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What Happened To The World Was Gradual. I've Forgotten What It Actually Was, But I Have Faint, Fetal Memories Of What It Was Like. A Smoldering Dread That Never Really Caught Fire Till There Wasn't Much Left To Burn. Each Sequential Step Surprised Us. Then One Day We Woke Up, And Everything Was Gone.

-Isaac Marion

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What Happened To The

Isaac Marion

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What Happened To The World Was Gradual. I've Forgotten What It Actually Was, But I Have Faint, Fetal Memories Of What It Was Like. A Smoldering Dread That Never Really Caught Fire Till There Wasn't Much Left To Burn. Each Sequential Step Surprised Us. Then One Day We Woke Up, And Everything Was Gone.

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What Happened? How Did I Get Here? How Could I Have Known That My Choices Mattered?

It's Hard To Take Your Life So Seriously When You Can See It All At Once.

In My Palm I Can Feel The Echo Of Her Pulse, Standing In For The Absense Of Mine.

I Adapt To Things Quickly, Including Good Things, Which I Wish I Could Shut Off Sometimes. My Friends Have To Keep Reminding Me How Crazy My Life Has Become, And Then It Hits Me Fresh And I Just Slap My Forehead And Think, "wait, What... ?"

But It Does Make Me Sad That We've Forgotten Our Names. Out Of Everything, This Seems To Me The Most Tragic. I Miss My Own And I Mourn For Everyone Else's, Because I'd Like To Love Them, But I Don't Know Who They Are.

Nothing Is Permanent. Not Even The End Of The World.

End Of The World

Regret Is Pointless. I Never Do Anything Without First Deciding To Do It Based On Facts And Feelings, And If It Doesn't Work Out How I Hoped, Oh Well, There's Another Notch On My Experience Belt.

...wanting Change Is Step One, But Step Two Is Taking It.

We Smile, Because This Is How We Save The World.

We Are Where We Are, However We Got Here. What Matters Is Where We Go Next.

You Should Always Be Taking Pictures, If Not With A Camera Then With Your Mind. Memories You Capture On Purpose Are Always More Vivid Than The Ones You Pick Up By Accident.

My Friend "m" Says The Irony Of Being A Zombie Is That Everything Is Funny, But You Can't Smile, Because Your Lips Have Rotted Off.

I Don't Want To Hear Music, I Don't Want The Sunrise To Be Pink. The World Is A Liar. Its Ugliness Is Overwhelming; The Scraps Of Beauty Make It Worse.

In My Mind I Am Eloquent; I Can Climb Intricate Scaffolds Of Words To Reach The Highest Cathedral Ceilings And Paint My Thoughts. But When I Open My Mouth, Everything Collapses.

What's Wrong With People?" She Says, Almost Too Quiet For Me To Hear. "were They Born With Parts Missing Or Did It Fall Out Somewhere Along The Way?

There Is No Ideal World For You To Wait Around For. The World Is Always Just What It Is Now, And It's Up To You How You Respond To It.

Warm Bodies Ended Up Becoming One Of The Most Personal Relatable Things I've Written.

I Think For A Minute. Watching My Wife Fade Into The Distance, I Put A Hand On My Heart. "dead." I Wave A Hand Toward My Wife. "dead." My Eyes Drift Toward The Sky And Lose Their Focus. "want It...to Hurt. But...doesn't." Julie Looks At Me Like She's Waiting For More, And I Wonder If I've Expressed Anything At All With My Halting, Mumbled Soliloquy. Are My Words Ever Actually Audible, Or Do They Just Echo In My Head While People Stare At Me, Waiting? I Want To Change My Punctuation. I Long For Exclamation Marks, But I'm Drowning In Ellipses.

A Month Ago There Was Nothing On Earth I Missed, Enjoyed, Or Longed For. I Knew I Could Lose Everything And Not Feel Anything, And I Rested Easy In That Knowledge. But I'm Growing Tired Of Easy Things.

I Used To Split My Time Between Writing, Music And Painting. I Would Work On A Book And Then Abandon It, Start A Band, Do An Album, Quit Music, Then Do A Gallery Show. Eventually I Decided To Give Writing A Serious Shot.

