I think we discover the most important things about ourselves as we fall asleep at night.
Do you know what I mean? I think you do.
It's those moments when you lie in a familiar bed in a quiet house, your eyelids growing heavy, your body carefully arranged in whatever position its grown to favor over the years. It's when your eyes pointlessly adjust to the darkness and you can make out the shadowy outlines of your closet door, the lamp on your nightstand, maybe even the dolls lining the top of your bookshelf that you can't bear to throw away. It's when you close your eyes and feel that indescrible calmness descending over you, when the hectic world we live in slips away and, if just for a few seconds, you are completely alone.
And at this moment, a thought passes through your mind.
We usually forget what we think in these fleeting moments. I know I do. It frustrates me, but at the same time, I wonder if this isn't by design. Maybe its better we don't remember always. Maybe always remembering would cheapen these moments, make them bland and common. Maybe it would be frightening, to know so much about yourself. I wouldn't know.
Do you know what I thought when I fell to sleep last night? I remembered. For the first time in four months, I remembered.
We need love, but that's pretty much all we know.
I paused for a second to reflect on this.
That really sucks.
Eloquent? No. Insightful? Not particularly. But meaningful, at least to me? You bet your bonnet, homeslice.
If we as humans have a flaw, it's that we don't know who we are. We are a species of action--we build skycrapers, we make art and play music. We learned how to fly, and half a century later we walked on the moon. Yet we're clueless when it comes to us. Very rarely are we completely aware of our own desires, goals and motivations as we go about our lives. Heck, it's not only possible, but likely that another person knows us better than we know ourselves.
So as you close your eyes tonight and that pure thought flashes through your tired mind like a shooting star on a cloudless night, promise me this. Try to remember.
Who knows? You just might learn something.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Happy Birthday, Ta! Also, A Story
I know that I promised I would write an article next, but today I was mowing my lawn and thought of an idea for a story that I really loved. Word of warning--this is a large deviation from my other current story, so don't be alarmed.
No Regrets
--1--
Clayton looked fondly around at his family. He breathed deeply—the air tasted packaged and thin—and began to tell his 34-year-old daughter that he loved her.
“Annie, you—.”
His sentiment was interrupted by a cough that felt perfectly normal. He cleared his throat, smiled, and began to speak again. But he could not speak. He tried to clear his throat again. Another cough, but this one tore his chest to pieces. There was pain, but then it was gone. Clayton faintly felt a ribbon of blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
His last thought was of sunglasses.
There was no fade to black. There was no bright light at the end of a tunnel to go towards.
Clayton Kelly, who was born in Belle Fourche, South Dakota in 1949, sat up in a hospital bed 61 years later in Rochester, Minnesota. He was clad in nothing but a dressing gown, and the blood which had coated it moments before had vanished from the material---it was now perfectly, blindingly white. It hurt his eyes to look at. Now that he thought about it, everything was a little too bright, even though the shades had been drawn.
His room was completely empty. That was the first thing he noticed. The flowers and balloons which had littered his bedside table were gone. There wasn’t any medical equipment in any of the drawers—they were completely bare, as was the exam counter, which had been barely visible underneath the countless jars of cotton balls and boxes of latex gloves just hours before. His heart pounding, Clayton got out of bed and walked down the length of the wing, confirming what he had already suspected--every room was just as empty as his. His breaths coming in short gasps now, he half-walked half-jogged to the nurses station, the crux which seperated the East and West wings of Mayo Clinic.
It was utterly barren, as Clayton knew it would be. Only a few bleached-white counters remained.
Clayton walked back to his room, his mind racing. The hospital was abandoned--but the lights had been left ablaze. There were no people. When he stood still, it was perfectly, horribly quiet. The basic foundations of all the rooms were the same—the beds, tables, chairs, and nightstands all sitting exactly where they had before. But everything else had vanished. It was as if something had come and taken everything which had not been bolted down.
Clayton blinked. Someone, he corrected himself.
Entering his room, he was unsurprised to see that pure-white silk sheets had replaced the yellow-gray blankets which had covered him for those four, hellish months as he waited to die. Perhaps if he had not been caught up in his thoughts Clayton would have remembered that he had torn the sheets from the bed when he had gotten up to investigate, and would have found it odd that the bed was perfectly made once more upon his return. But he was, and he did not.
