Norm Paper

Once upon a time there was a young boy who violated norms. Perhaps a bad introduction, but I have always wanted to start an essay this way and see what would happen. You see, it is a norm for me not to start an essay this way, so I decided to violate it. Who is this boy you may ask. Well, isn’t it obvious? It’s me. I have been violating norms since the day I was in a McDonald’s play-place, six years old and not a care in the world. Three little words are what set me off: “You are weird,” and I have been ever since. Why am I here being weird? Well, a long time ago my parents met each other, and . . . too far back, perhaps? Sorry, it isn’t something I can quite explain. You such as mention violating a norm and people go berserk. They shut you up and throw a tarp over your head; they tie you in a knot and hang you upside-down. Why do they do this? There is a fear of a word that you hear children repeating over and over again: “awkward.” Why is this word so scary? Maybe we’ll find out. A while ago I had the opportunity to go to an independent film festival. I decided that this time I would go all out and do my very best to violate as many folkway norms as I could. It was a film festival, so I wore lens-less 3D glasses throughout to see what people would do. I also planned on using one of my friends to violate a norm. Whenever I would get lost, I would scream out their name. I also chose, spontaneously, to lay on the floor in the middle of a huge room packed with people. The reason I did it at the time was mostly to just get attention. It wasn’t until later in the day that I decided that instead of getting attention, I would experiment on people’s reactions. I wanted to pick their brains and record expressions, some of which I was totally unprepared for. For the first, I knew people would ask questions. They would probably tell me none of the movies were in 3D. They might even ask me if I knew the lenses were missing. Facial expressions were to be expected, too. For the third violation, I expected people to turn their attention to me. I hoped to God that no police would be in the room. They would probably ruin my whole experience. My friend didn’t expect me to scream out their name, so I assumed they would be horribly embarrassed and red-faced. For the final violation, since it was so spot-on, I didn’t really know what reaction I would get. I expected my older brother to get mad at me, kick me in the side and tell me to get up, but that is unlike him. He usually just goes with my behavior—a key personality trait I have learned to love. I also felt people would do their best to walk as far around me as they could to avoid my gaze. Another aspect would be someone coming up and asking me if I was hurt or sick.

I’m going to spend the next three paragraphs on my various methods and their results beginning with the 3D glasses violation. It all started with a good quote from a very familiar name: Dr. Seuss. “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” I wanted to see who mattered, you see. Those who cared about my glasses didn’t matter much to me. And those who couldn’t care less that I was wearing them mattered a lot. At first, I thought no one would notice. I expected that most people thought they were real glasses, especially from a distance. They didn’t really know they were, in fact, 3D until they caught a glimpse of the side where in nice white letters it read “Real ‘D’ 3D Glasses.” Bold people who weren’t shy (Mostly teenagers) came up to me and asked me if they improve my vision. I would respond saying, “It makes everything come to life. I feel as if I could reach out and touch your face right now.” They would formally back away a couple of steps and find a reason to leave. A lot of adults gave me that sneer. “Oh, what a foolish, stupid, young man,” I am sure they were thinking. I could see it in their eyes. I won’t give out names, but their was one very famous speaker their who I had the pleasure to meet, and as a side norm violation, I decided to violate one of his. You see, I expected that since this person was so very popular amongst this concentration of people, he would expect me to know exactly who he was. Sure, I knew him, just like everyone else. I came up to the man, and with the sternest look, I said, “And you are?” His face turned red, and he looked at me with insult. I believe a lot of his expression, too, was partly my glasses’ fault, but still his pride was injured. “I am Mr. ------,“ he said with a crackled voice. This, by far, was my favorite reaction. People also asked me where I got my glasses so they could get one of their own for the movie. After leading them on a wild goose chase, I turned them around and said they didn’t really need the glasses and I was fooling with them. Hey, I wasn’t there to make friends. I was there to see movies and mess with people. Obviously they were mad, but understanding of a good joke.

