thoughts, feeble impulses, needs and flaws and pettiness doesn't bother me.
(As long as I own my cat.)
For you need to see, most of it is a mess I don't like. Messes I don't even want to begin to comprehend, simply because it's a shallow, incoherent, unjustified and *human* mess. A, once again, ephemeral mess that I do not approach.
Because somewhat, seeing the world as it is alone feels much better morally than sticking in other people's messes for the most of the thinkers and lonesome. And that is something I agree with: the art of communication is dead nowadays. Sometimes it even makes me want to regurgitate, to express a degree of discontent.
Words mean nothing, only messages that are meant to travel to unworthy ears, to be repeated, twisted, tucked and carefully modified.
Mines won't be, simply because a word of mines modified is no longer my word. But yours.
And the way people twist their words, their rumores and petty gossip, how they add to it.. often tells more about those who speak other's vices than the people talked on, themselves. To an impressive extent, sometimes.
Although that, I suppose I'm the only one who finds humor in that. I do find humor in meandering, meaningless critique. Hearing about gossip is funny, assuming correct things about the people spreading it... Not for everyone, I admit it.
I reckon I am a woman none would go around with, thankfully I don't blame my loneliness on those surrounding me. The opposite would be just as pitiful.
english is so hard sometimes??? i was talking to my husband about PANCAKES and could not, for the life of me, remember the word. so cue like, aggressive charades with very suggestive hand movements and struggling to figure out the right english word by fumbling with spanish words like círculo????? pastel??? some very strange amalgamation that sounded horrendous to both our ears. eventually i just shouted BREAKFAST CAKE and he started laughing so hard he was crying.
