{"id":120,"date":"2021-02-16T03:27:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T03:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/?p=120"},"modified":"2025-03-16T11:05:12","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T15:05:12","slug":"my-parenthetical-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"my parenthetical life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
This is my (parenthetical) life.
A life of multiple-choice questions.
I don't get to write an essay,
explain
entertain
my intersections don't fork,
they bifurcate. 

I saw a billboard, an advertisement.
\"It could happen faster than you think.\"
I couldn't see the meaningful text.
What could happen faster than I think?
Death? Opportunity? AIDS?
The young man looked unhappy.
It must have been AIDS. Or unemployment.
Not a natural disaster. A personal disaster.
All disasters are personal.
We get lost in them,
like a pebble in the tide,
swallowed up
disgorged
upon a foreign shore.

That's where I walk,
along the edge of oblivion. Oblivious.
The land depressives know best.
The place where you're always drowning, but never drown.
Forever in that moment when you can't
breathe,
but never fall all the way in,
because that's where peace is,
where neither breath nor life matter.
A suspended moment
free from the internal scoring etched by
relentless thoughts
of tragedy.
As if one person could contain all that.
As if I'm important enough.
As if I matter.
As if I'm not just one more pebble
in the maelstrom.

Life as a series of multiple-choice questions.
What would I choose?
It's not the answers that matter,
it's the question.
I never see the right question.
I'm always one page off,
working on something
that won't even be on the test.
Even when I'm right,
I'm wrong.

I lie alone at night
trying to solve the puzzle of the past
trying to see the picture.
I always assume there's a picture.
Maybe there isn't.
Maybe I'm making it up.
I see color and shape
where there's only gray.
I make a story.
I have to make a story.
I'm a human being,
that's what we do.
We tell ourselves the story
of ourselves.
That's how we remember
who we are.

Otherwise

we become
nebulous
unanchored
free floating
motes of dust
suspended
in a beam
of sunlight
powered by some external engine
unable any longer to assume
the right of flight
part of the conglomerate of dirt
anonymous
a non entity
compacted into what feeds
the indifferent multitude
above.

Life is not a series of multiple-choice questions.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is my (parenthetical) life.A life of multiple-choice questions.I don’t…<\/p>\n
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