This next one was hardest to do. I have embarrassed friends before. I’m the one who would go to the mall with them and ask (in their presence) complete strangers if they could tell me how to get to Sesame Street. I’m the one who sings loudly at weeklong campouts surrounded by strange people we didn’t know. The friends I went with would usually kick me in the shin, telling me to shut up. Once, they even tackled me down for singing the Barney theme song. Let’s just say, I have had a lot of experience and was good friends with the person I was about to turn into a celebrity (not saying they weren’t already). I did it in on more than one occasion. I’d look around, not seeing my friend, and after a big breath, I screamed their name as loud as I could. Naturally, the victim turned red and stomped their foot on the ground. Everything went quiet, like a gun had been fired. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought. All attention was on me. The flaming I got afterward. The endless invisible spears people throw out of their eyes penetrated me by the thousands. Did I regret it? Hell no. I would do it a hundred times over. In fact, I plan on violating this norm again someday, especially if it weren’t for the children. A lot of them laughed at me, and repeated me, too. They would scream the same name, only not as loud. Parents turned on them quickly. Those poor kids, I am such a bad example . . .

The third violation was me lying on the ground. Now, this one was the one that actually surprised me. I expected people would come up and ask me if I were ok, so I naturally pulled out the schedule of the festival and acted like I was leisurely reading it. I was there for quite a while. I waved at a nearby concession-stand employee. He gave me a look of concern. I was then questioning whether or not something nasty had been spilt here before, but before I could get up, two men came to my left and three others to my right, one of them being my older brother. They all wanted to play along. All of them, one by one, got on the ground, laid on their backs, pulled out their schedules, and started reading them. Not one moment passed, and we were all introduced to each other. Still on the ground, we exchanged names and shook hands like normal people would, only, normal people aren’t rendered to the ground. Now, I did not ask them to do this. I have reason to believe my older brother had a lot to do with it, but we weren’t working together. I guess it is just how our minds work with one another. I was right about the whole circle idea. Let me explain, I expected people to walk around me as far as they could, and they did. They would literally go to the edge of the wall in a circle and back to the centermost part of the room just to get to the other side of the hall. Other people would be walking distracted by something, and then at the last moment they’d spot me and stop. They gave up all together and didn’t cross the room. Not until I got up did they begin their approach. I have no idea why they were so scared of me. I hope no woman wearing a dress thought I was a pervert. That is the last thing I wanted them to think.

In conclusion, I must say that I was in the middle of being uncomfortable and comfortable with doing it. I have had so much experience violating such norms, that it was easy for me to do. Not until I started Sociology class that I know that that was what I was doing. It was definitely fun to do. When I look back at these things, I almost view them as my lot in life. It’s what I do to entertain myself. This experience made me feel good, somewhat embarrassed, proud, and it made me aware, too. I am aware of these hidden rules people have in their minds. These rules are my favorite to break, if you ask me. I’d say that everyone is developed with this code in his or her mind. They cannot necessarily explain what they are or where they come from. All they know is that it is there just the same. What they do not know is that the people that surround them and the behavior they have observed from these people since they were small children has taught them these invisible laws. Even the people who violate these norms know and feel these rules, and that is why we feel nearly sick breaking them. I take the Dr. Seuss quote lightly, I must add. I do not necessarily say people who cared about my glasses didn’t matter. The reason why these people acted the way they did was because I was breaking their invisible rules. A lot of attention goes to rule breakers. Criminals go to jail, and even some are sentenced to death. People just freak when their rules are broken, and that is why I got the questions, the eye-spears, the insulted expressions. I am not entirely sure why those men joined me on the floor. Perhaps they saw how much fun I was having and wanted to participate as well. Perhaps they were trying to impress a girl, so they wanted to express that they could be as weird as me. The list goes on forever. Perhaps my brother had a lot to do with it. And screaming gets on people’s nerves. That explains all the eye spearing. The children confused me, though. I didn’t expect them to follow my example. They were, after all, very young and still developing. Perhaps what they saw me do they assumed was a social norm, so they wanted to partake as well. In a way with the screaming violation, I would say that I am looking at it in both a macro and microsociology view, macro being everyone eye-spearing me, and micro being my one friend, red as a tomato and steaming out the ears. I’d take it also that this is majorly an interactionist’s point of view. In all these I viewed how the invisible rules were created by people’s interactions with one another. My parent’s have always taught me about public behavior and how I best be on it if I am to escape punishment. I’d say, too, that parent’s have a lot of power to influence these invisible rules. Behaving in general is what they want children to do, and this public behavior turns into these norms everyone values so much. The endless practice of behaving well in public encodes itself so deep in us that they are hard to get rid of, and that is also where the different stage selves come from. In public, we want to behave, but in a more private environment, we could care less. That is why we are totally different people when we are home. All these observations I am making is what sociology is all about. It is my sociological perspective. I believe it is vital for everyone to have a sociological perspective, even if they are not sociologists. In the end, I do wish to violate more norms, and I plan to. It all depends on my timing and ideas.

