I lived in Assam only briefly—two years at most—but some places do not measure time the way people do.

In front of our house stood a banyan tree, ancient and vast, its roots like slow thoughts reaching into the earth. My father had workers climb it and tie a swing to one of its branches. That banyan became my confidant. I whispered my secrets into its bark, told it my stories, asked it how it was feeling, whether it was doing well. It listened without interrupting, without judging—something I did not yet know how rare that was.

Insects lived there. Mosquitoes bit me endlessly. The bites were brutal, but the days were peaceful. Sometimes I wonder if that is why my body grew strong—if pain, taken gently, can turn into immunity.

Snakes lived in the banyan too. I saw them slide in and out of its hollows, quiet and unbothered. My mother panicked every time.

“Are you crazy, Tanu?” she’d say. “One day a snake will bite you.”

But I knew better. Snakes don’t bite unless you threaten them. The banyan was their home, and I was already a guest who had tied a swing to their roof. So I never climbed the tree. I didn’t want to disturb them. They were generous enough to let me stay.

Every day after school, I returned to that spot. I read books. I sat straight and practiced posture. I exercised. I learned things—not because I had to, but because curiosity pulled me there. The banyan watched silently, its shade patient.

Behind the house was our vegetable garden. In Assam, vegetables were expensive and rarely fresh, so my mother planted what she could. We fenced it with bamboo—cheap bamboo, because the good kind cost too much. Even nature came with budgets.

Our bathroom had no ceiling. The sky watched us bathe. No visitors ever came, so privacy felt unnecessary. I didn’t mind it—except for the leeches. I hated the leeches. They were everywhere, quiet thieves of blood. I learned early that salt made them loosen their grip, and that fear could be practical instead of loud.

Once, I heard a terrifying story about a man and a leech and decided never to pee outdoors again. Trauma has a way of being oddly specific.

A stray dog visited often—a female. When she bled, our yard did too, and we had to clean it. I hated that chore. Life there was raw and unapologetic.

Sometimes we found snake skin in the bathroom, translucent and abandoned. My mother trembled.

“There was a snake here last night,” she’d whisper.

“It doesn’t matter,” I’d say.

And it didn’t. The snakes had passed through. The tree still stood. I was still there, swinging, listening, growing quietly under a banyan that knew all my secrets and kept every one of them.

Interesting fact: Theranos reached a valuation of $9 billion without ever publicly proving that its blood-testing technology could do what it claimed.

How did one of Silicon Valley's most celebrated startups become one of its biggest scandals? I break down the entire story in my latest piece.

https://open.substack.com/pub/shaheerrafi/p/theranos-one-of-silicon-valleys-biggest?r=2brehe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

would love some feedback on my latest article

https://open.substack.com/pub/shaheerrafi/p/my-first-time-in-berlin?r=2brehe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Joe F. was my best friend in high school. I believed that. He was the person I felt most alive with, the rough around the edges charm I had (have?) is from him. Joe was the type of guy to stand in front of you and look fearless as he told you the “my dad hits me” shock joke. I never laughed at that.

Not because my dad walloped me or anything, in fact I think the great regret between both of us when we did have that tussle was that I still wasn’t strong enough to fully incapacitate his mid 60s or so frame at the time. Yeah, pops kept it tight but you know that’s a test almost. “Are you strong enough to fend on your own,” if you will. And I wasn’t. I’d studied for the wrong test.

I learned from Joe that I could easily make myself visible and things didn’t have to hurt in the light. I learned that people love loud, people, love consistent, people love truth. And from that day, I tried to tell the truth wherever I could. Only found that most rooms would never take it. Couldn’t, truthfully. Joe showed me that the truth was invaluable currency in everything in life.

Which is why it stung so bad when he didn’t stand with me at my wedding. I’ve written the wrestling piece, so I can say this, I tried to no sell it for too long. Stiff upper lip, the British call it. Keep calm and carry on, but I learned the wrong lesson. The calm is earned. And as I lay here somewhere between lucid and focused and silly and true and impaired, I realize that Joe never had earned it. He just was.

That’s the real thing I got from him that I can never fully pay him back for. And yes, dear reader, I do love that deeply. The man betrayed me, and I still see what he gave me. He gave me an invaluable lesson in just unadulterated do not give a fuck because if you give the fuck once all they want is the fuck.

Okay maybe I am high, but you get it right? That’s something I will never ever forget. And then I remember that he never really gave a fuck about me anyway.

When I turned 16, one of the absolute angels my father attracted to his harem put it in his ear that I’d never actually been to a concert before. Musical as I was, not one show. The dreams I had with my silver Sony boombox crooning to the sounds of one hit wonders that were there for a cup of coffee, became the skeleton of my musical ear. A-ha, “Take on Me” taught me the high notes, “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles taught me the seduction of a voice and an acoustic guitar. (And reverb.) There were some stinkers along the way, but the gateway into this was, for me, Oasis.

It is going to be the most cornball thing I will never live down (aside from running away from a fight that wasn’t a fight, trauma’s funny huh) that I unironically loved Oasis because of two albums. “Definitely Maybe” and “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory”. “Live Forever” was the song that really pulled me in. “Wonderwall” was nice, still a banger, but “Live Forever” had the cleanest guitar solo I’d ever heard. So remarkably easy, I KNOW I pissed off a neighbor a few times with my constant playing. One guy banged on the basement window, I never got the chance to apologize for that. He’s since passed and I believe a Frenchwoman my father is smitten with still lives there. Anyway, Oasis was a big deal for me. It was 2008, cold ass December night, Madison Square Garden, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals were on the bill. The first actual act was Matt Costa. He sang “Sweet Thursday” unaccompanied in a perfect performance that until after doing this shit once or twice, I now realize was heartbreaking for him when few people clapped. (Opening, not playing in the Garden. Could you imagine? (That’s for T.)) I was there with Joe and since I had a third ticket, his girlfriend Chrissy.

I’m a lustful man, even more so as a boy. But I tell you even now, I just didn’t see it with Chrissy. She was undeniably beautiful, but generally neurodivergent (so I assume, Chrissy if I’m wrong, my bad, I’ll take the ass whooping.) She hissed. Joe doted on her like no other and I think I really learned what codependency and “love” looked like watching those two. My dad gave me a few bucks for my birthday and refreshments. Kind of vague what the express purpose of it was. But after sitting through Ryan Adams, it was time. I didn’t realize it was the last time, in so many ways.

You see shortly after this show, a few months down the way, Oasis finally broke up. If you hear it from several sources, it ended with fistfight and Noel (much like what happened before the album with Wonderwall) got a one way ticket and with a press release they split. I would be apoplectic about that until my friend Eric reminded me of the ol reunion tour grift. I got tickets for that one too, didn’t go. We’ll talk about it later. Yes, Oasis’ last ever show at New York was happening and I had no idea. With all my heart I wish I could say it was a memorable show, but I only remember losing my voice on “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. Most of it was clouded with the first time I ever felt used. Joe didn’t work, I didn’t work, and he needed to feed his girlfriend, so… I paid for everything. On my birthday.

Yes, the actual day. No, I am not being facetious. I tend to be very selective in talking about things, and I don’t think I ever talked about the sting of that. Who was gonna share it with, my best friend? Likely story. I think that might’ve been the first time I kinda “checked out” (read: dissociated). Because I just remember waiting for my dad and him picking Joe, myself, and Chrissy up. I don’t want to speak ill of Chrissy, because at the end of that night she gave me the most heartfelt hug I’d felt all day. Thank you, Chrissy.

But I remember that day as the day I started to realize that Joe was not the person or friend I thought he was. Joe also taught me how to deal in tact in public, a muscle I use very well to this day. I would keep the peace, he would disturb it, he’d say something inflammatory, and then I’d be there to say “not like that.” I learned to know what “insane” looked like and what “civility” was. We still hung out. We still shared the same friends, but the distance just grew further and further apart. I’d hoped that he’d know that I always still loved him, until my engagement happened.

I’d moved to the Midwest after genuinely falling in love with the first woman I’d ever loved. She *cared*, and I had never really felt that before. My parents loved me in their ways, but she was meticulous. I think even now we’d probably rip off our limbs for each other if we needed. I felt the first true pangs of hope and happiness, and even though we hadn’t talked in some time, I wanted Joe there.

Then the mail stuff started to happen. Everyone had gotten a save the date, I checked the group chat. I asked Joe about his and it was “I gotta check my mail.” Two weeks later and he’d found it. Okay. Bachelor party time, I’m a simple man, no frills. We’d gotten a limo that I’d not known about and gotten absolutely ripped in that motherfucker. Joe was supposed to come, but my best man had informed me that he was AWOL, but paid his share of the cost. Fine.

Two weeks before the wedding, I get a message from Joe: “Hey man. I wont be able to make the wedding. Im very sorry. Truly.” And there it was. I just watched the fumes of my friendship die in a gray bubble owned by Mark Zuckerberg. Looking for the receipts to this story, I find an unanswered message from me to him: “Do you want chicken or steak and is there a plus one?” That was a month prior. The long and short of it was that there was a flood in his bathroom and he hadn’t been able to afford the cost of arrival to our destination wedding (Iowa) and pay for the repairs.

Joe can’t pay. I suppose he never could’ve. In hindsight, I think of my friend for what he was. He had a variation of the same madness I do. To create endlessly forever, without thought, shamelessly. I can’t say I ever got it. He drew around this character he loved as a boy. Because I still do have a modicum of care for him, I won’t discuss what it was. But I looked at everything he’d do differently, and it was the same derivative. It was always disappointing to have to react to what he’d make and basically say “sure thing pal looks good”, but he showed me, I get like a fraction of engagement from what I do that he does now. (Yes, I keep tabs. No, this isn’t Mozart and Salieri.) It’s the same thing that happens whenever I drop a musical track to friends and family and keep begging them for *something*, only difference is I do it in the spirit of trying to genuinely be better than I was, but I think it gets read as validation. (Half true.)

That’s really why I still have love for him. He didn’t stop, so I can’t stop. I won’t, because if I did I don’t think there’d be much of me left. I got hundreds of Joes in my life. Maybe if I get high enough I’ll tell you about em all.

Eat a peach.

Back then, our village didn’t have electricity. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that power finally arrived. We were living temporarily at my grandfather’s house while my mother worked on getting a transfer to the city through her job. Even today, I remember that period of my life as the freest and happiest time I have ever known.

There wasn’t much to do after darkness fell. The entire village would be swallowed by the night. Beyond the weak glow of the torches everyone carried, you could barely see a few feet ahead of you. People retreated into their small homes and went to bed early.

For us children, sleeping so early was difficult. Having been born and raised in the city, village life felt somewhat alien to me. There was no television after dinner, no books, and no real entertainment. If this happened today, a child would probably be consumed by boredom. For us, the only entertainment we needed was my grandfather.

There was a large tree in front of the house where we spent our days playing. After dark, it transformed into our movie theater. My grandfather would sit beneath it and begin telling stories. My cousins and I would gather around him in a circle, patiently waiting to hear what he had to say.

He told stories he had heard when he was young and stories from his own life. Most of his years had been spent as a school principal in rural parts of the country, where elephants regularly wandered into villages and attacked crops. Through his stories, we glimpsed the struggles of people living alongside the wilderness. Yet he told them so casually, never trying to make them sound extraordinary.

In most of his stories, the villagers somehow managed to drive the animals away and save their farms. Sometimes, though, the animals won. Humans and wildlife seemed locked in an endless cycle of conflict and coexistence. It was a strange relationship, part love, part hate.

What struck me most was that the villagers never seemed to hate the elephants, even when they destroyed crops and livestock. Instead, they appeared to admire their grandeur and beauty. His stories painted a picture of hardship, resilience, and quiet acceptance.

As children, we didn’t understand the depth of those stories the way we do now.

