odds n' ends
どこでもいいよ
Don’t take her seriously because she reads stories saturated with ambiguous sexuality: absolutely improper. There is a confusion in the space where she used to play with her dark strands, fried from hydrogen peroxide. A nervous habit. The scissors are stainless steel—a stranger’s eyes stare back tentatively. Her neck feels cold sometimes but she prefers staying indoors to wearing turtlenecks. Maybe sensitivity is just a measure of mood: how eager are you to chew at boundaries. She is not sure she likes this. Someone reminds her that it is unwise to miss a person this much, so she cuts her sentiments. There must be more direct ways to satiate this hunger: a curiosity for hedonism, an accommodating appetite. Doctors would advise against the consumption of saline—tears and saliva remain distinct. But discontent can still be heard bubbling under layers of skin. They threaten to penetrate. tldr short hair is rly dandy yall should get mathilda cuts and pretend to be an edgy kid who jams to mcr + cigarettes after sex w0w so cool;;;
Cautiously experimental. A tune you hum to yourself while tucking in your shoes. Today is an ordinary day filled with ordinary sounds: the faint rustling of leaves, the exchange of war cries between crickets and cicadas. Only if the melody from my speakers once belonged to a sparrow—maybe then can I understand.
Someone hand-washes her grandmother’s floral blouses, aged seven years and going. The new ones are neatly stashed in a suitcase somewhere. But she tells her granddaughter to not be afraid; she does not plan on leaving anytime soon. The child who grips her grandmother’s hands thinks of her calluses as natural. She stares into her cloudy eyes but only dreams of her own adventures in the rom she newly purchased for her Gameboy Advance. Her grandmother tells her to marry early but fall in love late but she grows up watching everyone around her. In middle school, a boy tells a girl that he likes her smile but the girl tells him that she does not really like to smile. Instead, her favorite expressions are smirk, derp and gasp because they were more fun to make. He promises her wonders but she prefers the monotony running through her blood: black hair and black eyes. The girl tells the boy in the next class that she likes his smile. He tells her that he prefers girls with eyes that light up with wonder. In high school, the girl dyes her hair. This is the apotheosis of retrospective narrative. She paints a blank wall in sedated differences. She makes a needlessly boring observation sometimes: eureka! In this picture, her grandmother walks a step ahead of her grandfather—that, too, is another interpretation. There is segregation in this passenger car. The watchers watch the sleepers while the sleepers dream of the watchers. Though this is not parity—the watchers feign superiority as they tread upon the more purposeful side of the boundary. I think about opening my eyes, but it is counterintuitive to lie to yourself when you lie to so many others already. Uptown houses monsters; downtown you may find security.
But he falls under neither category. His eyes are open, yet they do not see. Instead, they stare headlong into the murky blackness, trying to understand why he can read the words "this side out" printed on bulletproof glass. Where is in and where is out? A faulty installation. A day's toils easily relieved by a moment of tomfoolery—the thought of two dumb kids dancing in the dark. The light at the end of some tunnel is cliché, the mirage of midnight movies and songs set on perpetual replay. Both narrate the allure of prospects, yet this tunnel merely leads to the next stop. There is light everywhere. I follow his gaze, but he does not permit me entry into his private sanctuary. Perhaps he is thinking about the state of the universe. Or perhaps he is thinking about the apple he had for lunch. The voice from the intercom, a little robotic, reminds him too much of his mother. The last time he called her was four months ago. Once he aces his interview, he will buy her a summer house, invest in an android caretaker so that she can live more comfortably. There is a future for artificial intelligence yet, but it probably isn't today. The man next to me coughs and smells of something herbal. I wonder if he is willing to share if I ask nicely.
according to what god says by etsuko yakushimaru
a sweggy song that has nothing to do with this post lmao
I checked my phone exactly thirteen times since I woke up at 9:13 AM this morning. It is only 10:43 AM. My entry mate next door blasted trance music on speakers at some ungodly hour last night. Tomorrow, at least half the population will be on the computer like I am today. Our generation was married to technology before we learned the vocabulary to speak our vows.
And yet, many dismiss the prospects of artificial intelligence, space colonization, and the like as “scary” or “ridiculous” and by implication trivial in comparison to other more pressing matters such as poverty or warfare. These are the same people using Siri because they are too lazy to type and the GPS because physical maps are too difficult to follow, appropriately after heaving a dainty little sigh of condolence upon seeing a photo Syria circulated through popular media. The utopia (or dystopia, depending on perspective) envisioned by science fiction that is inhabited by some combination of human, cyborg, and android may not be our current state of reality, but that is not to say such a world may never be upon us. I am not insinuating that I endorse test-tube babies and cryogenics nor am I calling technological advancement “progress” because such terminology connotes that there is some positive end goal humans are ultimately working towards. The tale of Icarus is often raised as a caution against transhumanism, yet the truth is the modern-day human is already capable of flight. And still, we are not satisfied. Unlike fish that are content with completing their entire existences within the confines of a 48 x 12 x 20 inch tank, a human being placed within a box will inevitably develop the inclination to leave from said box. However, once he/she does eventually escape from the box, the cycle will only repeat itself if the human decides that he/she is bound by additional boxes—limitations of physical prowess, of mental capacities, of mortality. We are so enamored with the self-destructive idea of freedom that the technological advancement that provides us with a means to achieve it may halt but never terminate. The question is not whether it is morally permissible to merge with inorganic matter or reduce human existence to binary numbers in a program, but whether we even have a choice. Even if we may understand the repercussions of technology, we grow accustomed to it by convenience. Spending an entire 24 hours in front of a screen is unthinkable to society of the 1900s, but the norm for the hikikomori culture of Japan. Transhumanism is rightfully scrutinized now, but the same treatment may not apply 100 years into the future. Perhaps 20,000 years from now, transhumans will look back at history records and scoff at the narrow-mindedness of us, the archaic humans, just as we ridicule those who subscribed to the geocentric model of the universe. If that was the case, then human adaptability is the true tragedy. disclaimer: im not a transhumanist gg |
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July 2019
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