We are not like salmon, however much we try.

(The following is purely a creative piece and does not reflect any situation or person at any point in time)

I have a belly full of regret and a mouth full of words I've held back. My mind is steeped in fear, this fear of walking down a path I will grow to hate. And I am scared. So very scared that this feeling will never pass. I am a leaf tumbling in this autumn wind, moving with a will that is not my own. Those roots of optimism I was once anchored to, seem a fading memory of summertime. 

I find myself with no heroes, nothing to be inspired by and very little to emulate. Your voice gets hoarse if you are the only one singing the war cry above the melee of life. Your limbs tire from pushing against the current- we are not like salmon, however much we try. And finally your heart doubts, festering with indecision and questions, until it is changed irrevocably. 

I can only blame myself.

I always knew what my purpose was, because doing it made me happy and it felt the way birds must feel when they graze the heavens. It was a seed of an idea, a wisp of a beginning of what I wanted from this short time here. It didn't matter about money or material possession, which probably was the flaw in my idea. Happiness is an act  and it seems that ambition that is not materialistic is a goal for fools. And what I would give to be part of that troupe. 

Nothing would have happened anyway. I live by the book of rules and I will most likely die under its weight. Trying to deviate from this road, yet never touching the grass that lies beyond the lines that are drawn for me. The mind-made cage is ever-present. 

These colours of my soul will slowly drain away, washed pale by the waters I sometimes try to swim against.

Until nothing remains but duty.

 

A letter for the lobotomised

Greetings my dear companions (and my not so dear ones too)

In an age of spellcheck, Twitter-Wit and this abundance of enlightenment (or some vague notion that we are better off than our predecessors) I find it tragic that we still are plagued with a certain issues. This is my pep-talk for this year in a bid for my contemporaries to "up their game" (and their grammar). 

[Image via 9gag.com]

It is NOT 2007 anymore. We all have QWERTY keyboards on our phones- spellcheck and predictive  text are a free and active feature (I actually used the latter twice in the last sentence). And I'm not pointing fingers at the people who say "U" as opposed to "you", I understand the purpose of that fully. Instead it's "yew peeples wu aRe d01nG diż tôö meeee" (translation: you people who are doing this to me)

Typing that made my eyes burn. Reading it makes them bleed.

Why? 

That's all I ask you. It takes you twice as long to type with letters that have dots, accents and hearts and most rational people have NO clue what you mean. A yew is a tree, it's also the same length as the word you. I would like to show you a yew, with my ewe grazing beneath it. There is no need to personalise English. 

Why must you butcher this language that I love so very much? This attempt to be cool and "modern" has left much to be desired.  You bludgeon the grammar and starve your vocabulary until all that you express are monosyllables. Furthermore you choose to spread this moronic use of English to other people via social media and your social interaction with us.  This leaves me discombobulated and my eyes glaze over with sadness. This spoken and written word fills my soul with euphoria and I feel my heart become engorged with the prose of those who understood it's beauty.  How do you begin to detail the spectrum of your sentiments and how can you justly express it without these words? When did stupidity become trendy? 

Can we fix this? I'm pretty sure I can hear the 2008 Obama campaign saying, "Yes, we can!" to this query.  Read a book, a blog(this one is pretty nice, I think), a magazine or even… (Dare I say it?) A newspaper. We all make mistakes, you're meant to learn from your mistakes. When I was 14 and new on Facebook with a phone that had an alphanumeric keyboard, I used to shorten words occasionally in my wall posts to get the message across faster. I didn't bastardise the language with alternate spelling, "you= u" when I was in a hurry.Now I am 18, older and wiser. Many of my peers have not grown this way.

 You don't have to be the next Jane Austen but at least write in a manner that people understand. Its not cute or quirky so whoever told you that texting like you've been lobotomised was adorable, they lied.Don't sabotage yourself by creating an impression of being a total moron. 

Intelligence is the ultimate allure. End of story.