"'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?

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

?

Signs Of Life

"...She looked down at her stomach, and felt a tiny stir. Her firstborn child was soon to be born. An innocent, perfect, beautiful baby boy..."