Who cares?

The depth of humanity does not lie within the brightest corners of their mind, but rather the darkest.  I once heard a quote that stated something along the lines of how a person can eat dinner with someone every night for the course of their entire life, sharing conversations about every aspect of their lives, but if they truly wanted to know someone's core then they'd hang them over a volcano.  I believe that there is quite a significant amount of truth to that.

So when you meet someone who has the ability to walk through life's trauma as easily as they could stroll through a park then you've clearly met someone who is quite amazing.  That is, perhaps, the most empowering thing to watch someone do.  You see, at the end of the day, the things that one person can accomplish in their lifetime is something that thousands, or even millions, could have also potentially done.  Of course, because no two lives have been lived identically, those capable of such powerful lives may not ever get the chance to express them.

A person who currently resides in a Brazilian favela, as an example, could have potentially been the next Einstein had they been born in another country and to a far wealthier family.  Instead, their intelligence is reserved to the day to day survival of, essentially, street life.

Another person who is born into a wealthy family and with all the opportunities in the world may resign themselves to only valuing themselves based on the car they drive, or the clothes they wear, or their social status amongst their peers while otherwise being a person without substance. 

So, of course, it goes without saying that those who survive their struggles to come out the other side will learn things that others may never have the ability to learn.  A poor person will know far better on how to survive off of basic meals while a rich person would scoff at the notion of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  The protein in peanut butter goes a long way when you're a growing kid.

It extends well beyond that, of course.  You give a poor person a ten dollar bill and it is far more likely that they will do everything in their power to make it up to you.  You give a rich person a ten dollar bill and they'd likely set it on fire by buying something of little to no meaning.  The amount a person can value something depends strictly on their understanding of what the value is.

So of course, when a poor person gives you the shirt off of their back then it is likely all they really have to give.  A rich person, on the other hand, could just go to the closet and pick out a nicer one. 

No doubt, of course, that there are plenty of rich people out there who have a deep appreciation for the poor.  There are also a plethora of poor people who are only poor because of their bad choices in life.  There is just a portion of me who really wishes that the world could understand that all people - rich, poor, and indifferent - could understand that we're all capable of good or bad equally and use that knowledge to learn to appreciate everyone. 

-Dustin S. Stover

Alone

The truth is,
we're all alone.
We reproduce to ensure we're not,
but they leave.
We marry so someone is there,
but they aren't.
We pretend that those we choose
to have in our lives
are substantially defeating our loneliness,
but as we talk to them
they can't understand.
Because they
are not us.

So we're all alone,
and we fill that loneliness
with everything we possibly can.
From buying shit we don't need
to friends who create more pain than they are worth
to vices that take us away from
the very loneliness we should face.
Head on.
Because while we are
lying on our death beds
what is going on in our own heads
is exclusive to us.
As it is every other minute
of every other day.

Sure, there may be people who try
to connect on some level.
And maybe they succeed
to a degree,
and maybe that is enough for some of you,
but it doesn't take away from the fact
that you're still alone.

I'd love to take every hand
of every person I have discovered
to be special
and walk through the dark with them,
to help alleviate that loneliness,
but the best I could ever achieve
is for them to just feel less alone.
Which is to say they are still
very much so
alone.

Loneliness does not come
from external sources.
It comes from realizing
no one is you,
and thus
no one can understand
You.

So let us find
temporary releases from that loneliness
and hope that they last
longer than most,
but never forget
that they are just that.
Maybe then, maybe just,
we can learn to appreciate one another
a little bit more,
and that dark walk
can be just a little bit less
Alone.

-Dustin S. Stover

The Blackened Page

The page blackens at a deadening fast pace.  The words flow from his finger tips in a fever dream state, and that is where the art comes in.  Taken out of context, the words lose all shape and meaning, yet when placed in the sequence of the blackening page, meaning takes shape.  A poetic sense of justice for a man who is just desperate to find someone to understand.

A consequence, then, of the hallucinatory agent he took mere hours ago.  His mental state at the cusp of going in any singular emotional direction - albeit, even if very temporarily, it feels the most pure to him as he experiences it.  The senses have heightened and he believes what he sees.  He writes as he feels.  The elegant poetry, while lost in the initial intent, forms a bond with what is between the lines.

He sees no monsters you typically hear the stories about with such substances.  The room just feels more vibrant.  His head takes the shape of his greatest desires and grandiose ideas.  Still, in the purity of his emotions, words flow.

This man knows a thing or two about where art comes from.  He indulges in every emotional state he can.  He justifies experiences with knowing that they will shape his tomorrow in ways he could not otherwise fathom, and won't fathom until he can process.

This is where his appreciation comes from, while also fully understanding just how slippery the slope of imposing emotions can be.  So he finds himself in solitude with his hallucinations, still bringing him pure, unadultered emotional madness.

A memory inside him sparks.  A long lost love - his childhood dog, the kind of love that is absolute and pure, without the messy complications of human complexity.  It is far from a pleasant memory, however.  He remembers wanting to protect the dog and being unable to as tears begin to flood the ground beneath his chair.

Still, the page blackens even more.

He processes the emotion even more, the only way he can in this state - nearly incapable of doing anything other than writing about it in some convoluted, twisted story.  He will spend tomorrow editing it to make sense, but right now it is more important to get the words upon the page.

The room is filling with his tears and he begins to feel claustrophobic, but still the words are pouring out of him.  They've taken control now, as his hands turn into blurs before his very eyes.  Still, the image of that dog - him standing in front of it while his mother holds a belt and is ready to whip the dog into shape - has been etching itself, detail by detail, as a pure emotional image inside his mind.  

