Andy Weir

You ever read that short story, "The Egg?" It's a pretty popular short story on the internet. Guy dies, finds out that he's living every life, and his little universe is just an egg? It seems to have been written solely for the passage:

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

And I mean, okay, I get it. Really, I do. Give everyone some perspective, man.

But you know what that also could have read?

"I'm Hitler?" You said, appalled.

"And you're the millions he killed."

"But I was still me?"

"Yes, and your wife."

"That I had sex with."

"Yes, you've been everyone you've ever had sex with. And you've been your father, so also you had sex with your mother, technically. Lots of sex. All of it."

Try taking that story as a profound meditation on the truth of being good to one another now. Can't, can ya? I ruined it.

And I'm okay with that. It's neat, but always sounded a bit pretentious. But now I feel bad.

Because Andy Weir wrote "The Martian!" That was a good book! Hilarious and crude, not serious and preachy. And in my opinion it had just as much philosophy. Have a sense of humor about the possibility of your own death, and always keep moving, to win.

Poems XIX

Did you know I'm dating my future wife? Cuz that's cool.

My Ocean

If I were the ocean and you were a boat,
It wouldn't matter if you went when I stayed put.

The ocean envelops the land, like ceaseless kisses the waves smack,
And my love encircles all of you and I'll never want it back.
It would be dishonest for me to say that I knew that this would happen,
That somewhere deep within my heart there'd be a bubbling to rival the Kraken.

I sound the trumpets every day as I await your return
My passion aches, I languish, curse, and still it only burns
Brighter, darker in its hues, I wish to torch the hurdles
No circumstantial Scyllan fates could ever claim to be hurtful
For I am stronger, safe in you, secure and wrathful, righteous,
I win the day, I seize the prize, I have what I need- us.

Call me El Niño, my temperatures rise when I see you,
But I'm no boy, in you a man, with loving eyes of blue,
You can sail the years away, at home's the ocean true.

Poems XVIII

Ancient Plants

There's a little beam of sunlight in the conservatory,
It speckles and glimmers in turn,
Illuminates that ennobled, ancient leaf,
Once megaflora, now known as the fern.

They've moved this fern to the New World and to Oz,
They've transplanted this plant to Japan,
But her chlorophyll grows greenest, replenished, and strong,
When her roots sink in to her homeland.

The fern has a noble (pre)history,
Grandiose and loved in the era of dinos,
But now she sits in a sterile glass room,
And her dreams intertwine with her woes.

But low scents still draw the butterflies,
Landing as happy strangers and not out of pity,
Fear not for the fate of the fair-fringed frond,
The same sun shines in conservatory, country, or city.

When I was a child in Larkspur's canyon,
The ferns would pop vibrantly after the rain.
Cold tears from the sky rolled off verdant faces,
The sacrosanct beauty seen only in pain.

There's a little beam of sunlight in the conservatory.
Warm, warm, warm-
The fern.