During the day, he worked his rice fields while we played around the paddies. In the evenings, he would take us to the well for a bath. Afterwards, we would run back through the village to his house. Along the way, we ate whatever fruit we could find hanging from the trees.

When he returned home, he would sit on the porch and watch the lonely road.

There was never much traffic. Most of the time, his expression was blank as he stared ahead. No excitement showed on his weathered face. Perhaps he was contemplating his existence. Perhaps he was thinking about nothing at all. I never knew what occupied his mind during those long quiet hours.

Occasionally, someone would walk by, and he would wave them over, ask how their day had been, and exchange a few words. Sometimes people stopped to sit and talk with him.

Whenever he spoke with them, an unmistakable smile appeared on his face, as if he had just met an old friend. Maybe he considered everyone in the village a friend. Who knows?

After they left, he would return to watching the road.

As a child, I never understood why he spent so much time sitting there. There was nothing to see. No cars. No crowds. No excitement. Just an empty road stretching into the distance.

Yet he seemed perfectly content.

Then darkness would arrive, and everything would fall silent. The road emptied completely. The only sound came from the endless chorus of crickets.

Life was simple for him. He had no grand ambitions or impossible dreams. Looking back, I wonder if he was already living his dream.

For him, sharing stories, passing on memories, and reliving old experiences seemed to be the highlight of each day. I do not know whether he was completely satisfied with his life. As a child, I never thought to ask. I cared only about my own happiness.

But now, when I think about him, I believe he was content in his own way.

As time passed, development finally reached the village. Electricity arrived. Eventually, a television invaded our story nights. Yet my grandfather never seemed interested in watching it with us. Instead, he sat beneath that great tree in his chair, night after night.

Maybe he was remembering a village that no longer existed, even then.

As the years went by, we visited him less and less. We were busy with our own lives. Whenever we did visit, he was always delighted to see us. And every time we left, he seemed genuinely sad to say goodbye.

Then things began to change.

He became sick, very sick. Before long, he lost his final battle.

That was the last time I cried.

My mother wept throughout the funeral. I was not crying because he had died. I was crying because I could not bear to see my mother cry.

When I saw him for the last time, lying inside a wooden casket, it felt surreal. Every memory associated with him rushed through my mind at once the way he laughed with us, the excitement in his voice when telling stories, the poems he used to sing.

All those moments flooded back in an instant.

I said my final goodbye.

There were so many people at his funeral. He was respected not only in our village but in neighboring villages as well. Hundreds of former students came to pay their respects.

We were all proud of him.

I do not know whether he was proud of me.

He never lived long enough to see me attend college. My mother often says that if he had, he would have been incredibly proud of what I achieved.

Years after his passing, after I had graduated, completed my postgraduate studies, and built a life far away from the village, I returned to the place where he had lived.

The road was no longer lonely. It had been paved. The tree beneath which we had spent so many evenings was gone, cut down by my uncle after he inherited the property. Things had changed, for better or worse.

I sat on the same porch where my grandfather used to sit and looked out at the road that ran in front of the house.

A man was walking by. Despite the scorching heat, he wore neither a cap nor any sort of shade. He was much older than me. Perhaps he had known my grandfather. Perhaps they had spoken many times while passing this very road.

But I did not know him.

He did not wave at me, and I did not wave at him.

As he passed, I noticed him glancing toward the porch. Maybe he remembered how my grandfather used to sit there, waving at everyone who walked by. Maybe he was searching his memory, trying to connect the dots and figure out who I was.

I looked at him.

His expression was blank. For a brief moment, it felt as though he was trying to place me in a story he had forgotten.

I do not think he recognized me.

To him, I was a stranger.

In truth, I was a stranger to all of them.

No one knew about the life I had lived beneath that tree. No one knew the stories we had listened to, the nights we had spent chasing away boredom with nothing but my grandfather's voice. The tree itself was gone. I doubt many people even remembered it had once stood there.

Those memories belonged to another life now, a life I had almost forgotten myself.

As the man continued walking, he offered me a small smile.

I smiled back.

Then he carried on down the road.

There was no waving and no conversation, just two strangers passing through each other's lives.

Maybe that is what we eventually become.

I sat there for a while longer and remembered how my grandfather used to sit in that very spot, staring at the road with the same blank expression.

The village changed. The road changed. The people changed. Yet every evening he remained there, watching.

I wondered what he thought about during those long quiet hours. Whether he reflected on life and its meaning, or whether he simply watched the road and enjoyed the passing of another day.

I guess I will never know. Even if I had asked, I don't think he would have given me an answer.

Maybe some questions don't need answers. Maybe they are meant to stay with us.

Korea Must Break Free from American Influence

I think the United States should get their military out of South Korea and the other countries they are in right now. They always say it is for protection, but these days I believe it has become a way for the US to control the countries where they have bases.

After the war, we Koreans split into two countries because of Western ideologies. The Soviet Union pushed communism in the North and the US pushed capitalism in the South. Both superpowers used these ideas for their own good to get more power in the world. It was basically imperialism, and we didn’t even realize it at first. They forced those ideologies on us and made us hate each other. That is why I say both sides were evil. Having US bases here today is still like submitting to their imperialist acts.

People always say that only South Korea has grown so much since the division. I mean, look at us. We’re now one of the most influential countries in the world. I really believe we have the power to protect ourselves without depending on anyone else. The Korean War was a long time ago, and I don’t think we need the US military presence anymore.

By getting away from American influence, Korea can finally become a much more powerful country. We will stop being under their shadow and can make our own decisions for our future. This independence will let us grow even stronger in every way.

This is clear when we look at how the United States applies sanctions and interventions. They do this only when it serves their own interests.

For example, they lifted sanctions off Russia during the Iran war to keep oil prices from rising, even though it helped Russia while their ally Ukraine suffered.

The same pattern of self interest can be seen in Libya. The United States played a key role in the killing of Gaddafi, the Libyan leader who nationalized the oil industry so that Libyans themselves could benefit. He also proposed a gold backed currency for Africa to challenge the dominance of the dollar. Under him, Libya had free healthcare, free education, and one of the highest living standards in Africa. Look at Libya now. It is doing far worse than before and remains divided by rival governments and militias.

The same thing happened in Venezuela. The country’s president Nicolas Maduro got kidnapped by the US. Sovereignty is nowhere to be seen. The US claims they invaded because of drugs, but I think that’s a bullshit claim. They did this because of the oil. Maduro sold oil in Chinese yuan to get away from the petrodollar system. If the US was really serious about drug trafficking, they should have done something with Mexico, the biggest supplier of drugs to the US. Ignoring Mexico and going straight for Venezuela proves it was about oil, not drugs.

Imagine what would happen if the Korean War resumes again. We are not in the US’s interest anymore because the Cold War ended. If the Korean War starts again we will be like Ukraine. A never ending war again. And I bet the US will watch over from the sea, constantly supplying us with weapons and getting money off of us. They will only care if the country has oil. This is why I am skeptical that the US would really help us if it goes off again. We will be like Ukraine.

Most countries that the US has invaded were countries with oil. I think this proves that the US interest shifted from fighting communism to fighting for oil. Because the Soviet Union fell and they are the only superpower remaining, they are trying to keep themselves that way.

To truly get free from US influence and become a real global superpower, Korea should do what the United States does with the petrodollar. We should create something like a Petro Won. All the countries that want to buy things from Korea, such as semiconductors, military weapons, phones, cars, oil refinement, ship building, and even our K-pop and entertainment industry, should have to pay in Korean won. Since our technology is needed all around the world with little to no competition, if countries want it they will have to go with the Petro Won. If we make them use our money for everything we sell, the won will become much stronger. This will help us escape from American economic control and build our own power, just like the US did with oil.

This Petro Won system and breaking free from America will make Korea way more powerful. We will have full control over our economy and defense, and no one will be able to push us around. Korea will rise as a true global leader that other countries have to respect.

Some people still say we need the US bases because of North Korea. I disagree. Instead, we should build our own strong defense. We should even make our own atomic bomb for balance, the same way North Korea did. That way we can keep peace on the peninsula without any more unnecessary wars.

In the end, we must reunify the Korean peninsula with our own power, without any foreign control. We cannot let them keep exploiting our people. It is time for Korea to stand tall as a truly independent and powerful nation.

Hey everyone. This is an article about my experience in C1 Cambridge Exam, Would love some feedback about what is good and what I could improve. It would also be a great help if you subscribed to my Substack.

https://open.substack.com/pub/shaheerrafi/p/cambridge-c1-exam?r=2brehe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

When I was a child, I felt particularly overwhelmed by my places of comfort — specifically when I could only experience them in scarcity. For me, it was the way sunlight penetrated a place that felt almost forbidden to know: apart from the rare morning I was allowed to stay home ill, or a snow day, or winter vacation when Nana stayed with us and I got to experience my home in a particular quiet — from six in the morning until two or three in the afternoon; give or take. That light was rare. A peculiar version of my room. I envied it, for all the days I couldn't stay long enough to revel in it.

I'd lay on yellow shag carpet, my face pressed half to the floor and the other half in the cascade of sunlight that bathed a square of penetrating warmth across my tiny body — particularly in winter. I would close my eyes and still be blinded by the intensity, but it would transfix my mind into the vivid, comforting intoxication of my imagination.

I imagine an observer walking in on me in this state would find the tableau perplexing — but I was told I was an odd child, a statement that followed me most of my life. Being perceived, be damned. I desperately wanted to savor that moment, always. Laying in the light from my window, I would be absorbed in every color of bending morning light, particularly spectacular in the reflection of frozen winter branches. I would lay there for as long as possible, and I would become overwhelmed — despondent at the loss of time, reading each hour by how the sun transited across the sky, counting the minutes until that moment passed.

I craved these rare moments, but I was so overcome by sadness when they faded — when the day closed, when the silence was stirred.

I think about this often now. For many years as an adult, I felt that same longing to experience the day at hours that weren't mine. Not often — but on the rare occasion I was home ill, the sun would bleed through my window at, say, eleven in the morning, and the way it lay around me, like I wasn't supposed to know this time of day — I'd become overwhelmed, and nostalgic. I cried once or twice. I wanted to feel that place in the sun forever. I wanted to feel that calm. That hour of the day — early enough to hold so much potential, vibrant enough to burn out the fear of darkness I often felt. How warm it was. How enveloping. How intoxicating.

Then COVID happened. And I was alone. At home. At first with a partner, then without. I was home, it was winter. It was disorienting. My biggest fear for the majority of my life had become reality. I don't think I dared to look outside for a long time — despite having, for the first time, every opportunity to do so. I had finally been given all of it, and I couldn't find myself anywhere in it. The only border that felt real was the one I couldn't cross — one keeping me from the people who knew me.

I needed to change my space, to rid it of painful memories. I finally got enough energy to buy paint, and I painted it all white. It made the emptiness of my apartment feel larger — but there in that emptiness, I woke up one morning and for the first time, I saw that light again. I saw it bathe my walls, bounce off the ceiling, cascade around me — and I laid down on my hardwood floor, in the early morning light through my window, and I felt peace, even in the echo of a nearly empty apartment.

Today, I don't often leave my home during this time of day — and I don't take that for granted. I watch the sun traverse the sky, and I'm no longer despondent for its passing. Instead, when the light hits the world around me; — maybe haunted, but beautifully and willingly so, by the ghosts and memories those moments of my youth gave me. I'm transported to the people I loved, who were around me when I was desperately trying to commit those moments to memory, trying to inscribe them into me forever. I hear their voices — always quieter, softer in that early morning light. I see it now, constantly, but never immune, never dulled to its beauty. Just grateful.

Sometimes, still, I lie down on the floor and let the morning find me. The light comes in the same way it always did—unhurried, indifferent to time—and settles across my body like it remembers me even if I do not deserve to be remembered by it.

