*goes To The Top Of A Cliff And And Whispers To A Bird Which Obviously Doesn’t Care, “It’s My

Blue skies-embers of sunset-a little pink butterfly blown somewhere against its will. Reminds me of someone can’t remember who.

I am blankness and emptiness personified. Everything falls, flows, into the empty recesses of the soul and shapes and wears it away with its continuous current. ‘I talk to god but the sky is empty’. Blue, beautiful melancholy. The overhead lamp casting shadows of disarrayed hair on the page I write upon. I stretch my hand outwards and upwards, and I grasp solitude with a clenched fist. 

ok from what i can tell there have only been like 4 moderately widespread memes on this site in the past month or so (1. pokemon go meme 2. taylor swift copyright meme 3. “you gotta” 4. halsey lyrics on spongebob caps) which others have noted is a remarkably reduced rate of meme production for this trash site. 

while i think the fact that the majority of tumblr’s user base has gone back to school definitely contributes to The Great Meme Depression of 2015 (TGMD 2k15), it cannot be the only explanation. if it was we would see the same Meme Stagnation every year around the same time, which has not been the case. september 2014 gave us unavoidable site-wide phenomena such as madden gifferator, “what’s better than this? guys being dudes,” the rebirth of loss.jpg, steal her look, what are we?, etc. 

i propose that the rapid rate of meme production we grew accustomed to in 2014 and early 2015 deflated the staying power of individual memes. our hyper-awareness of memes and the fact that our metatextual analysis of said memes became a meme within itself (”memeology”) conditioned us into constant vigilance in our search for “the next meme.” i mean, for fuck’s sake, the first meme of 2014 was “what’s going to be the first meme of 2014?” and the last meme of 2014 was “is this the last meme of 2014?” with garbage pseudo-intellectual meta we sowed the seeds of our own destruction.

deflation of individual meme value led to an even more dramatic increase in meme production (for evidence, just look at how many memes the blog memedocumentation has explained. and of course, those are only 2015 memes. the fact that memedocumentation does not document pre-2015 memes is another fucking 2015 meme) this lead to an even heavier reliance on what could be referred to as Meme Credit–we were borrowing and resurrecting old memes like pepe and the aforementioned loss.jpg to satisfy the Meme Demand in the absence of concrete, original memes. we were destined to crash when that credit ran out and the vaults of the Meme Banks were emptied. 

even now as i reflect on how meme hyper-vigilance and overproduction has destroyed the meme economy, i cannot help but wonder “but what will be the next meme?”

only some kind of……….new deal………a New Meme Deal, if u will, can save us from this Great Meme Depression. in its absence we shall continue to suffer.

It was a cool and breezy evening. Just the kind of weather you hope for picnics but never get. “I am going out on a walk”, I declared, springing up with an unanticipated swiftness from the depths of an easy chair where I had been perusing ‘The picture of Dorian gray’. “Where to ?” He casually questioned me. A mischievous smile crept over my face, “To rediscover a path to fairyland” I said. “Do you wish to join me?”

A quizzical look came over his face, yet in the depths of those dark eyes I noticed a spark of recognition. He silently closed his absurdly large volume of ‘the history of great poets’ and reached for his hat, “Oh,never mind hats!” I exclaimed, “The elves don’t care for your exaggerated accessories”. Still he remained mute, acquiescing to my impulsive demand. “Where is this forgotten path you speak of ?” was the first enquiry made, after rambling on for the better part of an hour. I, who had drifted off to a remote and inaccessible part of my imagination, was jerked backed to earth by this and answered, “Just a little while away. Strange, how time can diminish your sense of distance in such a fashion”. He knit his brows together in agreement and put his hands in his pockets. We wandered on, passing old fields whose sight brought a rush of nostalgia for the days of the past, when worries were few and sorrow unheard of. I stopped at a creek, christened ‘Troll falls‘ by some old phantoms, as familiar to me as myself. Standing there in hope of meeting them again, I fancied that I could see a sharp glistening of wings behind the rocks. Wondering if my quest had so easily come to an end, I tried to peer over the broad stone to see if I could coax them to grace me with a full vision. While engaged in this manner, I lost my footing on the slippery moss and would have fallen into the creek head first if he hadn’t happened to get hold of my sash and pull me back.

“Thank-you”, I said.

“What on earth were you leaning so far into the stream for?”

“I thought I saw some of the fair folk behind that ridge”

So far he had been relatively calm, but at the mention of the fair folk, his face morphed into a strange expression. “The fairy folk you speak of don’t really exist. You know that, don’t you?”. I was rather taken aback by this sudden statement and scanned my surroundings quickly to make sure that we were alone. The fair folk a myth!

“Why do you look at me like that? Your eyes are fixed upon my countenance, what do you try to read there?”

“No”, I slowly said, “I was wondering.”

“About what?”

“If you had lost the way to fairyland and forgotten it.”

He frowned.

“There are two kinds of people who don’t recognise fairyland when they see it” I continued, after a slight pause. “The ones who never knew it, the souls who belong to the world in every sense of the word. And there is another kind, the people who knew the faerie place at one point in time, when their soul was untainted by the crudeness of the world, their vision not stained with its ugliness. When their spirit had not been crushed by the repeated injustice and unfairness which is a part of every creature’s portion in life. When you are born, the goblins tie the key to your land on heaven onto an invisible string around your neck, you never realise what it means to you until one day the string breaks, and you have to search for the key. When at last you find it, you stow it away in the stack where you keep your most prized possessions. It slowly starts to rust over the years, and there will come a time when you are left with only a few indented pieces of rusted iron in your hands. Some vainly try to restore it. Some become resigned to the fact that the door is henceforth barred to them. A very few understand that the door would still open, even without the key, for the true power to open it lies in their hearts, and it mattered little if the key was iron or stone. For what faery land truly represents is the wisdom of humanity. The ability to dream without restraint, decipher the truth which lies below vain frills of delusion. I was wondering, if you were one of those who disguised their despair under resignation and had gradually become so ingrained in the world’s ways, that they retained no memory of what is pure and true.”

All this while he was standing with his face turned from me, but I could see he was getting caught up in my rambling.

“If so, you needn’t turn away, the gnomes never forget their playmates. And here is a damned circle of toadstools in the grass, will you step in, knowing that for each minute in it a year passes? Will you leave everything you know and join their dance, for eternity?”

“See the world melt around you,” I went on, losing track of what I was uttering as I gazed at the horizon. “your fine distinctions between the real and false disappear, you find yourself surrounded and entrapped by ghosts, spirits and animated phantoms. And before long, you will find that you are one of them”. At this he shuddered, yet not a word left him.

I was silent for a while, faintly aware of the glow of the sunset sky and the sound of crickets chirping.

A few minutes or eons later, the sound of the old bell at the townhouse reminded me that it was past seven, and it was time to head homeward. As we passed the elm tree, he stopped and looked up at the sky, and so did I. Bellatrix of the Orion, my favourite star, shone especially brightly that night. I stared at the constellations, remembering an old poem from somewhere,

“ They say nothing is wasted,

either that,

or it all is. “

And so ended the affair of the evening stroll.

Literary history that happened on 8 July

Coherence as a virtue is praised too much

Memorial

Sometimes is enough for one wish.

And a walk from the corner

And back under the trees and light

Is often enough for a thought to perish

And a million others to be born

From their graves

The way shells explode

Under the hills of tin men and grass

Long after the blood-bath is but an anecdote

A story for a hot summer's evening on the porch

Or a tale told on idle winters

Through the dislodged teeth of the old ones.

- pollosky-in-blue