Sep 14 2008
Mental Instability- My mind in the morning
I see a man on a lawnmower; his dumb head hangs limply toward his right shoulder, bobbing up and down like a dead body floating in the water. The track of his machine slices through the blades of grass beneath him. His eyes remind me of a milking cow; they are empty and hold no sign of intelligence. Judging by his appearance and foreign idiosyncrasies, I conclude that he’s mentally handicapped.
An overweight girl brushes by my right shoulder. She has cheap headphones covering her ears; it must be some abject attempt to try to escape from the world. Detached from a world which refuses to accept her, so in turn, she refuses to accept it. Probably some nihilist wishing she could figure out what is real and what is simply a fabricated truth, but she won’t. No one will.
I wait in line to get into a classroom I’m not entirely certain I wish to be in. I feel as if I’m surrounded by puppets and actors, using this school, using this life as their stage. Egotist’s diluted attempts at trying to convince the world that they’re something worth being. They’re not. I wonder if I’m any different.
The class files in through three doors, slowly moving like sheep being herded into a canal. The girl to my right pretends she is calling someone on her phone. More lies and acting. She doesn’t want anyone to think she is alone, as if weakness is created through our seclusion. People are so frightened to be alone. I don’t understand it.
My eyes pass over a beautiful girl I often catch staring at me during class. The seat to her right is open and she sees me eye it. I sit four rows away from her, next to some guy hiding from the world in his hood. This isn’t the place to meet someone like that. Love isn’t created in a lecture hall.
Class begins. I look around at the seven hundred empty faces surrounding me. It leaves me with the feeling that no one ever sat down in these seats, they’re practically as empty as the minds which occupy them. I wonder how many of them actually want to be here. The teacher is a middle aged blonde woman. Today, she is wearing an African dress; I’m sure awoke with some faint fantasy of appearing “cultured” through her dress.
I begin writing this document, unknowing to what it is or what it is to become. People are reading it. I can feel their eyes following the document as my fingers press the keys which form the words upon the screen. I do not conceal it nor hide it.
The boy I sat next to apparently wants to be like me. I bet he drinks and smokes for the same reasons. He begins writing his own document, but it becomes obvious that it isn’t worth reading. He’s so caught up on using big words that his content is hardly developed and in fact, barely comprehendible. I turn my screen slightly hoping he won’t read it because I don’t feel like offending him. People make me smile. He wants everyone around him to read what he writes. He wants to show everyone how smart he is through the use of his intellectually sickening dialect. He doesn’t understand writing. What’s important in writing? Is it the words we use? No, it’s not. It is the way in which we use them. It’s not about finding the biggest or most advanced word; it’s about using the correct one.
He’s stumbling on a sentence because he doesn’t even understand what he’s trying to say. He stares at his screen, his mind racing to find another big word to add to his overly complex sentence, but it appears as if his mental dictionary been exhausted.
My professor mentions a study that was done that shows a direct correlation between smoking dope and a degrading GPA. I hear several sneers from the emptiness surrounding me. They’re all too busy smirking to realize that their GPA’s have been progressively lowering since they started smoking pot. But then again, why would they want to think about that stuff?
Why would anyone want to be logical? Why would they want to believe proof presented through science? That gets too complicated; it’s much easier just to follow the scripture that has been preached to them since birth. I wonder how many of their own twisted morals and values they’ve broken in the past week. I bet it’s too many to count.
I’m distracted by my neighbor’s writing. He decided to put a word and a period. He’s so caught up in using an enlightened and intelligent voice he doesn’t realize his sentence isn’t complete. Then again, why should it be? People’s sentences, like their lives, rarely have an ending.
I’m tired. My weary eyes hang in my skull like a soggy t-shirt on a clothes hanger. My mind is attracted to any distraction I can find around the room.
I can feel my pulse beating through my head like a drummer is using my skull as a snare. I entertain myself by wondering how long it takes my own brain to tell itself that it feels something inside of itself. I stop thinking to smile. It’s nice to know my heart is still beating.
