Today I felt like sharing something, but I wasn’t sure what. It’s one of those weird, exhausting Mondays and I don’t have much energy left in my system.
I started to write a draft for a new post last night, but it’s pretty long and I didn’t have the capacity to open that doc and go through it again today. I’ve also been wanting to make a post soon about the process of working on the first draft of my new novel so far, but I didn’t have a lot of capacity to think about the right words to say on that either.
So instead, we have a poem? (I don’t even know if I’d call it a poem) or basically just a string of thoughts that I wrote down last summer. At the writing camp I was a part of, an exercise we did one day was set a timer for a few minutes and write but it all had to be part of a single sentence, not ending the sentence until the timer went off. At the time, I thought I was just jotting down BS and putting words together that came to mind, but whenever I look back at what I wrote, I always find it intriguing. It kind of reminds me of the lyrics in Can You Afford to Be An Individual? by Nothing But Thieves, which is a song I really like.
(picture taken June 28, 2024 in Gambier, Ohio)
Anyway, here it is!
Do you like the way that grass blades dance in the breeze, or do you not dare to look at nature up close because you don’t see it for its true beauty and you don’t know how to love something you can’t see, but do you know that your heart is bitter like the sharp, metallic taste of a raw beet picked from the ground—the ground you do not touch because you fear the feeling of grimy hands, or rather, you fear the way everyone will look at you with grimy hands, and maybe that is why you’re heartless because you are afraid that people will stab your heart once you show it, but why do you care what mindless bees in a collective hive think of you when they can’t even come up with their own thoughts, their minds too small to comprehend individualism, but what is individualism when we live in a world where everyone and everything is somehow connected and who are we to say our perspective is the most right because what if beneath all of this—beneath the thick, dark soil that we try so hard to understand—what if every single, purposeful act leads to a dead end surrounded by nothing?
Let me know what you think of this piece in the comments! I’ve always thought about going back and fleshing this out more to be less vague or maybe write a short story based off this, but I have yet to do so. I like to view all written works of mine as something I could go back to and continue or change at any point if I choose to, so maybe I will do more with this soon. I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
i love this! also the idea, i immediately got like ‘i wonder what would come out of me’ lol - this one has so much depth and also so many imageries. picturesque too! pictured places i’ve been and feelings i’ve felt.