Assignment 6: Describe a World You Know

PREFACE

          I will whole-heartedly admit I over thought this assignment, and I had such insane writers block I wanted to break my fingers as an excuse for my lack of material. I went back to an old piece for inspiration, one that I felt could help me make something that fit that prompt. What is my world? Its a constant stream of internal vocal consciousness to be honest. I'm always listening to my own voice in my head, constant, nonstop, questions, worrying, describing, dissecting, over thinking. Its not always a bad thing though, I've finally come to realize that. It's just who I am. Below is my response to this prompt, a littler tangent-y (I apologize). 

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I have discovered that I am a fast paced person.

I cannot hear the vents creak with the moldy air that fills a classroom. I cannot see the dust fall into delicate piles on a worn out projector. I cannot smell the layers of chalk that line the metal ledge of a blackboard. I cannot feel the sun slightly filtered through windex streaked windows. I only strive to be heard, to have the last word in an unending debate of mixed subjects. I can only try to say as much as I can in the sliver of time allotted to my focus.

“Take a deep breath”, I am always told. “Slow down honey, count to ten”.

Creaky metal tracks ignited sparks along the subway. The car swayed as it moved, snakelike, underneath Cambridge corners. I could smell the tracks of one thousand travelers, and I could feel the fingerprints of all those lonely hands. I could see myself sitting gently on the bench in between two friends. My hair was messy from the city winds, my head was lying on my boyfriend’s shoulder, my eyes were half open in sleepy observance. I kept staring into the window, swallowing the scene around me, savoring every detail. It was like I was watching myself in a movie. There was a quiet that was not dense and not chilling, but simply cool. A cool silence that washed over everyone to cleanse us of our busy days. It set the buzzing thoughts out of our beehive minds. A silence that allowed the fast paced people, in a fast paced world, to simply be still. This calm silence allowed me to stop, slow down, and sit.

I sat. I sat and stared. I stared at myself in the window. Outside was pitch black, my reflection stared back at me. It was only the three of us on that quiet ride and I did what is common to do when caught in silence, I let my mind wander a little too far.

I thought about myself and life. I thought about how life has always been a little bit of confusion and frustration. Most people spend their lives trying to capture some sort of correct answer for everything. Maybe it’s because I’m stubborn, and I don't like being uninformed or not knowing everything, but it always bothers me that I don’t really know who I am yet. Constantly contradicting myself, surprising myself, unlocking parts of me I didn’t even know had a door. This is frustrating because we are supposed to know who we are as individuals, but we keep contradicting and surprising ourselves.  

The way I see it, humanity is constantly searching, digging around for trends to follow, genres to sort, and adjectives to assign. We like to make things belong, give everything a concrete category, to understand what things are. So is it crazy for me to think that there is this feeling in the back of our skulls, that aches to define each and every one of us? I think about this every day, it drives me mad. The irony of this is that every time is think about it, I discover a new piece of myself. Everyday I grow a little more insane, and it brings me closer to figuring out who I really am.

The subway slowed; the silence was broken by a thud, a screech, a muffled announcement from the driver. Instantly, I was ripped from my sedation, back into reality. Everything moved at once, but sequentially still in slow motion: I was trying to grab hold of the peace I had with reality for that short train ride. I gathered myself and grabbed my boyfriend’s hand, dragging him into the parking lot back to my car. My voice echoed in the garage, reviewing our exciting day in loud, excited sentences. I was back the sporadic version of myself. Starting my car, the volume filled the lot. The radio blasted a thick slow bass, layered with an insane eclectic guitar solo.