by Adrian Daniel Schramm | Jun 19, 2017 | Stories
That was a tough time. It seemed to have no end. I didn’t know how to get away. The reason why people commit suicide/take their own life… the reason why science hasn’t (yet) fully taken the place of religion. Science saved my life, but it didn’t make me want to live. It is questions, gnawing questions like Poppy on a chicken bone that keep me awake at night and then put me into deep sleeps I try and stay in forever. Can you answer these questions? Can you tell me why I feel the way I do? We rushed downstairs, Gogo bleeding in my arms. My roommate Mike was jerking on in his room. He has a car. He didn’t expect anyone to open his door. “Don’t you…” “We have to go to the hospital. “Don’t you knock?” Gogo bleeding and her eyes going back in her head. “We need to go the hospital now right now.” The night is quiet at least. One small blessing. Warm summers everyone up north at their cabins, sitting on lakes and drinking beer with fire and fire-roasted meat in front of them. No one on the street to get in our way. So far away. I tell Mike drive fast, faster. Gogo’s eyes flutter open and then closed with each burst of light that flashes past the window. Her head rolls back against my arm. I hold her shoulders and put my forehead against hers. “Faster, faster, faster.” Mike is cursing under his breath. He rubs his thigh nervous with the hand he doesn’t use to drive. Cars will drive themselves soon....
by Adrian Daniel Schramm | Jun 16, 2017 | Culture, Ideas
Or, is my optimism misplaced? Smell the lilacs. Kick the leaves. Watch the cat in the window with his lazy paw dangling from the ledge, his ears twitching in the sun. Feel the sun on your face. Smell the air. Nod at the passing parents and their stroller, and the something small and soft and round sleeping inside. Somewhere there is a car accident. Somewhere there are sirens, shrill and strident. But they are worlds and lives away. Here and now we need nothing but simple existence. Because people always want something to happen. Need something to happen. (Simply existing in this world is not enough.) But there is no need to force a plot forward, no need for a catalyst or a deus ex machina. Just the simple beating of an imagination. Just the world around you and all the details that bring it to life. There are people all around, sure. These people have lives – of course things happen to them. (Car crashes and police sirens.) But they can happen naturally, normally, without begging for a result. Without video footage, responses, likes, shares. When something is forced to happen in a world as beautiful as this it cheapens the experience: Like trying to describe/define perfection instead of basking in its glow. Drama so miserable It’s been defined as drama like “omg I’m so done with all this drama” and it’s been defined in reality television like Osbournes and Kardashians and looking for eternal love in an elimination game with a poorly-done soundtrack. It’s watching someone else’s life because it lets you escape from your own. It’s comparing and...