He Is Spent. His Mind Is Mercury Again, Its Brief Surge Of Humanity Melting Into An Oily Residue On Its Surface, And He No Longer Understands The Feelings He Felt In That Strange Moment On The Overpass. But He Did Feel Them. They Did Happen. They Rest On The Murky Seabed Of His Mind, Buried Under Sand And Silt And Miles Of Grey Waves. Patient Seeds Waiting For Light.

Of Course, If I Eat All Of Him, If I Spare His Brain, He'll Rise Up And Follow Me Back To The Airport, And That Might Make Feel Better. I'll Introduce Him To Everyone, And Maybe We'll Stand Around And Groan For A While. It's Hard To Say What 'friends' Are Any More, But That Might Be Close.

That's Why We Have Memory. And The Opposite Of Memory— Hope. So Things That Are Gone Can Still Matter. So We Can Built Off Our Pasts And Make Future.

All The Shitty Stuff People Do To Themselves... It Can All Be The Same Thing, You Know? Just A Way To Drown Out Your Own Voice. To Kill Your Memories Without Having To Kill Yourself.

Writing Isn't Letters On Paper. It's Communication. It's Memory.

Every Time I Go To Sleep, I Know I May Never Wake Up. How Could Anyone Expect To? You Drop Your Tiny, Helpless Mind Into A Bottomless Well, Crossing Your Fingers And Hoping When You Pull It Out On Its Flimsy Fishing Wire It Hasn't Been Gnawed To Bones By Nameless Beasts Below.

I'm Not A General Or A Colonel Or A Builder Of Cities. I'm Just A Corpse Who Wants Not To Be.

Here It Comes. My Inevitable Death, Ignoring Me All Those Years When I Wished For It Daily, Arriving Only After I've Decided I Want To Live Forever.

Inevitable Death

It’s Not About Keeping Up The Population, It’s About Passing On Who We Are And What We've Learned, So Things Keep Going. So We Don’t Just End.

There Is A Chasm Between Me And The World Outside Of Me. A Gap So Wide My Feelings Can't Cross It. By The Time My Screams Reach The Other Side, They Have Dwindled Into Groans.

I Adapt To Things Quickly, Including Good Things, Which I Wish I Could Shut Off Sometimes.

I Can No Longer Believe In Any Voodoo Spell Or Laboratory Virus. This Is Something Deeper, Darker. This Comes From The Cosmos, From The Stars, Or The Unknown Blackness Behind Them. The Shadows In God's Boarded-up Basement.

Peel Off These Dusty Wool Blankets Of Apathy And Antipathy And Cynical Desiccation. I Want Life In All Its Stupid Sticky Rawness.

The Sports Arena Julie Calls Home Is Unaccountably Large, Perhaps One Of Those Dual-event 'super Venues' Built For An Era When The Greatest Quandary Facing The World Was Where To Put All The Parties.

I Sigh Inside, So Exhausted By These Ugly Questions, But When Did A Monster Ever Deserve Its Privacy?

Once You've Arrived At The End Of The World, It Hardly Matters Which Route You Took.

We Have To Remember Everything. If We Don't, By The Time We Grow Up It'll Be Gone Forever.

Remembers Everything

She Hugs Me. It's Tentative At First, A Little Scared, And Yes, A Little Repulsed, But Then She Melts Into It. She Rests Her Head Against My Cold Neck And Embraces Me. Unable To Believer What's Happening, I Put My Arm Around Her And Just Hold Her. I Almost Swear I Can Feel My Heart Thumping. But It Must Just Be Hers, Pressed Tightly Against My Chest.

I Want To Change My Punctuation. I Long For Exclamation Marks, But I'm Drowning In Ellipses.

Exclamation Marks

Punctuation Marks

Breathing Is Optional, But I Need Some Air.

When The Entire World Is Built On Death And Horror, When Existence Is A Constant State Of Panic, It's Hard To Get Worked Up About Any One Thing. Specific Fears Have Become Irrelevant. We've Replace Them With A Smothering Blanket Far Worse.