The tears clear the top of the chair.  His face, feeling as though it is melting.  He is too far gone, but tomorrow he will question whether he over indulged.  His hands have never moved as fast as he sees them moving now.  The dog, whimpering behind his legs as it knows what it did wrong.  The man, only as a child, doesn't care what the dog did wrong.  He knows the dog doesn't deserve this.  He knows that he must stop his mother from doing the damage to the poor, innocent dog, but he is too small and easily gets pushed aside.

The tears are to his mouth now while his face begins dissolving into the salty liquid.  His hands, obscured and slowed by the water, now look like they are darting in all sorts of odd directions as the pool of tears splash around the room.  He must finish blackening the page.

The tears rush over his head as he takes his final breathe.  His head topples onto the desk between his arms, which are still extended to the keyboard.  The room is dry.  The memory has subsided.  For now, he dreams of things he could only hope to remember.

He awakes in the morning, feeling refreshed and new.  He looks at the blackened page.  It wasn't black.  In fact, there was only one line - "I love dogs."

- Dustin S. Stover

The Dangers of Religion: Volume 2

I will preface this entry with stating that I do not believe that religion inherently makes you a bad person. 

Now, having gotten that out of the way.

Ego.  Religion teaches the religious to be humble to a degree, but only to a falsehood.  The contradiction comes about once you delve into the belief that the religious is going to a heaven while the non-religious are going to hell.  This will inherently lead one to believe that, due to the sacrifices they've made in their lives for the religion they so choose to be a part of, they are better than those who have not made the same sacrifices.

Of course, this also must fall back on the faith in the religious themselves that they are correct in their religious perspective.  If the faith gets shaken at all, or they fall into a different religion - even a different sect of the same religion - then one must alter their lifestyle to accommodate that new system of beliefs.  So the faith that they are correct in their personal religious choice then also adds to the concept of their superiority.

The two fundamental ways in which Western religions choose to persuade their believers are through either happiness - typically by creating a sense of community between those who have joined, usually through song and events that cater to making people feel more connected - and through fear - the crowd in which strict lifestyles must be maintained or the threat of eternal damnation will be the most assured result. 

In the case of happiness, it leads one to feel superior in that they have a connection with those who they share their religion with whereas those outside of that bubble may appear to have less of that happiness.  Even though these people tend to have a significant less emphasis on eternal damnation, their community spirit leads them to believe that they have something others don't have.  This will obviously lead to a feeling of being better than others.

In terms of the fear strategy, these are the primary groups that sacrifice the pleasures of life more readily as a means to not offend their God.  Of course, when you sacrifice things like alcohol, drugs, premarital sex, cursing, and even to such great extents of healthcare for prayer then it is very easy to look at people who do these things as significantly worse off.  Add in that those people, at least in their minds, are going to Hell to burn for all eternity then it is clear to see how they would believe the religious perspective is has the higher ground, and thus must be more valuable as humans,

Going back to the faith aspect, however, it is also easy to see how the shaking of one's faith in their own perspective of their chosen religion would also be so offensive to their ego, which is fundamentally attached to the religion they are a part of.  It creates a very frail balance of believing to fill a meaning in one's life and keeping that belief structure just to support the individuals own ego.    Of course, the harder these people's lives get then the harder they can potentially grasp onto their religion.  A desperate clutching to ensure that their ego doesn't get damaged - a means to ensure their life's value doesn't slip away in the process.

-Dustin S. Stover

Small

Truly,

he felt there had to be

something

more in life than what he was getting.

That wasn't the case, of course,

as the more he took from life

the more he felt he needed.

Experiences have a means

to make a person feel small.

Small is exactly what he was.

Small, the way everyone is.

The conscious perspective of being

however,

made it that much more difficult to live with.

He admired people's ability to get lost

within their trivial existences

the way they put importance in

the shoes they wore

the cars they drove

the way they looked while ordering

their fucking coffee

while he just picked the clothes on top

of the clean pile

and hoped it matched.

He looked at art

and tried to understand the emotion

behind the paint strokes.

He listened to music

attempting to feel something new.

He listened to other's problems

with the hope

the sincere hope

that he could understand humanity

a little bit better.

But after a lifetime of doing these things,

he still knew

how very small he is

and how very small

he will always be.

-Dustin S. Stover

The Music Plays

The music continues.

It plays as background noise.

It plays as an emotion.

It plays as confirmation.

It plays as interaction.

Mostly, it plays.

Whether we want it to or not.

-Dustin S. Stover

Accomplishing Fear

Once you know what you want out of life,

how do you go about accomplishing it?

The sickly, fickle, and trepidatious

nature of being human

ruins all the greatest things

we ever accomplish

if we ever accomplish

anything at all.

And when we don't,

we ruin other people's lives.

-Dustin S. Stover

There's no Tune

He tries to find the note, but it is like searching for something that doesn't exist.  The light feels blinding, The throbbing behind his eyes is mind numbing, but still he searched.

The guitar drops onto the guitar rack as he pulls out a bottle of pills.  He pops a couple to relieve the tension building behind his eyes, but it will take quite some time before the relief comes.  An argument forms inside his mind - does he give up on it all or does he fight to hold onto what he cherishes.

The keyboard, perhaps, will be easier to find the tune he searches for, so he sits at the bench.  His hands can't even reach for the keys - the effort feels to be too much as his eyes feel as though they are bulging out of his skull.

Years ago, it was discovered that he typed best while he wasn't looking.  It was as though he could sense the keys before they struck, and he could correct as he went along.  He opens his laptop and begins to type up a story, or song lyrics, or even simply words to fill up a page; however, as his eyes open, they reveal little more than a blank page. 

A memory appears as though it is filling the entire room.  A woman rolling her eyes and speaking about how much time and money are wasted on these instruments.  She takes a violin and smashes it into the desk, shattering it into a million pieces.  The words become more sympathetic, but not towards him.  "You are ruining our lives."

