Left Eating Shadows

Left left eating shadows, laughing most hollow dark of the dungeon the colourless void alone in the dark without earthly light the darkness is fell an adequate feast food for the lonely a pitcher of void a whirlwind to reap — repast of the air — filled by the empty hungered in darkness

Right and sipping the night, he tastes lack of light a good snack to chew; it's "champion stew" yet flavours of joy he still will enjoy; yet starlight still shines upon which he dines in dinner for one: his cup's overrun he'll spoon up with zeal so scrumptious a meal the banquet complete this soul lies replete

This, as you might have guessed, is a poem.

This also, as you have probably noticed, is kind of a weird poem.

And, though there are likely no people who exist that care, I wrote this poem. Ta-da. I didn't actually plagiarize it after all.

So, I originally wrote this sometime last year. I have a certain notebook that you'll see pictured below.

[That is, assuming that I can get the picture up here without any major computer and camera problems, or world-ending catastrophes getting in the way. You always have to watch out for Internet crashes, corrupted memory cards, dimensional portals, and stuff.]

See? What did I tell you?

Bless you, Bradley Trevor Greive, for creating this book.

This book, as you can see, is called "The Blue Day Notebook." I could tell stories about that notebook in and of itself. Maybe I will tell those stories someday. Maybe not to the Internet, or at least not to the readers of this blog, but...

...sorry. I'm getting distracted.

One of the features of this notebook is that every page has three words at the top. There's usually at least one noun, at least one adjective, and then either a verb or another adjective or adverb. And they're not always words that you would think belong together, in any context. They often go something like this:

Hey, Homestar Runner fans: can any of you tell me if Marzipan
even has a spleen? Or... organs? In general? ...Or legs?

These words don't necessarily mean anything together, unless you want to project meaning onto them. And that is why the words are placed into the notebook; the creator of the book wanted to make a notebook that would inspire people to create things. Maybe it would lead them to draw pictures, as great and glorious as... as...

Can you imagine a country whose slogan was "heaving diaper aloft?"
'Cause I can! And I did! Heh. Mature.

Ahem.

(...For the record, though, I hadn't slept well the night before the day I drew this. And on this day, I was having a really long day of boring classes, and I was nearly asleep when I drew that doodle into my book. It's not... entirely my fault, right?)

"Distant Phone Knots." As I say at the  bottom of  the page,
"...I hope that someday I feel like finishing this poem."

But sometimes, it inspired me to write poetry. Which is kind of shocking; I write poems far less frequently than I used to. Or at least, that was true until I took a university class formally known as "Writing Poetry." (Classy. I like it. Magnificent nomenclature!)

The original draft of the poem didn't look exactly like what you read above, but the idea was there. What I wanted to do with the three-word prompt, "left eating shadows," was to apply those words in multiple meanings at the same time. Specifically, I wanted the word "left" to apply to the past tense of "leave," and also to apply to the direction. You know, ←. Thus, the title would also reference the left-hand column. And then as an afterthought, I thought about having the words structured so that one half of the poem looked like a shadow of the other.

So, that way, the title of the poem would be telling you not only what the poem was about, but also a way to interpret why the words were laid out on the page in the way that they were.

Yes, written in purple ink. As they would have called me in Bravely Second, I'm "The Man with the Purple Pen."

Now, this poem would have remained as nothing but a random amalgamation of words hidden in an obscure notebook of mine, were it not for the Writing Poetry class that I mentioned. In that class, we had the assignment of compiling a portfolio of our own poetry that we'd written, and also handing in copies of our early drafts along with the final product, so that we could show how we were improving and editing our work.

"Fear not; I may be but humble sea scum, but my sword is sharp,
my courage true. Have at thee. Arghlgh." — The Humble Sea Scum

Since I was having a very bad month... in a very bad semester... of life... again...

...yii. What a time it was to be alive. Is it too much disclosure to tell you that I had a moment where I sincerely didn't want to be alive anymore? I hope not; I just told you. 

