Summer Zombies

As the school year rounds comes to a close for college students the zombies are out and about again. The spindly claws of summer reach into the class rooms to drag students away from their studies, keep them up all night drinking and carousing until the small hours of the morning and spitting them out to wobble to class and finals in the morning. Students long to wile away their hours at the oceanfront, sunning themselves on the beach and cooling off in the water instead of cramming facts about 20th century painters or mathematical equations for their impending finals that they are veering into. Time progresses and students gleefully flee their dorms and apartments with summer properly started they are free.

They are free until August when summer isn't quite over but school drags them back. They go from staying up all night, sleeping all day, drinking when they please and working at some point to having to get up early in the morning, just shy of an hour from when they would go to bed. They lumber to class, dragging sun blistered and tan bodies into the air conditioned buildings with the bright summer sun outside to mock them. As the weather turns cool and ultimately cold they fall into the rut of school sleeping habits which are minimal as opposed to the excessive hours of rest from summer. They're wired of caffeine for class and work, running to and fro until winter break, a month to hibernate, the beaches are too cold to sleep on anymore. They lust and dream for summer, for the two weeks of being a zombie with the tantalizing warmth paying the Pied Piper luring them outside once more. The vicious cycle seems to never end, but the cycle breaks when graduation arrives and jobs with a yearly salary arrive and work happens all year round. The new graduates lust for the school cycle of work and rest, narcolepsy and insomnia in a yin yang harmony that drives them insane, but is a rote and comfortable track to follow.

Jasmine P.

Conteplating my mother

This was initially a response to a comment about needing to be Christian to understand the Bible, and my disagreement with that idea.  I ended up drifting to thoughts about my mother instead.

"I decided religion stopped making sense for me when I was about 12, but I kept trying. When my mother died when I was 18, she was "taken home" or "God needed her" or whatever platitudes people tried to give me, they never worked. I decided that her death was for the best because her last 3 months sucked. She was in pain and stuck in a hospital. She loved more things than I can and I aspire to be someone she would be proud of, even if I don't have her religious conviction. She wasn't crazy devout, but she would actively go to church just about every Sunday. She also went out to clubs on Fridays or Saturdays, and gambled. She helped those who were less fortunate than we, and she prayed. She also cursed like a sailor. She was human.

Sorry, I'm dealing with mourning, she died on April 28th, I try to get through April every year and it kicks my ass. Upside, I did smile while thinking about my mom and sharing this. She was a good person and literally gave a homeless woman the coat off her back one day because the woman needed it and my mom had plenty of coats. Sh was good to people and children, I think that even without God she would have been that person. She had her dark streaks, but who doesn't. For me, God 'needing' my mom was bullshit, I didn't consider myself to be an 18 year old who didn't need her mom. She was never abusive and the things that I was mad at her about were not worth her dying. I made it through her funeral and the time after with science as my explanation and not religion which gave me shitty answers."

Jasmine P.

Finals Week Dreams

DREAM!!!

Saturday Afternoon

I had a dream last night that started off with me going to the amusement park, I think Busch Gardens, with my brothers, cousin and somebody else. At one point a ride I was on broke in an odd way to instead of us flying to our deaths thy just run the ride in reverse which was pretty damn fun.

At a later part of the dream I’ve apparently made it into Harvard, or something, and I’m talking with a teacher and explain how much harder and more I need to prove myself because I’m black and I’m from middle class America. Apparently I violently threatened someone; someone else was a stoner; and I ended the day happy with myself but apparently with no friends there , which was all right.

I dream the weirdest shit sometimes…

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Monday morning

Another dream!

I was hanging out in Maryland with some people, one dude was kinda creepy. It’s been like 5 hours since I dreamed this, this part was boring. The entire time we keep hearing a new story about a mongoloid 6 year-old (sorry for the PC police, I can’t think of a better way to describe this kid) who’s been killing construction drivers with a pick axe. I’m driving home on Reston Parkway but it looks a bit more like Fairfax Co. Parkway when a trick is stopped in the middle of the road, I turn and break to not hit it and my car kind of gets stick under it. The 6 yo sees me, he just killed the driver who’s still burbling blood with the giant pick axe stuck in his neck. The kid is bloody, leaves the axe and tries to attack me, I’m pinned in my car and the window is open. I kind of deflect him with a trash can that I could reach through the window that had fallen off the truck. He gets up, I try to get out of the car but I’m stuck; the kid gets an axe and attacks me, I try swatting at him and wake up actually moving my arms.

It sucked balls.

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I am stressed like fuck, this second dream was so damn terrible. 
Jasmine P.