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Terrible rough draft of a college essay

There are three kinds of bikers: The athletic ones, the leisurely ones, and the commuters. I'm not any of those. I bike to circulate my thoughts like blood and become one with the wind. I don't race cars—I race birds. I'm always on my bike, ten, twenty miles a day. There is nothing better than simply being by myself. Listening to terrible punk rock, thinking about life, pedaling as fast as I can, with no destination in sight. I'd go up past the college or into small towns a dozen miles away. In the summer, I wasn't home for more than an hour a day. I found out so many secrets about myself—about the world. I biked up to a cliff with a tree. A waterfall gushing in front of me. And under the tree, with my bike and my music, I read. I wrote in my god-forsaken journal. I looked at the city beneath me. The books I read impacted me in incredible ways. If this essay wasn't so limiting, I'd throw in the dozen-plus book reports I've forced myself to write. I've developed so many memories with my bike that I've named it: Kirby (AKA K.R.B., short for Kickass Red Bike).

Pedaling gets the blood flowing, sure—does it get my thoughts flowing? I learn more about how the universe works on that unbearable bike seat than I do at school or in my bed. The universe never stops, so I pedal counterclockwise to counteract this terrible spin cycle we've all been thrown into. But the universe stays in motion, and so do I. Whipping down hills at twenty miles an hour, no helmet, no hands. Coursing through the country, having solitary picnics with the bees. 

And all of a sudden a major part of me has been stolen. Yanked away by grimy, thieving hands. I go to work one day and my return to the bike stands greets me with a dilapidated basket and a snipped lock. I've played it off to people like it's no big deal because I treat everything trivially to the public eye, but in reality, it's like someone killed my dog and smeared its blood down the hallway. Everything I care about seems to get stolen and I can't even blame myself because it never seems to be a result of my typically abhorrent carelessness. This is the fourth bike in a row to be stolen, and every time the same scar gets ripped open and filled with acid. They call me Charlie Brown on account of this God-awful luck of mine. No, they don't. Only I do.

It's genuinely embarrassing to admit this, but having my bike stolen has given me more trust issues than a broken heart ever will. I can always heal an injured heart, but I can't return an appendage ripped away from me. Sometimes I see a red blur rush past me and I come up with this plan: I'll pick up a rock and throw it at the asshole who dares tear me apart and yell terrible things. I'll put myself back together and once again go to the waterfalls and the fields that now only haunt me in dreams. Yet this speeding red flash is never Kirby, it's some other red bike I've never seen before, and it leaves me in abject agony. Recently I've been subjected to my room, where my head and my heart race in a new, worse kind of way, and it ruins me.

Give me a nice album, a warm breeze, a sunny sky, and a big empty road. Give me my bike back, and I'll figure out how everything works.

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broooooo get off tumblr lmfaoooo

ped doesnt give me enough time to talk ab my god damn journal entries blame julian

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Am I just a bomb, a shiny thing crammed with blood, guts, and bones, whose tiny word balloon reads "Don't get close?" I'm going to cry if I keep this up.

Dennis Cooper, Closer

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Response to Class 1/27/2025

Democracy starts with people, literally. Change does not happen spontaneously—it necessitates effort. Effort that can start with a single person but has to spill out into the community, the neighborhood, etc., because democracy is not for individuals. Instead, it supports individuals by breathing life into individual communities. Political theorists can suck my dick; real change doesn't require a thesis. It's important to discuss democratic ideals, but it's equally important to enact on those discussions rather than having further discussion. Politics are not a mythological beast or an iron-fisted king, politics are made up of bastards like me who want to do some actual shit instead of crying. Fuck your reality-show icon presidents and sports commentator politicians. You can do some pretty kick-ass things on your own.