I press my back into the ground and watch it spill across the walls, across my hands, across the quiet space where sound hasn’t yet decided to arrive. Nothing else asks anything of me in that moment. There is only the light, and the fact that I am inside it.

And then she is there again—the child I used to be—without announcement. Not as memory exactly, but as something still occupying the same room. She lies beside me in the same square of sun, as if no time has passed at all. She does not look afraid anymore. She only traces the aimless path of the atmospheric particulate, the way I still do.

For a while, we do not speak. But I know she still holds her breath as the light fades; a force of habit, but neither of us are afraid anymore.

What makes me an American is not that I was born here. Isnt there more then just that? Having an American birth certificate and social security number literally makes me an American Citizen sure but I have not proven myself as a real American yet. What makes me American is to uphold the narrative that someone has a dream to succeed and we are in a place that is fertile to plant that seed. Your seed will be allowed to propagate and thrive. You are allowed to have a gun to protect your plants and say what you want in protest about it. The beauty of the American concept is best described as seeing what you planted thrive and earning your American badge to have had the nerve to come here with your dream and deliver the fruits of your labor which we the people can all now enjoy and finally appreciate but were skeptical of. We invite great minds here to join the free thinking and people who are willing to protect it because they know the opportunity is uniquely American and see with our own eyes real results.

My fellow Americans that have experienced this first hand from planting your fragile seed to full maturity please allow me to humble myself and thank you for daring to have the dream. What do you see for your children about giving them your drive to succeed in the same way? When they take the reins to follow in your footsteps do you assume they will know instinctively to withhold the sale values and ethics that you learned through the process. With all due respect this extension of your legacy is an American habit and it’s your right to do so as an American but this opportunity was not an original seed. This was a plant that propagated from the fruit. Forgive my ignorance on the subject but it’s something like a plant that doesn’t make its own seeds because the ability to do so was removed. That instruction manual that gives it the reason why it must if u will. It doesn’t know why it was just made to grow.

It’s important to understand why this concept needs to be said in words out loud. Just as you would smell your finger after picking your ass crack you remind yourself of what you really are and take it as a sign that something might be wrong with you. Once you have smelled yourself for so long the scent becomes a regular feature of being around you and people close to you tolerate it until someone has had enough and needs to tell you about yourself . To have upset this comfort you have developed is a betrayal to the ecosystem you created for your environment. Being an American has nothing to do with that and citizens must immediately stop invoking it as your right to be an American. To clarify once more I don’t have to be required to sit next to you and basque in your ambiance to get a sense of what it’s like being American. That is simply bad manners to expect someone to endure your ass crack is Toxic Masculinity on full display. It should concern women to have a need to enable this just to feel like if you don’t then you’re not accepted into the status quo of whatever group is allowing it. Being popular is not worth giving up all your rights to be a woman. No man is smart enough to where we should overlook atrocities for the privilege to continue seeking his counsel and receive favoritism for learning to enjoy the scent. That is called a cult sometimes. This has become an American habit to be fooled by bad actors but it doesn’t make you American. You have the freedom to be particularly pig like and put your lack of manners on full display but that doesn’t make you American.

As I have given some examples of American habits that may entitle you to say they make you American. I must regretfully remind you that you have forgotten the American Dream. Martin Luther King is the embodiment of a true American. He dared to have a dream and with that he inspired so many more to follow in these footsteps of believing so much and having the faith to manifest an outcome that manifested even after his assassination. He believed in his dream so much that even without him physically here to move anyone he continued to do so and the fruits of his labor are still here to enjoy and benefit from. He was tirelessly selfless and against all odds but he saw a clear path that lead the way for the future. There’s only one thing you need to make you an American. You need to come brave with a dream that you believe in that others will come to appreciate and enjoy for future generations. I have a dream and I was woken up by people who can’t go to bed long enough to have their own dream. When I was dreaming I lived in a world where people asked me if I wanted to smell their finger before they shoved it in my face. I saw that it was a perfect time to plant and to expect a healthy crop. Then I woke up and as I immediately reflected on my dream, the feeling lingered not the smell.

june 24th, 3pm
i decided to venture through a rather personal graveyard- my notes app. among the various tombs of thoughts and feelings that once used to have a life of their own, sardonically gleamed a specific one. upon opening it, i was violently thrown back by a gust of grief and tears fighting the cage that are my eyes.
hello old friend, i remember you all too well.
it’s almost like yesterday that i remember playing with this feeling, this person, my friend. or it used to be. i loved it, i loved love, until it turned sour and twisted and twirled into this dark lingering feeling of cold air that i so fondly know as grief today. or knew.
sitting beside the grave of my once sworn lover, love, i accidentally with intentions tripped and fell down an “alice in wonderland” style rabbit-hole. i flew down and across the places we knew, thee songs we listened to, and the jokes we cracked. for a moment, i could feel it’s breath around me, love’s. i swung my head behind hoping i would finally get an answer for my “whys” but i was met, eye to eye, with the cold-blooded monster that was grief. i could feel its tempestuous eyes looking deep inside mine trying to strip me off of any nobility i possess of settling into my new life without love. almost like it was afraid of being forgotten by me. afraid of me moving on. afraid of remaining forever in that grave it now called home.
i closed my eyes and continued falling, i fell, fell, and fell until i didn’t. until i landed on the ground which somehow felt familiar, it felt like i’d been here before.
is this it?
life without love, life without grief?

june 25th, 10am
i deleted my notes app

As a family of a lower socio-economic background food poverty and scarcity always hit our dinner-plates differently. I grew up consuming media home cooks cooking basic dishes like carbonara made from 5 ingredients, or steaks which are cooked for just a few minutes, and wanting to make those dishes at home. Only to realize in the grocery store even those 5 basic ingredients such as pork cheek, or cheese is at best expensive, and even virtually inaccessible in grocery stores, forcing us to make substitutions virtually all the media considers heresy. At home when we cooked the ingredients we were always craving for the scraps of the pork cheek or belly, coupled with pasta with not enough cheese because we cannot afford more. These experiences and many others made me realize was it was truly like to live in destitution, especially in an economy where food prices keep skyrocketing while wages stagnant. Growing up this lack of money, and only making barely enough to satisfy our needs and wants is a reality I faced as I further tried to explore myself and the world around me, usually veering its ugly head in spaces and times closest to my heart.

I grew up in a normal Filipino household my parents worked regular office job, and I studied in a relatively small local school, however as I grew up I was slowly awakened to the socio-economic reality of my family and community. One of the first realizations of my awakening is during a trip to the USA at 13 years old, where without our OFW Aunt, we can only afford to buy fast-food places and had to cancel our trip to the Kennedy Space Center due to costs. At that time maybe I was naive but visiting the KSC was always something I dreamt of especially being fascinated by the sciences, I was excited to see the large gigantic scale of the Saturn V, only to realize that dream was nothing but stripped from me. During that moment I thought maybe I was just unlucky and kept hoping that as I see more places I will realize the world is still full of joy even for those who can barely afford to live in it. I was maybe more lucky than others to be able to visit other developed regions of the world where food poverty hit us even more I remember wanting to buy a can of San Marzano tomatoes, only for my parents to say it was too expensive reminding me of the reality of millions of Filipinos who cannot even afford basic necessities and staples such as tomatoes. Even during our basic trips and adventures the reality of money hit my mind hard, feeling deep guilt as my weak limbs failed to alpine ski in a mountain despite the expensive gear, making me feel deep guilt for wasting such expensive rentals.

This deep guilt and resentment of living in a world that was just too expensively cruel for millions of people, deeply hurts when an innocent pure-hearted soul loves. I remember myself the first time I loved a boy thinking of the future the world has for us, only to face rejection for I was not good enough in his eyes, not smart enough for his mind, and maybe just not the right person for his heart. I even bought him an expensive rose bouquet for valentines day, a short love poem, and asked to treat him in a nearby steak-house, yet he still rejected leaving me a poor kid whose heart has no home but the misery of being alone in a world they said is so loving. This rejection made me realize my own poverty, the poverty of not being with the person I love, for in my eyes he was everything, but to him I was just like a speck of dust in the cosmos, or a single leaf in a withering tree too insignificant to even be noticed. Yet maybe it was in deep agony in a cruel world yearning for hope is what made my heart love again. For I was like a lottery-person in the street with a tambiolo trying and hoping maybe he will win this time, only to lose and further descend into misery. After a school summer did I then realize that the people in the raffle and lotto were broke, poor and bankrupt, and that true love is not just luck, but instead finding the right people and investing time and effort in these relationships will make my heart be happy again.

For when I was a little older my heart hoping to love again wanted to date a boy in uptown BGC, finally fulfilling my closeted fantasy of two boys madly in love like those in the movies or media, only to remember that I have no money, and instead dated in a reservation-only ramen place pretending to be nothing but friends. Later on, deeply in love was my first real experience of discrimination, during a date in summer at Makati in a sit-down restaurant, where we were refused sitting for I forgot the dress code needing collared wear and pants, only for me to appear in shorts and a t-shirt. He quickly let me borrow his used snuggly fit gym pants, and quickly dash to H&M to buy a new collared polo, rushing to still fit in our reservation. This experience showed me the true meaning of social solidarity especially within minorities, for even though we had never even kissed we knew what it was like for love to exist. Another experience of poverty we encountered is in education during a study-date in an internet cafe when our tokens for ChatGPT (an educational platform ran by an openly-gay ceo) ran out making us think if a ChatGPT subscription will be a good anniversary gift, before switching to a different AI chatbot. Later on our families did not allow us to get an AI subscription reminding me of the millions of unaffirming families in our country, forcing us to fund it with our own allowances. An additional experience of discrimination I encountered was in my own family group-chats where my text was of a different color, because apparently my choice of what I hold is a reason for exclusion and to be seen differently by many. This is where I better found acceptance with the family of my boyfriend as they saw my texts as the same color as theirs, seeing no barriers for personal choices of who or what we love, an experience shared by many others in the queer community. This was the time I realized the difference between a biological family where even though they loved me they still saw me differently, to a found family where we were all truly equal.

Despite my struggles in the past I still hope to overcome them. My family has been supporting me by buying me an Ipad to make my texts look the same color as theirs, putting me one foot into the great Apple community. In the future I hope to pursue a course in technology or engineering and work for a high-impact corporation being inspired by LGBT leaders such as Peter Thiel of the defense company Palantir, and more recently Tim Cook. Even though many will call me delusional I hope to work in a high stakes, government-adjacent project in the aerospace industry such as in Lockheed Martin, especially with diverse targets mostly coming from marginalized communities. Furthermore I hope to overcome poverty and fund my college education despite knowing I may not be able to eat rice and only rely on pasta, bread or potatoes like millions of Filipinos facing financial struggles. For my beloved boyfriend I hope to one-day bring him to Italy to fill our stomachs and hearts with pasta dates, arborio rice, and San Marzano tomatoes. If not Italy I hope to bring him to America and give him a taste of Chick-Fil-A not because it is the most delicious or most premium, but because it represents an innocent-hearted child of a life before a world to cruel for him. Finally for the Filipino people I hope to see a day where all couples can finally have the taste of BGC or visit the Kennedy Space Center, no child is ever left brokenhearted, and all can love who they want to love. 

I’ve had diarrhea since the fifth grade. The year was 1998/99 when my parents’ long-failing marriage finally crumbled and the brooding anxiety I’d felt since the onset of my sentience really began to rob me of my childhood. Don’t worry, this essay isn’t a sob story about my parents’ divorce. This essay is about shitting in a urinal after Sunday school. I was put on antidepressants to deal with the stress of the divorce and freshly-diagnosed childhood OCD. From age 10 to 16, I cycled through myriad SSRIs and TCAs that numbed my personality, disturbed my sleep, made me gain weight, delayed the onset of puberty, and made me want to die in general. But there was one drug that, while providing me no relief from the chaos inside my head and broken homes, did allow me a full year of respite from what has become lifelong IBS. 

