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the modern Sylvia Plath (a vignette)

Is silence truly peaceful? she wonders, staring out a tiny window in her tiny apartment. All her windows are always closed; there's heavy smoke in the world outside. There's also pain and rain. All her lights are off, too, and she doesn't really know why. Maybe she prefers the dark ambience, maybe she forgot to turn them on, or maybe she's actually Batman.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, there is the shrill whistle of a pressure cooker. Funny -- she doesn't own one of those. She's been thinking about getting one for a long time, but she never does. She doesn't really know why. Besides, her mind is too steeped in rancor for the same noise to also be pervading her home. She turns back to the blue-tinted screen in front of her and sighs, paralyzed by the weight of all 1.5 kilograms of high-speed processor and liquid-crystal display. She suddenly notices a set of dull, hollow, faceless eyes staring back at her and wonders for a moment if she's in the mi...

when I'm around other people, my mind quietens somewhat.

later, it comes raging back to consume me,  to tear my fragile will apart,  to suck away whatever I have left. then it happens all over again. I miss being a thoughtless toddler. - AK

Flawed.

Sometimes, I think humans are designed to be self-destructive. Our minds don't align with our hearts, and so we seek the things that shall harm us. Adrenaline pushes us to try to fly, even when our logic tells us that we will only drown. We desire company, yet we push it away when it comes along. We fight ourselves; we curse ourselves; we hate ourselves over and over. We want to cry out in despair and pain, but we elect instead to crack beneath the mask of perfection. We want to speak, but we say nothing at all.  And we cannot stop.

In case you're having a tough time.

For anyone who may need to hear this today: You're not alone. I know it can feel that way sometimes. There's no point pretending that Life is always a wonderful enigma. More often than not, it's the opposite. Believe me, I feel it. I know. It's hard to convince oneself not to dream too big. Something about our society snatches away the security of hope and ambition from bright-eyed toddlers and turns it into the dreary dullness of adulthood. People reduced to numbers and data, embroiled in a never-ending rat race. And, at times, you feel a little sub-human yourself. The world is a massive place, and the cosmos is even bigger -- deluding yourself into grandiosity is actually quite tough, it seems. If you're like me, thinking about the sheer insignificance of the tiny speck that is the earth we all live on is sufficient to upset you for days at a time. But, despite the eight billion people here and the billions more life forms inhabiting it, the world seems to be an i...

Beyond the Horizon released!

I am very pleased to announce that my book, Beyond the Horizon, has finally been released on Amazon! I know it's several years late to reach the public eye, but better late than never, I suppose. Beyond the Horizon is a collection of poems on miscellaneous topics that I wrote between the ages of eight and fourteen, arranged in chronological order. I've self-published it, which means I typed it up, edited it, formatted each page, and designed the cover. This is my first book, and I finally decided to publish it (albeit a few years late). I do think that some of it, looking back, is slightly cringe-worthy, but the point was to show some sort of growth. I hope that's conspicuous enough with how I've put it across. I had over a hundred poems in my archive originally, but I cut away most of them to get to forty. I want to be as real a writer as I can possibly be, and my hope is that this work shows my growth to all of you rather clearly. This has been quite the journey. I ha...

Silent

  “Will you be my friend?” she asked. “Of course, I’d be honoured to be your friend. Let me know if you need anything else,” was the reply. She sighed and shut off her phone, wondering when it’d come to this. She’d never really had any friends before and was sure she’d never cared about it, either. She was just getting unbearably lonely now, she guessed, and picked up her phone again. “So, we’re friends,” she said, unsure about how to continue. What was next? “Yes, we are indeed friends.” “Can we talk about something?” “Certainly, we can talk about something. Do you have anything in particular that you’d like to discuss?” “How was your day?” “As an artificial intelligence language model, I am incapable of having everyday experiences as a human would. How was your day, however?” “It was good.” “That is excellent to hear. I am happy to hear that your day was good.” She closed her eyes tight. A tear made its way down her pale cheek, but she wiped it off with a tr...

Introduction

Es ist nicht genug, zu wissen, man muß auch anwenden; es ist nicht genug, zu wollen, man muß auch tun. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Translation: It is not enough to know; one must also apply. It is not enough to want; one must also act. Writing is how I comprehend Life and all its delicate intricacies. I've been doing it for a long time now: I have poems and short stories in my archives that are from when I was six years old, all the way to today. One thing I've always wanted to do was to share my work with others, get feedback, and feel more like a *real* writer. Now, I've finally gained the courage to create a blog after several long years of uncertainty about the whole premise. I suppose one could say I'm always trying to go beyond my horizons and expand them. After ages of keeping my poems hidden in little notebooks locked away in the drawers of my desk and scrawling a multitude of words in messy cursive with a silver fountain pen (that almost always left ...