Skip to main content

A Soap Bubble Nothing

I built a table, out of wood.  I made a thing that wasn't there before.  I cut and sanded the wood, I drilled in screws, and now we have a table where we didn't have one before. It is real and solid and you can touch it, you can feel where I cut poorly, see the rough edges where I didn't join the wood correctly, you can lift it, feel its weight.  It is a real thing that I made.  I made a table.

This is not a table, this is a nothing, a series of random thoughts that I had in the shower, which is where thoughts come from.

What if our souls are soap bubbles, what if we spread ourselves too thin, stretched out and flattened? What happens when it pops, would you even notice, would you even care?

What if we are meant for something more?

I am already behind schedule this year I've got work to do, I have things to accomplish, friends ask me questions ask for favors and all I say is yes yes yes and-

What is this?  What am I hoping to do here writhing

I meant to write "writing" but I accidentally wrote writhing and I think I'm just going to leave it that way.  It fits, somehow.

What am I hoping to do here, writing these things for a mysterious audience? You are there; I can see my counter going up, I know you are reading, but who are you? Why do you come here?

I imagine this place to be a library, ancient wood and warm soft light, leather bound tomes that nobody will ever read, I imagine myself sitting, speaking to ghosts.  What does it look like to you?

This is a nothing, I know it, but I have written nothing for so long, what was I hoping for?

We are spread so thin, our souls are a thin sheen stretched and pulled so far, distended, breached and ruptured.  Our souls are a soap bubble.

My friend said he tried to sell his soul, but nobody wanted it, it was too worn out, too soiled for anyone to want.  I said souls aren't ours to begin with.  You cant sell something that doesn't belong to you.  He said he sold a stereo that belonged to his older brother to a neighbor once for seven dollars.  Fair point.

Sometimes, when it is very cold, and your battery is weak, when you go to start your car, it turns over slowly at first, then it loosens up a little.  Then it turns faster and faster and then the spark takes or something, I don't know, but the car starts, it runs and then you can go on your way.  If it's very, very cold, and your battery is weak, when you go to start the car it goes rrrrrrrrrr RRR_RRR-RRR-RRRRRRRR-RR-R-rrrrr click click click click and you know that you're not going anywhere without a jumpstart.  You are going to need another car, another battery, to get you rolling along.

I don't know what this is, and I hope it's the first thing, but I fear it's the second thing, and I don't have the means for a jump; I don't have cables, I don't have any friends.  But I know that I won't go anywhere if I stay in the house, if I don't even turn the key.  If I never try, I'm not going to go anywhere.  I will never go anywhere if I don't try, at least.

What if I spread my bubble soul too thin and it popped and I was too distracted to even notice?

What am I hoping to do here?  Why are you here reading this?

What are we doing here?  This is what is whispered on wet parted lips before plunging into dangerous forbidden destructive desire.  What are we even doing here?

This is a nothing thing, I know, it's not a table, it's not a real thing; this is a click-scan-what-the-hell-was-that-forget immediately kind of thing.   I know this, but I have to try, I have to go out into the cold and see if the spark takes, because I'm not going anywhere here all warm in the house.

I tried to sell my soul, I had a buyer, username Devil6969 from Craigslist, but I looked and I couldn't find it.  It is probably lost in the garage maybe, or under all these dirty clothes, or sunk in the sink under the dishes.  It's probably mashed under the couch cushions with the cookie crumbs and the spare change.  That's fine anyway because I wanted fortune and fame, but if he offered me a small plot of land in the forest instead, I probably would have taken it.

What if we are spread too thin, what if all these words are a soap bubble, what if nothing means anything, what if all I know is a lie?

And this is stupid, a thousand nothing words, none of them mean anything, but maybe one of you mysterious folk needs a jumble of nonsense to get you over the hump, to get you to the weekend and to your Super Bowl snacks.  Ghosts still eat snacks, right?

So get out there and pick up your pen, your brush, boot up the computer.  Start your Yoga video, put down the donuts and pick up the celery, grab that old dusty guitar.  You might not go anywhere, maybe you might need a jump.  You might make a nothing like I did here, but maybe it's the first thing, maybe the spark takes and you are able to get on your way.  Maybe you make something real, maybe you build a table.  The only way to find out is to go out and turn the key.  Because you aren't going anywhere all warm in the house, that's for sure.

This is a nothing, a soap bubble, a whisper, a stolen breath.  This is a nothing, but hell, even this is something, I guess.

Still (kinda) Writing,

RP

1-30-18

So you mysterious folk, hit me up here if you like, or email me at dissent . within at gmail.com.  I'm still on a social media hiatus, because you people are all crazy, so I'm not seeing your messages there if you're sending them to me.  I hope all is well in your corners of the world.  All is well in mine.  Peace.

Comments

  1. I know why I am here reading this... I have to keep an eye on your soul...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Our souls are only soap bubbles if we let them become such and we have free will , do we not??
    Humanity is both corrupt and beautiful , each individual in different ways.
    Our souls are ours to manage for the short time we have them.
    For most wisdom comes a little too late and the soap bubble begins to rupture and then you return to the universe .
    But what do I know? A 39 year old knuckle dragger .......

    ReplyDelete
  3. Our souls are only soap bubbles if we let them become such and we have free will , do we not??
    Humanity is both corrupt and beautiful , each individual in different ways.
    Our souls are ours to manage for the short time we have them.
    For most wisdom comes a little too late and the soap bubble begins to rupture and then you return to the universe .
    But what do I know? A 39 year old knuckle dragger .......

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for reading this silliness, Ben. You're a good soul.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Somebody has to, I suppose.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Would Be a Song

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th

The Terrible Darkness

Out there in the darkness, something is circling us. something cold, something terrible.  It circles us, and sometimes, it takes one of us. Punks tend to have a short lifespan. We die early, through overdose or violence, through neglect or disease.  And we die of suicide. It happens. Way too often, it happens. It is patient, this terrible thing, it waits.  We huddle together around the light we created for one another. The thing hates the light, but there is just too much darkness, and the terrible thing whispers, and sometimes, one of us, we listen. We come to punk in self defense; in many ways it is a reaction, a response to a hostile and uncaring world.  Hardly anybody comes to punk as an adult. You don't come to punk because you are well adjusted . You come to punk because you're fucked up. You're fucked up and angry and young, and then you hear a song, and the sound sounds like you feel, and the words speak like you feel, and you realize that someone out t

End/Beginning of the Year House Cleaning

So its been a while huh?  Usually if I spend a long time away from writing, it is because I am either feeling pretty content, or because I have been busy. In this case it is both. I have been busy, both with the holidays and related events, and with the pay job, and also I have been working on a super secret surprise mystery project that I am not quite ready to talk about, but it is cool as hell and I'm stoked to bring it out and wave it around and harass my family and friends to tell me what they think and to tell everyone that they have ever met to check it out. But that is later. It is 2018, folks. Twenty. Eighteen. Since I am so behind in everything, I figured I would just blob everything together in one big-ass beginning of the year/end of the year rant/review/announcement pile of words and see where it goes.  Let's just jump in shall we? --  Unbelievable, but I'm turning forty years old in August, an age that I wasn't sure I was ever going to see, and one that I