nowhere-hunch - Tumblr blog

[nowhere-hunch]

The director of the unit I work in puts out a video message to all employees once a month. This month she wanted us to respond to the prompt “What is something you learned in 2020?” I don’t know what kind of answers she expected to get, but I don’t think I’m going to be sending in mine. I’ll just put it here instead.

This year I learned that harming others is just as much of a human need as caring for others. I.e. people prioritize hurting others more than helping themselves, even if they don’t realize it. If there are two ways of achieving a goal, and one of them involves hurting another human being, that will be the one that gets chosen. As our capacity for care grows, our capacity for harm grows as well – both individually and as a society. Human society without conflict, war, exploitation, and torture is as unlikely as human society without food.

I learned that human life is not meant to be sacred. We are animals born to kill, we probably have a higher body count than any other species that has ever existed, but we’re the only ones that play pretend like it’s a bad thing to do. Why are Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos and all of the other clearly evil people in power in this country able to go about their business without constant attempts on their life? Is it really that much easier to go through the show of building a guillotine on a lawn than to just “pull the trigger” as it were? People need to die. If anything is going to change a whole lot of people need to die – especially the “comfortable” masses that definitely include myself as well as pretty much everyone I love. I started reading the bible this year, starting with the Old Testament, and one of the biggest impressions I came away with is, Gee, most of these Israelites are really disposable for being called “God’s chosen people.” Maybe the lesson we’ve missed from the bible is just that God made most people to be disposable. It certainly resonates with my experience.

I learned that every single thing my whole life that has contributed to the person I am has been thoroughly corrupted by evil, and that by continuing to exist I can’t help but facilitate its spread. My close family members are racists and idiots. My ancestors built their legacy on genocide and exploitation. The stories I grew up on were all designed to support the continuation of an unjust society. The education I got was biased if not completely inaccurate. Every home I’ve ever had has been built on stolen land. If I were to cut away all the parts of myself that aren’t inextricably tied up to the suffering of others, there would be nothing left. Even with the best intentions, when I give something from myself, all I have to pull from is a barrel of black disgusting sludge.

[nowhere-hunch]

Social constructs

A few years ago, I started hearing the phrase “X is a social construct” in the context of social justice. First “gender is a social construct”, then “sex”, and lately I’ve been hearing “race” as well. At first, I didn’t understand the concept well, but as time has gone on I think I’ve gotten a better idea. Essentially, I think a good definition for “social construct” could be “a shared framework people use to cooperatively handle infinitely varied natural phenomena.”

I think the best way to explain this would be to work through a common, pretty non-controversial example: color.

Color is a social construct

“Color” is our brains reaction to light waves hitting our eyes – we perceive different wavelengths within a range of “visible light” as different colors. Since there are an infinite number of wavelengths within that range, technically there are an infinite number of colors.

However, when people talk about color, we are never (or very, very rarely) talking about a specific wavelength of light, but a whole bunch of wavelengths that are next to each other on the spectrum. Essentially, we have divided a continuous spectrum (a rainbow) into several bands (ROYGBIV). This allows us to more easily utilize the concept of “color” in our everyday lives. You can say “These berries are ripe when they’re red” while accounting for all the different variations of red that might occur between individual fruits, for example.

For this to work, the person you’re talking to needs to know (at least approximately) where you put the “boundaries” between the different color bands. As long as you two agree, the placement of these boundaries can be completely arbitrary. This is where the “social” in “social construct” comes from – our concepts are validated by social agreement rather than any actual reflection of physical reality.

When you consider this, several observations follow:

These “boundaries” may be agreed on by one group of people, but they change according to time/place/context.

If you speak another language, you may know that the agreements people have for talking about color vary by culture. For example, in Japanese the word for “blue” overlaps considerably with what we in English would call “green” (e.g. the color of green traffic lights). While English traditionally splits the rainbow into 7 bands (ROYGBIV), other languages may use more or fewer.

Although the whole society appears to agree, it’s likely that no two individuals actually completely agree on the precise placement of the boundaries.

If you give a hundred, or a thousand people a picture of the color spectrum and ask them to draw lines where red turns to orange, orange turns to yellow, etc., you’d most likely not find any two who put them in exactly the same places. Yet we are all (for the most part) still able to communicate successfully with each other about color.

Social constructs usually actually describe the intersection of multiple natural phenomena, even if we don’t always realize it.