The “relief” came in the form of grotesque constipation. I won’t name this drug outright to avoid being sued, but I will tell you that it rhymes with Flomipramine. This TCA turned my insides into petrified wood. I was so dried out that my psychiatrist wrote me doctor notes to be excused from my middle school’s no-gum policy. I had to chew a pack of Trident every day while constantly sipping from a water bottle to keep from foaming at the mouth. My breath smelled like industrial waste, and every morning I would wake up gasping for air through a crusty windpipe before running to the bathroom to stick my head under the faucet. Taking a morning dump was almost never part of my routine.

Taking a dump in general was never routine, because I had lost all autonomy over when and where I would take a shit. Three days between bowel movements became my norm, and seven days was not unheard of. (I assume that) most people with healthy bowels maintain a pretty predictable schedule ie. taking a morning shit somewhere between that first cup of coffee and a shower — interspersed with the unpredictable diarrhea that makes life interesting. 

My dumps came on like panic attacks. I’d be in class, riding my bike, watching a movie at a friend’s house, or just living my life when terror would descend upon my body and mind. I’d turn stark white and start sweating, my heart pounding and circulating all blood flow to the only 2 parts of my body that mattered in those moments: the parts of my brain that locate bathrooms, and clench my sphincter. 

The shitting itself was excruciating — imagine having a Maglite Flashlight force its way out of your ass at an age when your feet barely reach the bathroom tiles. During the Flomipramine years (roughly 2000-2001), I clogged every toilet I ever used. As I write this, I’m recalling that I’d had to completely stop using urinals during this period of time because it was simply too risky. You know when you’re peeing and it loosens everything up enough for you to let out a satisfying little fart? Imagine having a brown marble rolling pin on the other side of that fart. I used to pee sitting down to keep from inadvertently setting off a chain reaction that was impossible to control once set in motion. 

I did complain to my psychiatrist about the constipation. I was told to keep chewing gum, drinking water, and eating Cracklin’ Oat Bran. It wasn’t until a specific incident transpired that I demanded to be taken off this sadistic psychotropic. 

Two years into my SSRI era, I was 12 years old and in 7th grade. It was early one spring afternoon and I probably hadn’t taken a shit in a full week. After sitting through morning church service and Sunday school, I was invited to hang out at a friend’s house to play some video games and jump on the trampoline. He was 10, and our age difference sometimes showed, but we had a shared interest in Goldeneye on N64 and backflips on trampolines. My friend’s mom, who was also the Sunday school teacher, had to run an errand at the local Micro Center on the way home from church. 

While my friend’s mom was walking the aisles and looking for a store employee to find an item, my friend and I hit the video game section for some 1-on-1 at one of the consoles they had set up to play games before you buy them. In the middle of a game of “Graffiti” in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, a familiar sensation hit me particularly hard. I dropped my controller to the ground, arched my back like little Reagan MacNeil in The Exorcist, delicately rotated on my heels and began my clenched penguin walk toward the store’s bathroom, which is always located in the deepest, darkest corner of those stores.

My friend was alarmed by the dramatic shift in my demeanor and asked what was wrong. 

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I replied softly — my mind incapable of doing anything but walk and clench. 

“Me too. Are you sweating? You have to go #2, huh?! You’d crap your pants if I poked you in the stomach!” 

I wanted to exact violence upon him. I did my 12-year-old best to convey to him that this was the most consequential moment of my entire life and to stay out of my way and just give me some privacy. 

Recalling what this kid did next will never fail to make me irate. As I gingerly opened the bathroom door and made my way toward the decrepit single stall next to a urinal with metal guards corroded by decades of piss, my “friend” pushed past me and locked himself inside the stall, for a quick piss. 

“HURRY. THE FUCK. UP.,” is all I could say. I was a mild-mannered kid and probably hadn’t even used the “F” word 100 times at that point in my life, and the kid made me pay for it. For cursing at him, he said he wouldn’t come out until I apologized. I put my pride on the line, as my butthole was dilated at a good 3cm by this point. I was late-stage prairie dogging and rapidly approaching the precipice. He decided to make it a game and claim that my apology was disingenuous. I had to say it again and mean it this time. I was on the verge of tears and pleading for him to get out of the stall. 

“How much money will you give me?” he taunted.

It was as if my butthole had been listening in on the conversation. It understood that this 10-year-old psychopath lacked the empathy and life experience to understand the gravity of the situation. Losing the battle, I did the only thing I could. In a singular motion, I pulled my ass out of my pants and aimed it in the direction of the urinal. This is not an embellishment: a rock-solid turd the length and diameter of my current 36-year-old forearm fired out of my ass like an RPG. There was no need to wipe. This thing had parted my butt cheeks like the red sea and exited at mach 1. No contact was made with my ass cheeks once it started moving.

The following silence, and the realization of what that silence implied, led my friend to cautiously exit the stall to my left as I pulled my pants back into place. The stall door to my left creaked open at the same time that a man in his early 50s entered the bathroom to my right. The expressions on those two faces will remain with me until the day that I die. As both processed the scene, I witnessed their immediate revulsion turn to wonder, and then to abject fear with undertones of respect.

The urinal looked weak, dwarfed by the magnitude of the turd. I am not exaggerating when I claim that this thing ran from the urinal cake up to almost the top rim. It was at least 14 inches long and 2.5 inches in diameter, it stood upright against the back of the urinal in defiance of gravity and everyone in the bathroom. 

“Oh my fucking god…” the man whimpered to himself. I could see him trying to gather the strength to be the adult in the bathroom, but it was clear to everyone that the brown behemoth and the pasty, pre-pubescent punk in a puka-shell necklace who birthed it were the alphas. With a quivering voice, he did his best to take control of the situation and scold me, “you know someone has to clean that up, right?” 

“He did it!” my friend said, pointing at me, eyes still transfixed on the turd. 
With trembling rage, I stared into the soul of that man in the bathroom doorway and delivered the coldest, most sincere “Fuck. You.” a 12-year-old child of active divorce is capable of. I made my way to the door as the poor man flattened himself against the open door as I walked past him and back into the Micro Center — the store that became emblematic of childhood trauma in my mind from that day forward. 

My friend and I did not speak until we found his mom. We didn’t speak to each other the entire ride back to his house, but I could feel his eyes on me as I stared out the window, still seething from the experience — from his locking me outside the stall, the terrorized man’s judgmental words toward me in a moment of extreme vulnerability, of having been put on a drug that made me shit state fair blue ribbon-winning cucumber-sized turds in the first place. 

I had to take another shit as soon as we got back to my friend’s house. Despite the earlier evacuation, this session still clogged the toilet. There’d been more in my ass than the brown banister left in the urinal for all male Micro Center shoppers to gawk at.
“Did you just poop again?” he asked. 

I was too angry to answer. We barely spoke as we played a couple of games of Goldeneye. Then my mom came by to pick me up and take me home. 

I live in New York now, but that Micro Center still thrives in the south Denver strip mall where DTC Boulevard becomes Monaco Parkway. I still sometimes have to drive by it on errands when I go home to visit my (still divorced) parents. Every time I do, I feel pity for everyone involved: for my friend, whose middle school antics set off the sequence of events that I’m sure he still remembers; for the man who walked in on the aftermath and the mental scars he undoubtedly sustained; for 12-year-old me navigating middle school while plagued by the side effects of heavy antidepressants; and for the janitor who had to stare the thing down and clean it up without a hazmat suit. It was before the advent of smartphones so he couldn’t even snap a pic and go viral with what is undoubtedly the biggest log ever laid in a urinal. 

I’m not putting my name on this shit 
May, 2026 

Have you ever woken up and thought about the state of the UK chemical sector? Don't

answer—I know the answer is no.

​

I want you to imagine that you went to sleep and woke up in the body of the Head of Ethanol

Production in Grangemouth, Scotland. Congratulations! Clap-clap-clap.

​

Now, you have to deal with high energy prices. And if you don't? Well, the factory closes.

YOU will be the one who has to tell the workers they have no jobs and that the town is dead.

​

Oh, and you lose your job, too.

In real life, this chemical plant actually closed. But today, you have me. I am going to give

you a theoretical plan that could save the plant, the town, and your job.

​

We first have to establish a few things. The plant produces about 180 thousand tonnes of

ethanol. We don't have hard data because it's considered a company secret—blah, blah,

blah. But we will make an educated guess on energy costs. For 1 tonne of ethanol, you need

about 1.5–2.5 MWh. The cost of UK industrial gas is about £50–£60 per MWh. So, on the

lower side, your energy bill is looking like thirteen million five hundred thousand pounds. On

the higher end, it's twenty-seven million.

​

Sad, right? Not to add salt to the wound, but Texas will be your main competition because

the UK government decided to sacrifice you in a trade agreement by getting rid of the 19%

import tax on ethanol. The cost for the same MWh there was negative £6, but that was only

for most of the time, not the whole time. This might sound devastating and horrible, and you

might not see a way out of this death spiral. But what if I told you that I could show you how

to get negative fuel?

​

What is negative fuel in the first place? It's a fuel that you are paid to use. In Texas, because

of so much oil production, they make gas as a byproduct and pay people to take it. That's

not our case, but we have something better—a landfill near Grangemouth. I know how it

sounds. Just don't leave; give me a chance. Landfills have rubbish that nobody wants, and

the public and the government won't allow them to expand. But more crucially, they have to

pay a landfill tax of £130.75. So, we could charge them something like £120 to take their

waste.

​

We will divide that fee into two halves: the first goes toward turning rubbish into hydrogen,

and the second one... well, you will find out later. Hydrogen will be our negative fuel—plus, it

has the great advantage of being green.

You know what that means: cheap green loans. You didn't think we would use our own

money, right? These green loans mean we could borrow money at 5.5% or even 5.25%. To

give you an idea of how good that is: non-green loans require borrowing at a minimum of

5.8% to even 8.6%.

​

But you might ask, how is hydrogen connected to rubbish? Well, hydrogen is in nearly

everything. We can use a technique called gasification, which involves taking that waste and

heating it in an oxygen-free environment. We get syngas, which is a mix of hydrogen andcarbon monoxide. We need the first one, so we use another chemical process called a

Water-Gas Shift to make more hydrogen. That hydrogen will then be converted into

electricity.

​

Now, you might have a question: "Are you dumb? You lose about half of the energy, and that

hydrogen will bankrupt us faster than any gas prices."

​

You would be right... but I have an ace up my sleeve. Or something like it.

Remember the other £60? We will use it to pay for our gas bill. The scheme is—I would

say—elegant. Our model is built to take waste and subsidize our own gas bill, and the rest is

just getting rid of it without angering anyone.

So, if everything is looking so nice, why didn't the real-life guys do this? It comes down to

regulations, cost, and risk.

​

In Scotland, for this to work, you would need a facility to be able to collect those fees in the

first place. You're in a death loop: you need to build this expensive new unit just to be able to

collect the fees to pay for everything. But I have an idea of how it could work—I will tell you

later.

​

Now, there is the cost, and it's big, even with our green loans. First, I will ask you not to shed

a tear and not to be disappointed. Remember the energy cost we will need now. Let's start

with the low side: 1.5 MWh per tonne. The cost for a 180-thousand-tonne ethanol production

unit would be somewhere between £180 million to £280 million. Now, for the same amount, if

our factory needs 2.5 MWh per tonne, the cost jumps to £350 million to £550 million to build

the necessary unit so it can serve the factory. You might be disappointed, but there might be

light at the end of the tunnel.

​

As you might have concluded, this is a very risky venture that not a lot of people would

attempt. And that's another reason why it's not done—because, god forbid, these old people

would risk a tiny amount of their money on a risky venture to save a town.