Now I’m Just Standing Here On The Conveyor. Along For The Ride. I Reach The End, Turn Around, And Go Back The Other Way. The World Has Been Distilled. Being Dead Is Easy. After A Few Hours Of This, I Notice A Female On The Opposite Conveyor. She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan Like Most Of Us. Her Head Just Lolls From Side To Side. I Like That About Her. That She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan. I Catch Her Eye And Stare At Her.

...and We'll See What Happens When We Say Yes While This Rigor Mortis World Screams No.

What Wonderful Thing Didn't Start Out Scary?

Wonderful Things

It Was Fun, But It's Over Now. This Is How Things Go.

I Think We Crushed Ourselves Down Over The Centuries. Buried Ourselves Under Greed And Hate And Whatever Other Sins We Could Find Until Our Souls Finally Hit The Rock Bottom Of The Universe. And Then They Scraped A Hole Through It, Into Some ... Darker Place.

I Can’t Seem To Make Myself Care About Anything To The Right Or Left Of The Present.

But I'm Not Afraid Of The Skeletons In Julie's Closet. I Look Forward To Meeting The Rest Of Them, Looking Them Hard In The Eye, Giving Them Firm, Bone-crunching Handshakes.

I Want A New Past,new Memories, A New First Handshake With Love. I Want To Start Over In Every Possible Way.

Are We All Just Dark Age Doctors, Swearing By Our Leeches? We Crave A Greater Science. We Want To Be Proven Wrong.

I'm Watching Her Talk. Watching Her Jaw Move And Collecting Her Words One By One As They Spill From Her Lips. I Don't Deserve Them. Her Warm Memories. I'd Like To Paint Them Over The Bare Plaster Walls Of My Soul, But Everything I Paint Seems To Peel.

Deep Under Our Feet The Earth Holds Its Molten Breath, While The Bones Of Countless Generations Watch Us And Wait.

Soft Flesh Is Eaten By Hard Teeth.

Music? Music Is Life! It’s Physical Emotion - You Can Touch It! It’s Neon Ecto-energy Sucked Out Of Spirits And Switched Into Sound Waves For Your Ears To Swallow. Are You Telling Me, What, That It’s Boring? You Don’t Have Time For It?

Maybe This Is Why I Sleep Only A Few Hours A Month. I Don't Want To Die Again. This Has Become Clearer And Clearer To Me Recently, A Desire So Sharp And Focused I Can Hardly Believe It's Mine: I Don't Want To Die. I Don't Want To Disappear. I Want To Stay.

All My Life I Have Battled The Alarm Clock, Pummeling The Snooze Button Over And Over With Mounting Self-loathing Until The Shame Is Finally Strong Enough To Lever Me Upright.

How Do I Appear Unthreatening When Her Lover's Blood Is Running Down My Chin?

Enough White Lies Can Scorch The Earth Black.

We're Fumbling In The Dark, But At Least We're In Motion.

The Kind Of Stuff I Usually Read Is A Bit More On The Literary Side, Like Books That I Think Are Influential In The Sense That They're Doing Pulpy Subject Matter In A Refined Way. Like 'the Road' By Cormac Mccarthy, I Loved That Book.

You Know Things Are Moving. You're Changing, You Fellow Dead Are Changing, The World Is Ready For Something Miraculous. What Are We Waiting For?

Here We Are On The Road. We Must Be Going Somewhere.

I Don't Know... There's Something Kind Of Beautiful About It, Don't You Think? That We Keep Living And Growing Even Though Our World Is A Corpse? That We Keep Coming Back No Matter How Many Of Us Die?

What A Massive Responsibility, Being A Moral Creature

What Wonderful Thing Didn't Start Out Scary?

Wonderful Things

You Can Order Yourself To Treasure A Moment, To Cling Tight To A Feeling And Never Let It Fade, But It's Your Brain, That Three-pound Lump Of Hamburger, That Makes The Final Call.

It Frustrates And Fascinates Me That We'll Never Know For Sure, That Despite The Best Efforts Of Historians And Scientists And Poets, There Are Some Things We'll Just Never Know. What The First Song Sounded Like. How It Felt To See The First Photograph. Who Kissed The First Kiss, And If It Was Any Good.