In most art programs, when you select a “color” to paint with, you are actually working with three different “spectrums”:

“Hue” – the rainbow spectrum we’ve been talking about

“Saturation” – how bright the color is (full saturation = fully colored, no saturation = gray)

“Lightness” (full lightness = white, no lightness = black, mid lightness = “true” color)

Thus, we get words like “maroon”, “periwinkle”, “navy”, “brown”, etc. The usual answer to “what is color?” doesn’t include any of those. Our social construct of color actually includes not only the bands of the rainbow, but also other attributes like saturation and lightness. This is because our human experience of color is greatly affected by these other attributes, and our social constructs describe our *experience* of a phenomenon, not the actual reality of it.

Two people using the same social construct may sort the same object into different categories for a number of reasons.

First, we already noted how most people probably have slightly different boundaries between categories. Physical differences in our eyes or brains might also affect how we actually perceive color (e.g. colorblindness). Think about “the dress” – many people sorted that image into completely different color categories. Remember that social constructs describe our experience of a phenomenon, not the actual reality of it.

In some cases, we use different attributes to sort phenomena depending on context. Sometimes when we say “color” we mean “hue” and sometimes we mean a hue/saturation/lightness combo. When you’re shopping for clothes, you’ll probably say “I’m looking for a maroon shirt” but when you’re describing your purchase to someone you might say “I’ll wear my new red shirt.”

Social constructs are based on constructed stereotypes but impact our reality in measurable ways.

Each wavelength of light is a completely different color. As stated, physically there is no reason why we have sorted them into bands the way we have… or is there? There are generalizations people make about entire bands of colors all the time: “red is energizing”, “blue is calming”, “purple is luxurious”, etc. There’s a kind of chicken and egg problem:

Did we sort colors the way we did because they have these common characteristics? OR

Do these colors have common characteristics because we have sorted them together?

The fact that the “common attributes” colors are thought to have vary by time (e.g. blue used to be associated with girls and pink with boys, the opposite of today), place (e.g. in the west, white is associated with purity and happiness, while it is associated with death in some Asian cultures), and context (e.g. red could be connected to either anger or love) makes me think more the latter than the former, though I’m sure there’s a mixture of both.

However, it doesn’t really matter whether colors actually have those attributes. Just the fact that these attributes are part of our social construct has a measurable effect on our experience of the physical phenomena. There are experiments that show that people are actually energized by red and calmed by blue, even though those concepts are culturally specific. 

As stated, it’s often possible to trace these stereotypes back to some actual reality. Purple is considered luxurious because purple dyes used to be very rare and expensive. But note how the stereotype has remained in place and still has an effect on people’s lived experiences even though reality has changed.

Social constructs usually don’t distinguish between assumptions made about an item’s category and assumptions made based on an items’s category.

The human brain likes to take shortcuts, and one way it does this is by being loose with the distinction between “conditions” and “consequences” of a given object being sorted into a given category. I.e. there’s a difference between “these are the attributes I use to decide that this object belongs in this category” and “these are the attributes I can assume this object has by virtue of being sorted into this category,” but this often gets ignored.

A simple example would be to say something like, “Well, purple is a luxurious color, so I will call any color I decide is luxurious purple.” This isn’t especially common with colors, since it’s really easy for most of us to sort colors by sight and so we don’t need a shortcut, but it happens a lot with other social constructs I’ll touch on later.

Social constructs are not inherently “bad”.

Saying that something is a social construct is not saying that it isn’t real or doesn’t exist or doesn’t impact people’s lived experiences – in fact it’s saying the opposite. A social construct must be based on something real and important to our lives, otherwise we wouldn’t bother to create a social construct to allow us to conceptualize and communicate about it.

Social constructs are necessary for us to live in society, it’s just important that we not mistake our social construct for the actual reality they are meant to describe. Social constructs describe our experience of a phenomenon, not the actual reality of it. “A map is not the territory,” as they say.

Anatomy of a social construct

Now, we can list some things we would expect to find with any social construct:

One or more natural phenomena that are a) experienced by people in infinitely (or practically infinitely) varied ways and b) something that we care about enough to want to think and talk about with others.

A set of categories people sort the experiences of these phenomena into.

For each category, a set of attributes associated with items in that category. These may be used to sort items into categories AND/OR to make assumptions about items after they have been sorted.

We would expect the categories and/or attributes associated with them to change depending on time, place, or context.

With this in mind, we can start looking at some more interesting examples.