His eyes open again to reveal the keyboard in front of him still, but once again he does not reach forward.  He gets up and walks to his room without the note or tune being explored.

The bright light is still intensifying the pain behind his eyes.

Another memory - this one of a better time, a time of hope - fills his mind.  The notes come easy no matter what instruments he picks up, and he can hear them fitting so perfectly.  The beat he devours into on drums and the rhythm of the bass set the mood.  Synthesizer adds more atmosphere.  The melody of the lead guitar adds a real punch.  It doesn't even feel real at this point.

A lump works it's way up his throat before he swallows it back down.  It is a hard swallow, but he presses forward with it and it slowly reaches back down to his stomach.

An image of the broken violin fills his mind again.  Maybe this is what he should be doing, but he has lost everything else anyway. 

The headache has started to reside, but still fills a very prominent space. 

"Not tonight," he tells himself.  "Not fucking tonight."  He presses a key on the keyboard and it rings out, but it still doesn't fit what he is trying to find.  A chord, but still wrong.  He tries another position, but still wrong.  He glances back at the guitar, but interest just doesn't come. 

His head still has yet to escape the pain.  He closes his eyes one more time, reaching his finger and thumb to squeeze the bridge of his nose.  It helps slightly, but there is too much pain.  His eyes open, he gets off of the bench, and walks out of the room - flipping the light switch as he exits. 

Stumbling through the pitch black hall, feeling the walls for guidance, he eventually finds his bedroom.  His head hurts so badly that he refuses to even so much as turn on the light.  He knows where the bed is, he plops down into bed, and closes his eyes for one final time tonight.  Memories of the arguments, the broken violin, the feeling of worthlessness do not grant him the same luxury.

-Dustin S. Stover

Ranting

There's an abundance of evidence within humanity that it has never been the researched proof that dissuades personal beliefs, but rather, that emotions guide personal bias. Abortion is a prime example. Racism and prejudice in general. One could even go as far as to claim the plethora of religions as yet another. Whether someone believes in climate change or not. The support of politicians, and which side of politics you fall on. To be a human is to be perpetually lost within your own insignificance. Allowing one to invest significance in what justifies their own personal feelings is just a means to bring value to their lives without putting in substantial work to create the value. It is also quite the perplexing notion that those with the most conviction for their personal biases are also the ones most angered by those who disagree with them. Except, their's nothing perplexing about it once you consider that they've placed their entire value into their personal beliefs, thus leading to feeling insulted when someone disagrees with them.

-Dustin S. Stover

Not Your Hero

I am not your hero.
I wear the dirt on my face,
scars upon my brow,
and muck upon my hands.

The same as everyone else.

I am not your hero.
Despite your claims,
your desires to put me on a platform,
and despite the things I have helped with.

I just care, the way I feel we all should.

I'm not your fucking hero.
I'm just another person.
I'm just another person.
I'm just.

A hero wears a cape.
They do nothing wrong.
They rescue people from trains.
They have comic books written about them.

All I've done is listened.
And perhaps, offered advice.

So I'm not a fucking hero. 
I don't want to hear about how you feel that I am.
I don't want the praise of being a hero.
I am the same as everyone else.

I just cared.

-Dustin S. Stover

Days (Gone By)

We work our lives away,
so we can retire some day,
and watch the bluejay
float and flutter another way.

We regret our lives spent
wasted on work days and repent.
Life, it came and went
without our permission, heaven sent.

The notion of heaven is hard.
No guarantee, not even a shard.
Filled with sugar and lard,
our lives full of guards.

Wasted.

A smarter person
would learn to live early on;
their end days being spent
reliving the good times.




-Dustin S. Stover

The Dangers of Religion: Volume 1

Before I get started, I will preface this by stating that I do not believe that religion makes you a bad person.  In no way do I believe that it would reduce your value as a human being in any way.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I will start.

Let us start with the foundation of all religions - faith.  It requires faith for anyone to believe in any religion.  Now, humanity, in essence, has to have faith in something in order to not lose hope in their future.  Upon examining society as a whole, it is easy to lose yourself in all the negativity from the most external sources - murder, rape, and Donald Trump - to the most internal - the philosophical questioning of what meaning there is in this world to us as individuals or even as a society.  Faith that there is meaning, that we won't know someone who gets murdered, raped, or turn into Donald Trump, that's what keeps us together through the bad times.

Faith is also what prevents us from taking things to a whole different level of understanding.  From a philosophical standpoint, there requires an inherent distrust in faith in order to even want to research an understanding of a topic.  If, then, faith is a necessity and also something that prevents us from understanding more deeply, where is the breaking point?

This is the most dangerous aspect of religion.  Ingrained in every religion is an inherent distrust in questioning the religion itself.  Religion teaches us that by searching for meaning outside of the religion, to search for an understanding of the world around us, is to betray the very faith one has in the religion itself.  Religion requires absolutely no proof to support it's claim - it only requires itself and the one believing it to affirm it's existence.

Thusly, we have a circular pattern that encapsulates nothing more than itself, and the more one dedicates themselves to that circle the more they stop relying on proof to believe something.  Eventually, because there is no supporting evidence for any religion, one must ignore all proof in order to justify their very belief system.

This is the foundation of what makes religion so dangerous.  When confronting a religious person as to the evidence of the Big Bang Theory, as an example, the religious will come up with various stories to confirm their own belief in their religion as opposed to look at the evidence and see even an inkling of potential truth in the theory.  If one can be so blind to facts as to essentially shun the very notion then immediately you're automatically stuck in a scenario where reality as ceased to matter.