Dream - 1-22-11

I regret to announce that my experiment failed. I do not think I was in control of any dreaming. I was just sleeping and interrupted. But, in any case, here is the dream I had last night:

I find myself in a courtyard made of tannish stone. Four walls on each side, slanting down into a pit of water like an upside-down, hollowed out pyramid. Four bridges from the four walls sprouted out to a center platform as big as life. It had four circular platforms budding out from a ring of stone. Plants and vines and waterfalls aligned everything. A ring of stone for every platform acted as somewhat of a roof. Large pillars held them up. I was with a crowd of people whom I did not know. They followed me as I examined large circular points of light like those found under a magnified glass. They burned large black spots upon the stone, yet its hellish heat did not hinder my flesh. Above me was a large ring of stone in-between the platform I stood upon and the vine-covered roof. A mechanical arm like those of a propping manikin used ages ago seized it. Before my friends was a lever too heavy to pull alone. As I stood upon the dot of light, they pulled this lever and the large ring of stone slammed around me like a fly swatter—yet I was not hurt, for I went through the whole which defined its center.

We went to the next platform and did the same thing, and the next, until we came upon the final platform. It was much unlike the rest. The others did not have a giant tiger statue, snarling, and preparing to pounce! One of the male followers came up to the statue as if he recognized it. A sudden voice like a god vibrated across the hollows!

“Return the sight you have stolen from me!” it cried, horrifically.

The man’s left eye gave way, and popped out of his head. A tangent of blood came out of his eye as he screamed for mercy. We had thought that death was to be here soon and claim his pray. Albeit, his bleeding stopped—his eye remained missing, sadly. They patched it with a piece of cloth; and now that each platform had been completed, a final stairway that led into the waters below came up to us. The water sunk into the recesses—and as did the water go did the sunlight, for everything went black.

We lit torches, and followed down the stair into the dark tunnel bellow. A door stood in our way, but it was unlocked and light. As we opened it, we came out into a large neighborhood. The houses we close together, but the one that drew our attention was none other than the giant black one beyond. It was the center of our sight, and the first thing we mostly saw. As we got closer, it got bigger—as we got closer, the other houses got smaller, until they disappeared completely. We entered there in; we all knew what was inside, for it was this that our goal was. We were meet by various people in fashionable dress of the Victorian style. What beautiful hats and dresses and voices, galore—except for the color . . . Everything was either gray, or black, and everyone wore masks. Everything was unfamiliar, but we had been there before and met the people.

HD is now Available =D

Wal-Mart Raid # 3 1-15-11

Wal-Mart Raid # 2 12-27-10

I Want A

I want a hat with fire on the side
A tangerine flutist and a breath-mint of pride.
I want a yodel that reached for the stars,
A masterful snail that raced, much like cars.

I want a mirror that reflects itself,
A magical, mystery, amazing bookshelf.
I want a horn as quite as a mouse,
A house as a car and a car as a house.

I want a crystal that emanates pie,
A short little man that can brush with the sky.
I want a camera that takes memories,
I want a glass that’s full as the seas.

I want a high-five I could not give away,
A golden trophy too big to display.
I want a broken down escalator with cars driving down it,
A guitar that is good enough to be called a bonnet.

I want a book I can read with my nose,
I want a daisy that smells like a rose.

That Morning

I felt my stomach twist into knots as the van rushed its way toward its destination. My eyes were red as tomatoes from staying up late the night prior; my head was a dizzy hurricane; and above all, I was unprepared for what was about to happen that morning. As we pulled into the parking lot, my fingers began to sweat. My legs went numb like they did not want to leave the car. I wish it was the day before so I could have a second chance, but as much as I wished there was nothing I could possibly do.

