Parallel at Every Point

Was there ever a man who has not struggled and fought against the mold in which he was born? Has there ever been a man who did not despise the forces which he must face? Day by day we look at the ways of the world seeking to make it better, seeking anything as long as it means change. In the change, there is the triumph of life; the triumph in the belief that there is value within our actions and within our life.
With each internal force, there is an external force. Every action causes a reaction. There is movement until the forces balance, and there is no more change, leaving us parallel to what we have changed. And still we must change the world, we move in a different direction, still holding the last point parallel to ourselves and changing another piece of the world, we move until the forces balance once again. Everyday, the cycle begins and ends with changes to the mold and changes to ourselves. We extend and strain against every point, we change the mold, and the mold forms us. And soon enough, the world which we envisioned begins to take shape.
In the forces that we have created, we feel the comfort of the things that we can touch, the things that are parallel to ourselves, and beyond that is what we have not experienced. What we cannot feel bothers us. More and more of the world comes under our control, the forces become more familiar. Each day we come in and we adjust the world, and the world adjusts us. Finally, we cannot change anymore. We have created a new mold that fits us exactly. We are parallel at every point, unable to move.
So we fight against the mold all our lives believing that one day we will create a new world, a new way of thinking, only until we find, one day, that the die from which our lots were cast  neither much better nor much worse than the one we were born into, only one which we have created by the passions of our own humanity.

Twenty Years in Solitude

My mother had traveled these lonely streets for the last twenty years, picking up work, dropping off work, living life, paying her dues. It was a lonely road near the older part of town in the rundown neighborhoods where she had lived before I was born. I remember how much we would go down there when I was younger, always sitting in the car as she went about picking up the work and talking to the managers about the work. We made a fuss about it even though we didn't really mind. Eventually, it got to her and we would stay home as she went to pick up work. I was still a child back then. I finished up elementary school, all the while sitting home and watching tv or my childrens books. I went through middle school, struggled with the bullies and the teachers, but mostly myself. I went on through high school with even more trouble, and finally I went through college.

Now I've come back around to help her pick up some work in the little car she bought me. The road is exactly the same as when I last came there long ago. The church is still at the end of the street, the grocery store is still there. The company has changed owners once, but the interior of the building is still the same. I went to the supermarket on that side of town where it's more convenient for her to shop. The little aisles of candy and gum and sweet drinks is still there. The same vegetables that she bought twenty years back still stocked. She was not much older than I am now.

I felt the loneliness of the place. It was a place of solitude and the constant repetition which made up her life. She had done all of this for twenty years without anyone by her side. I realized that she has lived half of her life traveling back and forth on this road almost every day. She's been through all of this life by herself. I suppose it will still continue many years from now as my life goes on a different route.

Somewhere, Not Here

I suppose that most of my outlook on life is very different than a lot of people I know. It would account for a lot of the differences in opinions and desires which I have experienced throughout my two and a third decades of being. I started out much the same way as many other people; wanting to see, wanting to feel, wanting to move about through the width and the vastness of the world. The cities that we live in continue on and on forever like a sea. Even if we live a thousand years we will never see it all.


Our changing existences are like explosions of life from the wombs of our mothers. We feel the comfort of our mothers' bosoms, we develop as the thousands of forces upon us mold and shape our minds and bodies. The more we feel, the more we understand, the more we want to understand, the more ports we open in our minds. We run forward, faster and faster, moving through our lives, our family history, our community, our cultures, the science of our world, the thousands of years of history... and yet, the faster we run, the more we see the faster the world expands away from us. We never see the darkness of night. There is always something to see. Like an explosion moving away from us, sweeping out a wider and wider angle, affecting everything around it as far as we can see.


But I changed, as the world changes. Nothing stays the same. The people I knew still saw the world expand outwards from them. They still see the vastness of the universe. Always something to explore, always something to learn, always somewhere to go, always something to see. So they go, constantly in motion, constantly active, moving about all three dimensions in this world as their minds expand towards the speed of light, illuminating everything as far as their eyes can see. All I see is the long, long timeline stretching away in both directions, so thin and narrow. Unable to move in any direction save forward. I am locked into this steady conveyor belt, unable to run any faster, to stand still, to run backwards. I have nowhere to go, but to continue down this thin thin line of time.