Best of Freshman WritingVolume 17 |
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Matt
McClure English 15 PSU – DuBois Forsaken Reverie I will now recede from my post, for my throat swells, the colors around me weaken, the lights dim, my knees fail, and my writing scribbles. On this day, Father, please grant the alluring wishes upon those whom you have not blanketed your ear. Here it is. I am called. Carpe diem. All I wanted to do today was watch the football game this afternoon, but nope. This happens. I don’t even know what this is. It’s some scientific bullshit that I never felt the need to learn. I’m a welder. I do my job. Why didn’t the so-called “expert physicists” hold up on their end of the deal? That’s the way the world works. The mainstream scientists let it all get to their heads so they forget to do their job (keeping us simple folk safe), while we blue-collars work our ends off day in and day out. The rest of the people in Kansas City have all left. It’s stupid. Where are they leaving to? Goddamn people don’t think sometimes. I came back from the candy store because it looks like the janitors there are selling free food. Hell of a wind out there. The sky is kind of a gray-ish red color with a purple whirl of something high in the sky. Death must be a hippie. The leaves weren’t supposed to have fallen yet, as football season just started last week with McNabb throwing a fifty yard throw on the OL for a touchdown. The other guys had to muster up for a safety. I was more worried about the game later tonight than when I heard about the news this morning about Hell taking a permanent vacation from the world today. Don’t know what the reason is. I turned it off before I threw the damn remote. I feel fine, though—I feel like a million bucks, actually. My neighbor, Bill, came by early this afternoon, returning my shears for his siding, and told me he was getting out of this place because he couldn’t stop puking and his vision was blurring. He took some pills for his indigestion and he left. You know what I think the cause is? I think the Soviets finally put the pedal to the metal with their nukes. That’s why we’re all doomed. Haven’t gone to church since I was young, but they always talked about that on TV. Where are those fallout shelters they promised, anyhow? I always thought my bed was the best shelter from anything. I still think it is. But it’s time to leave this place. Go for a walk to see if I can find anything out there. I’ll be heading east, I think, towards Maine. Always was a fan of travel, but never had time for it. It seems like there isn’t a better time than now. I had always considered this day to be a well-deserved day with little to regret. My expectations of the end of the world began when I was only in my teens, and although this day fits the stereotype of a typical tale of doomsday, there doesn’t seem to be a well-appreciated conclusion by those who would live to look back on this day. Then again, it depends on who is going to be looking back in order to make that distinction. In fact, the acts of the superfluity of humanity certainly ring a bell—a rather robust, culminating bell—in that the things that were once held high are now abdicated as a nescience of our relatively short history on this planet. If only the great minds in history had taken a more realistic approach in the expression of the acts of their “genius” instead of their epitomized reliance on scientific and political affirmations that, in the end, proved to be useless. The optimism the world’s futurists expressed, I knew, was always too optimistic; they permitted their aspirations to supersede reality and inevitability. Let us take a look at what is happening: The sky has decided to express a fuchsia tone; it is increasingly difficult to breathe; body stability is lessening as each second passes—the same rate as world morale; and delirium will eventually settle in, causing an undistinguished world that would be better off not distinguishing. This condition of the world will only worsen, as it has progressively worsened over time, but everyone was just too blind to see it. And if the man in the corner will give us a drum roll, I’ll give you the answer to the cause of this espionage assassination on the world: Incognito. There is not one person on this planet who knows what or who begot this inescapable cataclysm. People will concoct theories with their remaining time here, as they have done fruitlessly throughout time, but it will all be for naught. It is the late afternoon on this day in New York City. I am on the seventh story of my apartment, and from my view, people can be seen running amok in the streets as they have been since this morning. They will eventually tire themselves, for what has been happening is that people have been dying their clothes green and drinking carbonized beverages. Bees fill my room, making everything difficult to recollect accurately, and I feel as though my T-shirt has become a straightjacket—but I fear this may be the delirium settling a score with me. And as I look upon the sky outside my window, I can sense a bit of claustrophobia settling in, for the sky that once appeared to be so vast and lacking constraint, is now closing in on me—on us all. Ducking and hiding will serve no purpose. For what of those purposes that we previously had held will stand now that the foundation of all that we have familiarized ourselves with is now crumbling beneath our feet? Matt McClure's essay appears here with his express written permission and cannot be reproduced in any manner or fashion without his express written permission. |
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