Some would say mathematics is the hardest subject, and some would say science, maybe even spelling—all of these, perhaps, but Spanish was mine. Over that school-year, I had developed some strange dyslexia for Spanish. I couldn’t conjugate verbs to save my grandmother, nor could I memorize any vocabulary. I was a hopeless mess. The words and the spelling, the accents and the grammar—all of it was jumbled disarray in my head. I do blame a lot of my unpreparedness to my lack of Spanish savvy; however, at the end of that year, I had developed into a diehard procrastinator. I had also lost a lot of interest in the Spanish language, and on many occasions said it was the stupidest language on earth.

It was cold in that classroom, or perhaps my fear was influencing me otherwise. It smelled like fresh coffee (my teacher obviously could never get enough). The resonance of pencils scratching on pallid paper surrounded me. No one else was shivering, and that is something I probably never understood. How was every other student managing this class better than I? And I could not help but wonder if anyone else was unprepared; yet, as much as it puzzled me, it was irrelevant.

The first thing I needed was a pencil. To my avail, I had none. I borrowed someone else’s, but snapped its tip at the first touch to paper. Hurriedly, I sharpened it in the corner of the room and returned accordingly to my desk. Reading through the text, I noticed questions one through five were effortless to answer—it was everything subsequent that made me hopeless. Over and over, I guessed through the whole test, but an obscure entity locked far into the deepest recesses of my mind was telling me I was doing well. Of course, I did not believe this. My face and ears were hot with anger and embarrassment; after all, none of these questions made sense to me as much did my haphazard confidence.

Before I knew it, the class had finished the exam. I, on the other hand, sat miserably on the third-to-last question. As much as the test was hard, none of it was compared to the essay. It required me to write, in Spanish, about my favorite Spanish word. I chose the word loco which means crazy pertaining to how crazy the test was. Something about the essay, regardless of its intimidation, struck me with refined buoyancy. Perhaps I did not do poorly after all.

The next two days were gruesome. I experienced one of the most nerve-wracking weekends of my life. I could not for the life of me stop thinking what my parents were going to think of my final grade. Though, as much as I was sure I failed, I was sincerely surprised to find out that I had made an 87 percent grade. I could not believe the report card I was reading. I felt that surely I made at the least a 20, but an 87? True, it made me feel good about myself, but I was still reminded of how legitimately unprepared I was that morning. Never do I want to experience anything similar to it, and that is what good came out of this experience—it showed me how painful it can be to be unprepared.

Riding in the Car!

"Overpopulation" Epidemic and the Attack Against the Family

Umm, you see it everyday you go to Wall-Mart. You see it every time you turn on the TV, I mean. Some countries are worried about the whole "overpopulation" epidemic. In the Philippines it went from 6 children max in the 1960's to half that number 40 years later. This only increases the poverty level because there are no new people to work. I for one believe the whole overpopulated ordeal is a huge hoax that is killing the family. Chinese people are only aloud 2 children. This causes a problem: there isn't any growth whatsoever in the population number. I find it a bummer when two children were born under two parents who die later. 2 + 2 = 4 - 2 = 2. . . There is no up or down. Some people in China only have one child: 2 + 1 = 3 - 2 = 1. Then we lose a number in our population! AND THEN THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO DON'T EVEN HAVE CHILDREN! 2 + 0 = 2 - 2 = 0 Ok, now remember these figures, for, believe it or not, it posses yet another threat. The television community has communicated in secret that it is appropriate only to have three children max. Have ya ever gone in a McDonald's and got frowned at cuz your family had 6 kids!?!?! You see, people have been brainwashed to denounce and shun big families. People have been taught that having more than three kids is absolutely insane! Now here is the climax of this little story: while we Americans are having three children per couple, Islamic people are having twelve. . . and on top of that, these Islamic men have more than one wife!!!!! One guy with 6 wives each one having twelve kids what do ya get? An army for Alah! *passes out* AND ON TOP OF THAT, WE HAVE PEOPLE SPAMMING AND ABUSING THEIR ABORTION RIGHTS!!! *Dies*

A Hint of Reality

Why is it that we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

Why is it we leave our expensive cars outside in the danger, where as we keep our worthless junk in the protection of our garages?

Why is it we call mailing boxes by ship “cargo” and mailing boxes by car “shipment”?

. . .

. . .

Why is it we even have CPS when we abort babies every day?

Why is it we can legally kill our babies in a hospital but outside a hospital it is a whole different way?

Why is it that men are marrying men and women are marrying women?

