#universal human experience

[universal-human-experience]

when the human experience is universal

[lwveless]

waking up from a 6 hour nap you never intended to take, bedsheets unmade and dripping from sweat, bead indents on your arms and faces from bracelets that are currently nowhere to be found, phone at %4 unbelievably hot literally three seconds away from exploding, having nausea, a headache, a sore throat, bloodshot eyes, spotify playing a song from an artist with 7 monthly listeners on loop forever damaging your spotify wrapped, airpods playing faintly in the distance in some undiscovered corner of your room, sweatpants rolled up but also slipped off so it's only covering your knees, arms in the neck hole of your shirt so you're choking yourself, no idea what day or time it is you just know you're about to force yourself to take the most painful piss not yet felt in the history of this world and you're more tired than went you fell asleep in the first place

[effemimaniac]

just had the most heavenly toastie

[yeoldenews]

In the Rachel letter I just finished (from March of 1898), Rachel snuck out of her hotel room in Philadelphia, where she and her parents were spending the weekend, to go get candy at Huyler’s.

While there she ran into a man she had met briefly at the theatre the night before. They had been quickly introduced by a mutual acquaintance on the way out of the performance, but Rachel had failed to catch his name.

The man, seeing her all alone, decided to invite her to join him for a soda (the late 19th century equivalent of getting coffee). Rachel was too polite to decline so she sat through a presumably awkward soda with the “almost stranger”.

Afterwards he insisted on walking her back to her hotel and ended up staying for some time more to chat with her in the parlor. He stayed until Rachel was “crazy trying to talk to him”. When he “Finally” left Rachel was “so relieved” she ran back upstairs to her hotel room.

She doesn’t say for certain, but I get the impression she never figured out what his name was.

I don’t think I’ve ever connected to a Victorian person more than through the mutual experience of trying to get out of on an awkward conversation with someone whose name you’ve forgotten and then running back to your room.

The social awkwardness spans centuries.

[gaiainthejourney]

I think one universal modern human experience is starting to write a reply to a comment online and giving up halfway through because why bother? I don't even know you, who fucking cares, this is too much brain work for me right now

[followthinswindandstaydead]

well i know that all of this is part of the experience called life but how not to miss all the good stuff when it’s gone ? the laughs shared with my best friend and now we’re strangers ??? That barely talk?

Like hide and seek with my nephews who soon will be too old for these games ???

Like seeing pictures of my parents when they were my age ?? Having fun and being so young ??

Life goes on so smoothly and things just slide off my hands like water although i try my best to catch it. Honestly it’s so smooth it’s almost unnoticeable until it’s gone gone .

I always despised the feeling of nostalgia, telling myself that as long as I don’t have any regrets I’m not falling for it . But the past man it’s catching me up

[skellowmare]

i mean all stede did was get fucking drunk after his boyfriend broke up with him and pick a fight with the wrong person. we've all been there

[thetetra]

So I want to talk to you all today about poetry.

When I was growing up I had it expressed to me that poetry was a very narrow thing. Two roads in a yellow wood, or a sonet about a beautiful thing... maybe an expression of sorrow for something beautiful.

I learned about the Vikings. They have a very special sort of bard called a Skald. The Skalds are most famous for spouting an insult so cutting it can kill a man... or at least finish him off. I wanted to explore this power and I tried to find examples for years to no real luck.

I watched an interview with R. Lee Emery. He was the guy who played the Marine Drill Sargent in Full Metal Jacket. He was famously supposed to only be the advisor but he was so much better at it than the actor they got that they used him instead. During the interview they asked Emery how he managed to insult these guys and not sound stupid. Emery responded that he had taken a class on poetic composition in college and so he constructed the insult in his head using the same rules and they all worked because of it.

This struck me like lightning. All of those things fell together in my mind and I understood that poetry could be used to make cutting insults that are devastating. I got a book on poetic composition and I got a general idea of what I was doing.

Flash forward to me having a job where my supervisor was an incompetent sexist shithead. He hated me because I wouldn't let him pick on female coworkers, a thing he constantly tried to do when either his wife or girlfriend was mad at him. Well one day BOTH his wife and girlfriend were mad at him and he was literally sleeping in his car. So he was really laying into the staff. He also wasn't very smart so he would say what he had to say then repeat himself twice more. So I had a habit of listening the first time then zoning out till he was done. He noticed that day and snapped at me to pay attention so I repeated back to him exactly what he was talking about in 20 words or less.

This pissed him off more so he started talking about respect and how I should do that in his direction and I just immediately composed an insult just for him that made me realize the elements of a good insult.

It needs to have truth in it about their weaknesses.

It needs to imply more than it says

it needs to invoke the worst interpretation of a thing like a vulgarity does. (fertilizer is a useful substance for crops while shit is a slime that crawls out of an asshole and into a sewer)

These are the elements of a good insult... and I will share my insult I thought up for my boss as an example.

"Rick when you clawed your way out of the abortion bucket and they were forced to hand you to your mother... did you mistake the look on her face for love? Because that might explain why you're so emotionally retarded "

he claws his way out of a bucket, and are forced. These all support worst interpretation of a thing (shit not fertilizer).

I don't just call him a failed abortion and unloved I imply that. Its like a twist on a joke but malicious.

I point out his inability to read a room and imply a cause. These elements are too interwoven to properly separate, and I could probably improve upon the rules.

In any case thinking up that insult made me happy and I had a good month. I read more about poetic composition and I came to realize that you can also do this for compliments. you can up your game from "Thank you very much you saved my ass" into really heartfelt thanks and a meaningful expression of your emotions.

This is about when I realized that is the point of poetry all together. An expression of emotion that really is a better vehicle for emotional content than normal. Haiku Bot is cute and all but really poetry is about putting your soul on the line so that you feel emotional satisfaction into what you said.

So I say that we need to express poetry as a deeper vessel than just beautiful things being respected. We need to teach people that poems are about spite and sadness and vitreol and anger and happiness and the whole range of human condition. Not just the appropriate and civil parts but the ugly parts too.