Illiterate People Would Demand Better Content

I think it is safe to say that here in the “Western” part of the world we love our lists. Creating categories permeates every thing we do; whether it’s stocking our kitchen, organizing a closet, or expressing a paradigm, we really love our lists.

We’re actually known for this habit. “Westerners” have a tendency to categorize and pathologize almost everything. Personalities, social habits, thinking patterns, and sexual tendencies all fit into nice packages with little room for context.

“You’re a man that enjoys jelly on half of his toast and butter on the rest? Let me see which Freudian philosophical puzzle your piece will fit in. Oh yes, it comes from the mother’s side.”

Aside from taking the completely obscure nuances to explain people’s preferences in their day-to-day activities, lists work. They can help organize thoughts and procedures. Lists can help us plan ahead with fashion and logic. Lists are a reasonable means to helping us accomplish complex tasks in a way that is translatable to other people. An organized pattern of instruction is crucial to logical and reasonable thought. There are some issues with constantly organizing the world, however. Issues that hang on the berth of insanity, and I mean the very definition of insanity. And honestly, unless I’m out buying groceries or looking at a recipe, blatant, spelled out lists don’t need a common and recognizable infrastructure.

A phenomenon—whether it is recent or not is debatable, but for the sake of this potential dialogue let’s call it recent—is creating lists for everyone’s enjoyment, and more frequently now creating them as attempts at helping others on the internet.

Before I begin picking apart the utter madness and sheer annoyance I have with this habit of its own, I will begin by admitting that at times I enjoy a good list. I personally love seeing lists of witty and satirical posts from cleverly named users on Amazon products or Youtube videos. Really, those things make me laugh every time, and it gives me optimism that there are still creative and clever people trolling the net.

My problem, which I hope is many of yours as well, is when I can’t find anything worth reading amid hours of scouring places I was once excited to. A few Internet hot spots that used to be a bastion for new, known and unknown writers, or people that just had something worth while to say have taken a quick path to a place that is full of a self help, why-you-suck-but-don’t-have-to-because-I-have-this-great-list-that-will-totally-help-you-turn-your-life-around-even-though-you’re-20something trove of useless information.

For some reason, I must be one of the few people that would rather read some fucked up short piece of fiction about a guy killing his girlfriend’s cat on accident and comparing it to the state of his relationship instead of wondering what “13 things I can learn from my grandparents,” or “25 signs you’re a millennial,” or­—and this is my most hated, “15 reasons meditation/yoga/breathing exercises/a fuck load of candles every where in your apartment are going to radically change the way you feel/think/or whatever crock of subjective shit we can come up with.”

There was once a time that some of these lists were fun to read, mostly because they were new and creative. But I don’t—I’m sure most people don’t—need to be told how life should be lived.

A lot of the lists flooding HuffingPost, Thought Catalog, and Buzzfeed are accusatory in nature. They make claims like “Reasons your sex life could be better,” and “10 dietary changes you need to make now.” These headlines and titles, and the accompanying revelations are irresponsible at best, and at worst they are a manifestation of the mass media culture that all Americans are forced to navigate on a day-to-day basis. If you’re the one writing crap like “17 signs you’re a writer at heart,” then you need to re-evaluate what writing is, or dare I say it, read something that isn’t a list.

  The situation has become dire, dear reader. People are now beginning to make lists of lists. Forced nostalgic word vomit like “a list of every list about Disney princesses,” is probably in the works. Admittedly, these lists of lists take a little more work to compile, but for all of that extra work on behalf of the “author” the reader is merely being rewarded with an even less creative pseudo-Wiki document.

I think the editors of these well-known sites, if they can call themselves that, need to take a few steps back, maybe collaborate on this, and assess the damage they’re doing by choosing a headline that reads “20 reasons your dog’s shit can taste better,” over some good reporting or a quality piece of fiction on the daily homepage.

Either way, his shit probably tastes better for just one reason: it comes out in one, sometimes lengthy, cohesive chunk of which the content is only clear after careful, and sometimes repeated examination.

He too has a Heart

I had the desire to try writing some short stories. I finally started to put my thoughts down after watching a TEDtalk that featured the brilliant Sugata Mitra. He holds a PhD in physics, but is really something more of a sociologist, and as I said, a brilliant one.