Not knowing what else to do, Clayton Kelly sat down heavily on his deathbed and wondered if he was alive.
No Regrets
--1--
Clayton looked fondly around at his family. He breathed deeply—the air tasted packaged and thin—and began to tell his 34-year-old daughter that he loved her.
“Annie, you—.”
His sentiment was interrupted by a cough that felt perfectly normal. He cleared his throat, smiled, and began to speak again. But he could not speak. He tried to clear his throat again. Another cough, but this one tore his chest to pieces. There was pain, but then it was gone. Clayton faintly felt a ribbon of blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
His last thought was of sunglasses.
There was no fade to black. There was no bright light at the end of a tunnel to go towards.
Clayton Kelly, who was born in Belle Fourche, South Dakota in 1949, sat up in a hospital bed 61 years later in Rochester, Minnesota. He was clad in nothing but a dressing gown, and the blood which had coated it moments before had vanished from the material---it was now perfectly, blindingly white. It hurt his eyes to look at. Now that he thought about it, everything was a little too bright, even though the shades had been drawn.
His room was completely empty. That was the first thing he noticed. The flowers and balloons which had littered his bedside table were gone. There wasn’t any medical equipment in any of the drawers—they were completely bare, as was the exam counter, which had been barely visible underneath the countless jars of cotton balls and boxes of latex gloves just hours before. His heart pounding, Clayton got out of bed and walked down the length of the wing, confirming what he had already suspected--every room was just as empty as his. His breaths coming in short gasps now, he half-walked half-jogged to the nurses station, the crux which seperated the East and West wings of Mayo Clinic.
It was utterly barren, as Clayton knew it would be. Only a few bleached-white counters remained.
Clayton walked back to his room, his mind racing. The hospital was abandoned--but the lights had been left ablaze. There were no people. When he stood still, it was perfectly, horribly quiet. The basic foundations of all the rooms were the same—the beds, tables, chairs, and nightstands all sitting exactly where they had before. But everything else had vanished. It was as if something had come and taken everything which had not been bolted down.
Clayton blinked. Someone, he corrected himself.
Entering his room, he was unsurprised to see that pure-white silk sheets had replaced the yellow-gray blankets which had covered him for those four, hellish months as he waited to die. Perhaps if he had not been caught up in his thoughts Clayton would have remembered that he had torn the sheets from the bed when he had gotten up to investigate, and would have found it odd that the bed was perfectly made once more upon his return. But he was, and he did not.
Not knowing what else to do, Clayton Kelly sat down heavily on his deathbed and wondered if he was alive.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
New Layout
As you may have noticed (subtle I know), I changed the layout a teensy bit. So far I've gotten pretty positive reviews, so thank you to those who have taken the time to say kind things about it.
Differences beyond the obvious---I will now be opening up new pages each time I write a part of a story, which I will start to do more frequently due to the amazing reaction I've gotten. :)
I will still post the new parts of the stories on the homepage, but for the full version, simply go to the tabs bar under the big JUSTIN SAYS WORDS title, and click the story you want to read.
Thanks guys! A new article will be up tomorrow, promise.
-- Justin
Differences beyond the obvious---I will now be opening up new pages each time I write a part of a story, which I will start to do more frequently due to the amazing reaction I've gotten. :)
I will still post the new parts of the stories on the homepage, but for the full version, simply go to the tabs bar under the big JUSTIN SAYS WORDS title, and click the story you want to read.
Thanks guys! A new article will be up tomorrow, promise.
-- Justin
Thursday, June 24, 2010
LolStory Continued!
Honestly I hadn't intended on continuing to write this story, as I had no idea of where to go with it and wrote it on a whim. But people seemed to like it, so here's part two.
LolStory Pt. 2
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The phone had hidden itself quite well. Five additional minutes of searching produced no results. During this time, it had tauntingly buzzed again. The sound sent Robbie into a frenzy. Two text messages? As far as he knew, they could be from two different people! And one of them may be an attractive girl!
Robbie was a big fan of attractive girls.
