i have a lot of thoughts, swimming in my head.

i have a lot of thoughts, swimming in my head.

you wouldn't guess so, if you saw me irl. my skull is like the vacuum of space. it looks empty on the outside, but inside, alive, busy, things constantly flickering in and out of existence, two thoughts, antithetical, spawning from the meaningless void and going their own separate ways, temporarily, until inevitably their distinct trains join back together in unavoidable annihilation that either takes the form of resolution or forgetting.

i feel like i should put my thoughts out there. i feel like they're valuable. sorry, not valuable; they're quite unvaluable. but they're not so pointless so as to deserve annihilation.
annihilation is the default. millions of thoughts fighting to the death to become the one champion that gets to be registered to the conscious brain, but the six nines that fail don't deserve to be lost. it's a shame that annihilation is the default.

but every time, i take a pen or i take a keyboard or i take my phone and i start writing and i'm lost. what is there to write? the thought, which i found worthy, which has since been conquered and relegated to asphodel by something far less interesting overall? it's not as if the faceless judge of the gladiator arena proclaims xer champions according to my notions of value. the judge is but Chance itself, under the hood.
what is there to write? i can try contriving something interesting, but artificial insight is never as whimsical as the daily commuters on the train of thought. i twirl the pen in my hand, having earlier found initiative to write 26 pages prior out by hand rather than pay attention to the linear algebra lecture, yet now struggling, racking my brain to try to remember what his face looked like who stepped off the train to never be heard from again. annihilation station; this is your stop!
what is there to write? sometimes i do get a grasp on th eslippery thing. slimy little fish, you, you naughty little thought, ashamed of yourself, wanting to be forgotten, but no! i will show you to the world! and so i write and whaddayaknow, turns out the thought was right, that slippy little bastard. i write something shameful and i toss it in the bin with the office fan's wind set to -5.7.

some thoughts don't want to be written. some thoughts have just as much self hatred as you do! they resign on move 1 when their turn comes in the colosseum. they resign not just their match but with it their fate, because they don't deserve to be thought.
but it's exactly these thoughts that i want to write more of. not because i want to write them down to share them with the world, but because i want to write them down so i know what kind of thoughts they are! they kill themselves and slip past my brain so fast i never even know what they are

the vacuum in my skull is alive. and maybe you're some sort of weird panpsychist and already think the particles popping in and out are alive too. i'm not, but i'm starting to feel like they are anyway.

whenever i write, the end goal isn't the thing i'm writing. the end goal is beauty. i want to write beauty. but i only ever write beauty when i'm writing my thoughts unfiltered.
so to reach my goal, i have to write more of my thoughts. i have to fish the slimy fuckers out of the sea, catch 'em and jot 'em down, and eventually, one day, sixty years from now when i'm old i'll finally hit beauty.

one day.