Poems and Curios

In the depths of swirling self, beneath the sunlit surface of conscious thought, the mind is a universe of boundless potential. We are more than a patterned prison of neurons, charged with managing memories amidst the fuzzy tangle of unconsciousness. We are explorers, drifting through those fleeting moments between waking and sleeping, sleeping and waking. Life is the lucid dream between birth and death.

A kid 6-stepped around the perimeter of a small platform on top of a van, quickening his pace along with the beat blasted from bass-heavy speakers. Sneakers blurred as the curious crowds on the beach boardwalk transformed from passersby to rubberneckers to onlookers. While the snare crescendoed, the breakdancing kid introduced various flares and windmills into his repertoire. Just as the music reached its anticipated climax, he back-flipped off the platform onto a designated landing pad, triggering an optimally calibrated vertical launch of two Red Bull cans. The kid snatched the projectiles in both hands at their apex , and he crushed the streams of characteristically red-brown liquid into his mouth in a single, literally fluid motion. The gathered masses erupted, tossing their inflatable beach toys, cheap sunglasses, and boardwalk confections into the air. Queues flooded the sides of the van where Red Bull merchandise was freely distributed. It was a combination of product branding a...

As predicted by leading models to the millisecond, the sun released its final coronal mass ejection. Now obviously, this event was not the sun's final, but merely the final to be observed by those Earth-bound beings able to chronicle it. Other beings would also eventually observe this negligible blink of energy from galaxies away, and deduce its existential implications using inconceivably complex signal analysis techniques, resulting in a brief empathetic funeral for yet another extinct species. As the countdown reached zero, the anticipation was over and the "End of the World" parties commenced on schedule. These were less riotous and uncertain than one might expect; at the time, the overwhelming mood of humanity was practical pacifism. It seemed as if the advanced knowledge of impending doom allowed bucket lists to be completed and affairs to be settled in a graceful manner. It certainly helped that poverty, famine, war, racism, climate change, and other global problem...

The human brain is always reaching its capacity limit, forcing new moments to replace old ones in memory like a circular buffer. As if subject to delta-based compression, longer timelines persist within a smaller mind when its input is dominated by repetition and monotony. By introducing a variety of new and uncomfortable experiences, that same mind stores a shorter timeline of orthogonally independent memories. This diversified data storage process optimizes the mind's capacity instead of reducing the bulk of data to a repetitive sequence with only subtle divergence. The algorithm is embedded within human chemistry at the core of consciousness. We were made to explore, examine, experiment, experience, and expand. Our minds should express, not compress.

The sun spins on the horizon, projecting light between trees where the thickets have become thinnets. I am driving home, then nowhere in particular, only subtly aware of the synchronized flickering of 24 frames per second and 48 miles per hour. This cinematic illusion replays scenes from my favorite forgotten classics: tales of childhood bliss, loves lost, friends found, moments missed. The reel ends as I pull into my driveway, retinas resisting the darkness of the theater outside. The sun will rise tomorrow, and I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel from nature's zoetrope.

Time is the prison we have constructed around ourselves, fortified with each year of manual labor, the sentence for no crime. Its bars become familiar, even comfortable, home to minds that crave regimented schedules after their imaginations evaporated on the last summer days of childhood. To be free, one only has to walk away.

I take a sip of coffee. Equilibriums shift; electrons orbit; cells stain. Centuries from now, what marvels of medicine will laugh at my self-imposed decay? What fossilized records will remain to compare to the inconceivable miracles obvious in future potions? The frame of reference slides back into focus. I take another sip of coffee.

These musings may as well be stashed away in a tiny diary beneath my mattress, in between the wooden slats that function as both boxspring and bookshelf. If I were to deliberately share them, my words would influence themselves, embarrassed victims of that particular psychological effect where you behave differently when you know you're being observed. A public outer circle is a strange but comfortable audience for a private diary.

The woman gently placed the broken toaster on the cluttered back table, the endless to-do pile. The pawn shop was filled with priceless artifacts. She had individually salvaged each item from the neglected shipwreck of retail-centric society, including the original shop itself. Where our collective appreciation dissolved, her personal vision of beauty was instilled. Her young but calloused hands began to dismantle the toaster, preparing to replace its fragile parts with trustworthy equivalents. This merchandise's very existence defied the human laws of planned obsolescence. There were no customers.

Exactly 9,306 miles away, a butterfly flapped its wings and killed 129 humans. Countless other wings flapped innocently until death choreographed each unique pinwheel to earth, free-falling without the weight of destruction on its conscience. In the end, you were always going to read the word arbitrarily selected for the end of this sentence: Mandelbrot.

It is always with the first chill of winter that I long for a summer soak, after which the sun would dry my skin of every drop until I shrivel into a decorative starfish mummy to be displayed at the local combination museum exhibit and seafood buffet: the Kitschy Kitchen.

The weary man rested his hand upon his friend's shoulder, careful not to crumble her hollow bird bones to dust. A book resting on her lap contained several faded photographs, proof of an unimaginable era when the fleeting moments of childhood were rarely captured, and in purely physical form nonetheless. "We were so young and innocent back then. Now we're old and murderers," she whispered.

Memories, ignorance, bliss, et cetera. If sunshine was eternal, you'd miss the stars and even moreso the blackness that holds them. Our memories will be erased by time, replaced as surely as we shed our cells, our shells, our selves. Remember while you can, forget that you can't.

There is a momentary yet forceful desire to share myself with the world. I leech onto it, before it fades as quickly as it appeared.