#exitential

[echoesoflayth]

“One minute — sixty seconds.

Breathe. Quiet. Be calm.

It might feel like a deep year.”

Sometimes a year of memory is nothing more

than a single minute misunderstood.

Read the story:

https://vocal.media/poets/one-minute-nine-o-clock

One Minute — Nine O’Clock

Quietful mystique — a feeling, perhaps mistaken — the moment I took for too long. The mystery of the soul and the brain. Brown eyes I was…

༆LUCCIAN.LAYTH𓂀

[asplantkin]

I just want to be a bumblebee but alas I’m trapped in this mortal body prison we are born into

[friendzine]

[krappu-blog]

me: *exists*

me: sorry

[his-final-ride-into-the-sunset]

If I Had Never Tried

Given how unhappy I am at Richmond, it is perhaps unsurprising that I am experiencing an existential crisis of sorts.

In high school, I so tried so hard at everything. I tried so hard to get a good GPA, so much work in extracurriculars, so many hours volunteered, and so many honor society joined.

All to get into a school where I am unhappy, and can never picture being happy.

I would have much rather have gone to the community college near my house and taken advantage of their excellent program that allows students to transfer to UVA. I know so many people who I have been friends with for years, they have better programs, and I think I would have a good chance of being happy there.

However, I can graduate very early from Richmond. I would add at least a year onto my time as a undergrad if I transferred after my Sophomore year at Richmond.

I now look back at high school and wonder if it was worth trying at all. I now believe I could have gotten a much better result if I had never tried at all and I had just maybe done Marching band and gone to the community college in order to transfer to UVA afterwards.

Why did I take all those AP's? All those dozens of hours after school to study and go to honor society meetings.

HOWEVER: I now find myself taking a Macroeconomics class in the summer (so as to graduate earlier) and I find that we are reading the same textbook that I read in high school for AP Macro. Isn't that worth something? That experience? The advantage that I now have?

Aren't all of those experiences worth a lot? How else could I have  had those experiences.

This class got me to thinking. I guess I find myself coming back towards one of the mottos I have had for some time now. I came up with it shortly after the suicide of a close friend of mine.

"It is better to have tried and failed, than to have never tried and always wonder what might have been."

I suppose that makes it all worthwhile, probably.

I think so.

[nutworks]

don't preach to me, preacha man

Another sunny day in Moscow greets me through the dusty windows of a local trolley running the 3/47 route through the morning traffic that seems to have livened up with the scarce rays of the bright autumn sun. Here, from the 6th floor of a massive brown exemplar of Stalinist architecture I can sometimes see the sun tracing its path through the city, reflecting against the windows of a far away building, then skimming on to the Kremlin’s domes, gliding past the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, then glistening on the surface of the river that snakes through the concrete and tin of the city’s less lovely constructions.

I am surrounded by small wonders- the highest 3 strings on my guitar brought me out of an emotional stupor this morning, grandmother and I alternately cried with each other, Emma’s gorgeous yoga forms stopped me in my tracks from the living room to the kitchen, my coworker’s been bringing chocolate croissants into work for a week now, a policeman told me to smile and stop thinking as I was walking past his post, another coworker gifted me a figurine of an angel, and Maksim, who is fond of donuts and not so fond of politics mimicked an armed kidnapping of yours truly with two bananas instead of guns. For all of the above, I am blissfully happy.

Days in the city tick along quietly in a less than exuberant routine where pleasures are small, though regular. I imagine sitting at a rooftop somewhere on the outskirts, watching the sun go down against the grim armada of gray apartment buildings with a million window eyes. Or standing on a shore of a small river in a birch tree forest. Both are equally unlikely, but I imagine reaping similar effect from watching the power cables go by while riding my morning trolley. Simple pleasures are vast and a sadness can be overcome by squinting your surroundings into distortion and listening to the sound of the city.

There’s the steady hustle of the city traffic, more monotone at night than it is during the day. Or the clinking of an army of heels of various caliber against the marble floors on a subway intersection. Or the quiet murmur of the newsroom; the gentle sound of the night knocking at my windows. How easily calibrated I am today!

A month ago I bumped into a William’s Syndrome man on the train- right away he offered me a seat, held my hand, and asked me : “Friends?”. To that I said yes and we rode along, him holding onto my hand, me smiling with a shy pleasure. He was very clean, well dressed and gentle. I couldn’t look him the eyes for a long time, as if they were too open and I could fall straight into his soul. Instead I looked at his hands, that were dark and worn, unlike the many other pairs of hands that I’d held. His fingernails were smaller, the wrinkles around the knuckles – more prominent and somehow it is his hands that I remember most distinctly. We got off at the same station; he insisted I take his number and didn’t want to let me go without my giving him a kiss. Stas. I will never dial this man’s number.

I crossed paths with another Stas that week- it was my lucky Stas week- as I was riding home from work. He plummeted on a bench next to me with a sight and I remarked - “you must be tired”. Ne to slovo. Words don’t describe how tired I am. Yes, and also drunk. He must have been over 40, but had the eyes of a boy; evidently drunk, though holding up very well. We got into the train and he very comfortably put his head on my shoulder. I delighted at this strange gesture. We shared an inconsequent exchange and then he told me, peeling his head off my shoulder “I don’t want anybody to pressure me, ever.” Don’t let them – I answered and soon after left him cooking in his thoughts on a train bench.  

I tell you all of this, because I’ve come to believe that openness is most important. The damage from the harm, betrayal, mercantilism that we so anxiously expect from strangers is far outweighed by the damage of shutting up to the tangle of fates, the snowball of emotions and the conglomerate of hearts that surrounds us daily.

But I’m preaching. So let me stop and run after that sense of humor that was so vastly overtaken by a weird sense of others.

Sincerely yours, Christopher Robbins.