Attractive girls were not a big fan of Robbie. They could not even be said to be casual supporters of Robbie. In all fairness, a vast majority of attractive girls at Robbie’s school were not aware that Robbie, was, well, alive. When he came up in conversation, they typically assumed that their friends had misspoken and were in fact conversing about the school mascot, an ancient bulldog named Moby¹. Why the bulldog was named Moby, or why the school mascot was a bulldog for that matter, is not known. This is especially confusing considering that Robbie’s school, Brooks College, had been known as the Fighting Eagles since 1947.
After ten minutes of frantic searching, the cell phone firmly remained in purgatory. At this point, Robbie’s fatigued brain exasperatedly provided him with the idea that should have occurred to him a good half hour prior—simply call his phone and locate where the rings are coming from.
Robbie spent the next ten minutes working out the logistics of how he was going to call his phone when he did not know where his phone was. He would not look back at these moments proudly.
“Hey, Amir.” He punched his sleeping roommate. “I need your phone.”
Amir was Robbie’s roommate. He wasn’t a big fan of Robbie either.
“Your mom needs my phone.” He was, however, a big fan of your mom jokes. This probably explains why nobody liked Amir. Robbie often fantasized of killing Amir and using his bed for storage.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does. The phone’s my penis.”
Robbie considered this. “Why is your phone a penis?”
“Why not?”
He had a point. “Just give me your phone.”
“I left it at Rebecca’s.” Amir did not know anyone named Rebecca, and if he had she would not let him into her home. His phone was actually lying on his nightstand approximately 8 inches away, but Amir was not in a helpful mood.
“You don’t know anyone named Rebecca.”
“Sure I do. I met her at a party.”
“You don’t get invited to parties.”
Before Amir went back to sleep, he advised Robbie to perform a series of complicated actions involving his internal organs, characters from the cartoon Dilbert, and a box of Lucky Charms. Robbie could only assume he was speaking rhetorically.
The cell phone was underneath his mattress. He had two new text messages. And they were both from girls.
The first was from his ex-girlfriend, Judy. It read:
Rob, I’m so lonely. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve missed you so badly it hurts. You were such a great boyfriend, and you were awesome in the sack. Please tell me where I can meet you. I need to have you right now. I can’t wait any longer. Judy.
Robbie understood her pain. He had always known she would come back before long. He was that good in the sack.
Humming contently, he got dressed, applied Irish Fresh scented deodorant, brushed his teeth, impaled Amir with an emerald-crusted broadsword, and left to go satisfy the lovely Judy Wooden.
It might be pertinent to mention at this point that Robbie is dreaming.
He had fallen asleep on the floor of his dorm five minutes prior, his exhausted body, deprived of sleep for over two days, reaching the conclusion that it had had quite enough of this shit.
Reflecting upon his dream later, Robbie had to admit that it went downhill when Judy had turned into a dolphin and swam off in search of fresh mackerel.
¹One could convincingly argue that Robbie’s propensity for engaging in actions often associated with aging canines made him deserving to be mistaken for Moby in this manner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay I'm officially enjoying writing this enough that I will keep going if you guys will bear with me. Thanks for reading, hope you're having a great summer.
-- Justin
LolStory Pt. 2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The phone had hidden itself quite well. Five additional minutes of searching produced no results. During this time, it had tauntingly buzzed again. The sound sent Robbie into a frenzy. Two text messages? As far as he knew, they could be from two different people! And one of them may be an attractive girl!
Robbie was a big fan of attractive girls.
Attractive girls were not a big fan of Robbie. They could not even be said to be casual supporters of Robbie. In all fairness, a vast majority of attractive girls at Robbie’s school were not aware that Robbie, was, well, alive. When he came up in conversation, they typically assumed that their friends had misspoken and were in fact conversing about the school mascot, an ancient bulldog named Moby¹. Why the bulldog was named Moby, or why the school mascot was a bulldog for that matter, is not known. This is especially confusing considering that Robbie’s school, Brooks College, had been known as the Fighting Eagles since 1947.
After ten minutes of frantic searching, the cell phone firmly remained in purgatory. At this point, Robbie’s fatigued brain exasperatedly provided him with the idea that should have occurred to him a good half hour prior—simply call his phone and locate where the rings are coming from.
Robbie spent the next ten minutes working out the logistics of how he was going to call his phone when he did not know where his phone was. He would not look back at these moments proudly.
“Hey, Amir.” He punched his sleeping roommate. “I need your phone.”
