My Too (Many) Cents

Hello everyone, I recently found this poem I wrote 3 years ago for a water conservation contest. The sky cried, The plants died, The mountains separated from their snow-clad bride, A thin stream emerged, laden with guilt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? With childish purity and tumultuous flow, Helping the mountains thrive and grow, Repaying the debt it did owe, A river emerged, with its life built it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? Coming down, from when the world was at its feet, Supporting civilizations from heat, giving wheat and concrete. Thinking that its work was complete, It approached the sea, and laden with silt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? The stream was now old and one with the sea, Corals bloomed with pearls of wisdom, while fishes swam free, But the cycle of life had to continue and the sky had a tax to levy, As it evaporated, covering its deathbed with a quilt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? The tap was open! The bucket was broken! Could no one

This quote of Nietzsche's is perhaps his most well known quote and many people have different (mis)interpretations of it, but mostly used to refer to how the scientific revolution led to increasing secularization and rendered earlier conceptions of god unbelievable. That conception of god in the west had been a source of most ethical and aesthetic judgements so Nietzsche foresaw the 'death of god' (correctly) to have great implications. This poem is not  the explanation I think Nietzsche meant originally, this is a fun idea I had which could be another alternate interpretation which I decided to flesh out. Here I consider the linguistic implications of the phrase 'God is dead' basically meaning 'God' is a dead word , which is pretty much the nature of all words/language or at least in daily parlance where we forget the feeling or phenomenological state that should be associated with words. It also expresses hope for a return to idealist paradigms which is pr

The paper is where my creativity goes to die Like the dying carcass of a newly swatted fly, Like the fluid of a paint becoming rigid when it dries, Like an addict coming down from his ecstatic high, Like a baby which doesn't quite understand so it cries, Like the difference between the truth and our many unlies, Like surrendering to authority to try and get by. When I see the process beginning I give up and sigh, It uses me as a medium rather uncaring of my agency To express itself without a care for human decency But when It's finished it's not quite it What I just wrote seems full of shit. Not a self deprecative false modesty But rather a recognition of the absolute's beauty. And rather confounding nature of the expression of pure potentiality. And maybe this is how it is meant to be. Everyday lexicon is too unfree. Metaphors wrapped in infinite chains of self reference Trying to grasp (at) the sea in a jug To take some home to quench our thirst But our sweaty hands l

This year I applied to around 15 universities to continue my studies. Where I got rejected from 8 universities at once yesterday, which was probably one of the biggest failures I would have faced in my life but oddly where other failures in my life have left me stumbling, gasping, resentful or jealous, this only strengthened my resolve to be better. Here I want to write what I learnt from it, hopefully you can learn somethings from what is basically a glorified journal entry too. etymology the word failure in its oldest word roots often comes from a feeling of stumbling or falling. An interesting aside about the etymology is that somewhere along the line, the word which originally comes from stumbling or falling got related to self deception, trick, or be lacking. This is something I'll come back to later. what it actually means in most circumstances How does failure actually come about in today's world? Most often it comes about due to not performing upto a certain expectatio