Gender is a social construct

If gender is a social construct, we would expect it to be built on some actual natural phenomena. The question is, what is that phenomena exactly, especially if it is distinct from physical sex? I don’t think we as a society have a very good idea of this, which is why, to me, this example is more difficult to talk about than color, sex, or race.

My theory is this: the phenomenon behind what we think of as “gender” is individuals’ specialization in social tasks.

I think this is why sex and gender are so closely related for many societies. The earliest social activities humans were doing were primarily related to reproduction: courtship/mating and parenting, so it makes some amount of sense that individuals would specialize in the tasks required for these activities based on their role in the reproductive process. Someone needs to feed the child; it makes sense for someone whose body produces milk to be responsible for that. And if they’re spending their time doing that, then someone else will have to specialize in the other things that need to be done. 

These roles and specialties weren’t (and still aren’t) exactly the same in every family, so as families came together and started to talk with each other about their social roles and specialties, the social construct of gender developed.  The concepts of “man” and “woman” corresponded pretty closely with a person’s physical sex. But as human society became more complex, additional social tasks needed to be fulfilled related to spirituality/religion, medicine, industry/technology, etc. These were worked into the gender social construct in different ways depending on the society, resulting in the diversity we see today.

My basis for this theory is just considering *why* it matters to people what someone’s gender is. Humans care about color because it helps us determine what food is good to eat (among other reasons), we care about physical sex because it allows us to find a partner we will be able to reproduce with, why do we care about gender if it’s different than sex? I think that people use gender to make “educated” guesses about:

The language forms used when talking to or about them (e.g. pronouns)

Their roles/responsibilities within their social groups

The most effective social strategies to use with them for the given situation

Social experiences you do/don’t share with them

I.e. it’s a shortcut for figuring out social situations.

So, if we consider “gender” as a construct for describing “how people specialize in social tasks”, then there are technically as many genders as there are people alive on earth – it’s extremely unlikely that any two people will have specialized in exactly the same way. For colors, we mainly use 1-3 attributes (hue, saturation, lightness) to categorize items into categories, but for gender, although there are fewer categories, many more attributes are considered:

The roles/responsibilities you take on within your family (e.g. in raising children) or other groups/teams

The way you present yourself physically via clothing, mannerisms, etc.

Your relationship dynamics with individuals (familiar or strangers) of different genders

Hobbies and aesthetics you are drawn to

Etc.

At this point, we are realizing that our society is so complex that trying to sort every person into one of two available categories just isn’t sufficient. There are so many factors that go into “sorting” people that at this point it’s probably easier and more reliable to just have people self-identify. Sex is not a reliable indicator for all these other things, nor is appearance, interests, skills, etc.

So, we have the natural phenomenon: groups of humans divide responsibility for social tasks between individuals. We have categories for sorting that phenomenon: “man” and “woman” traditionally, and other “nonbinary” categories becoming more prominent as time goes on, and we have lots and lots and lots of attributes associated with those categories. Think of all the stereotypes we use to make assumptions both about a person’s gender and based on a person’s gender.

We can also see how both the available categories and the attributes associated with them differ by time and place. There are many cultures all over the world that have included more than two genders for a very long time. One example is “two-spirit” people in Native American societies. Attributes that are considered “feminine” or “masculine” by one culture may elsewhere be acceptable or encouraged in other genders. For example, in western cultures men are discouraged from styling their hair and face with lots of product, but it is encouraged in some Asian cultures.

This is why gender is considered a social construct: we think about it using concepts that are not a one-to-one correspondence with reality, but are instead validated by social agreement – we as a group all agree to talk about it in a common way.

Sex is a social construct

I think most people are more ready to call gender a social construct than sex, even though to me sex has more in common with the color example than gender does.

Our social construct of sex is based on the natural phenomena of human beings possessing an infinite variety of sex organs – no two people have a set that is exactly the same. The fact that a body is considered “male” regardless of the length of the penis or whether or not it is circumcised is evidence of this.

What makes the social construct of sex difficult for people to grasp, I think, is that it appears to be quite close to a direct one-to-one correspondence with reality, particularly if you’re willing to ignore people with intersex conditions as “outliers” (which I think is unwise). However, if you pay close attention you can see some situations where our social construct starts to fail. This is because although people usually assume “sex” is decided using a single attribute, our social construct actually considers several:

The (visual) sex organs you were born with

The sex organs you currently possess (“sex change” operations may be relatively new, but eunuchs are an ancient phenomenon)

The sex of partners you could potentially reproduce with

Presence or absence of a Y chromosome

Hormone levels in your body

And although the categories and attributes appear fairly constant across place and time, they do vary according to context. This is reflected quite obviously in recent controversies about intersex athletes. Medical and social establishments decide sex based on the appearance of sex organs at birth, while athletic organizations often instead base it on current hormone levels. That’s how someone can live their entire life with no doubt they are 100% female, only to be disqualified from sporting events because they meet the criteria for being “male”.

