I'm sitting on the floor in front of my computer; dreads flopped over my head, calves resting on bare feet and my bottom against the floor boards, but I'm not cold. I wish I had a pen. Then I remember that just the other day I was wishing I had a database of all my journals. Why not just write them on the computer? Hand-writing is out-dated anyway. Nobody does that anymore except in impromptu circumstances and out in the boonies. You know, writing is an art now. Calligraphy. Tagging. It's not old fashioned or out of date, it's not something only some people know how to do, but it is more of an art now. Everything can be done on portable electronic databases. Writing is for scribbling a note to someone when they won't have their cell phone out (i.e. at work), or reminding yourself on your skin in case the alarm fails to drive you into action.
I do like that there are still no gimmicks with writing by hand though. Maybe some flashy pens and disappearing ink, but there's no short cut. No long cut either, it just goes straight from brain through instrument to paper. The computer route is a little more abstract. Brain to many different buttons to screen which can't be accessed except by way of one particular machine and perhaps user on that machine... if you aren't online or at an internet cafe chances are slim that anyone might stumble upon your work in five minutes, forget in twenty years when you're dead or lost or mad. And what about paper? Well yes of course you can put it on paper but to do so you need another machine with a power supply and ink, and paper. Then if it prints properly somebody might stumble upon it some day.
So do I write to be remembered, or to sort out my thoughts? Do I think my sortings might be valuable to society some day? Maybe if I actually wrote about the real things that are bothering me they would. But do I try too hard to define reality? I live. I'm real, that's reality isn't it? Computer games and fiction, movies and imagination – they're real. Why do I need to be remembered? I'm afraid of dying, of just being gone from Earth. No one ever knew I was here. No one ever needed to know. I was here and then I wasn't, just like the deer down the road. It was alive one day and then it wasn't, and it didn't matter that it died sooner than it might have. It still died, and it still lived, and not a thing changed. Except for me and Chooli and everyone in the house I live in because I mentioned seeing the dead deer, and the man who stopped his car and got out of it to look and spoke to me about it. Everyone was affected a little bit by that. Opinions changed. Not necessarily opinions about the deer or its life or the deer's effect on my life or the world or anything – but our reactions to the deer told us something about each other. About humanity? Is it important to understand humanity? Is it important why we live this way? Do we need to change the way we live? Do I need to change the way we live for other human beings? Because the changes I affect may make me feel better but will they make the next generation any happier? Is this generation unhappy? Does the next generation need to be happier? Is it perfectly fine just the way it is... the world turning. Some people happy, some people not. Some people wealthy, some people in love, some people sad... some people working some people stealing... isn't that fine? People. Just people surviving. Do I need to change that? I couldn't. Should I want to? Do I want to? I just want to make enough money to be happy. What does that mean? I want to have a dog and a horse and I want to travel. I only want enough money to have a dog and a horse and be able to travel with them. Travel how? How ever! All I want is to have them and to be able to move around when I feel like it. I want to be able to keep in touch with my friends and to be warm in the winter. Does life really cost so much? My dog has to go to the vet. Has to have operations and antibiotics. Has to? There is a law about when you can give your puppies away. You have to wait until you've had them 8 weeks. Why is there a law about that? You can't just let some puppies suffer and die or suffer and survive? Why are we protecting everything? It will die anyway. Maybe we're not protecting it right and it will die sooner, or worse, kill something else, kill many other things. We often damage in our attempts to correct foreseen injury. Injury that did not yet occur and may possibly not occur at all, even without our intervention. Did the Mayans predict the end of the world in the distant future so that they could live peacefully; doing their best to live well while knowing all the while that the world would end without them?
Why do we live so far in the past that we think about what the Mayans thought about the world? Isn't it what it is today? Does it matter what it will be tomorrow? I do still care about keeping it clean. It's just not pleasant to live in a dirty place... I would like to keep the world clean right now for me and you today not for our children tomorrow. Don't be silly I'm not trying to preserve it I just want to use it and enjoy it at the same time. It's hard to enjoy when you watch it rot around you. Beauty. Trust. Community. Where are they? Aren't they as ancient as the world and don't they still exist and why are they sometimes so hard to find, buried under society and law and mis-interpreted expectations?
Tomorrow. The weather still dictates what I'll do tomorrow, to some degree. Technology be damned, the world is still as it was. Tsunami, hail, frozen roads and slushy hill. Hurricane, rain, all remain.
