𝙼𝚊𝚢 𝟸𝟾, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶
 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣

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

Miles of Rain

The days after school haven't met change

Since times seasons revolved round the sun

You still wait by the corner lane

And I walk up after the bells have rung.

We eat a mouthful of your smoke

And break off bits of corn to make cake

Before we slip into the deep red of the

Bell-cracked wine glass with a rake

On Wednesdays you say, my hair looks nice,

That's for the soap I needed to save till

The next month so we didn't run out of rice.

There is, you know, comfort in unwashed mill

And yet more softness in hands that are soiled

To the nails in lovers' mud and dust.

It is only the shortness of one arm that

Asks to be coupled to twos at first.

Still, your fingers are long enough

To meet both ends and still cup snow

For us to breathe in the iced snuff,

To keep awake among the rafters below

For a few moments more.

We laugh at eachother's smiles

Lie forgetting and run wilder than raccoons

In Philadelphian winters, though miles

Of shadow could never erase these monsoons.

Unless you make it so, these months

Don't hold weddings or coronations

Or those hourly bypasses to coffee haunts,

But as it is, the gaps are fit to ration.

It has always been the dry edge of monsoon

Since times the seasons revolved round the sun.

- pollosky-in-blue

Two days ago, I had gone up to the terrace to behold the sunset and breathe in some fresh air. I had always preferred the setting sun to the rising one, for soft dusk ensues after one while the other is succeeded by harsh daylight. Ah, for a world in which it is permanently twilight! The view from the place was one that might be seen from any building over two storeys high in the neighbourhood. It was rather the stark contrast of the sky at the opposite ends that piqued me. The east at sundown was a pale azure, almost unnatural in its monotonousness, disturbed only by a hazy sapphire mountain, whose original crude bareness was softened by the distance, imparting to it a hue reminiscent of the shade the sea is often associated with, but seldom found in. In the west meanwhile, the sun was letting afloat his final banners, on which seemed written all the wisdom of the mortal world, in a language nearer to me that the ones I had ever heard spoken or seen written, yet at the same time utterly incomprehensible. What is to be the use of poring over Greek and Latin if they don’t impart to me a knowledge of these transfixing scriptures? Here was a cloud whose ethereal inhabitants had borne the harsh rays of the sun all day and were now looking down with relief at his long awaited departure. What are you doing little one, so precariously perched at the edge? What are your irresponsible siblings thinking of? Have they gone to make arrangements for your moonlit revels? Ah, there comes your mother. She looks quite shocked. The chances of you wildly wandering in the gentle realms of cloudland soon again are not so high, are they? Look at your haze! One would think there was a storm approaching! How lonely your dwelling looks, a storm scud in the middle of pastel drifts! Another cloud, situated at a higher altitude than the previous one, part of it softly illuminated by the rays of the now setting sun was drifting by, as if determined to make the most of the sunlight by moving unhurriedly as possible. All this, coupled with the music of unconcernedly fluttering leaves, punctuated now and then by the sweet trill of some bird, with a mild breeze blowing in my face, made for a very pleasant evening spent in the company of two curious squirrels, and in the way most agreeable to me.

What more foolish than to believe happiness is the ultimate ambition of a society whose very foundation is built upon a thwarted craving for meaning and its pillars insatisfaction ? Unhappiness and insufficiency are the driving forces behind economic expansion. The horror of contentment, the very notion of it is injurious to capitalism. So, in a way, a constant search for and accumulation of wealth is equated with success and to not deliriously overwork oneself in the name of ambition becomes failure, or as an excellently absurd term puts it ‘wasted potential’. Perhaps the implication here that any ability to create or produce is disqualified to be of any value unless it is yielded in a way enabling it to be monetised is collectively unacknowledged by society, or consciously endorsed. A bit of prodding into this brings one to the despaired question. What indeed is humankind’s core want? Or in other words, what would compel a thinking person to serve bureaucracy if their fundamental need were met and a decent standard of living provided?

Also another thing that bothers me is the quasi-philosophical belief that suffering is somehow superior to happiness in both meaning and virtue. The dreadfulness of pain masquerades as intellectualism and, to borrow a phrase from LeGuin, the banality of evil is wrapped up in folds of mystery. The ideology that ‘suffering should be endured for the potential of a reward later’ (and not to seek any meaning in itself, which, although questionable is a manifold better reason to engage in masochism) is one that is encouraged and spread by those in power. This is an abuse of religion and an exploitation of people’s values done more or less solely for the purpose of keeping people perceived beneath them in check. This state of affairs is more prevalent than it appears to be at first glance and is a disgrace to the few who actually work for the welfare of people. This has been a rant. Thank you.

Limerence is a word i have been looking for for a long time.

‘I would like you not to forget me’

She whispered with her last breath,

A grave demand it was, the wish to keep for her

a page of memory, warped and stained

By time’s tender erosion, and fill it with lavender and rose,

What matter if the world should burn and fall

to ruin faraway, a graveyard is a desecration to

the song of the earth written in the stars,

I’d forsake heaven and the angels

for a glimpse of your hand,

eternity can scream into the abyss,

and all I ask is to have you buried beside me.

Lone stars to be my long forgotten secrets,

And the night sky depraved of her jewels to be

My heart, the calls of the woods are drowned out

by the voice of the ocean, singing with

all the sweetness of a pathway home.

Amidst the never-ending hush of the port that harbours lost souls,

The trees can only ache for the archangel’s love,

home’s beneath the world, where the body of the

Captain’s sweetheart lies, washed away by

the clawing tide, into the veiled hearts of the

Pearls scattered upon the shore, lost forevermore

To the flowing hold of the sea and the earth.

It’s an autumn twilight and the valley of violets has

yet to spare a rose

for the lovers lying dead by the cove.

The invisible ropes of twilight cling gently to the new dawn, the gates of heaven are barred. “Exile is sweet”, uttered the wind. “For whom?” “Everybody”, she answers with a smile. “Liberty”, she mused, “what is it…?”Hesitation. Tentative reply. “Freedom to call your spirit your own.” “And how is it to be obtained?” Silence. “ Answer me young woman, how is one to go about purchasing liberty?” Murmurs. “I do not think you can.”Wonder. “Nature”, she suddenly said, “The answer to be found in nature, is it not?” Uncertainty. “Perhaps” “Are fetters to be hailed?”, she presses. Quick answer. “No” Laughter. “Break them then” Perplexed. “You despise your chains, yet revere them. What is it that you want child?”, She teasingly asks, wounding her slender fingers around a flyaway rose. Exclaims in despair, “I don’t know.” Laughter again. “Nobody really does I suppose”, she said, more to herself than to anybody else. “Why do you seek freedom?” “Liberation of the mind and soul is the object of life.” “Very well,” she said, “Liberty you seek and Liberty you shall have”. And thus cast the ascending sun it’s first rays on the mischievous interrogator and the exiled one.

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.

I wonder what the impulse to beauty is, - thinking of Darwin - without all the jargon around it. Why should a pale pink cloud strike the eye as profound and beautiful? There is a pigeon drinking water a few feet from where I sit and the squirrels are chasing each other over half raised walls. Today, the evening tells me of something that has been in ruins for a period long enough for it to have ceased to matter. Somewhere a bird whispers, the ruins are to rise again, not in image of what was, but as a shrine what is now. The future seems less real than the past. why?