Embracing the Afterlife (UPDATE #14)

I love staying after school. Hi, by the way. I believe, and this is with the most respect, that when one stays in school after hours, it’s like a whole other building. I remember once, for a period of about 3 weeks, I would go out in the night to just see the side of darkness many aren’t able to experience. I saw the creatures of the night come out. I saw this side of Chicago I was never accustomed to because I would always be home by the time darkness fell on the city. I would do something ordinary, something one would do in the day-time. Things like shopping, eating, taking a walk downtown, all seemed so alien. When we would eat at a restaurant, the only people I would see would be individuals who were being stood up on a date, or a few people hunched over their meals, not really caring about how they ate or who was watching them eat. When we would go shopping, it would be these people, who hide behind their expensive clothing to shield their inner insecurities, who would be shopping. It seemed like they shopped without purpose, as if they would buy just because product was there. Walking downtown, there is artificial sunlight coming from neon signs and streetlamps. I would see the bums, the whores, and pimps going about their business like the men and women we are so used to seeing every working morning. This, I can relate to the way it is when I stay after school. Not in the way where I see prostitutes and bums going around, but I get to see people I hardly see in an average day of school. I get to see the freaks. Now before everyone reports this for being offensive, or you label me as a bad person, let me make two things very clear:

1. I know I’m a bad person, so you don’t have to remind me.
2. When I mean a “freak” I do not mean it in an offensive way. Allow me to explain…

Hey, I consider myself a freak. I have actions and thoughts that I have yet to encounter a person with the same thought process as me, and that’s not me being egotistical, that’s based off of the time I’ve spent in the world. I know that freak can be used as an insult, but I think of it as being a revolutionary. Some of the most influential people of our time, people like Karl Marx, Isaac Newton, even Jesus (The Man) were thought, at the time, to be weird, these guys were freaks, yet they influenced the world to this day! So when I say the freaks come out after school, I do not, at all, mean that in an offensive way. Moving on, I feel like the people who stay after school hold stories. Anybody can get up for school, fuck around a little in some classes, maybe do a little work, and go home; but it’s those who stay when they don’t need to are the people who hold a background. Some stay because they don’t want to go home, others stay because they don’t necessarily have a home to go to. When I stay after school, I get a feel for the true diversity that really exists in my school, and I believe that’s where the essence of not only inspiration, but of creativity stems from. I like getting characters from the people I meet in my life, and I think a “freak” does the trick. Too many people want to be these perfect human beings. We all want to have the same interests in order to stay relevant and be one with the culture, but I say to hell with that. I think people should create and embrace their own culture. I try to do that, I create my own way of doing activities, and I either prosper or suffer because of it. I may suffer, but at least I’ll be suffering because I was original. It's a struggle we, as conscious people, have to deal with, and that’s what I see when I stay afterschool to participate in the freakshow.

                                                             P.E.N.T.C.I.