I was sitting in an office waiting. There was a painting of a forest of birch trees on the wall.
I noticed that birch trees always have so many knots on their trunk, like they’re falling apart and losing branches right and left. Either it’s bad construction, or they’re the laziest trees ever and simply get tired of holding their branches up. If I was a bird I would only build a nest in a birch tree if I was pinched for cash and needed a place to stay. Even the bark has given up and started turning itself into paper. It’s like birch trees don’t really know what they want to do with themselves. What’s the point of being a tree anyways? Yeah, I get it, you’re supposed to grow and get tall… but why? Is there an optimal height that all trees are trying to reach? Because the taller you get, the easier it seems to snap in half in the middle of a storm, or lose your roots in a flood. Why not reach a modest, respectable height, and stop? Are you really going to benefit from being taller if you just keep dropping branches along the way? They are what built you up in the first place, so how do you think that makes them feel? You sacrifice what you consider to be dead weight just so you can sprout a few more leaves closer to the sun.
What I liked about this painting is that it didn’t show the tops of the trees. It only showed the trunks and the forest floor. All the branches were gone, but everyone could see the knots, the scars left on the trees.
Pencil sharpeners are whores. And you’re the pimp. We all know this. Even since a young age we would have dozens of pencils and only one pencil sharpener. You stick in pencil after pencil, red, blue, orange, pink, number 2, hard lead, soft lead — some don’t quite fit, but you cram them in anyways — it doesn’t matter to you. All that matters is the pencils keep getting sharpened until they go out into the rough world of paper, get dull again, and need to come back. Pencils come and go, but you use that same poor sharpener until it too, dulls and can no longer function, and you get a new one. It has seen so many pencils, but can’t seem to remember any of them. It’s all such a blur. This lonely pencil just wants one connection that will last, that’s all it asks. It just wants to feel special. In a perfect world you would have one pencil sharpener for every pencil you use, but this isn’t a perfect world. You line up the next pencil sharpener and make sure it is tight and firmly mounted on the wall. You add a drop of oil to prevent squeaking, turn a blind eye, and start lining up pencils again.
How are you supposed to read a picture? I know with words you go left to right and the spaces tell you where the words are, but with pictures, where do you start? Is there a way to tell if you have picture literacy? Sometimes words are illegible, but is there such thing as an illegible picture? Or do you just call it “art?”
A man decided to travel the world. Wherever he went that he hadn’t been before he had to constantly ask questions about where to go, what to eat, and what to do. He carried the suitcase with him on every trip, and as a souvenir he collected a sticker from each new place — but he didn’t stick them anywhere. He kept his suitcase clean and free of markings. One day he put all of his collected stickers on at once, and then people started asking him questions about where to go, what to eat, and what to do, so he started giving advice, even though he had never been there before.
You don’t need to have experience to know how to do something. Sometimes you just need someone to ask you a question.
I just realized that greeting cards are really redundant. Most of the time you hand someone a card in person instead of mail it, so you can just wish them a happy birthday in person.
But it’s the occasions where you don’t want to confront someone that just beg for an alternative. Like something you’d slip under someone’s door with a cute picture that says “I never want to hear you again. turn your music down.” or “TGIF! Take a shower once in a while.”
The danger of skydiving is that you have to come back down to the ground. I’m not talking about hitting the ground at terminal velocity. I’m talking about how skydiving is the most exciting thing you will ever do in your life, and then you have to get in your car and drive home for 45 minutes in traffic, eat, sleep, and go to work on Monday when all you can think about is how much better you felt while you were falling.
A man sat down on a park bench and started reading the newspaper. He grew more and more bewildered with each word, not knowing what to make of the news.
A child then came up to him and asked, “Sir, why are you holding that upside-down?”
To which the man replied, “Because I’m illiterate.”
Two friends were playing a game, and one kept losing. The losing one was not enjoying losing, and complained, “Why do you even play this game, it’s so trivial and pointless anyways?”
The winning friend retorted, “It’s all about skill and strategy. It looks simple but it’s actually really complex; you just have to be good at it.”
The losing friend shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just a game.”
They continued playing until the losing friend won a game and threw his arms up. “Yes, I’m finally winning!”
The other friend shrugged his shoulders, “It’s just a game.” And set up another round.
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