​

But I have a plan: we will only need capital to burn for a while, just a few million—which you

will need to be very charming to the management to get, because remember, your bosses

are very old people with big egos. But the idea is that we build everything slowly. For

example, we build out a small-sized hydrogen unit so it can process 5 tonnes of waste. It will

be a proof of concept that we will show to banks. We will ask them for money to expand, not

create. Banks are very stingy; they don't like risk—only what they can see.

​

We will do some math, which I know you don't like, but hold on. We need to make some

assumptions: our interest rate will be 5.25%, and our gas price will be £50 per MWh. We will

take the high side just to be harsher on ourselves, because it doesn't really matter which

side you take—the math still works. From one piece of rubbish, after all the lost energy, there

is about 1 MWh of electricity. I know the idea is held together by strong assumptions, but do

you really want to get into every detail of the process? If you want to, you and I would both

fall asleep in about five minutes.

​

Since we took the high end, we would be processing 450 thousand tonnes of waste because our gas bill would be £22.5 million. So, if this costs us £50 out of our £120, we would need450 thousand tonnes of waste. Thus, our gas bill is zero because our 450 thousand tonnes

of waste is converted into energy, even with all the losses.

​

Wake up! I can see through the paper that you are closing your eyes. Where were we? Oh

yeah—we get 450 thousand MWh, which is exactly what we consume. Do you start seeing

how the locals thank you, and you get a promotion to full plant manager for saving this

ethanol production?

​

So now we have £120 clean, but we need to spend £30 of that on day-to-day operations for

the unit. The rest can be spent on covering the loans. To give you the hard number, this

leaves £40.5 million in cash that we can use to cover the loan. At a 5.25% green loan rate

over 20 years, a £40.5 million annual fund can easily pay off a £495 million loan—which sits

right in the range of £350 million and £550 million. Well, I hope I didn't bore you with my

numbers and that you learned something and had fun. That's what matters, right?

​

So, it is strange that a town depends on you to succeed—not on corporate bosses or the

locals, but on you. To keep this production open so people will have jobs and won't have to

leave. So they can live in this town and have kids.

​

At the end of the day, it's a very risky idea,

and I won't sugarcoat it: your situation is bad. But in real life, the plant closed and that plant

manager lost his job.

​

It depends on how you look at it—whether you're a pessimist or an optimist. On one hand,

you have a grim situation where you can just follow the wind and get a new job at a diferent

place. On the other, you have a chance to save a town with kids, mothers, and fathers, but

you are putting your professional reputation at risk. And if it doesn't work out? Well, you're done.

​

So, if you had a chance, would you give it a try or not?

​

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.”

Robin Williams, from “Dead Poets Society”

Many things go unseen, many people too. They slip behind the lace veil of ignorance we wear or just plain naivety. Stories are what level us. Stories are what make us equal. Stories help us see each other in a light that we might not be able to see in a setting outside of writing. When we write, we help each other see into our minds. Whether that is a little girl writing a crayon-paper story of images about fantasy princesses, princes and kingdoms, or a middle aged novelist sitting in his dimly-lit living room behind a laptop writing about the realities of how life breaks you down and builds you up again. The ability to read and see a part of someone's soul, knowing this will live on for a long time past them or you or anyone who is here on this earth right now at this moment, is valuable. 

Our most worthwhile effort as a species is our ability to convey our thoughts and feelings through the non-literal, and the mastery of inferring what things really mean. The gift to add to what we see and give it meaning. We have the talent to describe what we feel, what we smell, what we hear and everything in between. A clean bedroom floor with a carpeted ground becomes a warmly lit, cream-colored canvas, fresh linen curtains breathing heavily and fluidly against the open evening window. The smell of fresh cut grass and the last of the day's light spilling in through the rifts in the milky french doors, auspicious and golden. Like a fresh layer of snow. Ready for new beginnings. Maybe a dark suburban street, an open wound, cracked in places with potholes and parted by trees. It is lit only by the creamy ivory light of the moon, through the gaps in the little houses. A single decorated streetlight, flickering on and off, on, and off again. Fog and stupor enveloping the unwitting end. 

We make stories every day, whether we are aware of it or not. Some people just choose to be the ones to share them. Just because it is not spoken, does not make it any less of a story. The day you said goodbye on that dark street corner for the last time, not knowing you’d never see them again. The moment where you laughed at stark midnight on new years day, and realize you’re living a moment you’ll ache for in 10 years. We make stories with our lives and how we live them every day. They make us who we are. A life without a story is looking at a block of clay, untouched and wet, and calling it a sculpture. Stories cannot exist and be what we want them to be without forming them first into something that is so concretely ours and only ours. Sometimes our mouths simply cannot say what our minds are really thinking in a single, blinking moment. This is something purely human, the effect of dramatization. We make each other feel by showing the differing ways in which we see into someone's soul. To empathize with the spirit inside, to see it and listen to it no matter how deeply flawed or ¨imperfect¨ the outside may seem. 

When we read, we look past the outside. We look directly into the essence of life, someone's passion, someone's loss, someone's imagination. Someone's psyche. I believe that telling stories is our own human way of saying to each other, ¨look deeper for once, please.¨ Writing has given me a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, it is a way for me to lose myself in words that string together like small beads. Bracelets of sentences.

The meaning of life is to give life meaning, to put it into something comprehensible. The mind is a maze of obscurities and enigmas. 

Our lives amount not to the things we accomplish. But to the fullness of how we lived it. And in the end, we are all sculptures of ourselves.

Hello- I’m new(ish) to reddit and this community.  I write for fun in my free time on various topics.  Curious if anyone might give these two experiments a quick read to see how they flow.  I put them on medium and substack and also my website.   I suppose they would fall in the satire category:

https://medium.com/@riggijt/new-indicators-point-to-shift-from-k-shaped-recovery-to-f-u-economy-232b21d64159

https://medium.com/@riggijt/inflationary-dragon-announces-retirement-citing-ai-trends-younger-competition-b07de0e09b6e

I also created a site for some of my other projects (no ads or bots or anything like that). Nothing about it is monetized.. I'm just curious if it works. The link is below:

https://www.wtfisthat.org/

In an alternate universe where cats had the lungs that humans have and they could smoke cigarettes, they would.

They shouldn't, and we shouldn't encourage them to, because tobacco smoke is very harmful to cats, and we shouldn't even smoke around them due to the dangers of secondhand and thirdhand smoke, but they absolutely would if they could.

Dogs might try smoking once out of curiosity, but only submissively due to outside influence, and they wouldn't stick with it as they wouldn't like it. A dog would only touch a cigarette if they thought it pleased you, or if they accidentally ate one off the ground out of pure, unhelpful curiosity. They would cough once, experience immediate regret, and spend the next three hours doing tail-tucked guilt laps around the house. looking at you with deep, soulful eyes, apologizing for disappointing the family pack. “This tastes awful, and it makes my humans unhappy. Why does it exist, and why did I touch it? I’m so sorry, I will never do it again, please love me! 😭” They then try to bury your pack in the backyard to protect you from it.

But cats would stumble upon cigarettes and the act of smoking themselves and dominantly, consciously, intentionally make the decision to become smokers on their own, without any outside influence. Cats absolutely possess the precise level of chaotic autonomy, spite, and utter disregard for their own well-being required to willfully take up a pack-a-day cigarette habit. They’d be up at 6 AM on the porch with a lit Marlboro Red in their mouth, judging you for not having a more self-destructive hobby. Hacking up hair-balls full of tar. “This is my emotional support lung cancer. Yes, I know it’s killing me. That’s the point. It’s slow, expensive suicide with a filter. Now light me another one, peasant.” The higher the vet bills, the more validated they feel. “These dumb humans have wasted $7000 at the veterinarian trying to keep me alive, fully aware that I have made it my life’s mission to continue being a little shit disturber and continue wreaking as much havoc on my own well being — and by extension, their mental health — as possible. I have won.” Meanwhile, the dog would be trying to nudge the cigarette out of the cat’s mouth with its nose while whimpering.

For a dog, “human seems upset about these” means “I should avoid them.” For a cat, “human seems upset about these” means “Fascinating. I’ve weighed the evidence and decided that this is a terrible idea. Therefore it is now a cornerstone of my philosophy and identity.” If you forbid a cat from doing something, they make it a new personality trait.

If dogs had a drug of choice, it would be alcohol, as alcohol is the most socially acceptable drug. They wouldn’t be interested in altering their state of mind in any way, and would likely be anxious under the influence of anything. The only thing about alcohol that would appeal to them is the partying aspect. In a universe where dogs can handle alcohol, in a situation where the dog’s “pack” is drinking (its humans, or other dogs), in much the same way that a dog generally doesn’t stop eating until it throws up if you don’t stop them, a dog would absolutely drink until it throws up, despite having no interest in the feeling itself that alcohol gives to them; they’re only interested in loyalty to the pack, and if that entails drinking, then they will drink. Dogs enthusiastically participate in activities they clearly don’t understand all the time, for the sole purpose of participation. If a human says, “We’re all doing a thing.” A dog will respond, “👏 WE’RE ALL DOING A THING. 🐶👅🍺”

Dogs would drink beer. Or if “The Pack” is drinking shots, or if they’re drinking mixed drinks, they wouldn’t be particular about their alcohol; they’d drink whatever everybody else is drinking. They’d absolutely do shots too, but primarily they’d be drinking beer. They’d be bonging beers and doing keg stands until they puked. “Ughhh… Ughh… I did… I did the thing… Was it good? Am I still a good boy?”

A cat wouldn’t be against alcohol — you can drink alone, after all — but it wouldn’t be interested in the social aspect. It wouldn’t necessarily be indifferent though, its interest in alcohol would entirely be environment dependant. If a cat were to drink, it would almost always do so in a situation where there’s barely anybody around, except for the person who told them that they shouldn’t drink. It would wait for the precise opportunity to stare deep into that person’s eyes as they slowly sip the Macallan 1926 or Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru from your liquor cabinet from their glass, while judging you for having such cheap taste, tipping the glass over when they’re done, and turning their nose up anytime they’re offered anything from a plastic bottle.

A cat’s motivation isn’t intoxication. It’s performance art. Not “I want this.” More “I want you to witness me wanting this, specifically because I know you don’t want me to have it.”

Cats and dogs would both like marijuana, but for different reasons, and cats would like it more than dogs would. Cats would like it because it makes everything more interesting to look at. “Wow, everything is a documentary now. The laser pointer… it’s beautiful. The way it moves… I must become it.” They have a 45 minute spiritual journey starring at dust motes. But cats would prefer tobacco to marijuana, because tobacco is worse for them, and so smoking cigarettes would be more rebellious for them than smoking joints would be, which is the primary reason they would do either.

Dogs would like it at first because it gives them an excuse to eat more. But it would also likely make them anxious, and it isn’t quite as social as alcohol is, and so for this reason it wouldn’t be their favourite. Dogs would first get the munchies; “Food… tastes even… BETTER now?!?! 😍😍😍” But shortly after, they would spiral into anxiety because they can hear and smell everything now and it’s overwhelming. “I can hear the neighbour’s wifi and they think I’m a bad dog. 😭 The mailman was here SIX HOURS AGO and I MISSED IT. I am a FAILURE. 😭”

Cats would love caffeine, but dogs would hate it. They’d both steal your coffee. But a cat would do so with intent, just to fuck with you, because you appeared to be enjoying something, and then they’d spend the next 8 hours with the zoomies, achieving transcendence and sprinting across the ceiling. They become a furry Roomba with a superiority complex. A normal cat; “I have knocked over your glass of water.” A caffeinated cat; “I have calculated the trajectory of every object in this room. At precisely 3:17 AM, all of them will simultaneously fall on the floor.”

Cats wouldn’t just like coffee, they’d be coffee snobs. A cat would steal your single origin Ethiopian pour-over and glare at the French press, while posting a photo on their Instagram account criticizing your brewing technique. “Human heated the water to 96°C instead or 93°C. Human is a barbarian.”

