For Every Missing Shade

Entry 1

I guess I could start by saying hello.

So... hello.

I'm Israel Taylor. I was born in Denver, but moved to St. Louis when I was young. My family has always lived in the United States, but my great-great-grandparents or something came in from Sri Lanka. To understand what that means, just imagine a guy who sounds like your typical American, doesn't look like your typical American, and then also kind of believes in reincarnation.

Today, I spent five hours having my thoughts dominated by the three stupidest words in the English dictionary. And no, those words are not I love you. I wish my brain could be as interesting as that, but no. As useless as it sounds, the three words that have consumed my every thought since waking up are, how are you?

You see, I learned profoundly late in life that I shouldn't tell the truth when people ask me how I'm doing. Instead, I'm supposed to say, "good." Maybe you could break out "well" if you cared about your grammar, but that's away from the point.

The point is that it's a stupid thing to ask. And it's stupid for three main reasons: 1. the person asking is asking a question they don't care about the answer to, so 2. you shouldn't waste their time by being honest with them because 3. it's the only situation where people would almost always rather you lie than tell the truth. No one wants to hear about a day going shitty just like people don't want to hear about a day that's going absolutely fantastic. No one wants to hear about the girl you just got to second base with, and no one wants to hear about the test you just bombed. People beg for neutrality in the lives of those around them.

Asking that question is like accepting that life is a formality, not something to explore. There are so many things I could say instead of "good." I could talk about how I can't speak well so my life has become a constant string of saying something only to say, "oh sorry, that sounded different in my head," right afterward. I could tell them about the portrait I've been painting in my head ever since they started talking to me. I don't know, maybe I could say, "Confused. How are you?" and we could accept that and go on with our day.

Why does everyone need to be good?

I could talk about painting or writing or god or how the chances of being alive are like one in ten to the three millionth power which means none of us should exist in the first place so why the hell are you spending this impossible time alive asking me a question that you don't even care about the answer to?

Jesus, I almost ran out of breath just writing that sentence.

But I've spent too much ink on this problem already. If you need a moral of this story, it's that asking how are you? is a stupid thing to do. But for your own safety, just say "good" and go on with your day.

But that's why, long ago, I started writing. Talking sucks. There are too many rules. There are things people want to hear or don't want to hear, and it's up to me to figure it out. They ask too many stupid questions and want too many stupid answers. It's confusing and somehow it's my job to figure out how to walk in this weird, colloquial minefield.

I never knew how to express my feelings before I found writing. Someone once told me that writing is the ability to create my own perfect world. That gave me a lot of comfort. My mind moves too fast for my mouth to catch up to, so everything I say comes out nonsensical and flawed. For some reason, holding a pen in my hands has always changed that.

The world made me want to escape, and writing gave me something to escape to. But to me, writing is more than an escape, just as it's more than ink on paper. I believe that writing, as well as all other forms of beauty, can be boiled down to one simple word:

Color.

I started painting when I was ten. I started because I was obsessed with creating a portrait for the things I felt, but couldn't see. I would paint what happiness looked like or what getting a new present felt like. Color represented my feelings, but the world looked nothing like those colors. It looked nothing like my feelings. I wanted the world to be more vibrant, more rambunctious, and more like a work of art. Color was the only way my young mind could describe what I wished the world was like, and it's followed me to today.

The problem is that color is rare to find in general and almost impossible to find in a high school. If originality was a color, then I lived in a place where it was cool to be gray. But it wasn't always like that. Elementary school was filled with weirdos. People sticking pencils up their nose and failing tests because they wanted to play in a jungle gym.

But then something changed and everyone changed with it. Color became a dirty word. I don't know who first decided that an absence of color made someone valuable, but it had a lasting effect.

Slowly but surely, the peculiar fire inside everyone got extinguished.

I wish I could find a match and light it again.

A change would be nice, I think.