I Can Feel It... The Chance To Start Over, To Live Right, To Love Right, To Burn Up In A Fiery Cloud And Never Again Be Buried In The Mud.

What's The Point Of Trying To Fix A World We're So Briefly In?

Everything You See, You Might Be Seeing For The Last Time.

I Crush Her Against Me. I Want To Be Part Of Her. Not Just Inside Her But All Around Her. I Want Our Rib Cages To Crack Open And Our Hearts To Migrate And Merge. I Want Our Cells To Braid Together Like Living Thread.

Inspirational Love

Sometimes I Wonder If He Has A Philosophy. Maybe Even A Worldview. I'd Like To Sit Down With Him And Pick His Brain, Just A Tiny Bit Somewhere In The Frontal Lobe To Get A Taste Of His Thoughts. But He's Too Much Of A Toughguy To Ever Be That Vulnerable. - R On M

Stop. Breathe Those Useless Breaths. Drop This Piece Of Life You’re Holding To Your Lips. Where Are You? How Long Have You Been Here? Stop Now. You Have To Stop. Squeeze Shut Your Stinging Eyes, And Take Another Bite.

We Eat And Sleep And Shuffle Through The Fog, Walking A Marathon With No Finish Line, No Medals, No Cheering.

I Wonder How Well She Sleeps At Night, And What Kind Of Dreams She Has. I Wish I Could Step Into Them Like She Steps Into Mine.

One Mistake, One Brief Lapse Of My New Found Judgement-that's All It Took To Unravel Everything. What A Massive Responsibility, Being A Moral Creature.

I've Always Been Interested In Writing From The Perspective Of An Outsider.

My "heart". Does That Pitiful Organ Still Represent Anything? It Lies Motionless In My Chest, Pumping No Blood, Serving No Purpose, And Yet My Feelings Still Seem To Originate Inside Its Cold Walls. My Muted Sadness, My Vague Longing, My Rare Flickers Of Joy. They Pool In The Center Of My Chest And Seep Out Of There, Diluted And Faint, But Real.

Is This Muteness A Real Physical Handicap? One Of The Many Symptoms Of Being Dead?or Do We Just Have Nothing Left To Say?

I Notice Faint Scars On Her Wrists And Forearms, Thin Lines Too Symmetrical To Be Accidents.

Every Experience, Good Or Bad, Is A Priceless Collector's Item.

My Favorite Songs Change Every Year.

Once Again The Absurdity Of My Inner Thoughts Overwhelms Me, And I Want To Crawl Out Of My Skin, Escape My Ugly, Awkward Flesh And Be A Skeleton, Naked And Anonymous.

The World That Birthed That Story Is Long Gone, All Its People Are Dead, But It Continues To Touch The Present And Future Because Someone Cared Enough About That World To Keep It. To Put It In Words. To Remember It.

What Happened To The World Was Gradual. I've Forgotten What It Actually Was, But I Have Faint, Fetal Memories Of What It Was Like. A Smoldering Dread That Never Really Caught Fire Till There Wasn't Much Left To Burn. Each Sequential Step Surprised Us. Then One Day We Woke Up, And Everything Was Gone.

Sometimes It's A Struggle To Live In The Moment.

Live In The Moment

It's A Strange Feeling, Being So Utterly Surrounded By Her. Her Life Scent Is On Everything. She's On Me And Under Me And Next To Me. It's As If The Entire Room Is Made Out Of Her.

But We Don’t Remember Those Lives. We Can’t Read Our Diaries.’ ‘it Doesn’t Matter. We Are Where We Are, However We Got Here. What Matters Is Where We Go Next.’ ‘but Can We Choose That?’ ‘i Don’t Know.’ ‘we’re Dead. Can We Really Choose Anything?’ ‘maybe. If We Want To Bad Enough.

I Hate That She's Hurt. I Hate That She's Been Hurt, By Me And By Others, Throughout The Entire Arc Of Her Life. I Barely Remember Pain, But When I See It In Her I Feel It In Myself, In Disproportionate Measure. It Creeps Into My Eyes, Stinging, Burning.

