Ignore this post if you want to live with some meaning.

self-contained universes, me

I think Piattos just triggers some internal mechanism 
that forces my brain to come up with the oddest and most insistent stuff. 
They want to be written, but I'm not sure what they are. 
Honestly I should be studying. 
Honestly I'm surprised this post still has proper capitalization and punctuation thus far. 

The past few days have been odd for me. The start of this year saw me afloat
--I'm not sure if I wrote about it, 
but there was this persistent feeling of being untethered, early this year. 
It was an overwhelming feeling;
What would have taken me seconds to think about took me minutes instead. 
The world was syrupy and slow.
I was grasping for words and grasping for meaning,
like a hapless man trapped in quicksand. 
Rebuttals were soft and responses were alarmingly off-center. 
I was off-kilter.

Recently I've been feeling a cousin of that mental shift. 
Everything real blurred, but everything else became more lucid. 
Or maybe everything else is the real thing. 
And they just became clearer. 

I've also been losing track of relevant time. Value-time. 
Maybe what I'm writing about isn't actually recent.
Maybe this happened decades ago. 

But one day I was walking by the Oble Garden, 
      and then I was on a bench. 
Through no conscious decision of my own I had stopped walking, 
      and I began watching. 
It was like the universe gifted me with silence; I stopped thinking. 
I looked at people and held curiosity in my hands, but only for awhile. 
The curiosity, like everything else, soon fled.
The worries of the day ceased to matter, and so did any other feeling or intent. 
And everything was so slow, but so clear, like life was magnified 
but I wasn't sure what I was seeing.

Microcosms magnified, the minutiae made alive. 
I could have been sitting there for days, doing nothing and knowing everything. 
Or months, or seconds, or years. 
And around me were students and professors and chattering friends, 
and I saw nothing and felt everything. 
But for the life of me I can't remember what was going on inside my head,
(What was I thinking?)
only that it was beautiful, and silent, and profound.
It lasted the whole day.

I miss that silence. 

And then
I made the grand and wonderful mistake of reading more books. 
I feel like I can make and unmake the world, 
with all the things I've learned and collected and realized
(words and thoughts and ideas and, oh the possibilities!)
they include:
   the poetry, read and not heard,
   words can be senseless and profound at the same time,
   we don't have to understand the things that move us
       and change us
       and kill us
          (with the awesome)
they include:
   the riddle of existence and essence,
   and then consciousness and life
       (it's a chicken-and-egg, you see, only not)
   that the things we give, we have to lose
       (until we lose ourselves, and give others more)
   choice, and responsibility and commitment 

To be fair, this augmentation of knowledge might as well be useless. 
What's its use 
                           to me?

A biology student.
But then again. I will never cease to wonder at life. 
And I am thankful of my forgetfulness and my stupidity---
did you know, I forgot that there is iron in the blood?
I've got a vial of my blood stashed on my desk.
(It doesn't coagulate, because there's sodium citrate)
I forgot that there is iron in the blood.
I forgot that there is iron in the blood /
    and now my blood, outside of me
    is blackened by the world. 
Red of life to the blackness of oxidation 

There's poetry here, somewhere, I can feel it. 

Today I fell in love with the world again. 
Dangerous, I know.
I once said I'm done falling in love 
    but only with people
       and even that is debatable. 
It was called Girl Rising, a libfem film
but well done. 
I was crying, just a bit, and maybe without tears
(but I was crying)
because
   -people suffer in this world we created
    and there is no other possibility;
    the world we made demands sacrifice
        like in Omelas
    there is no other way our world is built
        and it will take a lot for us to unmake
        what has been made
   -people are weak and strong
     i'm not sure how to say this, but
               a girl dares herself to be shot 
               before she will be silenced
    is there anything more humbling than that?
  -educate a girl and change the world; it's true 
    challenge the patriarchal idea of uselessness
          (female infanticide)
            (domestic economies and global growth)
               (marriages at 7yo)
     girls grow up to be people too   

And again and again
I am reminded that the people in my life
can be wonderful and interesting too. 
       It's my father's 51st birthday today
       obviously, had he been alive
          what I'm trying to say, somehow
          is that my family is awesome
       I've been talking to people 
       with the same interests as me
          and they keep recommending more books to me
          or they just make me feel alive
          or they inspire me, again 
              though for the life of me
              i haven't found someone 
              who'd go to #ArtParkPH with me
              jk it's not like i have the time but if i did
              who'd spend money on a coffeeshop to watch people with me 
              jk i also have no money lbr
the point is:
     i should remember that there are people
     worth being social for, in this world
          and that's a huge thing.

What else, what else. 

I am too many people, but oh
The world is beautiful.

I feel like that's a statement
that no one can contest. 

And that I will never get tired of saying.

Not going to edit and not going to look back. I may have been generous with my emphases.

EDIT: I lied.