What a messy, topsy-turvy world we live in:

A world where we’d rather murder, steel, and sin.

. . .

. . .

You see, Satan wants us to be disoriented and confused.

He likes it when we’re massacred and abused.

That way, we don’t know that what we do is bad;

That way we live in darkness and are always sad.

Postmodernism

"Feeding Jim!"

WACKA WACKA DOO DOO YEAH!

Vlog Quest

Well, here I am, posting a blog. I haven’t posted in a long while, so SHAME ON ME! I wanna make somethin’. Maybe like a short Vlog er something, but I cannot think of anything to do. . .

How about you ask me ten questions (reasonable ones, ya know), and I will answer them in the most interesting way. Don’t worry, it won’t be like Cole’s latest and last Vlog; it will be much more than that. Sitting in front of a camera in a room by yourself gets old and boring too quickly. I am gunna drag you to places with me and junk. SO, ask me ten questions and I shall answer them, cool?

(This seems to be quite scary considering that only two to three people even read my blog. . .)

SUHWEET!

~The Silhouette

PS: I wanna make Vlogs a more common thing amongst my blog and stuff. . .

Dear [if any] Great Grandkids,

Dear [if any] Great Grandkids,

You are probably reading this because I am dead. . .*Eerie Music, Angels Singing* . ., and some psychopath has told you that I have a Facebook/Blog. If you know him/her by name, (and if him/her still lives) send him/her to the North Pole (if it still exists—if not, just launch him/her into space. I am sure it will be easy considering that every single movie made foretelling the future WAS WRONG!—y’all are probably laughing your heads off at Back to the Future 2).

I hope you still speak English in your era, or else this note is completely useless. (But maybe y’all still have translators that decipher Ye Olde Inglish, hopefully.)

And here I am, typing away, not knowing if the rapture might have happened already, or I’ll even live to have children, or they’ll live to have children, or they’ll live to have children, for that matter. . .

I hope, also, that aliens don’t come down and evaporate the earth to the degree of ashes. . . That would bight. . . If aliens DO come, SEND THEIR *&^$ing Green “As- -s” to H-E-Double-Hockeysticks!!!!

If they do destroy Earth, (Fat Chance) just build a spaceship a day or two in advance and launch your butts to Mars. . . What, that has already been done? DANG IT!

Always turn the other cheek to those who slap thy face (Unless they’re aliens). Say no to drugs and smoking. . .

Don’t be too hard on your parents and grandparents. They gave me a hard time. (Why not return the favor?) Ya know what? Do your great grandfather a favor and give ‘em a hard time; it’s fun messing with their brains.

I’ll be sure to punch in some Pro-life morals into your parents so you’ll even exist. I also hope all of you are Christians (if not, I’ll come out of the grave and make you Christians, by golly!)

Curse Webster for making all them Homophones! I could never tell ya how hard spelling was! You’ll probably never experience it giving the fact that nowadays they infuse all knowledge into your brains at childbirth. Consider yourselves lucky!

Do NOT invest in Pink Leotards. . . That’s my rule of thumb.

If you’re not Conservative-Republicans, may God have mercy on your souls and your parent’s souls, etc.

Give up them floating chairs that make walking obsolete!  Watch WALL-E by Pixar/Disney Animations, (If it still exists) It will make you understand.

Do y’all still wear jeans? Why am I asking you that? I am dead! And ya know what? It is SO weird talking this way.

Yours honorably,

Ryan Scott, Oakley

Ps: I was 16-years-old when I wrote this. . .

Random Funny! AUDIO

RETARDEDDDD!!!

Inimitable Snow

I saw the flying snowflakes falling from above;
Like a heavenly spirit, it filled my heart with love.
Like falling stars, they collapsed towards the earth;
The sight reminded me of happiness and mirth.

Up north long ago in wondrous winters of old,
I remember many snowfalls within the endless cold.
What masterful patterns of glittery enchanting blue;
A wondrous masterpiece of colorful radiance anew.

And now, in my new home, I see some of this enchantment;
To think here it resided in the south; what endless excitement!
How I ponder at how Texans alike find so much love in snow;
Maybe because they see it seldom or maybe it’s a mysterious show.

Yet anyway, here it came on the tenth of December,
And of that day I will always treasure and remember.
Four years ago we saw this once before;
If only, if only we saw yet a little more.