I Wish People Were Willing To Dig A Little Deeper Than The Surface Elements Of A Premise Before Tossing One Story In With Another.

There’s Not Really Such Thing As ‘good’ Or ‘bad’ People, There’s Just Like…humanity. And It Gets Broken Sometimes.

Can We Really Choose Anything?' 'maybe. If We Want To Bad Enough.

I Would Like My Life To Be A Movie So I Could Cut To A Montage.

What I'm Saying Is, When You Have Weight Like That In Your Life, You Have To Start Looking For The Bigger Picture Or You Are Gonna Sink.

The Shadows Of The Room Pool In The Lines Of Our Faces, Draining Our Eyes Of Hue. "there's Nothing Left Worth Saying.

I Want Life And In All Its Stupid Sticky Rawness.

She Gathers My Half Of The Blankets Around Her And Curls Up Against The Wall. She Will Sleep For Hours More, Dreaming Endless Landscapes And Novas Of Colour Both Gorgeous And Frightening. If I Stayed She Would Wake Up And Describe Them To Me. All The Mad Plot Twists And Surrealist Imagery, So Vivid To Her While So Meaningless To Me. There Was A Time When I Treasured Listening To Her, When I Found The Commotion In Her Soul Bitter-sweet And Lovely, But I Can No Longer Bear It.

Life Only Makes Any Sense If We Can See Time How God Does. Past, Present, And Future All At Once.

Are My Words Ever Actually Audible, Or Do They Just Echo In My Head While People Stare At Me, Waiting?

Came To . . . See You.” “but I Had To Go Home, Remember? You Were Supposed To Say Good-bye.” “don't Know Why You . . . Say Good-bye. I Say . . . Hello.” Her Lip Quivers Between Reactions, But She Ends Up With A Reluctant Smile. “god You're A Cheeseball. But Seriously, R—

I'm Not A General Or A Colonel Or A Builder Of Cities. I'm Just A Corpse Who Wants Not To Be.

It's More Eerie To Be Alone In A City That's Lit Up And Functioning Than One That's A Tomb. If Everything Were Silent, One Could Almost Pretend To Be In Nature. A Forest. A Meadow. Crickets And Birdsong. But The Corpse Of Civilization Is As Restless As The Creatures That Now Roam The Graveyards.

And Yet ... But What If ... I Want To Do Something Impossible. Something Astounding And Unheard Of. I Want To Scrub The Moss Off The Space Shuttle And Fly Julie To The Moon And Colonise It, Or Float A Capsized Cruise Ship To Some Distant Island Where No One Will Protest Us, Or Just Harness The Magic That Brings Me Into The Brains Of The Living And Use It To Bring Julie Into Mine, Because It's Warm In Here, It's Quiet And Lovely, And In Here We Aren't An Absurd Juxtaposition, We Are Perfect.

Last Winter, When So Many Living Joined The Dead And Our Prey Became Scarce, I Watched Some Of My Friends Become Full-dead. The Transition Was Undramatic. They Just Slowed Down, Then Stopped, And After A While I Realised They Were Corpses. It Disquieted Me At First, But It’s Against Etiquette To Notice When One Of Us Dies. I Distracted Myself With Some Groaning.

It's Rare That I Read More Than Two Or Three Books By Any One Author, Usually Only One.

I Feel An Unfamiliar But Pleasant Sensation In My Lips, Tugging Them Upward. This Is... New.

You Might Say That Death Has Relaxed Me.

The Past Is Made Out Of Facts...i Guess The Future Is Just Hope.

Just... Ate," M Says, Frowning At Me A Little. "two Days...ago." I Grab My Stomach Again. "feel Empty. Feel... Dead." He Nods. "marr...iage.

I Wince At Her Use Of The Word "human." I've Never Liked That Differentiation. She Is Living And I'm Dead, But We're Both Human. Call Me An Idealist.

Differentiation

Why Is It Beautiful That Humanity Keeps Coming Back? So Does Herpes.

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