Anyways, I watched his speech on education and how he'd like to see it transform in the future. At the end, he recounted some work he was doing in the Himalayas; he was in a village that sat at about 13,000 feet above sea level and he told an 8-year-old girl that he wanted to give computers to every child in the world, then he paused, mid-sentence, to take a picture of her. She held her hand out to him and said:

                                         "get on with it!"


"Nick," she nudged him gently, but to no avail. "Nick, are you listening to me?!" She said with a more commanding tone and a slight shove that forced his hand to balance on the bench they were sitting on.

He caught himself in one of those stupors that is set in motion by an unraveling chain of thought, and when he finally blinked at her intrusion he realized that his eyes were as thirsty as his brain. He hated that chirping voice.

He turned to look at her and acknowledge what she was saying, but her words weren't coming through.  She was no more stimulating to him than a Greta Garbo film, no matter how good critics said they were. All that was needed to complete the scene was a black and white filter set over the sun.

She was beautiful nonetheless, he could not escape that. Her hair was a dark brown that faded ombre style into some washed out shade of blonde; it was a popular style of the time that all the movie stars sported on their red carpet gaits.

The color of her eyes was as confused as the stare they were giving him now. They shifted maniacally from hazel to evergreen in the drooping afternoon sunlight. Her natural red lips moved in step with her gaze, bouncing gracefully through her words of admonishment. The colors of her features were set perfectly against the backdrop of her summer tanned skin that October had just begun to fade.

"I can hear you," Nick told her.

A strong, cool burst of wind marched through the tall elms, rattling lose the first layer of leaves that fall would hold ransom.

As he took to his feet after suggesting they take a walk another powerful gust of air ebbed and cracked a dead limb that had been looming over their heads, and with the help of gravity it struck Nick with such a force that two of his ribs let open a hole in his right lung that quickly filled with life and just as quickly took his.

He died with a gasp of panic, knowing that among all of his accomplishments, he was about to lose the only battle he had ever wished to see through.

That was a Sunday and his funeral, which hundreds of his colleagues, friends, and admirers had attended, was held that Wednesday. Regina sat in the last pew on the aisle, closest to the door.

His wife gave his eulogy through forced sobs and garbled prose, but Regina could only hear the chirps of common sparrows that so loved the elms; she never once took her eyes off his open casket.

It had only been a few days since they spoke, and it had only been by chance. Before then, nearly twenty years had passed, the day he unveiled the face of his love for her.

As children, they had been fellow students and neighbors in a time well before the digital excesses of the approaching future. When homes were privileged to have telephones without chords, so that a private conversation was simply a possibility, instead of a certainty.

He knew her with his eyes, and she would come to know him only through his words, for she never dared glance in his direction save to acknowledge his gaze. For years he would see her; from his window leaving with friends to revel in the nightlife of their humble city; passing through the corridors of their school building; laughing with friends in the popular places that only the recognizable crowd had any stature.

Though he would experience hurried love with beautiful women throughout the rest of his life, Nick knew that there was only one that even time was forced to pause and have a look at.

Her perfectly rolled lips gave way to a diaphanous smile with two expertly sculpted rows of white teeth. The bridge of her nose set her chestnut eyes apart at a golden ratio, the same symmetry that outlined her subtle jaw, and that nature so conveniently chose for her best designs. She always wore her dark hair in a pony-tail, leaving its true length and weight for the tried and trusted.

She faintly noticed him from time to time. He had learned at a younger age that if he was selfish with his admiration she would quickly discover him and find avenues of avoidance. So, as they grew older, he learned to reproach his wandering goggles and take sips of her beauty instead of gulps.

The school days had passed and Nick, being the studious outsider that he was, graduated at the top of his class and headed out for a promising career in medicine. He would go on to develop vaccines for various cancers and diseases and build for himself an acknowledgment that was renowned around the globe.

She would go on to start her energy consulting firm that she would command with as much confidence as she carried through her school days. That command would blossom as she would become the woman that she always envisioned, but she would soon long for something much harder to procure as she would realize she let it slip away with a simple piece of paper.

 He started the letter of his expressions the day she moved into the house across the street from his mother's and he handed it to her, half tarnished from the sweat of his palm, on the day of their graduation.