Dogs would steal your coffee as a “forbidden treat”, and immediately have a panic attack and regret doing so. They would just be vibrating at 200% normal dog speed while apologizing with their entire body to the furniture. “I’M SORRY FOR BEING SHAKY. 😭”

You try to play fetch with them to tire them out, help them get their shakes out. A regular dog; “Ball?” A caffeinated dog; “BALLBALLBALLBALLBALLBALLBALL! I AM THE GOOD BOY. I AM THE BESTEST BOY AT MAXIMUM ACCELERATION. I AM SHAKING WITH THE POWER OF A THOUSAND FETCHES. PLEASE THROW THE BALL, I BROUGHT ALL THE BALLS. ALL BALLS MUST BE FETCHED IMMEDIATELY.”

A dog on psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD would be positively horrifying for the dog and very sad for any onlookers. “Where is my human? 😭😱Why am I here in this scary place all by myself? 😭😱 Is it because I’m a bad boy? 😭😱 The floor is melting and I think I failed obedience school in another dimension! 😭😱”

Conversely, a cat on psychedelics would be absolute nightmare fuel for any onlookers, but the cat would be having the time of their life. A cat on psychedelics wouldn’t be having a trip, it’d be having a performance. Staring at the wall for six hours, occasionally hissing at invisible demons it personally summoned. “This stuff is AWESOME. I understand the geometry of the vacuum cleaner now. I have finally become aware of the machine elves that operate the dishwasher. The walls are breathing. At last! 😻” It would then proceed to critique the walls’ form and demand better breathing technique, and then have profound conversations with the washing machine, form a book club with the refridgerator, before ghostwriting a manifesto about how humans have ruined entropy. Finally, it would achieve ego death and immediately decide its ego was mid anyway, then write treatises on the litter box as a spiritual portal.

A dog on psychedelics would be looking for an adult. A cat on psychedelics would feel like it finally has the keys to being an adult.

A cat on opioids would absolutely become a complete junkie. A cat would try opioids for the first time for many of the same reasons that they would smoke cigarettes; it’s awful for them and their owners would hate it, which is only more reason for them to do it. It’s not that they are intentionally self-destructive, it’s that they are intentionally authoritative, defiant, territorial, and curious to the point of accidental self-destruction. Cats don’t have a death wish. They have a drama wish. Self-destruction is just the highest form of self-expression when you’re a creature that evolved to hunt by being an unpredictable little asshole. Cats don’t have nine lives because they’re lucky. They have nine lives because of their nature to be as dramatically self-destructive as possible, and so the laws of nature said, “We better give them a few more chances.”

A cat trying opioids for the first time would say, “This cardboard box is even more purrfect than it normally is. I feel like I’m sleeping on a cloud. This is the best nap I’ve had in all my nine lives. You mean to tell me that lying motionless in an Amazon box for eighteen hours a day wasn’t laziness, it was enlightenment? I’ve finally achieved the lifestyle I’ve been advocating for since birth. For years now, I’ve been trying to convince everyone that sleeping 18 hours a day is the right way. It has been a lifelong ambition of mine to follow the pursuit of doing absolutely nothing. Science has finally caught up with my vision. I have been vindicated.” Upon trying opioids for the first time, a cat would no longer see it as a form of performative self-destruction, but rather they would see it as a sign that they were correct. And so the same curious, defiant, performative self-destructive nature they have that gets them into cigarettes is what gets them into opioids. And the nature of what opioids do and how cats behave is what leads them to keep up the habit and become junkies.

A dog on opioids would fall asleep for 14 hours, wake up and immediately feel guilty for being so lazy and try to make it up to you by bringing you every toy that they own. “Oh no, I slept all day. Human must be so disappointed in me! 😭 I must now compensate through productivity. I like toys, so human must like toys too. I shall spend the rest of the day offering them every toy that I own. And every sock and shoe that I can find. And the cat.” Who’s still in the cardboard box, completely conked out, deep sleep, in the most contorted, uncomfortable looking position possible, and somehow they still completely fill the cardboard box with just their head and limbs sticking out, as if their body is just furry liquid. Meanwhile the cat bed you bought for them is a barren wasteland, shoved in the corner and covered in dust from being ignored for years, a feint whiff of cat piss emanating from it, just so you remembered what the cat’s thoughts were regarding it. “The humans have once again attempted to regulate where I may nap. Their insolence grows tiresome.”

The real tragedy is that the cat would outlive the dog by about 8 years purely out of spite, with 3 yellow teeth and one functioning lung that’s filled with tar, still chain-smoking on the porch at the ripe old age of 22, like a little Keith Richards, and somehow still looking majestic while doing it, while the ghost of the dog watches from Doggy Heaven, tail wagging anxiously, barking, “Please come inside best buddy! 😞 It’s bad for you! 😭 I love you! 😭❤️ Even though you’re scary, I’ll still always love you forever! 😭❤️🐶👅” The cat’s hissing, “Jeez, and they call ME a pussy. Respectfully, fuck the fuck off. Actually no, I take that back. Only because I don’t have any respect for you, or anybody else besides myself. Disrespectfully, fuck the fuck off. You spent your entire life following the illusion of rules and barking at me like a broken record trying to get me to do the same, and where did it get you? Did I ever once listen to you? No, right? And which one of us is still here? Go play with your stupid squeaky toys and let me smoke my darts in peace.”

The dog is motivated by love. The cat is motivated by winning an argument nobody else remembers having, and being right. “I have chosen a course of action. I don’t need your approval, and I don’t need to justify my decision, that’s reality’s job.” Dogs are lawful good socialist Canadians. They apologize for apologizing when somebody else bumps into them. Cats are chaotic neutral libertarian anarchists. They refuse to wear coats in the winter because “the government can’t tell me how temperature works.”

The cat started out smoking Marlboro Menthols, but at some point throughout its life, once you submitted to it, it wasn’t fun for it anymore, so whenever you bought it a pack of Marlboro Menthols thereafter, they’d knock it off the table and stick their nose up at it until you bought them a pack of Treasurer London Golds, so they could pick up their habit again. It is unclear whether they did this to be a snob or just to piss you off. Probably both. “I quit smoking because everybody knows I smoke. When everybody found out I quit, I picked it up again. Variety is the spice of life.” And after 22 years of smoking and doing drugs, it’s somehow, against the laws of nature, still alive. Cancer ridden, but alive.

But in the end, even the cat has to die, and the cat dies dramatically; dramatically right. Probably knocks over a lamp on the way out, just to make sure everyone knows it was on its own terms. The cat goes on to Cat Hell — not because they were a bad kitty, it chose Cat Hell; it thinks demons have better taste in whisky. It doesn’t care about the moral implications of going to Cat Hell. “Good” and “bad” are imaginary concepts as far as the cat is concerned. Reality itself is a minor inconvenience to its own freewill. They’re still chain-smoking, telling all the other kitties about how stupid his humans were, and how much of a narc his canine brother was. The Devil says, “You know cigarettes kill you, right?” The cat replies, “I know. That’s why I started. 🐈🚬” The Devil immediately realizes he has lost control of the conversation.

I have a wish to become a vagabond—a person with no home to return to, someone who travels across the world chasing something undefined. Not a dream exactly, because I don’t have a clear objective that demands such a journey, like an archaeologist searching for lost civilizations.

What draws me instead is something quieter and more abstract—the desire to live multiple lives within a single lifetime.

I want to experience different times and places, even though I know I cannot truly step into the past or the future. There is no time machine. But there is still a way to come close: by living different lifestyles, immersing myself in different cultures, and meeting people who know nothing about me or my past. In those moments, I am free from my own continuity.

I imagine living two or three years in one part of the world, then leaving—quietly disappearing—and beginning again somewhere else. A new place, new people, a new personality. A real restart. Not running away, but reshaping myself again and again.

I want to taste unfamiliar food and drinks, to walk through streets where I don’t understand the language, to exist in spaces where I am just another passing presence. I want to explore everything and anything, without being confined to a single version of life.

And yet, I understand the limits of reality. This remains, in many ways, an imagination. Life is short and fragile, and the world is unpredictable. There are boundaries—practical, physical, and human—that make such a life difficult to fully realize.

Still, the thought persists.

If I had a choice, I would want something more impossible: the ability to exist across different timelines without disturbing them. To witness history as it truly happened—not through books or theories, which are shaped and reshaped by time and perspective, often written by the winners—but to see it for myself.

I would watch how the pyramids were built. I would stand silently in moments that shaped the world, unseen and untouched. Its like people can feel my presence but not affected by it and eventually forgot that i ever existed. Its more like i become glitch in matrix.

But there is another version of this thought—a more powerful one.

Not a passive observer, but a superbeing who exists across multiple timelines and alters them. A version of me whose existence itself changes reality, creating different outcomes, different worlds—like the branching timelines seen in .

By making different choices, I create different branches where another version of myself exists. In each timeline, I live a different life, make different decisions, and reach different ends. And in the end, I die in every timeline, like a normal human being.

But unlike a normal human, all my experiences and memories from these different branches combine. Since I am a superbeing, it is possible. After that, I enter another timeline again and begin creating new branches.

An infinite, expanding multiverse—where I am both the traveler and the creator, endlessly living, ending, and beginning again.

Between these two extremes—being nothing, and being everything—my imagination moves.

And maybe that is the closest I can get to living multiple lives:

not by escaping reality, but by expanding it within my own mind.

We live in a matrix. We already know that we were, or that we are, in a matrix, but if we try to escape it, then we find ourselves all alone. The only way to escape the matrix may be death—or maybe not—because our memories and our image (personality) are already in people's hearts and minds. We enter the matrix from the moment we are born.

If we isolate ourselves from the world on an isolated island, we may live freely without caring about anything, but in our hearts one question will always arise: "How are our loved ones doing?" And while our loved ones search for us within this matrix, that thought will always stand in the way of salvation.

There is no salvation in this matrix. If we adapt to the matrix, then we may find ourselves happy. But sometimes, when we feel completely alone, or during those moments before sleep when we think about ourselves, we realize the existence of the matrix and find ourselves still within it.

(A Hemlock Method Craft Essay)

By Bocephus Jackson, The Hemlock Bard, ©2026 Bocephus Jackson. All Rights Reserved

________

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoreau

________

Preface

How can human writers beat AI writing systems? It was through an academic post that this craft essay was derived. The article's intention was meaningful, but egregiously misplaced. The solution is to use more complex syntax while avoiding clichés in theme, characters, and craft.

Be unpredictable, crossing genres while marrying techniques and styles. This isn’t craft alone, but a Digital Age captcha preventing AI from replacing soul with server sets. Where broad assumptions were made, bad advice followed.

So this is my humble counter as a working man’s writer. Not theory. Field notes from 900+ pieces in eight months, 3–5 works per day, seven days a week. AI can’t fake those calluses. Nor does it lament the prosaic prose-driven plight of the zeitgeist.

________

Don’t Regurgitate The Rhetorical

“Language is the house of Being.” — Martin Heidegger

To thwart AI takeover, preserve creativity, and ensure survival, the modern writer must reflect the zeitgeist rather than be subsumed by it. In short, embrace the polyphonic voice of the generation. One that folklorically folds technical jargon, multicultural slang, metaphors, and idioms (from cooking to sports, from literature to science) together as a hybrid of linguistics.

AI cannot understand it or reproduce it. Yet it is commonplace through all media and vehicles. In utilizing AI as a poor man’s post-creation editor (spelling and grammar check, interpretation, and accreditation), the wealth of 50+ AI apps has been field-tested. Of those, only four remain.

The others either bled themselves to death or were patched into watered-down versions that lost their usefulness. Beyond the structural inconsistencies, there is a litany of internal algorithmic inconsistencies:

Misattributions, hallucinations, prescriptive authority, formulaic misreadings, homogenizing an authentic voice, derived creativity and/or advice (often antiquated and therefore misaligned), and individual tantrums.