~The Silhouette

Sporadique - Ch.1 of Many

Sporadique

In this world of rarity, strange, random things happen at strange, random places at strange, random times. Within this world, everything moves to a much slower rate than in our world—like a film that has been slowed to a numbered degree. Also, no sound exists within Sporadique; only strange music the kind of a hypnotic, haunting design. Sometimes the music is nice, yet soon we change our mind. But for too long the music changes our fancy and we continue to look upon the music with delight, yet the pattern never ends and we soon become disgusted by the very same disturbing, yet enchanting music which dances and trips through the confusingly scented air.

A tall man wearing a black top-hat and a tuxedo walked proudly within the eerie swamplands, occupied by many twisting, leafless trees. He held in his right hand a pail of water, and in his left he held the arm of his fair maiden who wore a white gown overwhelmed with truffles and dominated by puffed sleeves. They did not mind that they soiled their formal attire; they simply walked upon the muddy ground, holding large tickets within their gloved hands. They walked slowly with their noses drawn to the sky. The man had a large mustache and the maiden, long flowing blonde hair. A large white hat dominated the maidens golden head. The life surrounding them seemed to be slowed down by an eerie light. The sky was overcast by weak, cloudy turbulences. They sat slowly upon a log like they sat before a large theatre.

Before them emerged two strange characters—one, completely covered by white and the other, completely covered by black. Their attire was like one huge suit with no opening. It covered them from head to toe, and because it was tight, it outlined the very architecture of these two characters; almost like they were a strange fashion of manikin. The white one was female, and the black one male. One could easily tell by the fact that the white one wore a dress and her features very much resembled a woman. They took hands and started to waltz. They danced like professionals in the art of ballet. The two separated and started dancing in solo, leaping and spinning. Vultures landed on the trees above, staring at the dancing before them. After many a spin and many a leap, the two dancers joined once again, and the strangest thing happened; the hands of the black dancer became white while the hands of the white dancer became black. Slowly yet surely, the two completely changed to their opposite colors. As they finished the dance, the man with the black top-hat took the pail of water and blasted the two with the liquids it held. The waters changed into snowflakes as it flew toward the two dancers. The snow brushed against the two dancers, and as it did this, they too became snow and drifted away upon a gust of wind. It started snowing ever since. The man and the maiden then took their shoes and socks off, and started mashing their feet in the cold mud.

Out of a tree emerged a small character—a very short and fat man with a large bald spot. The two looked up from their feet and noted the new mustached character. The dwarf turned his head as if confused, and approached them with sincere authority. He first took the man’s ticket and, waving his hand over it, wrote with a magical force at the left end, the letters “F, and R,” while at the other end, the letters, “D, and O.” The short, fat man took the maiden’s ticket in the same fashion and wrote in at the right end, the letters “T, E, and N.”

The man with the top hat, standing, took a black rose from inside his coat, bowed before the maiden, and handed over his hand. The maiden, grasping the man’s hand, stood and took the rose. Behind the two appeared a trail which they soon turned and followed. The trail was outlined with many smooth stones of gray. The short fat man waved as they walked along the trail. Very soon after, a parade of people from the right started walking over the trail to the left. They all wore red suits with ruffled, long-sleeved white shirts. Some juggled red balls, others did flips and handsprings, some were being hauled by small chariots drawn by geese, and some played drums that didn’t play any sound. The man and the maiden started clapping and laughing, yet no sound was heard within the area; no sound save the eerie music. They saw the crowd of people walking toward a large fissure, belching out magma, yet they didn’t try to stop them from their fate. They watched, almost like they didn’t see the fissure. As the whole parade of people fell into the flaming depths, the man and the maiden proceeded onward.

The trail aligned a large cliff. The two walked along the trail, winding and turning in most unnecessary ways. Within a gorge withstood a huge dam. The two sat on a bench, overlooking the massive work which dominated the gorge. A man, who wore a necklace with a cross, sat on the dam asleep. He himself built this massive dam, and it was he who must care for it. As he slept, not caring for the world he lived in, black liquid leaked through the dam. He looked at the leak and he owned the tools needed to fix it, yet he only went back to sleep, condoning the black liquids flowing through the dam. Slowly, yet surely, the leak grew larger, and larger. The man became nervous and started to work on the broken dam, but to no avail; the dam broke and he became overcome by the black waters.