Of course, that scenario is a rather extreme one so let me dial it back a bit to the faith that God always has a plan, which is often times preached by Christians and the subsets of Christianity as a means to justify bad things that happen.  This is perhaps the most bothersome saying, at least to me, as all it really does is confirm their own justification in their faith as it can be said in any event and hold equal weight - which is to say it holds none.  If a person gets murdered or raped or turned into Donald Trump, by saying that one phrase that person is essentially saying that no matter how bad things just got for that person, it is okay.  Just get over it.  It is a complete lack of empathy for someone, presumably, they supposedly care about.

That touches upon a whole other danger of religion, but I will try to stay on track of faith for now. 

Then, of course, no one can possibly understand God's plan so don't even bother questioning that, either.  Yet another case where faith is a requirement as opposed to realizing that it is a societal issue.

The entire concept that we should go through our lives without questioning things is absolutely absurd.  The one thing that drives humanity, and has gotten humanity to the point we are currently at, is questioning things.  No one ever achieved anything by just putting faith into things getting better, or some magical all seeing spirit in the sky was watching over everything.  No, even when a religious person accomplished something it was because they made actions.

I can see all the religious screaming at their computer screens now about how it was God's will that they did whatever they did.  Yeah, and it was God's will that a girl got their drink spiked at a Brett Kavanaugh party, too.  It was also God's will that your Republican candidate is paying some male prostitute to fuck him in the ass, too, while his wife is at home crying herself to sleep because her husband won't include her.  Or is that one Satan accomplishing the impossible by defeating God's plan?  Only God knows, so just put your faith in him.  It definitely couldn't be because they like raping women or getting ass fucked.  A George Michaels song just popped into my head.

Praying is, perhaps, the most egregious example of faith.  If your all knowing, all powerful God has a plan for everything and everyone, what do you believe praying is going to do?  If he has a plan for everything then thanking him for doing whatever he was going to do anyway is not going to accomplish anything.  Praying as an effort to get him to change his mind for whatever his plan is, again, will do nothing because he has a plan.  That damn George Michaels song is haunting me for some reason.

More than anything else, though, faith just prevents people from taking responsibility for their own lives.  A person who believes something so completely as to disregard all evidence to the contrary means that they can justify anything action or outcome their heart and mind desire to justify. 

And now fucking Fred Durst had to go and ruin a perfectly good - alright, it was a pretty lame original, too - song.

-Dustin S. Stover

A Mildly Horrific Story

There was no frame of reference – like being in the void of space, only he felt gravity pulling him towards something.

His shoulder slams with too great a force into what feels like a cliff. His body bounces and spirals. The inertia makes him feel as though he is going to vomit, and he does, but there is no means for him to slow the spin now that his shoulder is dislocated, at best, and completely shattered if worse.

He feels his foot catch on something, but whatever that something is breaks and allows his fall to continue. His foot dangles without control, but at least he has stopped spinning.

A moment passes, just long enough of one for him to realize the excruciating pain he is in. He lets out a yell, a blood curdling scream from the bowels of his most miserable point of existence. The only comfort he received was hearing the echo of his own screams.

“This is a nightmare, it has to be,” he says aloud, but he knows that he feels it all. He knows, deep inside, that this is really happening.

He tries to recall the events that led to this tumultuous fall, which he realizes he is still in the midst of, but cannot remember anything before this point. It is as though his entire existence has never come to fruition and he is just living the journey into Hell.

A deep, boisterous howl of a voice comes from nowhere. “Now. Now is your time.”

As the voice finishes it's long bellow his body stops abruptly. His body slams into the most solid piece of anything that he has ever felt, and his whole body is destroyed. The pain is so intense that he can't even so much as whimper. The only point of relief is that he has stopped falling, but of course he can't even form enough of a thought to come to that realization.

Lying there, still absolute darkness and still in absolute pain, he can feel his heart beat start to slow – too slow, he thinks, but he is ready for death. He would be begging for it if he could form sounds.

A flicker of light forms in the distance, down a long hall that is now beginning to look like stone.

“Welcome,” the boisterous voice from before says from all around him.

A swarm of small creatures, half the size of a human – roughly the size of a child barely able to walk – pour into the room as the torch finally illuminates the room. He is surrounded by hundreds of the little things. Unable to turn his head, the one holding the torch walks to him.

The small creature, whose head is now looking down at him, is as black as the fall with what appears to be a gray ash covering his body sporadically. The creature looks back at the rest of the swarm, back at the man, back at the swarm, and then starts making a noise unlike anything the man has heard before. Before he knows it, every one of the swarm is on top of him, pulling the skin from his body and feasting.

The pain from before feels as though it had happened decades ago and this new pain sets in. The creatures' claws are all like dull, rusty knives cutting his skin away. His flesh rips away like cheap wrapping paper being cut by even cheaper scissors.

As the last piece of flesh had been devoured, the creatures scatter. As the light creeps down the hall, the man moves his eyes as much as he can to see nothing but exposed muscles – not a single piece of skin is left anywhere that he can see.

The booming voice enters his head once more, “Are you having fun, yet?”

The man just wants to cry, but nothing comes out. He wants to yell, but it all falls into silence.

The sound of rabid dogs strikes off in the distance. The howls are rushing towards the man. It sounds as though there are thousands of them, and they are very near.

There is no means for him to see what is happening as light never entered into the cavern, but a sudden slam of one of the dogs lands on his body followed swiftly by what feels like hundreds of teeth dig into his exposed muscle.

The first dog jumps down but immediately a second leaps atop him and takes it's chomp of muscle. He jumps down and the next. This agony continues for what feels like an eternity as the man still cannot make a single noise. He still cannot cry, and he cannot beg. The pain is, again, so intense that all his previous pain forces itself deep into the past.

As the final dog finishes his bite, it pauses and shifts its body. It then let's out a siren like howl before jumping down and leaving the man with nothing but the sound of hooves stampeding into the distance, but the man is entirely unable to hear anything any longer.