She reluctantly accepted the letter as her friends giggled and pointed at the poor boy who was shaking in her presence and sweating from every pore. It hadn't come as much of a surprise to her. The boy's furtive glances had always been known to her and it was only a matter of time in her mind before those beautiful sips that Nick had been taking all of those years would eventually empty the glass and need to be refilled.

In a hasty but calculated response she shooed him away like a stray scavenging for coins on the shopping avenues of the city as she silently slipped the piece of his soul that he had so patiently composed into the pocket of her frock.

"That poor, poor boy."

Years would pass and she would wrestle many battles with fruitless love, but none could compare to the words so painstakingly chosen to confess his. Their professional lives would criss cross many times, like the freight lines through Chicago, the crossroads of the world. Until one day when she was forced to acknowledge the reason for his tremulous perspiration.

They both unwittingly frequented the same cafe that met half way between their places of duty. two rows of tables accompanied by two chairs lined the arcade of the spanish style diner. In the early Spring months, when the air was still cool and damp from the renewing rains, warm air would tip toe through the arcade forcing the sensation of the times to come.

They had been situated at separate tables, facing each other. The years of astute labor had ashed his hair and he wore his age with young vigor, for the girl he had always admired was occasionally a few steps away.

As if time had been standing still since the day he first saw her carrying boxes of girlish knick-knacks across the tree budded terrace of her new home, and she noticed the solemn boy furtively sticking his nose over his window sill with the faint hopes of catching the scent of her hair. Here they were, in the Spring time arcade of the cafe, his same clandestine glance over his newspaper and her ever keen eyes on him.

She moved to address him. Like a fish clasped from the water he gulped for air that could not fill his lungs enough and he began to turn blue.

"Many years have passed," she said to him without any proper greeting. "And you have never once asked me what I thought of your letter."

This simple piece of truth struck him so abruptly that the air he had so barrenly been searching for was knocked from his chest. Only once more in his life would he know the feeling of grasping for air, only to have it rush from him in a blind instant.

He had been involved in an unhappy marriage with a woman who did not love him. On the day that Regina Reyes approached him in the air conditioned arcade he realized he could step down from the shelf that held his beloved and admired achievements and he would leave his wife in  six months time to marry the woman he had always loved.

The summer had passed and their wild rendezvous were as unsuspected as solitary cats among the acacias in the open savannah. Even the sun envied the radiation created by their naked promiscuity in the many open air balcony of the many lofts he traveled her to. His wealth and prestige allotted him no shortage of secret hideaways for them.

As she wept quietly alone in the back of the church, she realized that it was not him she was crying for, but the missed opportunities of so many years that had been left behind. And she learned that day that some things must be learned to live without, but love is never one of them.


















 

A Loss...of Words

"You can sleep up here." That is the last thing I can remember her saying to me in person. It had been a long night of drinking, but a fun one, full of faces that are all but blobs of goo now.

Making it back to the tiny dorm room had been a challenge. I don't quite remember what I had been drinking that night, but pictures tell me it was a lot of that cheap, watered down concoction known as Natural Light undoubtedly mixed with  an assortment of finely distilled, top-shelf liquor from 7/11. My head-ache did not care what exactly I had consumed, it just cared that I had consumed it.

Nothing strikes my visual memory more than her smile. It was so contagious. Sometimes she would jut her jaw out, forcing somebody to admire it, and of course reciprocate.

The boat had finally stopped rocking when we made it back, but the laughter continued followed by some of the deepest philosophical insights four nineteen and twenty-year-old undergraduates can muster. I cannot relate a word that was said when we stepped through that heavy aluminum door-I am guessing it's made of aluminum-but what I can say is that it made us laugh, there was never a shortage of that when we were together.

The Kent State dorm rooms, off the top of my head, are probably 12 or 13X6 or 7 feet, glorified storage closets. There was enough room for two twin beds, stacked up bunk style no doubt; two small desks and their accompanying chairs; and  some sort of various shelving units for the many nick-knacks that two college girls have with no shortage of pink shit mind you.

The girls made us sleep on the floor. Now, I was too drunk to care, give me a pillow and I will sleep on a bed of nails, but Josh, he was expressing some extreme disposition to the generous offer. We slept nonetheless.  

