Crystal Gleam

Re-reading what I wrote in middle school brought on quite the shock. I am more mature now. I like to think that I'm intelligent, but I have my doubts. In brief, I shall cover what I've learned since then:

1. Social comparison can be positive and negative. People who fall into the latter camp do so because of shame and guilt carried from a troubled childhood. Further involvement derives from vanity and pride.

2. Lazy people with privilege are rewarded in a patriarchal and capitalist society. It is not a definable trait that can be assigned. Use of the term instead reveals who that person has deigned fit to assign blame to for their own failure to teach and motivate.

3. There is no "secret to the universe" that can be resolved with a simple equation that slots the whole of existence into neat little boxes to further sort and categorize.

4. A judgmental attitude is the result of insecurity and low self-esteem. This behavior is a coping mechanism that can provide a false sense of superiority and control, enabling bravado and arrogance.

5. AI will not bring about the end of the world. What we fear is simply man's own hubris- artificial intelligence is merely a vehicle for suspension of disbelief.

6. Two contrasting things can coexist so long as explicit follow through does not render the other incongruent.

I wonder how I can express myself. I hear the sighs of daffodils, I see clouds that cry diamonds. I cannot choose a favorite. I want to be free of the past, for it is a horrid place, yet acknowledge that without it I would be nothing.

There the moon fractured, multiplicitous. A ravenous jewel scarab ate the sugar crystals- each and every one. No twinkling little stars survive, eclipsed by shadowy greed and envy. It is darker than dark, beyond black- vantablack! I gaze into the abyss. I fissure and dissolve. As above, so below. I know not what I am, but I know what I am not. I cannot stand the hypocritical, nor corruption. By way of the gentle kiss of moonight on my skin and a gasp of frigid air I break free from rope looped over snout and claw. Feathered wings fly in the face of a fictitious demiurge, divine ignorance holding fast in the face of divergent thinking. I challenge authoritarian, patriarchal tradition.

I know what it is like to feel alone while embraced. When blood and bond assert that to love is to be changed, yet never do. Rather, they ask the object of their affection to revert, to crawl back into the womb, decrying abortion, privileged to think themself judge, jury and executioner. Threatening what can drive the best to the brink is heretofore a punishment deserved because I am weak. Guilty until proven innocent, so they say. All's fair in love and war, but if we don't end war...war will end us. I am a cycle breaker. A warning to the prophet, the leader, the pariah, the victor- to the right, to the left -we will fight to the death to the edge of the Earth.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire; bread and circuses. This is in honor the canary who slipped through the net a decade ago. I may be a mere solarpunk pagan, furry and nonbinary, but "she" would be proud of what we have become and how far we've come. Life isn't over, but rather...just begun. I am free! ...for now, at least.