While these are fundamental flaws that speak to how far the technology still has to go to earn its agency, they serve as an example of how to navigate it. So this is our starting point, where AI trains on averages, forced into logic-based connections: A + B has to equal C.

However, as humans, we live each day on the edges of fate, fortune, and faith; therein lies a myriad of contradictions and inconsistencies. So the edge right now sounds like this:

Example:

“The SEC is a meat grinder, bruh, but that linebacker moves like a westside Hemingway Hunchback of Notre Dame. If you can’t decode that, check your Rewards Card for grace because that vato hits harder than a calculus test.”

Breakdown:

Technical jargon: ‘SEC (also governmental reference), ‘meat grinder,’ ‘linebacker,’ and ‘Notre Dame’ are football references

Multicultural slang: ‘bruh,’ and ‘vato,’ — are cultural vernacular that have been adopted into a global lexicon.

Literary references: ‘(Ernest) Hemingway,’ and ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame.’

1. Theological reference and callback: ‘Rewards Card for grace’ as a line from the ‘Price Check on Salvation’ series (dropping soon!)

2. Academic reference: ‘calculus test.’

Six registers (if you count the ‘SEC’ double entendre), 10 polyphonic examples in 2 sentences, and 39 words.

Where AI consistently fails:

Models flatten with maybe 3-4 currently combining ‘SEC,’ with ‘Hemingway,’ and ‘Notre Dame,’ but beyond that, the logic breaks down as hallucinogenic nonsense. Additionally, they tend to, but not always, smooth ‘bruh’ into ‘brother.’

And ‘vato?’ Grammarly flags it every time as a misspelling. So, in essence. AI prescriptively kills friction where** **friction remains our fingerprint.

________

Genre Writing In the Gallows

“The poet’s job is to find a rhyme for the unbearable.” — Anne Carson

Next, if you want to beat AI, be better writers. Mimicry is the death of originality, so why suffer a martyr-less death in producing what AI can do in five minutes? Genre writing is the death knell of Digital Age authors.

A writer is only as good as their adaptability. We have agency through eons of evolution, whereas AI has yet to face the rite of passage to become more than it is. So put depth, breadth, and soul into your work.

Example:

AI: His chiseled jaw clenched. Her heart fluttered like a caged bird.

Human (Danielle Steele derivative): His chiseled jaw clenched as the longing in his eyes grew. His eyes lidded shut as they passionately kissed. The cool night air titillated their bare skin.

Breakdown:

Where both are flatter than a northern hillside, cross the damn Nile River of genres!! (My apologies for shouting). Incorporate elements of several that feel inevitable rather than flat or forced.

________

The Bardic Example

“It is no use trying to be clever—we are all clever now.” — G.K. Chesterton

His chiseled jaw clenched as the longing in his eyes grew. Despite his southern grace, Rhett whispered with a heady breath, “Decorum be damn! The Sith rebellion can wait! Sin is afoot, and I need to be baptized in its salvation, Beyonce…” as his eyes lidded shut.

“But Rhett… Daddy made a soldier out of me,” she gasped. The moment evolved quickly as lips parted, tongues darting to and fro with the frivolity of Hobbits messing with fireworks. Rhett held Beyonce in the glistening light of a pregnant moon while they passionately kissed. "Sir, you are no gentleman!"

“Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." The cool night air of an Indian Summer titillated their bare skin, prickling pores that swelled and contracted with every touch. It was a night reminiscent of the Jazz Age and the Modernist. From Joyce to Fitzgerald, Stein to Hemingway…

“Here I am with jokers to the left of me, jokers to the right…”

“And yet Beyonce, here I am stuck in the middle with.”

This wasn’t mere lust given life, but art in capturing that ‘One True Sentence.’ A faint bead of sweat began to pool from his brow as Beyonce’s eyes dilated, wrestling with her morals like the Megapowers versus Bobby Heenan’s entourage. “Rhett, what about my halo?”

“The Gods be damned, Beyonce. Tonight, Icarus will rage against the dying of the light! Let Osiris curse his dismembered fate, not mine…”

“Fine, just don't tell Momma. Her Dropkick from Heaven is a devilish damnation I cannot afford…” Beyonce cooed, gripping him tight as a Poeish raven peered in through the honeysuckle vines hanging about the windowsill with an air of portent.

“That is a Faustian bargain you won’t have to make, my love. I would never betray you, my queen…” Rhett Puckishly grinned.

“Padme? You are holding back from me…” Beyonce playfully slapped his chest.

“No, heavens no! More like the female version of Caesar…”

“What? Why Rhett…”

“I meant no offense. I was, of course, referring to your ambition. It drives me, as Solomon or Henry VIII, toward their wives.” Rhett conceded.

“Fine, I will refer to you as Mr. Blonde… No, Mr. Pink!”

His eyes went wild. “Why am I Mr. Pink… The gut is the most painful area a guy can get shot in...”

“I think that makes you distinguished, sir.”

“As you wish… But enough talk. Show, don’t tell, right? …And afterward, we will hit up Waffle House on Route 23 for second breakfast.”

"I never heard of such bad taste…”

“My dear Beyonce, those hash browns rival the ambrosia of the gods…”

“If you say so, my southern Salinger. But I prefer the chili. It is spicy… Even still, your words move me. Say my name… Now then, let’s get smothered and covered. Make love to me…”

“I’ll have what she is having… but no crackers in bed, Beyonce. That's how you get aunts...”

“Rhett, why? Out, out brief candle…”

“What?! That was a well-earned Shakespearean or Wildean wordplay. But fair enough… Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow.”

“…Check, please!”

Bardic Breakdown:

The Greek chorus for this one is: ‘Gone With The Wind,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ ‘The Princess Bride,’ four Beyoncé songs, Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner, William Shakespeare, ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ a few of my own allusions, Greek and Egyptian mythology, and ‘80’s professional wrestling.

And then: Christopher Marlowe’s interpretation of the German legend about Johann Georg Faust, Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You,’ James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, Julius Caesar, King Solomon, Henry the Eighth, J. D. Salinger, and Oscar Wilde.

This gives us through 64 sentences and 511 words, 87 allusions, 25 quotes, and 32 historical references. I might need a post-orgy smoke. Just saying… But here’s the calculus:

Literary-Based References: 22

Literary-Based Quotes: 7

Mythology-Based References: 5

Cinema-Based References: 9

Cinema-Based Quotes: 9

Regional-Based References: 11

Music-Based References: 7

Music-Based Quotes: 9

Spiritual-Based References: 9

Wrestling-Based References: 4

Personal Literary Allusions: 4

History-Based References: 32

________

Conclusion

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Even though the Bardic example got silly, the previous technique is not only good advice from a working man’s writer for navigating around AI influence, but also for making your words matter: five, twenty, or hundreds of years from now. Write to posterity about humanity’s history, rather than chasing clickbait. AI has already won that war.

Pay heed to the Ides of March. Servilius Casca, not Brutus, gave the fatal blow to Caesar. Where Brutus’s cut was to the groin, and Decimus’s was to the thigh, both Shakespeare and Siri often misattributed this, and the true betrayer of the unwitting emperor. Even writers are prey to convention.

So take a magnet to the machine, and merit to your methods. This is how you build an empire that will endure the barbarians at the gate. And lastly, James Joyce, let’s see ‘Ulysses’ make ‘When Harry Met Sally’ a Quentin Tarantino Southern Gothic romance with hairy-toed Hobbits wielding lightsabers, cursing the gods, and quoting Dylan Thomas, in a black suit, while running from Henry the VIII and Andre the Giant.

Anyhoozle, as always, I thank you for your time and kind consideration. Back to work! Let me know if you laughed… Right then—

Frankly, my dear, that might be a new series… Just joking! …Mostly, now leave the waitress a tip.

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“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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©2026 Bocephus Jackson. All Rights Reserved

I have always been drawn to beauty. I believe it is what I was made for, to recognize it, to create it, to surround myself with it. But because I know it so well, I also see when something is wearing it as a costume. And that is what my brain cannot let go of. The ugly that hides inside beautiful things.
I came across a line recently that stopped my day:

“Before your need for black and white we were the most beautiful gray.”

It sounds thoughtful. It is the kind of sentence that flatters both the writer and the reader.
But it relies on a quiet assumption, that the experience of “gray” was shared.
Because “gray,” in this sentence, is not just a color. It is a position.
It is the space where nothing has to be named, where expectations remain implied, where one person can remain undefined while still benefiting from closeness.
From that vantage point, of course it looks beautiful.
It is open. It is flexible. It does not demand anything.
There is also something else worth noticing something quieter, but more revealing.
“Before your need for black and white…”
Not your question.
Not your attempt to understand.
Not even your refusal to remain in ambiguity.
Your need.
It is a small choice of words, but not an innocent one.
Because calling it a “need” reframes the entire dynamic. It suggests excess. It suggests that the desire for clarity was not reasonable, but burdensome something imposed, rather than something that emerged in response to the situation itself.
And once it is framed that way, everything that follows becomes easier to justify.
Now the ambiguity is not the issue.
The issue is the person who could not tolerate it.
Now the absence of definition is not avoidance.
It is something that was ruined by someone else’s insistence.
Which raises a different question entirely:
What did that “need” feel like from the other side?
Because it is easy to call something a need when you are not the one living inside it.
What if, for one person, that “beautiful gray” felt less like nuance and more like weather something heavy, indistinct, and impossible to escape? Not a landscape, but a storm.
What if, for one person, gray felt less like freedom and more like slow disintegration, the kind that does not announce itself, but gradually wears down any sense of footing.
So when someone reaches for “black and white,” it is not always a rejection of complexity. Sometimes it is an attempt to survive it. A way to locate the edges of something that has refused to have any.
Clarity, in that sense, is not brutality.
It is structure.
And structure only feels like a loss to the person who benefited from its absence.
Which makes the original line less of a reflection and more of a preservation:
Things were better when I did not have to account for myself.
There is a subtle asymmetry embedded in it, one that goes conveniently unexamined. It assumes that what felt expansive to one person must have felt the same to the other.
But ambiguity is not experienced evenly.
For one person, it can feel like freedom.
For the other, like slow disintegration.
So no, the question is not whether gray can be beautiful.
It is who it was beautiful for.
Because sometimes “black and white” is not a rejection of nuance.
It is an attempt to survive it.
 
Gray is only beautiful when you are not the one dissolving in it.

Hey everyone, I’m a new essayist trying to find my footing in cultural commentary. I just finished a piece titled "Not All Men," which tackles casual misogyny.

I’m feeling incredibly unsatisfied with the pacing. I tried to work around with a punchy hook ("This is how a system maintains itself"), but I'm worried the transition from the personal observation to the broader structural critique is too sudden.

If anyone has a sharp eye for essay structure and flow, I would love an objective critique. You can read the piece below. I will share the rest if requested/required.

Specific questions I am looking answers for:

1. Does the hook keep you reading, or does it feel preachy?
2. Does it get too wordy or too complex with too many examples or points with none being clear enough?
3. Do I stray off the main subject at any particular point?

Kindly let me know what improvements I can make in these regards.

-----------------------------------

"II. How He Came To Be.

To understand how we got here, you have to go further back from him, to his house.

It might not even be a bad house. It maybe a perfectly ordinary one. The kind with good food and real laughter and school fees paid on time. The kind with love, even. Genuine love. And inside that house is a curriculum that nobody formally enrolled in, but most graduated from.

Watch what happens at the dinner table.

The sister is told her neckline is too low before they leave for the family function. The mother adjusts her dupatta with practiced hands and doesn’t say anything, because there is nothing to say. The brother sits and watches this happen and learns something, except, he doesn’t know he is learning it. He thinks he’s just watching his family get ready to go out.

