(Blog)

One time (now) I read this article about some guy giving a college graduation speech. It’s this speech. And then I rewrote it as my own speech, which I prefer better, because I’m young and selfish and unkind, just like the guy giving the original speech expects me to be.

What are old people good for, besides ridicule? Tales of regret.

Once, I was poor, and it was awful; once, I worked at a slaughterhouse, and it wasn’t. I’ve imbibed poop-water in a distant land and it gave me the shits for months. I shot a hockey puck at a girl I liked, and missed. Once, a nervous-hair-chewing girl came to town, and moved away, and I was kind of kind to her when she was around, but mostly she wasn’t; I think that’s because I was selfish.

See, everyone thinks they’re the invincible lead in their own story within a greater world; it’s not that we don’t care, we just can’t see outside our stories. I’m using stories as a metaphor because I’m an author, so that’s all I know.

Being the hero of your own story makes being kind tough, because who gives a shit about the nervous-hair-chewing girl, right? You’re the hero. Still, as we get older, our reflexes dull and we can’t play FPS games anymore, so instead we play casual Facebook games and give all our money to Gameloft, and Zynga, and others. We slow down and lose our faculties. We can’t tell jokes anymore. We realize through endless microtransactions that we were, after all, not the lead of the story at all.

And like that, this cruel, inhuman modern life grinds you down into dust. But it something like fairy dust. And if you have kids, you’ll sprinkle them with it with every lesson and every story you pass on. Many of you have decades of the stuff on you, and inside you. You’re even breathing it in right now, your parents’ lives. See, they live on through you, and you’ll live on through your children, in an endless cycle of reincarnation through fairy dust.

I’d say “don’t be a dick”, but some Trekkie nerd already made that speech, so I’ll just say this: In 80 years or so, I’ll be 134, probably with robot legs, and laser eyes, and a cyberbrain, and a lot of cats. Hopefully by that time, some of you will have become kinder, because you’re all a bunch of dicks right now. I can tell. I used to be one of you. When you are as kind as the Element of Kindness, and we’re all living in space, drop me a line, and I’ll say “I told you so”, and we can arm-wrestle with our cybernetic future arms and toss back a space brew or seven. Cheers, now get the fuck out.

One day, years ago, I wrote the following immediately upon waking:

She wore a robe of burgundy and gold, and her flaxen hair was all I saw. Her home was made of felt and porcelain, full of satins and ceramics. The house was too small, as if caving in on itself, and stuffy, though not suffocating. I felt as if I weren’t there.

The doddering old fool, I heard from my left. Out of a cupboard-like cubbyhole of a room to my right, a slinking hag emerged.

“Pot calling the kettle black, indeed,” she mumbled in retort. “She’s dropped her wishes,” the old woman continued, as if I knew her, what she spoke of, and its apparent importance. “Go on!” she continued, with more urgency, “pick them up, before she realizes she’s lost them. Do you expect to go to market empty-handed?”

Her words were confounding. Speaking of wishes as if they were physical objects? Going to market? None of it made sense, and this house was beginning to feel like an attic inside a dollhouse, and I had to get out.

I glanced down the hall and spotted a small staff leaning against a wall, delicately painted with golden symbols I could not read. Next to it, there was a pale blue robin’s egg. No, a stone with an egg-like appearance, with the same symbols as the staff. As the cupboard-dwelling hag vanished into the ether, the hall turned bright, and spring morning air wafted in.

From all around me, I heard, or felt, It was sunny, and glowing; it was Sunday morning.

Feeling these were the correct objects, I grabbed the staff and the stone. I wondered if these were the wishes the lady had lost, or whether they contained her wishes within. Perhaps they were the symbols. I wondered what story they told. She wore burgundy and gold, and held this staff and this stone, her wishes, and now she was gone.

Sunday morning tea and cake, everything methodically laid out, I heard whispered from all around me. As I ambled downstairs, that’s what I thought, as if the house or environment were thinking through me. On the first floor, I saw weathered oak chairs with pillows, an ornate teacup with a spindle used as a cover, delicately prepared pastries laid out on silver tray, and an enchanting view of a forest outside. Everything was indeed methodically laid out.

I sat down, ate a pastry, and drank the tea. I packed the staff and stone in a sack and decided to take the teacup, spindle, and the remaining pastries. I understood that I was to leave this house and seek the lady. Burgundy and gold, and flaxen hair, I heard and thought, picturing the lady of the house. I would make it to market, and find her.

I walked outside and turned to the west and entered the forest, for it beckoned me.