“How do you feel?” The voice booms into the man's mind again, but he is still unable to utter anything.

The room illuminates with the most intense light that anyone could imagine, but all that is left of the man are his organs and bones encasing them. His eyes dart around the room, but the light is blinding and nothing can be seen.

As his eyes adapt and he can finally see, dark, nearly see through, floating creatures flow towards him. He thinks about how it all must end at some point, it is his last form of hope.

The ghastly things hover over the remaining parts of his body, pulling each individual organ from the his skeleton. One of them positions his head so that he is forced to watch everything. His bones are shattered all around him, and what is still attached by the cartilage is cracked all over. Blood covers the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the table in which he fell atop.

The ghosts each tilt what appears to be their heads towards the large hole in which the man fell from. As they do this, every organ – other than the brain – start turning black and shrivel into near nothing. There is no pain, but the man feels absolute disgust at the sight.

The ghosts vanish just as quickly as the light arrived, and his skull falls to the ground. The brain remains. He attempts to contemplate all that has happened to him, but nothing makes sense.

“I will give you the ability to speak to me now. What would you ask me?”

“Why are you killing me?”

“Oh, my dear son. This isn't death. This is life.”

-Dustin S. Stover


If you enjoy my writing then please purchase my collection of short stories, Happiness in a Void of Darkness.

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Theories on Work: Part Never-ending

There is a theory that humanity shifted it's focus on survival to a focus on pleasure, but I find this to be missing a major point.  While it may be true that humanity no longer has to struggle just to survive, and it may seem as though a focus on pleasure is the pinnacle of modern day societal norms there is a major mark about how miserable we all are throughout our normal lives.

We work day in and day out just to buy bullshit we don't need while living in houses and apartments that far exceed what we can afford to pay.  Out of a 24 hour day, if we spend 8 hours sleeping, that leaves 16 hours awake.  A typical work day is half that if you exclusively count hours on the clock but then you have to add the time it takes to get ready for work, the time it takes to drive to and from work, and the breaks you take that are off the clock. 

Let's say you're exceptionally quick to get ready for work and take a mere 10 minutes, but then it takes you 30 minutes to get to work.  That is already 40 additional minutes to your 8 hour work day.  Then an additional 30 minutes spent for your lunch break, which if you leave your job to get lunch will mostly be spent in your car driving to and from the location with, if you're lucky, half that time actually just sitting to eat.  After you clock out you have an additional 30 minute drive home.

So if we add all that together we get 9 hours and 40 minutes, which has now become your actual work day, which turns that 16 hour day into much closer to 6.

Next, there is dinner.  Preparing for dinner takes time, and then it has to be cooked.  By the time you can sit down and eat, another hour has passed, if not more.  That now leaves us with a mere 5 hours remaining of our day.

Of course, after spending so much time doing everything else, who wants to spend the remaining hours of their day leaving their house again to find something they enjoy?  That isn't even considering that those 5 hours are likely split between pre-work and post-work, which dependent upon how you split it could be dwindled down to a couple of hours.

Then there are the trips to the grocery store, picking up things you need that may have broke or worn out, taking care of the yard, cleaning the house, and all the other responsibilities brought on by being an adult.

Now typically, a person takes care of all their responsibilities on their off time, and this makes sense because they don't have time during work days. 

But that begs a question - where does a person's desire, hobbies, or interests fall in all this?  How does a person find something they enjoy?  How does a person find the time to discover themselves in all this mess?

Well, there is ultimately only 4 answers to this question:
1: They skip taking care of their responsibilities.
2: They skip work.
3: They skip sleep.
4: They don't.

The 4th answer is really the one I feel most people would find themselves in, but we all have to find a reason to continue our lives or else we'd all commit suicide.  So, how then, would one find a reason to continue their life?

I feel that the answer to that question should be answered in a later blog post.

As always, thanks for reading,
Dustin S. Stover




Also, if you find yourself interested in my writing and would like to help support me in continuing this endeavor, please be sure to click on the links below for the collection of short stories I have published.

Happiness in a Void of Darkness
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Definitely not a Story of Love

He looked at her while she didn't even so much as give a glance.  Every day was the same story.  He had this misguided belief that if she would just look at him then he had a chance with her, but we all know that a look is just a look with little to no meaning more than that.

Still, his gaze didn't falter. 

He watched as she spoke to many other people, usually in a sarcastic manner to ensure everyone around her knew of her place in the societal hierarchy.  She knew she was better.  That just made him desire her even more.

There is always that point in time when a person comes face to face with what they believe they want only to discover just how wrong it is for them.  This story isn't about that, though it will definitely feel as though it falls along that line.

Our lonely hero decides one day that he will force her acknowledgment.  He bumps into her causing quite an awkward moment. 

"Why the fuck did you bump into me, asshole?"  Her voice is shrill and condescending.

"It was an accident."

"You gross mother fucker, just leave me alone." 

And just like that, our lonely hero felt completely crushed.  Their eyes met, at long last, and only for her to shut all his desires down.

Of course, that was a few decades ago.  Our lonely hero has had many failures within those fateful years - all of which contained fruitful nuggets of information he learned from.  His memory of youth was little more than memories of many mistakes, the likes of which he would never want to repeat.

Our antagonist, on the other hand, made but one mistake.  One mistake that she has had to live with ever since - marrying the first person who treated her like the condescending bitch she was and letting him make her into his submissive housewife, a mother to his obnoxious and bratty children.  Her memory of youth was full of fond memories, memories of dominance and being wildly desirable. 

Our lonely hero rarely ever thought about women who rejected him, especially the one who called him a gross mother fucker.  Meanwhile, she longed for someone to idolize her the way he did back in those long since passed days.

She knew he stared at her.  She knew him running into her was an attempt to gain her attention.  That just made her even more fierce, thinking that was the way to ensure he kept going the way he had for so long.