Who knows, four, maybe five hours passed, the sun was up, and so was Josh trying to weasel his way into Whitney's bed which was the lower bunk.

"Move that ass over," Josh was shoving Whitney.  He may have said "fat ass" or "big ass," I am not certain, but whatever it was she didn't like his tone, or possibly the fact that the 160+ lbs of him was trying to share the most uncomfortable size mattress that is possible to purchase in America. In all honestly it was probably a combination. Either way, she refused, so he stormed out with serious vigor.

The three of us found it amusing, it is easy to ruffle Josh's feathers and his reactions usually find a chuckle in somebody.

That's when she said it. That last thing I can remember. I climbed up top and snuggled right in. It may have been the fact that I was sleeping on a concrete floor, but I can remember the comfort, our warmth combining, and just knowing that this was my friend, and that she would be forever.

That is how things were for our lot. We grew up in a small town with each other. The better half of my memories are with those people plus a handful more. There is no shortage of nicknames or funny phrases that I can still recite; I can see and smell the campfire at our cleverly named "Sand Bar," behind Zach's house, riddled with half buried bottles of Seagrams V.O.

Our relationships are much different now. We rarely talk. When we do it feels as though nothing has changed, but it has. Perhaps it is the ever changing perspectives brought on by the sponge-like early twenties, the distance between us, or the additional friends we have made, but I know it started the day we found out she took her life.

There are natural phenomenons that can strike from seemingly nowhere. Tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, but nothing can stun you like the power of words. My cousin attended the same college as the girls, so she found out very early on and called me.

The Facebook statuses were blossoming like briar bushes, flowerless, annoying briars.

I could  feel the glue between me and each of my individual friends heat and begin to melt. I felt like she was responsible for constantly re-applying that glue so that it would never corrode, never soften. She made us all happy and it troubles me to think that we did not do the same.

I believe her discontent for this world was beyond any of our knowing however. There are times that the mind is weakened and tired by the task of living, and suicide is an irrevocable and disappointing relief from that task. I stopped asking myself about her decision, it is a futile question that only she can answer. 

They found her body November 20th, 2009 in one of the dorm floors shower stalls. They say she hanged herself with a cell phone charger from the shower head. The way that this information directly made me feel I will not busy myself with describing.

Her funeral was puzzling. 200 people attended, maybe more, maybe less, it did not matter to me. It is a surreal feeling at a such a strange age such as 20 to say good-bye to someone you thought you would watch become even more beautiful, successful, and grow old. I had survived a round of cancer in my teens and I had an idea of what it was like to think about dying young, but I was not a witness then as I was at that moment.

I had cried already,  but only at night in my bed where no one could see. It was important for me personally to show resilience, I had watched enough friends cry, they did not need to see me do the same. The funeral puffed away what little strength I had  anyway. I struggled and struggled to choke on it, but nothing, no words, can express the weight that forced the sobs out of my chest.

She tries to speak to me still from time to time, but words need not be exchanged. I see her shining smile in my sleep, always at the foot of whatever bed I may be in.

Her smile says she loves me, and her eye's say she misses me.

I miss her too and I always will.

Jessie F. Schenk
(August 15, 1990-November 20, 2009)















-To my friends, I am sorry if the end is graphic, I made it quick and I hope you are not offended. If you are, then you are not my friend.

I Need a Shower...

 So I decided on a hot shower.  I don’t exactly know why, its not like I felt dirty in a veracious way, but for some reason I really needed that shower.  Sometimes things progress far too quickly, when all you want is to enjoy the aesthetics.  There are too many girls like her.  She’s pretty, fairly intelligent, but fast.  The water sputtered from the new shower head and the air released from the line.  I get the same feeling just before I step under the water.  A deep sigh and the moisture, so soothing, washes away all of the disgust.  Water represents a lot of things, renewal among them and I think I really need that subconscious sensation.  I close my eyes, clear my head, and let my body blend with the moisture that now surrounded me.  One, two, three deep breaths and the water shoots ice cold, directly in my face.  It was a shocking feeling,but I left it that way.  I didn’t care how or why the temperature shifted so dramatically; one moment you’re happy and building that level of comfort, and the next everything is breaking down as fast as you can get her pants off.  I guess it’s time to stop shopping for something that isn’t for sale.