"'I mean if he were a girl -- somebody in my dorm, for example -- he'd have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through Wales. Or taken an apartment in New York and worked for a magazine or an advertising company. It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so -- I don't know -- not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and -- sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.' She stopped. She shook her head briefly, her face quite white, and for just a fractional moment she felt her forehead with her hand -- less, it seemed, to find out whether she was perspiring than to check to see, as if she were her own parent, whether she had a fever. 'I feel so funny,' she said. 'I think I'm going crazy. Maybe I'm already crazy.'"(Franny, J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey)Is there any way not to conform?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
What's Behind
What's Behind
One day
I bumped into someone when I was
On the sidewalk.
The person was wearing a
Mask it was
Featureless.
I apologized,
They apologized,
And we went our separate ways.
The next day, I saw that person
Again, and they were wearing the
Same
Mask.
I said “hey!
You’re that guy I bumped into
Yesterday!”
And I sat down
And we talked
And she took off the
Mask called
Anonymity.
The mask underneath looked
Much like a
Human
Face.
But some
Features were
Distorted, although I could
Not tell which ones
They were.
We chatted for a
While, and the
Day grew late, as the
Sun lit the clouds in the
Sky.
I asked her if she wanted
To talk again
Tomorrow. And she said
“Yes”
And she took off the
Mask called
Aquaintance.
The mask underneath looked
Much like the one above
Except that now I
Could tell which features
Were “distorted”:
There was no distortion.
There was an exuberant,
Energy-filled face,
Which was beautiful.
We met again at
Daybreak, on a
Ridge overlooking the
Rising sun.
And we talked about
Meaningful things, like
Friendship
Happiness
Love
Joy.
And we
Were so
Happy, but so
Unaware of the
Truth of all things.
The day after, we met in the
Afternoon, and again talked about
Meaningful things, like
Friendship
Happiness
Love
Joy.
But we also talked about
Meaningful things, like
Death
Sadness
Brokenness
Hardship.
And the mask began to
Crack.
We talked through the
Night. And when the
Sun came up again,
I could tell that the
Mask called
Friendship had
Fallen off.
The mask underneath looked
Like it could change. It
Didn’t look
Like a
Mask at all.
It looked like one of
Picasso’s
Paintings.
Except that the
Pieces
Moved around endlessly,
Searching for their
Correct
Home.
We kept talking.
About all the things
We’d ever
Done
Wrong.
All the things we’d ever
Done
Right.
And I reached
Over to her
And peeled back the
Mask called
A
True
Bond.
Now the
Right side of
Her
Face was the
Mask called
A
True
Bond.
And the
Wrong side of
Her
Face
Revealed the
Mask called
Consciousness, or the
Mask that we
Cannot
Take off.
This mask looked
Unlike the others.
It was a machine, that
Constantly moved to the
Commands of something
I could not see clearly.
We were
Both
Crying as I slowly
Looked to see if I could
See what was driving the
Machine. I
Halted some pistons, and
Undid some screws, and
Recoiled as I saw what was
Behind this last
Mask.
I knew, from
Then on,
That
Consciousness
Is an illusion
Created to pacify us, and to
Hide the
Darkness that
Drives
Us
All.
What is
Friendship
Happiness
Love
Joy
Death
Sadness
Brokenness
Hardship
?