The two walked onward on the trail aligned with stones of gray, and they soon escaped from the gorge. A new set was to the left of the trail; it was a large wooden floor occupied by furniture and waltzing people. Everyone wore clothes of early Victorian design, yet each and every cloth was red. On a couch sat three people: two wearing red, and one in-between wearing blue. He was writing on a piece of paper. Whenever he finished what he was writing, the letters disappeared. After a good few minutes a message replying to his appeared before his paper. He would giggle at the response, and then he would reply with his own. The two on the couch wearing red were sad that he took more interest in a person whom wasn’t there than the people that were right before him. He was at a party with many, many friends, yet he only wanted to talk to one who wasn’t there through his magic message paper.

Deranged-looking marionettes hung from the trees. They wagged and swung in correspondence to the winds that pushed them. The vultures mistook them for real people and started pecking out the marionettes’ eyes. After passing the party of the red dancers, the two came across another scene. A blue couch stood to the right of the trail. It had a table next to it, holding a large record player. A small baby boy not but 13 months old slept on the couch. An elderly man, by the looks of a school professor, stood there nervously, hoping that the music would keep the child asleep. The old school professor hoped that the child wouldn’t figure out what he was trying to do and destroy the record player. Even though the professor tried not to sweat, the baby still slept and didn’t wake. The man and the maiden thought the boy was quite familiar. The professor came up to the two and gestured toward them to be quite, or else their son would wake. The parents refused to stop the professor; they believed what he was doing was the right thing. In a fast pace, they saw their child grow up. And as he became twenty-years-old, he woke and was accustomed to the strange world he lived in; he thought it was a natural world; that there was nothing wrong with it; so why then should he try to change it if there was no reason to? He was taught to live in a world like this. Why change something that isn’t wrong if, after all, the world you live in doesn’t have any wrong in it?

The two embraced their son and watched as he drifted away. As they walked onward, they came to a lake with freezing waters. People swam in the waters which could kill anyone in the matter of seconds. They seemed to be enjoying themselves; laughing and singing, yet the one thing that was out of place was that very same water they swam within had many drowning and even some dead people. The swimmers would see the drowning people, yet they wouldn’t try to help them out of the water. Slowly, the pale dead floated over the frigid waters. Ravens pecked out the dead people’s flesh. A magpie the size of a fully grown man landed near a swimmer and asked if they were going to help those people, yet they only said that they couldn’t, like something stood in their way. The magpie asked if it was fear that made them not save the drowning people; the fear of changing their minds and dying themselves; the fear that the drowning may attack their beliefs; a nervous fear. The swimmers agreed that that was the problem. The magpie was nervous, like he couldn’t believe what he saw. He went to person by person, yet they acted like he didn’t’ exist. He was in an estranged state, like the world he lived in he didn’t belong. He screamed, telling everyone that the drowning people’s blood will be on the swimmers’ hands if they didn’t save them. The people just smirked and ignored the magpie. He started hyperventilating and died. A legion of rats came from under the earth and started devouring the magpie’s corpse. The short, fat man with the bald spot emerged once again and took the man and maiden’s tickets with greedy fingers, grinning evilly. The man and the maiden came to the waters, looked at each other, and slowly fell into the waters face-flat. The bubbles resided and the two were never again seen among Sporadique. The two believed that they simply stopped existing after they died. They alone didn’t simply stop existing; they, instead, were punished eternally for their decisions. The short fat man, with his magician-like fashion, took the man’s ticket and wrote two “E’s” at the end of the “F, and R,” while at the other end, the letter “M” at the end of the “O,” spelling the word “FREEDOM.” He took the maiden’s ticket and wrote, “F, O, R, G, O, T” at the beginning of, “T, E, N,” Spelling the word “FORGOTTEN.” He took the tickets and switched the hands he held them in, making the phrase “Forgotten Freedom.”

Those that criticize, criticize the future, remain in self denial of their decisions and beliefs—until otherwise changed—and so fear; they fear that which is true. We only need this truth to create self evidence, exist, and grow.

As for understanding this strange tale, that is of your own ability. Each to his own, this story will be deciphered in many ways. I already know how it comes out for me, yet how does it you? Personal Question—answer is not needed and neither should it be for others’ sight.

~The Silhouette