Again, saying that something is a social construct isn’t saying that it’s not real. In human reproduction there are two roles involved – an egg cell needs to meet a sperm cell, and there are two “configurations” of sex organs that correspond to these roles. This is not being disputed. The social construct is how we “sort” people when these configurations are not exactly consistent and not always as obvious or simple as we might assume.

So, in summary:

Natural phenomenon: People are born with unique sex organs

Categories: “Male” and “female” traditionally, “intersex” more prominent recently, “eunuch”/“neuter” historically

Attributes associated with categories: sex organs visible at birth, sex organs currently possessed, presence/absence of Y chromosome, levels of “sex hormones” in the body

Race is a social construct

Race is another social construct that people might have a hard time recognizing because it is apparently rooted in physical reality - the physical differences that manifest in people due to their genetic ancestry are usually highly visible. The social construct of race is how we conceptualize this phenomenon when no two people (who aren’t siblings) share exactly the same genetic ancestry.

One thing that makes it pretty obvious race is a social construct is that the available categories we “sort” people into vary so greatly by time, place, and context that it’s difficult to even come up with an acceptable list. In everyday life, it seems like we in the U.S. tend to categorize race roughly by continent of genetic origin:

White (Europe)

Black (Africa)

Asian (Asia, sometimes including Oceana and the Middle East, sometimes these are their own categories)

Native American (Americas)

“Latino” is an interesting category. Technically the definition refers to national origin (someone of any race from a Latin American country), but people who only have genetic ancestry from those places are (sometimes, depending on context) considered Latino as well as or instead of Native American.

Notice how these don’t necessarily correspond to the options you can pick from on “official” forms, which for example sometimes include “multiple races”/“two or more races” as an option. In many other contexts someone who is multiracial is seen as being sort of half-categorized in each applicable race, regardless of if this accurately reflects their experiences.

Another way you can tell that “race” is a social construct is that it takes into account more than one phenomenon when “sorting” people. For example, religion and shared *cultural* ancestry has a long history of being tied to race. That is why Jewish people are (depending on context) considered a race even without all having a shared genetic ancestry. There are also Muslim minorities throughout the world today that are treated essentially as separate races locally.

Note that the categories used for race change over time. Catholic people were in a somewhat similar position to Jewish people at one time; remember that the U.S. didn’t have a president who was Catholic until JFK. Catholics were actually regularly targeted by the KKK, and anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiments were closely intertwined. Another example is Moors, which is a racial category we don’t really hear these days, at least in the U.S. These were *technically* people of mixed Arab and European origins, but the term was also more widely used to refer to Muslims in Europe generally. Shakespeare’s character Othello is a famous character who is a Moor.

Another very heavily used attribute associated with race is a person’s physical appearance. Depending on context (such as before we had a good understanding of DNA), this might even be more important than genetic ancestry. For example, think about the “paper bag test” that was used in apartheid South Africa – if your skin is darker than a paper bag, you’re black, regardless of your parentage. On the other hand, there have been examples in more recent times of people being forced to change their racial identification because it was discovered that they had ancestors from a particular place, even though it was in no way evident in their appearance or recent family history.

So, in summary:

Natural phenomenon: People have unique physical characteristics based on their ancestry

Categories: White, Black, Asian, “PoC”, Jewish, Catholic, Irish, Moor, etc. depending on time, place, and context

Attributes: genetic ancestry, cultural ancestry/religion, physical appearance

Conclusion

So, this is how I have been thinking about the concept of “social constructs” - I make no claim that this is in any way “correct” but I have found it helpful and maybe others will as well. What this all comes down to is essentially a) “beware of stereotypes” and b) “knowledge can be validated either by accurately reflecting reality or by social agreement - don’t confuse the two”. 

Or if you need something simpler: “be respectful and believe what people tell you about their identities and experiences.”

[nowhere-hunch]

Absolutely sick of watching people twisting themselves in knots trying to convince themselves that “things are looking up” or “things are getting better”. They’re not. The human species was beyond the point of no return way before the pandemic started, what we’ve been experiencing this year is just acceleration toward complete self-destruction, and what you’re noticing now is just it going back to the old rate.