(P.S. Nobody worry; there's no need to call a suicide watch on me or anything. Moments like that are very rare, and between my medication, counselling, and all of the defensive/recovery methods I've accumulated over my life, I endure a lot better than I used to.)

Anyway, some things happened during that semester of school, and I found myself falling behind... drastically... again... in everything... in school and otherwise...

...Yii. Seriously.

The point is, the month of April approached, I was having problems with every aspect of self that makes me a living being (i.e., physical, mental, and emotional challenges ganging up on me), and I found myself behind on some of the poems that I should have had written already. And so I dug through some of my old work, which would help me to speed up the process a little; I could genuinely submit these old drafts as work I really had done, and I could genuinely edit and improve them. I wasn't skipping out on any work. All I was doing was saving myself the trouble of coming up with something completely original that I felt happy with; instead, I was drawing from original things I had already come up with, and at the time felt somewhat happy with.

When I edited this particular poem, I wanted to make the idea more cohesive than the original was, and I wanted to try one more effect: I wanted to make it possible to read the left half of the poem alone, and still end up with a complete story of sorts, but to have the poem make just as much sense, and tell a different story, if you read both halves of the poem together. (I even tried making it possible for the right-hand half of the poem to make sense alone, but... that was harder, and didn't work out as well.)

So, that is why this poem looks the way that it does today.

If you are curious as to what this is actually about, this is... umm...

Get a good look; I may not let you peek at my personal notes again for a long time, whomever you are.

Assuming I remember correctly, it's about how I was dealing with extreme isolation and loneliness. 

If you look only at the left-hand side of the poem, it's a sad story of... well, extreme isolation and loneliness. It tells of a person who, for lack of anything worthwhile around him, reflects on this nothingness. I don't know about any of you, but whenever I read it over again, it tugs at my heart, and reminds me of how moments like that feel.

Now, if you look at both sides of the poem together, suddenly the entire tone changes. This time, the story is of a person who dwells alone, but cherishes the solitude. Suddenly, there is light in the darkness. There is peace and inspiration to be gained from what would otherwise be nothing but a trial to endure.

I've come to appreciate, in recent years, all of the ridiculous and seemingly unnecessary opposition that I've experienced at certain periods of my life. (I could elaborate on that, but now's not the time.)

And among the trials I feel grateful for now, is the ordeal of so much isolation. I mean, sure, it can be aggravating when that's all you deal with, and you feel friendless, and you feel like nobody is listening to a word you say, and...

"Whew, you said it. Those results sure make me feel like a
koala who cuddles alone." (If you're curious, those numbers are
me collecting data on my overall mood every day for a month.
My psychologist asked me to do that for him. So I did.)

...sorry. I'm getting carried away. The point is, even though it's not completely enjoyable, even isolation is something I can learn from, and have learned from. 

In the quiet moments, I've received all kinds of inspiration, artistic and otherwise. In the lonely moments, I have learned how to empathize with people who suffer as I do. And in the solitary lifestyle, I get to understand who I am "in a vacuum," as it were; I can understand a little of what really makes me tick, and learn how to become better, without all of the noise of other people trying to convince me that they know me better than I know myself.

And, that's the feast I was writing about in this poem. Sure, sometimes I wish I weren't always sowing chaff and reaping whirlwinds. But if I'm going to deal with all this time alone... I may as well do something useful with it, right?

In case you can't read that, the top three words say "warm face forgotten."
The part I wrote beneath it says, "No... never truly forgotten.
Obscured, perhaps, but still remembered."

Right. Whomever you are, have a good day. If you feel like nobody cares about you, I hope that reading this makes you feel a little bit less alone. Just think: maybe by the time you are reading this, you could be hearing the words of someone who not only has never met you, and who decided to take a random stab in the darkness, hoping that it might puncture the dark and reach you specifically, but also sent this off even if it had to take years and hundreds of kilometres (or miles; let's not discriminate) to come to you. Just think, maybe someone anticipated your cries before they ever happened, and wanted to send you well-wishes so they would be ready for the day you'd need them. It could happen.

Or such is my hope. Heh.

Peace be with you all and stuff.

Con amor y valentía,

- TAB III