1a.
“Hey, you know, I was just thinking,” I say excitedly to her as we sit in the pizza shoppe we like to frequent, eager to share some interesting ideas with her.
“Just thinking what?” she asks, smiling.
“Hm. . . I don’t really know anymore,” I answer, puzzled.
Then I realize what’s going on.
The shock waves rocked several city blocks and could be heard from miles around, but fortunately there were no injuries—to people, that is. The negative emotions containment facility had been evacuated expediently at the first sign of trouble, all safety precautions enacted without delay. And while those precautions ultimately could not prevent the blast and its ensuing conflagration, they did contain it and ensure the wellbeing of the community. I was asleep at the time, but my roommate woke me up after hearing the frightening boom resound throughout the city. Together, we watched the news coverage on the television, which he had immediately turned on to find out the source of this thunderous sound. On the glowing screen before us, we saw the raging flames of the monstrous firestorm engulfing what was left of the facility and the surrounding wooded hills, the blaze reaching up high into the starry sky. Behind the reporters, containment teams were working furiously to bring it under control with hoses blasting chemically treated water. By morning, it was over, leaving the charred skeleton of the facility, burnt up forests full of ash and clouds of dark smoke hanging over them, blown slowly east by the wind to the plains upon which they would later rain their caustic waters.
The storage facility was situated on the outskirts of the city, placed in such a remote location in case anything like this ever happened. It was designed as a holding station for hazardous human substances before they could be properly disposed of at the treatment facility, which despite operating at maximum capacity, was always overrun dealing with these environmentally and socially destructive materials. It was meant as a temporary measure to safely house these things until another treatment facility could be constructed. Continue reading
I still remember that morning when the incredible, astonishing truth was revealed to us, the truth you have come to know so intuitively and intimately. I watched it live on the wall-mounted television, sitting silently with my peers in the company cafeteria, the air still and cold, some of us sipping coffee. After some introductory remarks (dominated by the discouraging conditions of the economy, the nation’s morale and the environment; yes, in that order), our leader announced this simple, defining, revolutionary fact. We are all heroes. More precisely, we are all latent heroes, all capable of championing myriad causes, each in our own way. It was a shocking revelation, one long suppressed by generations of oligarchic rule for fear that this crucial knowledge would jeopardize their power. But now they realized they were in desperate need of heroics, to undo the dilapidation their elitism had incurred on us all.
My friend eats her salad savagely, like she’s been stranded on a remote island without salad, or any conventional food for that matter, for days or weeks. With supreme unconcern for etiquette, she devours the lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and croutons eagerly, voraciously, viciously. She’s still using her fork but in a rather grotesque manner, like she’s invented a new way to be barbaric with silverware. It’s quite unbecoming, especially with the hat she’s wearing. A perfect example of discomplementarity, in fact. The hat and her salad-eating are just repulsive in their spatial and temporal juxtaposition, simply aesthetically odious in combination.
But for the sake of our friendship, I keep these opinions to myself.
She looks up at me, her lips slathered with ranch dressing, her fork suspended in the air at a hideous angle, an obscene amount of salad components affixed to the prongs. I wince at the horrendous sight. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to notice this irrepressible manifestation of my disgust.
“Halogen lamps?” she mumbles, intermittently revealing a mouth- ful of chunky, partially manducated vegetarian hodgepodge with her words.
“Yeah, I like them better than ordinary incandescent ones,” I reply, averting my eyes from the appalling mess.
“But the…energy consumption is…still quite high,” she says, her enunciation still hampered by her continued mastication of salad.
“Well, I know, but I can’t quite get used to the feel of fluorescent lighting in certain places,” I tell her, then take a sip of my espresso.
“Mmmnnn,” she murmurs.
I can’t tell if her utterance is in response to my remark or the salad. I’m about to overlook it, but I start to sense an air of condescension about it, disapproval or even scorn towards my choice of lighting. Maybe this feeling is just my imagination, but it bothers me nonetheless.
“What?” I can’t stop myself from saying rather confrontationally.
“That piece of radish was just awful. Clearly several days too old,” she says, jabbing at the remaining greens with evident vexation.
I’m glad to hear the salad is the object of her irritation, but then I start to think I’d rather be the one who has irked her. She’s clearly paying more attention to the salad than me. And I realize that I’ve never been subjected to her savageness and further realize, reluctantly, that maybe I would like to be, just once. To glimpse what lies beyond our very civil relationship.
Tuoz is really good at bottling up his negative emotions, especially frustration and anger. This is only to be expected since he’s been doing it for a long time now. When we were kids, he started holding in his feelings more and more during third and fourth grade. He wasn’t great at it back then, and he actually hasn’t improved much since; sometimes feelings and thoughts would slip out of his grasp or he couldn’t keep his hold on them, and there’d be an outburst in class or an explosion on the playground.