That didn't work, though.  The last day he ever looked at her with longing eyes was the day our lonely hero performed his little stunt for attention.  It was also the day, he would never find out, that she met the man that would transform her from the fierce bitch into the docile puppy.

The hero of this story learned, in no short part from his experience here, that the amount of effort one puts into winning someone over does not equal the amount of love a couple has for one another.  The antagonist learned what it was like to put forth all the effort and never learned that equality was far more a sign of love than effort.

The two would go on with their lives, never to meet again.  He traveled throughout the world, finding meaning in every little thing he did.  She stayed in their hometown convincing herself that her life had meaning.

-Dustin S. Stover

Happiness in a Void of Darkness is my collection of short stories and can be purchased at either of the links below.
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Authenticity

It was a terribly gray sky, though the rain wouldn't fall.  He sat with eyes sharply peering at the peak of a neighboring house, yet if he was asked what he was looking at he'd have no idea.  He had no idea. 

The funky bass line roars and her voice rips the sky wide open, at least inside his mind.  There is a synthesizer that breaks up the sounds of traditional instruments while fitting so effortlessly that without knowing better you'd believe it was being keyed the way a piano would.  Jazz drums is always his favorite to listen to.

It was all fitting perfectly for his day.  Solitude, contemplating life's trials and temptations, gray skies darkening everything around, and music that felt as though it was just as much a part of the scenery as the clouds in the sky.

Of course, this says nothing to what he was seeing while staring at the roof top.  He was seeing his former life fading from present day into the past.  His best friend died a few short days ago from a drug overdose, yet he was entirely oblivious of his friend's habit.

He is reminded of some quote he heard many years ago - one he cannot fully remember - that states something about never truly knowing someone until they are under extreme suffering.  It never made much sense to him at the time as he simply believed he could know someone with relative ease, but now thinking about his friend he understood that he never saw him suffering.

He tries to summon memories of his friend suffering.  Memories clear from distant fogs in which he would get drunk with his friend over some girl or the loss of a job - that time he had to sell his favorite guitar to make rent that month.  There was a feeling, at the time, that this was suffering, but it wasn't.  It was the evasion of suffering and he only now has he begun to understand.

A tear creeps out of the corner of his eye as he begins to think back on all the little signs of heroin usage.  The lame duck excuses of being too busy to reply to a text message after days.  The memory of how often his friend had been sick within the recent months.

More than those memories and the feeling of stupidity crawling around in his mind, he found a great sadness in how he would never be able to laugh at some stupid shit a customer said, or share this great jazz he was listening to now with his friend. 

This is life, though, and he knows that no matter how he feels that he will have to get up tomorrow and pretend everything is alright with everyone he interacts with.  The only break he will get from pretending is the point in time he is at the funeral services, but even that will feel so impersonal as everyone else there will be feeding off of the emotions of one another.  Aunts and uncles will be crying immensely even though they hadn't seen him in years and people who only knew him in passing will be talking about how great of a person he was, how terribly he will be missed.

He begins to acknowledge that life is just one big swath of falsehood.  A display of what humanity is supposed to look like - a heroin addict near killing himself playing it off as though he is just a little sick, people mourning the loss of a life they knew nothing about, and even his job of interacting with people with a fake smile to sell whatever shit he was pushing onto the people.  It is all fake.

Could authenticity exist at all in a society that rewards the inauthentic far more?  The creeping thought of this was increasingly spreading throughout his mind.

He then remembered his friend, the moment in time the two met.  They sat on the back steps of a house, party in full force inside, and discussed just how fake everyone inside the party was.  How everyone was showing off in order to one-up one another or just to get laid, how it wasn't either one of their scenes. 

They both went back to an apartment - he couldn't remember if it was his or his friends - and listened to albums all night long, critiquing the guitar playing, the drums, the vocals, and how well it all pieced together.  He remembered how authentic they were with one another about it all, unashamed to hate a song or band the other loved.  It was the start of an authentic friendship.  It was the start of an authentic friendship, and now he had a greater appreciation for that than ever before.

-Dustin S. Stover

If you find pleasure in reading my short stories, please consider supporting me by purchasing my writing.  It allows me to continue to pursue this crazy little hobby of mine as I attempt to turn it into a profession.

My collection of short stories is called Happiness in a Void of Darkness and can be found at the following links:
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Knock

It started out as a humbling drive into the sunset but emotions grew, and before he knew it he was well above the speed limit.  In a world of automated cars, people who find simplicity by having the technology do all their work for them, and priorities have shifted to pleasure long ago it becomes an act of rebellion to be perceptive.  That is where the hero, or villain, of this story will reside.

His car is of a vintage nature, a time when there was a such thing as a driver and a driver utilized three pedals and a stick between the seats to control the speed and acceleration of the vehicle.  It was small, only having two seats as opposed to the modern cars with cabins of bed-like seats, and was built with the intention of putting a smile on the driver's face.  Now only a few would know how to turn a steering wheel as anything more than a novelty.

While cleaning out his great grandmother's home, years ago, he came across a collection of books.  He didn't even know what they were - it had been decades since the last one had been printed and now people just listened to books selected for them by the state based on their age, gender, and racial background.

Among the books were the likes of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus.  His grandfather, still remembering the old ways of reading, taught him the words within the book and talked to him about their meanings.  While this behavior was not strictly forbidden by the state, it had been almost exclusively pushed out of societal norms. 

Now our hero has found himself at odds with society.  Upon re-reading The Stranger by Albert Camus he began to see himself in the character - not so much the kind of person who could kill a person and then show no remorse for it, but a person who perceived the world through a detached emotion.  Another thing he began to notice was that everyone around him held no distinct emotion to their experience, no unique experiences.

