Well That's Not Good

I was walking along in Little Tokyo today when I came across a man who offered to give me a poem in exchange for some lunch money. For a dollar, my day managed to go from a-ok to plain depressing.

No Soul

This life is so pathetic
Tragic existence
Necessary persistence of fate
And waiting for our own soul to transcend
whatever was never known.
We grow into the realm of truth
awaiting the youth of our infamy
For what is poetic infamy
is what is no match for reality
and still I see no future for the soul.

--Kenneth Towler

It also made me wonder what an intellectual like him was doing depending on the assistance of others. Whatever the reason, his personal journey must have been fraught with hardship and pain. The tragic point about education is that the more you know, the more you see for yourself what is wrong with the world. The suffering--other people's as well as your own--becomes even more distinguished and poignant.

I would put this in another post, but out of convenience I'm just going to discuss it here. I had a scary and vivid dream about being involved in an explosion. Not that I know what that feeling of sheer terror is like, nor would I ever hope to know, but I felt like my body was numb and my face had fallen off. I know the imagery is disturbing, but that's the only term I could actually use to describe the entire dream.