Amir was Robbie’s roommate. He wasn’t a big fan of Robbie either.
“Your mom needs my phone.” He was, however, a big fan of your mom jokes. This probably explains why nobody liked Amir. Robbie often fantasized of killing Amir and using his bed for storage.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does. The phone’s my penis.”
Robbie considered this. “Why is your phone a penis?”
“Why not?”
He had a point. “Just give me your phone.”
“I left it at Rebecca’s.” Amir did not know anyone named Rebecca, and if he had she would not let him into her home. His phone was actually lying on his nightstand approximately 8 inches away, but Amir was not in a helpful mood.
“You don’t know anyone named Rebecca.”
“Sure I do. I met her at a party.”
“You don’t get invited to parties.”
Before Amir went back to sleep, he advised Robbie to perform a series of complicated actions involving his internal organs, characters from the cartoon Dilbert, and a box of Lucky Charms. Robbie could only assume he was speaking rhetorically.
The cell phone was underneath his mattress. He had two new text messages. And they were both from girls.
The first was from his ex-girlfriend, Judy. It read:
Rob, I’m so lonely. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve missed you so badly it hurts. You were such a great boyfriend, and you were awesome in the sack. Please tell me where I can meet you. I need to have you right now. I can’t wait any longer. Judy.
Robbie understood her pain. He had always known she would come back before long. He was that good in the sack.
Humming contently, he got dressed, applied Irish Fresh scented deodorant, brushed his teeth, impaled Amir with an emerald-crusted broadsword, and left to go satisfy the lovely Judy Wooden.
It might be pertinent to mention at this point that Robbie is dreaming.
He had fallen asleep on the floor of his dorm five minutes prior, his exhausted body, deprived of sleep for over two days, reaching the conclusion that it had had quite enough of this shit.
Reflecting upon his dream later, Robbie had to admit that it went downhill when Judy had turned into a dolphin and swam off in search of fresh mackerel.
¹One could convincingly argue that Robbie’s propensity for engaging in actions often associated with aging canines made him deserving to be mistaken for Moby in this manner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay I'm officially enjoying writing this enough that I will keep going if you guys will bear with me. Thanks for reading, hope you're having a great summer.
-- Justin
Monday, June 21, 2010
LolStory!
Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted in an obscenely long time. Went through some personal stuff, but I'm good. Here's the start of a comedic short story I wrote the other day. Let me know what you think.
LolStory Pt. 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cell-phone made a muffled groan as it vibrated somewhere nearby.
It was 1:24 AM. Robert Boyd, whom had slept a total of three minutes in the previous forty-eight hours, was instantly awake.
The fact that Robert, who went by “Robbie” not by personal choice but popular demand of his nostalgic childhood friends, had only slept three minutes in two days was not remarkable. It’s well documented that all teenagers instinctively acquire this skill around their 18th birthdays and exercise it often for a variety of pointless reasons.
Robbie's predicament was forseeable. On the first day of Chemistry 143, the professor grandly proclaimed that if a student got an A on the final, they would ace the class even if they hadn’t turned in a single assignment or attended a single lecture. The ease of which Robbie sidestepped the reality that professors only say this if they have very good reason to believe no ordinary student can pull it off was the subject of much admiration from his peers.
Make no mistake--Robert Boyd was no ordinary student. He was a sub-par student. Consequently, his chances for getting an A on this particular final were about as good as his chances of winning the lottery without buying a ticket.
After a thorough investigation of his and his roommate's belongings, not necessarily in that order, Robbie determined that he lacked the $3.99 required to purchase a third 24-pack of the off-brand Mountain Dew that had been instrumental in helping him maintain consciousness thus far. It was this setback that made Robbie realize at last that he would not be able to digest two semesters of advanced Chemistry in two days.
Greatly disappointed, Robbie proceeded to sprint dejectedly to the bathroom, as his bladder was doing its best impression of the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who...oh I don't remember what happened to her. I think her name was Violet. It had something to do with blueberries. Let's have another go at it. His bladder resembled Aunt Marge from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban--Or was that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?
For all intents and purposes, he really had to pee.
