dear gem

 

tony the dog

just seconds ago I let Tony, my dog out. He was barking and wanting to be let out because his friend, a female dog was there. Tony sprinted to gate as soon as he heard the door locks opening and went right to his friend. They played together for a while. Ran around, sniffed about and pissed on things; dog stuff. He was happy, his friend was too, their tails kept waggling.

At that moment, I smiled. I felt a moment of happiness - something I haven't felt since..., y'know? I felt it is an achievable goal and not farfetched at all.

But my thoughts lingered for a bit too long because I saw his friend leave. She went to an area where Tony can't go. She started playing and running around with other dogs. Tony stood there and watched.

I felt something again. This time a parallel to my life. Did I really see myself in a dog? Have I become an animal or animals have become more emotional? Could be that I can now see and feel emotions and have my life to draw parallels from. Or could be that I cling to anything that makes me feel.

But the reality, as much as I hope it be poetic, is that my mind just filled in the blanks and drew conclusions. I do not think the way a dog does, nor do I feel that way. Instead, my mind put me as Tony and imagined the life as is. Sad.

I ate a burger

Some people show up and the lights are already on. of course they are. Switches work, water runs, things are just... functional; and some people don’t. Not poetic “darkness,” mind you, literal dark. Like you know, you can’t see your hand past 7pm, like night is a real constraint, like you plan your life around the sun or prepare candles or you’re screwed.

thing is, this isn’t not-so-distant history or a story written in mythos. This is now. You and I are in same timeline, are same species, but the three of us have totally different baselines for what “normal” even means.

One kid grows up thinking medicine is a given, food is just there if you’re hungry, school is boring but inevitable. Another kid, same planet, maybe same state even, knows water comes from a well, and if you’re sick, well, you just... deal with it. Or you don’t.  And everyone kind of knows that’s how it goes.

There isn’t one human experience. That idea’s kind of bs when you look at it. It’s more like billios of separate processes running at once, all labeled... whatever they were labeled at birth, all giving a different output, none of which line up at all. When people say shit like “what it means to be human,” they’re usually just describing their own narrow and tiny slice and pretending it’s universal. It’s not. It never was.

We have numbers that could be mapped to a map of the world but we don't do that. Data like who ate, who didn’t, who had access to meds, who died from something stupid and preventable. But we don't. Why bother? Someone has to haul those bricks or man the turret. And, I sure as shit am not going down the sewer to clean it and I don't think you will either.

But being born into less doesn’t make you less. If anything, it drops you into a version of reality that’s a bit more honest and strippedd down. You see how people actually behave when things aren’t padded and softened. People with comfort sometimes have to get smacked hard by life before they learn that stuff, if they ever do. Most don’t. Some just float through, insulated, clueless.

Atleast, that's what they would like us to think. But reality is that understanding things in a more "honest" way doesn’t fill your stomach. Doesn’t keep a kid from being hungry. And that’s the part that kind of sits there, ugly and unavoidable, no matter how you try to frame it.

So, then, tell me now, how was lunch? I had a burger from Burger King.

Green Pigeon

 Today while out on walk I saw a green pigeon. At first, I thought it was a parrot. But as I went closer to it I noticed dove like black stripes. Before I could take a photo, it flew off.

I thought I saw a dove with mutated colors - like an albino. But now that I look it up on the internet, I see that green pigeons are a real thing.

Fascinating.