But once he discovered his knack for making containers, he didn’t have to exert as much restraint upon his emotions. All he needed to do from then on was get his feelings and thoughts under control or reined in (which he usually was able to do discreetly), then expediently cram them into one of the homemade containers (typically a bottle, occasionally a box or tube) that he’d carry with him; they were designed and built to withstand the pressures and temperatures of their future contents so long as he kept a lid on them, tightly. Continue reading
This morning, before classes begins, Jozine perpetrates a prank which she thinks is harmless but ends up hurting Tuoz’s feelings, quite deeply.
By homeroom, our teacher Mr. Noziq has learned of this.
“Jozine,” he says sternly once we have all gathered in the classroom.
“Yes, Mr. Noziq,” she answers, rising from her seat.
“Is it true that you emotionally injured Tuoz?” our teacher asks.
“Yes, but–”
Mr. Noziq holds up his hand, and Jozine becomes silent.
“Jozine, I don’t think I am the one who needs to consider your ex- planation of this matter. I think you do. And to help you do that, I’m sending you to get a dose of empathy.”
“Yes, Mr. Noziq.”
“Please do that now. I will tell the teacher of your next class that you will be late.”
And that’s my cue to go with her to the school clinic. It’s my responsibility to take classmates to the clinic and tend to their needs. I get up from my seat and walk towards the classroom door. Continue reading
I fall in love with all my might, and utterly exhausted by that, I go out for an ice cream sundae. At the ice cream parlor, I find Sumiko at the counter in the midst of ordering a formidable seven-scoop sundae with assorted nut and fruit toppings. She looks surprisingly slender today, but maybe it’s because summer has just started.
“Going all out?” I ask, my voice raised just above the boisterous din of the kids enjoying ice cream behind us.
“Yeah…I’m totally wiped out,” she says. “More crushed walnuts please,” she says to the clerk.
“Same here,” I reply. “I’m in dire need of a banana spilt. With extra hot fudge.”
“Extra hot fudge isn’t what you need,” she says, shaking her head.
Not following, I raise a doubtful eyebrow.
“And some shredded coconut but only on the pistachio and mango scoops,” she requests, then tells me, “What you’re looking for is caramel syrup. It’ll do wonders. Especially with whipped cream.”
“Really?” I can’t help but be skeptical. I’ve never had that before. No one has ever recommended it to me.
“Trust me, I’m not a novice in these matters. I’ve been where you are plenty of times,” she says. “Raspberry sauce on the vanilla scoop, please.”
“All right then. Thanks for the tip.”
“Any time,” she says to me and then to the clerk, “Can I get an extra maraschino cherry on that?”
“Sorry, miss. We’re running low right now. One per sundae until we get some more,” the clerk says.
“You can have mine,” I tell Sumiko.
“Thanks. I could really use an extra maraschino cherry right now,” she says, and then I notice just how weary she looks.
Just after you began to develop intuitive grasp of the emotion economy through your parents and siblings as they gave love, shared joy and offered compassion, you began to glimpse its dual nature, the dichotomy that bifurcates it into two modes: the positive and the negative. The latter was raging all around, evident despite your parents’ efforts to surround you with transactions of the former. You saw the subtle and blaring exchanges of prejudice for inequity and resentment, then the trade of hatred for violence on many scales—the myriad activities of what we call The Dark Economy. Continue reading
To defray his student expenses, my friend gets a part-time job “fighting hypocognition”. It’s not as glamorous as it might sound. He spends his once-free hours of the afternoon standing in the shopping arcades downtown, handing out new and important but not yet widely accepted ideas to people there. These ideas are often startling and strange, even frightening to most of these urbanites. Such ideas often clash with the ideas people already possess, those which have become intimate fixtures in their lives. Not surprisingly, many passersby just ignore him, or accept an idea nonchalantly only to drop it into a trashcan several blocks away. On most days, the ideas are at best taken out of superficial courtesy, then crammed into shopping bags amidst groceries or on-sale department store apparel.
“Yeah, it kind of sucks to see these ideas treated that way, tossed aside or just plain rejected,” he laments while turning the compost. “But occasionally you get those few who are actually receptive,” he adds. “We’ve gotten some more part-timers like me that way. Which makes it worthwhile, but it’s still hard to take all the apathy out there. It really makes you feel like we’re never going to get anywhere.” Continue reading
“I can’t really make out the lyrics of love songs these days,” I mention to Yuuka, wondering if she’s ever had any experiences like this.
We stand in the heart of the city arboretum, soaking in ambiance of shedding trees in the morning light.
Looking at me intently, she says,“Really?” with a voice full of concern.
“Yeah. Is that serious?” Continue reading
A Contemplative Compilation 