To me it seems like they know that life is rapidly approaching a point where it will be unbearable, and so they put all that mental energy into either denying it or vainly trying to “solve” it (which at this point is just sad to watch). It’s pointless. Just figure out your “out plan” for when that time arrives and forget about it, you’ll be happier in the meantime.

[nowhere-hunch]

As the starling flies away She lets a feather fall It falls into the raging flames That have consumed us all

[nowhere-hunch]

I was staying at my grandparents’ house in the days before my grandfather’s death. There, I had a dream where I woke up and went to go outside for something, but found that the entire house was surrounded by a ring of dead birds that had collided with the sides of it.

I had a dream last night (yeah I know, but I haven’t had a dream in a long time). I started seeing flashes of light out my window. At first I thought it was lightning but when I peeked out I saw that it was actually a huge number of fireworks going off in the sky. I assumed they had been set off accidentally. As I watched, fires started all over the neighborhood, including in my front yard. I saw a house across the street suddenly become engulfed in flames. Then my phone buzzed with an emergency broadcast message. But it wasn’t about the fires; it was about extreme waves in the ocean that were threatening the city (even though in the waking world we are well inland). I woke up and it was 3am. I didn’t fall back asleep.

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...” If none, that would be no rub to me.

[nowhere-hunch]

I made a call to Death, but found That she was not at home Her sister, Sleep, she greeted me When I returned alone

She cradled me in winged arms And wiped away my tears She kissed my cheek and smoothed my hair And soothed my prickly fears

I rolled up in her darkness, Her silence, and her cold And breathed a sigh as she began To take away the world

And then, alone, I followed her As she went in my mind With no look back to all the things I gladly left behind

She sang her sweetest fantasies To me all through the night Until the morning called to her And she brought back the light

Regretfully, I rose with her And then to me she said “Tomorrow I’ll return, my dear If you can wait ‘til then”

[nowhere-hunch]

In Japan there are monkeys that live in cold, snowy environments, but they have learned to stay warm using naturally occurring hot springs. But not all individuals are allowed access to these, only the higher ranking members of a troop do. This hierarchy holds even if there is room in the water for more.

I think, it may be that we humans, as a species, are reaching some kind of homeostasis of suffering.

At some point in our past, the majority of our suffering was out of our control. We didn’t know enough to mitigate the effects of natural disasters, disease, etc. So when those things happened we coped by attributing them to supernatural forces, creating religions.

But at some point we crossed a threshold--now we have the knowledge and tools to prevent almost all suffering if we wanted to. And yet, it hasn’t gone away, just shifted if anything.

I fear that the suffering we are seeing in the world now is approaching or at a “stable” level that is inherent to our species.

Or maybe... for so long we lived under what we saw as cruel supernatural forces that allowed suffering to happen, that when we started to reach that level of power, we thought we had to let it happen too.

[nowhere-hunch]

There’s wild fires all over the state, several of my family members are in evacuation warning zones. I’m not for now, but the air is so smokey I literally can’t go outside. My cellphone broke yesterday morning and I can’t get a replacement for at least a week. My internet keeps breaking intermittently. I can’t sleep or eat because of stress and bad air. I’m getting near the end of my rope.

My “I’m-out plan” has been to go to my mom’s house while she's away and shoot myself with her gun, but she’s been working from home since April so I haven’t had the opportunity. I’d wanted to avoid the more painful but readily-available methods, but honestly I’m getting to the point where I’d seriously consider them.

I want to go back and punch every person who’s ever said or typed “it gets better” to me because they sure as hell haven’t done anything to make it better. Things don’t just ~get better~ on their own, it requires work, and if I can’t do it (at this point it’s pretty obvious I lack that capability) and no one else is going to, then......??? I honestly cannot understand how people can say “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” with a straight face. I have literally been watching the entire world get worse and worse in real time my entire life. I was 10 years old when I first remember wanting to kill myself. How much grief could I have been spared if I had just done it then?

If you’re reading this no need to report or contact me or anything - I’m not planning anything at this moment and I’m still not willing to try something I might survive (which is all I have access to). However, if I live through this, I have promised myself I won’t live through it again.

[nowhere-hunch]

In summer/fall of 2017 I went through a big poetry kick. It was a time of major transition in my life and though I’m not any *good* at writing poems that wasn’t enough to stop me. Many of the ones I wrote are already posted, but here are a bunch of short ones that I didn’t want to make individual posts for.