His car, which had been handed down to him from his father whom got it from his father whom got it from his father, was weaving between the automated machinery.  Each vehicle altering it's speed automatically to allow him easier access - a design feature programmed by the early programmers of automated cars to ensure those who still enjoyed driving wouldn't be held up while they were breaking various laws.  It was also a way for the state to monitor people who drove themselves - see too many cars in a location altering their speed and you know you have someone driving themselves.

His wife, whom he shared conversation with before this drive, had proclaimed him mentally unsuitable for children due to his perception of the world.  To him, this was not only an insult but an absurdity.  He knew the people of the world were lost.  They are lifeless, thoughtless, selfless shells of the humanity that had existed for hundreds or thousands of years. 

He remembered when he first read Camus' classic, how it made him feel when he read about that fateful gun shot and ultimate murder.  He felt conflicted.  He knew it was wrong for that gun to be fired, he knew it was wrong to murder someone, but what else could he have done in the situation?  It was the first time our villain of this story realized that people could have choices, and from that point forth he begun being paralyzed by choices.  He didn't want to same soup for dinner than his wife cooked night after night.  That old car that had been passed down between the generations suddenly looked like a viable means to get from point A to point B, at least if he could learn how to drive it - so he did.

He saw the different races of people, whom he had never really had any real interaction with before since they were forced to go to school together, take the same jobs as one another, and eat the same foods as one another - all dictated by the state, of course, because the state believed it knew what would suit everyone best.  Suddenly, however, he wanted to try the other ethnicities foods.  What about that round thing that was shared amongst an entire family?  What about that steaming hunk of meat that would be sliced into several slices, each going to the children, mother and father?  He didn't even have names for these things as the only thing he had to eat was soup - night after night, with the same ingredients. 

The conversations he had with his wife about other ethnicities, trying different foods, and how odd it was that these people did not share things with one another is what led her to believe him unfit for children.  In his society, little did he know, it was always the wife's job to report abnormalities within the household to the state. 

In his rear-view mirror he saw flashing lights coming towards him fast, but he had no idea what this represented.  All he knew is that each of the other cars on the road were moving to the side and stopping, automatically, while his car kept right on moving.

At one point, he stood at the door of another family of different ethnic background, but he couldn't bring himself to knock.  He just wanted to ask them a few questions about their lives.  He had heard once, in passing, that every ethnicity spoke a different language.  He just stood at the door, he never knocked, and they never knew.

There was a loud THUNK into the back of the car.  A moment later the engine died, along with all the lights, and the fuzzy sound coming out of the radio.  The flashing lights came up on him fast, it was several cars, and surrounded him on every side.  Guns pointing directly at him.

"Your wife has told us how you think, what you feel.  You aren't allowed to think.  You aren't allowed to feel."

His final thought was about standing at that door - how he should have knocked.

-Dustin S. Stover

If you enjoyed this short story and would like to read more of my work, or would just like to support me in a small way (but really, I'd prefer if you purchased to read) then feel free to click the links below to buy my collection of short stories, Happiness in a Void of Darkness.  And thanks again for taking your time to read.

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A Mildly Depressing Chapter with Little Purpose

A handful of people sit, by pure coincidence really, while a jazz band plays covers of music spanning nearly a century. The band alters the songs drastically to fit their jazz style, but the lyrics remained the same as those ultimately influential tunes.

The small crowd, mostly of an ethnic majority, parades themselves in fancy clothes as though it is a fancy night, though they don't do a tremendous amount to support the band or the establishment. One couple buys a drink, splits it between the two of them. Another patron doesn't even turn from the bar to acknowledge the band's hard work.

A group of friends, though, found themselves here by chance and begin to thoroughly enjoy the music.

The awkward silence after the first song suspends in the dimly lit air as though it would last forever, but then the pianist announces the next song and continues anyway.

The audience hasn't a clue that this fateful night was not supposed to have a band – this was a special event that had as much publicity as the homeless person sleeping on a park bench not even a mile away.

The song's original context of a few minutes extends well beyond ten in this format and contorts in such a way as to not even be recognizable if it were not for the lyrical content, which only interjects itself at random points.

The group of friends are really enjoying themselves as one of them turns to another to announce that jazz is their favorite type of music to see live – the way the band members converse with one another using their instruments as though speaking their own distinct language no one else understands and taking the conversation in seemingly random ways has always appealed to him.

The audience finally claps as the song ends, all it took was that one person to start it all. The pianist announces the next song, a cover of a famous Beatles song.

The couple sharing the drink looks at one another in disengagement. The man at the bar still hasn't peered up from the drink in front of him, now on his third or fourth. The group of friends seem to to be the only ones engaged in the music at all.

The song ends with the group of friends peering around to one another, presumably waiting for someone to give acknowledgment of how good the band played their cover song. The acknowledgment never came.

Etta James was next on the list of covers. They really did it good justice, even though the voice was nowhere close. The guy at the bar turned around, even forgetting about his drink for a minute or two. The group of friends bobbed back and forth to the rhythm of the music. The couple, one of which had slipped outside to smoke on his cigarette, had abruptly put it out and slip back inside the door and enjoy the pleasantry. The woman declines another drink as she refuses to take her eyes off the band.

A group of college age kids walk by, peaking through the windows as they giggle to themselves about how few people are being entertained. A snide joke is made about how the business is such shit that it will be closed soon.

The patrons, nor the band, hear any of it. Their entertainment trumps what they would consider the ignorance of youth.

Etta James' song ends and a round of applause loud enough to be three or four times as many people as there were bursts out as the closing line ends.

The music continues while each of the patrons leave. The man at the bar walks out slowly and unnoticed. Next the couple of single drink smokers, not even remotely caring if they are noticed. Finally, all that remains is the small group of friends, two of which want to stay but know they can't. They leave, begrudgingly. The bland finishes their last song a few minutes after the group leaves with no one remaining to applaud their work.

