Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Imagine

I realised something yesterday. I've been ignoring my imagination. Somewhere along the way I sort of lost track of it, mostly. Sure, I still do some weird quirky things, and I think up crazy schemes, but I recognise it as weird. At some point in school we stopped doing creative writing and fiction writing and shifted to analytical and persuasive writing. Poetry and fiction became silly and inane. I'm not sure why this happened, maybe it's part of how they prepare us for the "real world", no more silly thoughts, no more cats in rain coats or shrink rays or magical melt-proof bowls of ice cream. Maybe it's a big conspiracy theory, they're trying to convince us that you can't be normal if you're imaginative. They replaced all the teachers with robots, or conditioned them to teach us to be normal. Somewhere on some magnificent island they have taken all the fun people, the ones who write silly stories and poetry still, and draw funny pictures of giraffes wearing boots to make people smile. If they fail to normalise you they haul you off to this island. There, they teach you to be weird, as weird as possible. Salvador Dali is there, in a giant egg, throwing yellow paint at people. They tell you that you are the normal ones, and that all those suburban dwelling suit wearing folk are a grand experiment. You attend classes that teach you to stand out, so that the "normal" populous will think you're bizarre, and it will scare them. Your oddity will reinforce their conditioning. After you're done learning to be weird enough to survive, they take you back to civilisation, and they swear you to secrecy. This all takes roughly a weekend.

Maybe, if I keep this up, I'll get to go too.

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