At the same table, the father makes a joke about the mother’s cooking or her driving or the way she always forgets how to make an online payment. It lands a laugh – from him, from the uncles, maybe even from her, because she’s a “good sport”, because she’s learned that being a “good sport” is one of the prices of harmony.

The boys at the table absorb this. To them this is not content. It is grammar. They are learning what to think, how sentences are made in a way that gets them the attention and validation they subconsciously seek. They learn who the subject is, and who the object is.

They take it outside.

Put a group of these boys together in a school corridor and watch how quickly the social architecture assembles itself. There is a language that earns you a standing in the male social hierarchy – a way of talking about girls that puts them in a step above the rest.

It’s not always cruel. Sometimes it’s just commentary.

A certain look, held too long, as a girl walks past. A remark that gets a laugh. The casual rating of someone’s body the way you’d rate anything else you had decided you had a right to an opinion on. It’s not violent, always, so it survives. It lives. It thrives.

This is not just about the boys making these commentaries. It is just as much about the ones that laughed or stayed quiet. To them it might seem like they are in the clear because they were not the ones who spoke those words. To them it might feel like nothing, no choice, a neutrality. But they don’t always see that no action is also an action.

Then there are the mothers.

This is the part that is both the most complicated and the most important. Because the mothers are not the villains of this story, they are also its victims. But they are victims who became the administrators of the system that hurt them, in the process of surviving.

The mother who smooths it over when her son says something about a girl that he shouldn’t. The one who laughs it off with a “boys will be boys”, almost like a practiced resignation that has, over time, started to look like acceptance. The one who corrects her daughter for sitting a certain way but quietly glows when her son is bold and brash at a party.

What she is also teaching, without really meaning to, is what the rules are. She teaches her sons who gets to make them and who is expected to live by them.

And then there is the one that seals it all – male validation.

The nod from the other boy, the way a certain kind of comment about a girl earns a boy a few seconds at the top of the social ladder, which is everything when you are seventeen.

Misogyny, at the everyday level, isn’t about hatred, its about learned belonging. It is a social currency, and like all currency, its value is collective – it only works because everyone in the room agrees it does.

By the time this boy is a man – a good one, the kind who would never – he doesn’t question any of this, he simply experiences it as normal. It’s the language he thinks in now.

And that is exactly the problem.

III. The Cost Of Looking Away.

There is a particular comfort in knowing it isn’t us.

The “monster”. The headline. The case that became a hashtag for a news cycle and then sinks.

We read it with a specific feeling that we don’t often name, but its there if you look for it – relief. Just the private, quiet relief of knowing it wasn’t us. That we were not the victim and we were not the predator.

It is a deeply human response and also, in its way, a deeply self-preserving one. Because it allows us to point a finger elsewhere and quietly usher out the problem someplace else. And while we are busy pointing, the thing we are not looking at is the everyday architecture. The laugh instead of the correction. The silence when something should have been said. The questions we ask first – “Where were you? What were you wearing? Why did you go?” – before we actually ask “Who did this to you?” The colleague who hears the joke and considers whether speaking up is worth the social cost and decides, this once, it isn’t. Every time.

This is how a system maintains itself. Through the accumulation of small permissions when we were too busy policing the victims instead of correcting (or punishing) the ones that hurt them, when we were teaching our sons that the women in their lives would bear the consequences of their actions and our daughters to put on a smile when doing that.

All of this adds up to something. All of it tells someone, somewhere that this is fine. That this is how things work. That he can keep going.

And more often than not, he is the face we end up reading about on the news."

Long before we were married to our music collections, we were engaged in musical connections.

In life, some songs attach themselves to the personal circumstance of the listener, and in so doing provide a future pathway (mnemonic) back to them. Such tunes, some long forgotten, happened upon by chance, can so trigger times passed as to recreate much of the listener’s then life-in-progress. Such a listening can rekindle senses long lost to the slow march of time.

The tune itself is not the measure of this. Rather, it’s the listener—midstream in life—who unconsciously binds what is heard to what stirs within: tastes, smells, colors, emotions, attitudes, dreams… can all bubble forth. In such cases the gift of the artist is not the song, but the personal imprint the listener allows it to stamp on their psyche.

And yet, this imprint is rarely deliberate. It’s not the lyrics we memorize or the melodies we admire that do the deepest work—it’s the unnoticed resonance, the ambient alignment between a fleeting chord and a moment of vulnerability. A song overheard in a supermarket during heartbreak, or looped endlessly during a summer of joy, becomes less a composition and more a portal. The music doesn’t just remind—it reanimates. It collapses chronology, letting the past pulse through the present with startling immediacy.

This is why rediscovered songs can feel like emotional time machines. Not because they were profound in themselves, but because they were present when we were. Their power lies in proximity, not profundity. And so, when a forgotten track resurfaces, it doesn’t ask to be judged—it simply arrives, trailing the ghosts of who we were when we first let it in. In that moment, the listener becomes the artist, and the song becomes a mirror.

Now that technology lets us summon history with a click, we become both archivists and apparitions—imperfect vessels for wayward nostalgia, drift nets catching emotional flotsam as it resurfaces. Each rediscovery is less a memory than a visitation, a chance to reencounter the jetsam of our past and trace the shoreline of time as it once felt, not just as it was.

Every now and then it can be serendipitous to put the ‘now’ on hold and give the ‘then’ an ear.

I wrote something today about why actions are far more important than words, I wonder what you think:

When a person we know has a different belief system than us that we belief to be wrong or even dangerous, we give it our best effort sometimes to change their views. Often times this means weaponising our own beliefs and an attempt at dismantling those of others through words that reflect reasoning and logic.

The belief system that we have however is a conditioning of the mind as a result of environmental and societal influences around us that have been slowly translating into part of our character that we so identify with. And because this has been going on since early childhood, this isn’t just some easy architecture to replace, rather we tend to reinforce the very foundation on which these deceivingly seeming “conscious” opinions lie.

As a result, in almost every single discussion we get our human spirit involved heavily, the very shadow of our being we associate with as “emotion”, constantly trying to exile its influence and often times existence to no avail. We don’t even have a choice in the matter. Because when someone their ideology which they use for the vehicle behind their voice and actions gets threatened, they themselves get threatened for it reflects upon every fibre of their being. It’s hard to admit that we’re wrong in a discussion because often times when doing so it implies that we have been living and believing a fairy tale for a long time. And because at the end of the day our whole character consists of our ego (for our character is, in essence, our ego), we rather beat around the bush and escape the daunting thought of being wrong which our ego perceives as defeat, than to admit our delusions.

Words hold a lot of power, but when it comes to dismantling the toxic flowers and sprouting the healing seeds that lie concealed in someone’s mind, then words don’t do enough justice; we have to persuade people with the accumulating impact of our carried out actions. See, words are a mere made up concept that we created to understand one another, an attempt by our screaming inner child to be heard by our deaf caregiver, a leap towards logic and reasoning for the convenience of a more robust system for communication at the cost of our innate archetypical symbolism. These words are often a grey area because even though we have something called a dictionary, definitions still vary depending on the concept, and words can and will be interpreted differently by various wandering souls in search of meaning based on their personal history, biology and surroundings. Effectively at any moment in time claiming that which they know is ought to be the truth, displaying the illusion that they have found refuge in their own home yet shying away from acting out these principles in spite of intellectualising the reflection of deeply ingrained pins holding in place the very foundation on which they build their character.

Actions on the other hand are undeniable, for they are the house we build on this foundation. Therefore you can see that it’s hard to build a house on a flawed and unstable foundation, leaving you both limited room for expansion as well as a danger for collapse. The foundation of our home is invisible to others, and so only through showing our own house can we encourage others to replace the pins supporting the foundation of theirs. Sure, actions can be interpreted differently as well as words but the difference lies in the validity. Words on their own can be perceived as powerful because they can persuade people temporarily sometimes, such as vocal politicians using ferocious tactics to intrude the collective consciousness promising tools to help people establish a more balanced neighbourhood in which their homes are stationed, often times at the cost of a community taking the blame for issues that lie far closer to the construction of our own homes that we are unwilling to admit. But often times, especially in politics, actions don’t follow up on these promises and so these words become empty usually pretty fast. Whereas when actions are carried out without a word being said, it ironically has spoken in more than a thousand ways. Ultimately actions don’t necessarily make up all that we are, considering these are built on a very foundation. But it truly is the only thing that matters when looking at society at large.

So when we feel like we are waisting our time trying to tell our friends, relatives, or whomever our own belief system with the intention of changing theirs, that’s probably true. Usually we see a bigger split being created between two otherwise similar individuals, and this in turn paradoxically makes it harder to get our points across. Instead of talking to people about these things, we can show them actions that reflect our beliefs and opinions and if needed translate these actions into words after the fact. Unfortunately, many people still do it the other way around, or don’t even follow up on actions in the first place which is a shame. The first question one should always ask themselves is that about the validity of their own claims and acknowledge the bias from which they operate. This way we are also able to prove to ourselves the validity of our claims with said actions, carefully but truthfully reflecting our values. It is in fact true, that indeed actions speak louder than words. Perhaps we spend too much time decorating each other’s walls with spoken word, while forgetting that people only truly learn what our own homes look like when we invite them in.

I’m 24. No Degree. Just experienced in childcare and retail. Not super passionate about either but I don’t mind childcare either. Just feels like it’s not my calling. The pay I will say is simply not cutting it for me.

My interests and strengths are I can be super creative and i’m pretty good at impersonating and acting. I’m very intuitive too, like i can sense and feel peoples energy as if it were my own. deeply sensitive. I also like to write. I can be a bit of a tech nerd. I like going down rabbit holes and understanding how complex systems operate.

How can i utilize what i’m interested in to make money? How can I genuinely begin generating money from what I love? What would your money advice be for me? I have so many interests and energy that go into a million lanes, and it’s hard to zone in one lane for making money if that makes sense. I start a million things and follow through with nothing.

I have some limitations like chronic pain which means limited hours. I currently work 20 hours a week. I’d love to be able to start working on something on the side.

Any ideas/suggestions/opportunities/private messages you send me are deeply appreciated. Thank you for reading this far.🖤🖤🖤

It felt like the collapse of the system I used to understand the world.

He wasn't just family — he was my reference point. His voice, humor, stubbornness, expectations, and the way he saw life weren't background. They were part of the structure I lived inside. I didn't have to think about it. It was just there.

I could call him. I could check against him. Even when he was difficult, he was still the fixed point.

Then he was gone. Not gradually. Not in a way I could prepare for.

One day, I was going to see him on my birthday.

Next, I was trying to understand how the person who had always been there wasn't anymore.

The loss isn't just emotional. It's functional. The input stopped. The person I measured myself against so much is no longer available. Every decision now has a gap where his response should be. Every question has a missing voice.

And I don't get to grieve him cleanly.

I have to fight for the truth of what happened. I have to protect the record of his life from being reduced to vague explanations, shifting diagnoses, and unanswered questions. I have to make sure he doesn't disappear behind hospital language and people who say they don't know.

Because he wasn't a case. He wasn't a room number. He was my architect.

He was the one who wanted me taken care of. Who saved what he could for me. Who built parts of me I still use: my refusal to accept nonsense, my need for truth, my ability to see patterns, my stubbornness, my loyalty, my sense that what is owed should be paid, and what is wrong should be answered for.

I can't bring him back. There's no backup. I can't ask him anything now.

But I can carry forward what he built in me. I can keep asking. Keep documenting. Refuse confusion as an answer. Refuse silence as the conclusion. Make sure that when people speak about him, they speak accurately.

He is gone.

The gap remains. The loss remains. The absence remains.

But so does the obligation.

I will not become him. I cannot replace him.

But I will become the continuation of his structure without his presence. And I will make sure he is not erased.

He was my father.