Robbie emerged from the bathroom some time later. grinning. Although still somewhat glum over spending the better part of two days studying for a final that he now wasn't planning on taking, his mood had been brightened considerably in the little boys room, where he discovered that even in his fatigued state he possessed the accuracy of a Gulf War sniper. Feeling altogether too happy about these findings, Robbie tottered off to bed. The instant head touched pillow, he descended into a state of sleep so deep that he was, scientifically speaking, in hibernation.
Yet at the sound of his phone receiving a text message, Robbie’s subconscious leapt into action. Much like a grizzly bear feeling the rising heat of an approaching forest fire and instinctively waking from its annual winter reverie to flee to safety, Robbie threw off his covers and groped around in the dark for his Nokia for a good three minutes before his brain realized he was, in fact, awake.
It is a widely held opinion in the scientific community that had Pavlov traded in his dogs for teenagers and exchanged the bells for cellular phones with texting capabilities, he would have gotten far more interesting results.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The picture you see was not my first choice. Originally I wanted to have one of a teenage guy being really tired from pulling a few all-nighters, right? Well here's some words of wisdom for today, kids. Do not under any circumstances search the keywords "exhausted teenager", "up all night", or "cramming" into Google Images when you do not have SafeSearch enabled. I learned that the hard way.
Lolpun.
-- Justin
LolStory Pt. 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cell-phone made a muffled groan as it vibrated somewhere nearby.
It was 1:24 AM. Robert Boyd, whom had slept a total of three minutes in the previous forty-eight hours, was instantly awake.
The fact that Robert, who went by “Robbie” not by personal choice but popular demand of his nostalgic childhood friends, had only slept three minutes in two days was not remarkable. It’s well documented that all teenagers instinctively acquire this skill around their 18th birthdays and exercise it often for a variety of pointless reasons.
Robbie's predicament was forseeable. On the first day of Chemistry 143, the professor grandly proclaimed that if a student got an A on the final, they would ace the class even if they hadn’t turned in a single assignment or attended a single lecture. The ease of which Robbie sidestepped the reality that professors only say this if they have very good reason to believe no ordinary student can pull it off was the subject of much admiration from his peers.
Make no mistake--Robert Boyd was no ordinary student. He was a sub-par student. Consequently, his chances for getting an A on this particular final were about as good as his chances of winning the lottery without buying a ticket.
After a thorough investigation of his and his roommate's belongings, not necessarily in that order, Robbie determined that he lacked the $3.99 required to purchase a third 24-pack of the off-brand Mountain Dew that had been instrumental in helping him maintain consciousness thus far. It was this setback that made Robbie realize at last that he would not be able to digest two semesters of advanced Chemistry in two days.
Greatly disappointed, Robbie proceeded to sprint dejectedly to the bathroom, as his bladder was doing its best impression of the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who...oh I don't remember what happened to her. I think her name was Violet. It had something to do with blueberries. Let's have another go at it. His bladder resembled Aunt Marge from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban--Or was that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?
For all intents and purposes, he really had to pee.
Robbie emerged from the bathroom some time later. grinning. Although still somewhat glum over spending the better part of two days studying for a final that he now wasn't planning on taking, his mood had been brightened considerably in the little boys room, where he discovered that even in his fatigued state he possessed the accuracy of a Gulf War sniper. Feeling altogether too happy about these findings, Robbie tottered off to bed. The instant head touched pillow, he descended into a state of sleep so deep that he was, scientifically speaking, in hibernation.
Yet at the sound of his phone receiving a text message, Robbie’s subconscious leapt into action. Much like a grizzly bear feeling the rising heat of an approaching forest fire and instinctively waking from its annual winter reverie to flee to safety, Robbie threw off his covers and groped around in the dark for his Nokia for a good three minutes before his brain realized he was, in fact, awake.
It is a widely held opinion in the scientific community that had Pavlov traded in his dogs for teenagers and exchanged the bells for cellular phones with texting capabilities, he would have gotten far more interesting results.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The picture you see was not my first choice. Originally I wanted to have one of a teenage guy being really tired from pulling a few all-nighters, right? Well here's some words of wisdom for today, kids. Do not under any circumstances search the keywords "exhausted teenager", "up all night", or "cramming" into Google Images when you do not have SafeSearch enabled. I learned that the hard way.
Lolpun.
-- Justin
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Always Be Running, But Never Away
“If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.” - Bill Watterson
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