-Dustin S. Stover

For short stories of varying degree of intellectual stimulation and entertainment can be found on both Nook and Kindle with the links below.

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The Perplexing Condition of the Youth and the Elderly

A child, young enough to be a great grand daughter to the old man, tells him a story about how a chicken makes a “po” sound. The old man sits confused as this is the most perplexing thing he has heard. “No, child, chickens make a 'cluck' noise.”

Noticeably upset, the child gets louder, as though the loudness will make the old man change his perception. It doesn't. The old man, worn from old age yet still defiantly stubborn, refuses to raise his voice as much as he refuses to change his mind.

The argument continues on like this for quite some time – the child now red in the face and flustered as she continues to convince the old man as to how wrong he is. The old man, having lived a great deal longer than the child, also knows her to be wrong, but as he tries to explain to the child that it is simply a matter of geographical understanding that has led each of them to the different perspectives the child interrupts with the explanation of just how wrong he is.

The old man attempts to change the subject now. Perhaps music would be a more appropriate topic, he thinks. Of course, the child has opposition to this as well. See, she is hip on all the modern music and the old man, well, his prime was decades ago. He couldn't possibly understand what constitutes as musical today.

He tries to explain to her how sounds have textures, how they create emotion with the various depths in which the instruments get played, yet modern music has little of this. Timbre, he calls it while describing what it is. Of course, the youth don't care. They know what sounds pleasant to their ears without the critiquing aspect. In a way, the old man is jealous at the simplicity of the little girl's life, yet he knows that eventually she is going to have to grow up and face the harshness of reality. Teaching her depth about the pleasurable things in life is just his way of trying to prepare her for the world to come - to look at things from a deeper perspective without suffering consequences in the process.

Then the child plays the old man a song – some new song that has a diabolically simple bass line with a few blip noises to hold time. She dances like a mad man as the old man sits back wondering what it is she is dancing to. It makes no sense to him as there is no rhythm to dance to, but he lets it happen anyway. He has gotten to that point where he understands resistance is futile and trying to understand her is worthless. Being perplexed stays, though.

He has to ask anyway, “what do you like about this music?” The old man asks in a very sincere, non-offensive way.

“I just like it. I don't have to know why,” the girl answers quickly.

The admiration of the simplicity fades into an annoyance, yet remains enough for him to still wish he could be so simple.

That, however, is when politics enters into his mind. Remembering the past, having watched so much happen that has led to the point they are at today – socially, economically, politically. The simplicity in ignorance is what has led to such a catastrophic state. The unemployment numbers may be down, but the average income is extraordinarily low compared to the cost of living. Slavery may have ended, but it has arguably changed to prison labor instead. Political parties work their damnedest to divide a country while neither side is working to benefit the society as a whole. This is the world this girl will have to face and the old man fears that if she can't even understand that her admiration for the song is nothing more than because of how familiar it is then how will she ever have enough comprehension to know that every action is equal parts good and bad – how will she know that the politicians she votes for, if she even votes, are going to use her lack of understanding to ensure they get her support?

The old man has lived too long, he feels, as he sees now that he is alone in paying attention. The rest of the world is like this small child – trying desperately hard to enjoy things as superficially as possible, and finding hope in the promises of those who would manipulate them for their own personal gains and the gains of those they support.

Teaching someone of any age to care is difficult, but a child? That is downright impossible when they feel they know better. Of course, the old man knows he can't live forever. He just wishes better for the future.

-Dustin S. Stover

White Light, Blinding Room

The light is piercing, almost painful.  A solid white room with the brightest sunlight I could imagine pouring in from above as though someone placed the sun directly outside the clear glass surrounds me.  Painted on the walls, with invisible ink, are all the mistakes I've made in my life.

The room is so blinding that I can't find the door.  I can open my eyes only with the smallest of cracks.  I'd hoped that my eyes would have adjusted by now - has it been days?  Months?  Years?  A lifetime?  It definitely feels like a lifetime.

The brightness may as well be a thousand tons of weigh pressing down on me.  Still, I find myself pawing at the walls in an attempt to find the door.  All I feel, however, is the texture of the painted mistakes slightly raised off the walls of this deadly white.

I feel like giving up, but I'm so lost within in this room that even if I had the capability of doing so I wouldn't be able to see my way to doing it.  This is why the light is so much more dangerous than the dark.  At least when you're in the dark you can use a flashlight if you'd like, or just stay peacefully blissful.

Still, the textures, as uncomfortable as they feel, give me understanding.  Understanding of how I got here, how I trapped myself here in this never ending cycle of blinding pressurized existence.

Strangely, though, the room is absent of heat.  It is freezing, the way the air feels in the dead of winter, open field, and snow littering the landscape as though it is all that has ever existed.  I, however, am not cold.  It is just a feeling of brisk, frigid cold air surrounding me as these mistakes are my main companion.

I suppose that since my choices have always been that of my own, I only have myself to blame.  Still, it feels like a strange sort of relief to curse something else even though it is only a momentary relief as I release that I, in fact, am still the reason I'm here.

It is better to keep my eyes closed; however, that is too simple.  I have to keep them open, hoping I can see the painted mistakes and have them point me to something I've not yet seen.  The cracks in my eye lids opened as little as possible, but it is still hopeless.  Just white.  My hands are the only vision I have.

Crawling on the floor just renders more risen painted lines, but it still feels absolutely hopeless in deciphering anything.  It would be easier to give up searching.  I just... can't.

Sometimes I wish I could just go back into the dark like everyone else, but if I can just survive this experience then perhaps I will have knowledge coming out the other end that surpasses what I could imagine.

Simply have to keep hope alive long enough to find out.

-Dustin S. Stover