*

A house with a star on the wall Invites ghosts to come into the hall Or maybe the dead Put the star up instead Either way I stay clear of them all

(A/N: I used to be really in to ghost hunting shows and noticed how a suspicious number of apparently haunted houses had some kind of star-shaped wall decor)

*

A spring that pops and bubbles And dances with the air But when you dip your foot inside You find there’s nothing there

(A/N: I cannot for the life of me remember what on earth I was talking about when I wrote this lol)

*

Each night as I’m lying in bed All these thoughts wander into my head I’m too tired to rise Or to open my eyes So I lay and pretend to be dead

*

I tried to meet my brain but I Can’t tell if it’s not there Or if I am myself the brain And simply unaware

*

If I was some kind of plant My bones would be the bloom Picked from me after my death And placed among the tombs

*

To write I have tried a long time But the energy I just can’t find Though my brain’s ‘bout to burst I must write in short verse In fact five lines will have to suffice

*

What do I know? I cannot say Perhaps nothing at all But I can see and hear and smell I’ll come when I am called

[nowhere-hunch]

The men about have leafy beards At least this time of year They fill the landscape all around With gaiety and cheer

But they are fragile, fickle, and They do not hold us dear I know when it gets colder they Will gladly disappear

July 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

I see the world through ice-etched glass I have to port around It’s heavy but I have no choice But keep it off the ground

Someday I’ll either lose my strength Or lose my sanity And it will fall and break apart The shards will make me bleed

Perhaps I’ll wipe blood from my eyes And see for the first time Or maybe I will cleanse myself With liquid life sublime

It’s possible I’ll float away Without the weight to hold But likeliest I’ll freeze with fear And soon succumb to cold

June 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

Duty is the flower bloom Unfolds itself inside Removed from its ancestral place Away from feeding light

How foreign are the rain and clouds That darken its false sky But somehow it remembers well The seasons long gone by

October 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

“The Brothers”—so they’re known to us They sailed across the sea They looked inside their pockets, where They found a name for me

Their sons roamed ‘round the country and Made mountains out of bones Their daughters snuck through history Made mountains into homes

Their sons came to my brother, said “Look what we’ve made for you!” Their daughters leaned in close to me Said, “You know what to do”

I caught then just a glimpse of them Their strength and pride and love I want, now, both to follow them And scream “That is enough!”

October 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

I landed on a planet That circled a blue star I stopped there just to take a rest From traveling so far

One eye watched the ocean while The other watched the sky And in the ground beneath my feet Amoebas hurried by

September 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

How heavy summer’s sunshine How bracing winter’s cold The fog comes in the morning To both of them enfold

Slowly is revealed the road That closes fast behind In grayness just outside of reach But rarely out of mind

September 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

Language is a drug we use To feel like we can know And I fear my tolerance For it's no longer low

No longer adequate are words To show me what is seen No longer can I fool myself That I know anything

To speak is only to compare It is not absolute And through comparing this and thus You cannot find the truth

Who was the first divider To give a thing a name And set confusion’s course ahead ‘Til to my mind it came?

October 2017

Bonus poem:

To name can be an awful thing Just look at how we’ve made A mighty river to a fence Using only two names!

I’d love to watch the water swirl And flow out of the dawn But I just can’t stop thinking About which side I’m on

August 2017

[nowhere-hunch]

There were two trees stood side-by-side Upon a green hill’s peak One stood tall and strong and proud The other thin and meek

The tall would always tease the small Whene’er wind would blow “The way you sway so—back and forth It’s silly, don’t you know!

“A real tree in the face of wind Stands tall and straight and still Not like you, who tilts just like A drunkard on this hill”

The thin tree did not answer back Nor curl his leaves in shame Why worry about such a thing That you can’t hope to change?

Then one day over both the trees A mighty storm did loom And suddenly it birthed a gale As strong as a typhoon

The smaller tree did shake and sway Submitting to the wind While his neighbor, braced and firm Threw him a mocking grin

But soon that smile faded, for It was a massive task To stand against the weather’s rage How long could his strength last?

He fought with all his might and vim Until, with crashing sound He fell—trunk, branches, roots and all Dead on the cold wet ground

So, when your life becomes a gale And you are pushed and pulled Remember, it is good to sway It lets your roots keep hold

August 2017

A/N: My mom told me this story when I was little and it always stuck with me. I don’t know where she got it from.