The Wise Ry Guy

So in my Junior year of high school

Something happened that still boggles me today

I mean, many things from all times boggle me

I experience consistent boggles

Perpetual boggling, really

I had modern philosophy class first period

That one was tough on the eyes let me tell you

My teacher’s name was, well – to conceal his identity – Persimmons

You know like the fruit

I can’t for the life of me figure out whether a persimmon is a citrus fruit and it’s actually peeved me

I spent like a whole 3 minutes trying to figure it out right now

But I didnt click many articles

I just skimmed through all the little description blurbs for different sites in search of an answer confined inside a few magical key words

And then I decided that Google held nothing for me

So Persimmons

The teacher

Not the fruit

I’m off the fruit now

He had us write journal entries for the reading assignments

Which I totally did

The entries, that is

Not so much the reading assignments

So each student had a little journal for these entries

And we would turn them in occasionally – maybe every 2-3 weeks

And ol’ Persimmons would grade them

Well, one day, we turned them in

I had scribbled on the front of mine

A lot

With black ink pen

And I think also with blue and red ink pen as well though I can’t remember

Regardless, the cover of my journal was a mess

Because abstract art is really just an incomplete self-portrait

Calling those scribblings art might be a stretch

But then again, art is thought

And because those scribblings were not premeditated nor simple doodlings, but rather an outpouring, an icon, of the battle of ideas waging itself with weapons of rationality, yes, but upon a field of desperate emotion, yes yes,

Maybe less of a stretch.

Anywho, my journal was scribbled upon

And Persimmons made me cover it all with white-out

But before he made me do that, he showed it to the class and said,

“Ryan likes ugly things”

It took me aback, big time

I didn’t know

I had thought little of those scribbles until he told me they were out of place

Which, I think I realized they were conspicuous

But ugly?

That one really threw me for a loop

And that scene is still stuck in my heart today

And there’s a reason for that

There’s something I haven’t confronted hidden in there that I seek to confront

Although I don’t think I’ll do it in this article

Because I want to mention that I’m becoming more and more attuned to the fact that certain, specific blip-length scenes from my past remain

I’ve always wondered at my incredible ability to forget

During high school, I took pride in calling my life thus far an unknown fog

I’ve been told that Christmas is december 25 so many times

I think after 18 years of life, as of last week, it’s finally stuck in my head

And I’ve actually been constructing a fairly detailed timeline of my life over the last few months

It’s quite the transition – I have much more memory than I had thought

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And now I’ve been keenly aware of specific things, some from over a decade ago, that take place more vividly in my head than the events of yesterday

And I’m on a mission now to confront these things

I am also amazed by the intensity of my dreams

They aren’t stories

They aren’t drawn-out scenes as they are for many people

They’re rapid fire thoughts

And there’s a point where I snap from the whirling stream into calm confusion

I open my eyes immediately after that point, like a click,

And whatever fanatical narratives had been pioneering themselves in leaps and bounds from synapse to synapse escape their aura

and their literal being having gone, they left me with that energized sense from which they had fled

The imprint of their hectic transitions from each one into the next stamps itself on my mind, at this point, indefinitely

And the intensity, the pure unrest of it all, and the visceral sense of investment and meaning –

Those linger

And I believe those scenes of my past which bore such psychological import that they present themselves today in colors so vibrant as to be uncharacteristic of their nature even in the moment they took place embody a kindred position to the dreams which bridge my slumber and sight and dissipate, having animated my sunken corpse into a chaos that stirs from one that lies on their race acriss and across my plain of thought that agitates and berates with the vigor of Dean Moriarty himself

The instant I come to I cannot recall nor reiterate to myself the content of my sleeping thoughts

And that drives me crazy because my dreams still seem to leave me a feeling of significant, crucial meaning and excitement that dwarfs all of the importance and dopaminergic meaning that I have and can garner from my conscious activities

So I will confront those things which linger

And strive to siphon out the contents of my hyper thoughts

To decipher my experiential heritage and put myself in order

So

Try to work through the things that keep bubbling to the surface, or keep threatening to

Putting the shark on land tends to afford us land mammals the advantage

Don’t avoid things

It will make you sad and bitter