"Wasting time with you in mind" -

What is today but another day to waste away?

What is time wasted to a person whose days have come to an end?

 These questions aren't rhetorical.

I'm not so sure where I am going with this blog, or if anyone will ever read it. But that's ok, because all I am really looking for is a medium in which I can express my rambling thoughts. Below is a piece I wrote a few years ago after a long night run near Ala Moana beach.

Death of a cockroach

Its been dark for a good three hours now and here I am lying down on the side walk at ala moana beach park. The oceans waves are crashing just loud enough for me to sense them over the melodious music cascading into my ears from my tarnished ipod. I stand to my feet as if somehow it will make me feel closer to the stars shining above. Moving with the rhythms in my head, I cast my glaze up, around, and down to the ground. With a spontaneous flick, I quickly, as if habitually my nature, react to the sight of a huge ugly brown cockroach by crushing him with my heel.

 

Why?

As I sat there staring at the dead roach I couldn’t help but to ask myself why I had found it necessary and almost natural to kill a creature that posed absolutely no threat and caused no harm to me by being alive. You may think that I am a weird, vegan, greenpeace, emotional, hippie girl, and the truth is I am all those things, but I hope that you can try to relate to me on this.

So I killed this innocent roach that was minding its own business, outside in its own habitat. I can’t tell you why I felt like I had the right to take his life. Is it because I had more power than him? Is it because I didn’t want to share the sidewalk with him, even though there was plenty enough room for the both of us? Is it because I was better than the roach and I have more of a right to life? Was it because he was different from me and I was afraid of that? Did my fear lead me to be insecure and ultimately elicit hostilities towards the roach to boost my own self-purpose? 

            With all these questions clouding my mind I began to see a simulation between our story and the societal history of our world. I realized that these very questions are the same ones I would pose towards Hitler of Germany, Slobo of Serbia, Pharaoh of Egypt, Hutu's of Rwanda and Burundi, colonizers of the world, slave owners in America, racist of the past and present, Andrew Jackson and the Indians, Australians and the Aborigines, Sudanese government and it's southern peoples, and so on and so forth.

And so I cried. I cried because I killed the roach for no better reason than the questions listed above…. and it disgust me to know that.  So yes, I think we should have  an appreciation for every living thing from people to plants to ants to elephants. I don’t have the right to take anythings life just because I can or because I am afraid and you don’t either, not as an individual or a group…….. I donno how to make this world less shittier than it is, but hopefully this translates into someones life in a positive way….. and maybe we will begin to start appreciating life more and destruction less.

R.I.P.

Mr. Roach~ I'm really sorry.