Half Birthday Haiku - Becoming A Bore

Half-Birthday Haiku
By Mark Anderson

The sun lost in fog
Icy slush loves all wheel drive
Where is my checkbook?

Hoppity hop hop
When I think of dead bunnies
My heart splits in half

Turn on your sun lamp
Put a kettle on the fire
Nuclear winter

I miss whiskey eyes
Though they may not have been real
Heartbreak in sunlight

Becoming A Bore
By Michael Herman

John was concerned he was becoming a bore. It wasn’t something which occurred to him until recently. But now that he was aware of it, it was apparent to him. He’d begun becoming a bore sometime in the past as his interesting qualities were smoothed away by the passage of time. Now he was full-on into the process and slowly approaching the day he would actually be a bore.

If he had to nail down an exact day his process of becoming a bore began, it would probably be during the summer following the summer he graduated from college. Initially he had remained very vibrant and his social life was fruitful with many friends, parties and sometimes anonymous sexual partners. That part was when he was still interesting and had fun for himself. Then the seasons changed from summer to fall and fall into winter and winter into spring. By the time spring turned into summer again, he was not vibrant. He found his social life no longer bore fruit and his many friends had dwindled, there were fewer parties and his sexual partners were more anonymous. John, upon reflection, realized he had lost something during this timeframe.

With fewer people who knew him intimately and fewer still opportunities to see those people, John began to lose the edge on what made him interesting. Where he previously had been surrounded by people who shared his taste in music, movies and television, he found himself increasingly surrounded by people whose opinions he did not know about music, movies and television. It’s not that these people didn’t have opinions. It’s that the people who filled into the vacuum of the friends he once knew were not his friends. He didn’t feel comfortable talking with them about television the same way he did with his now-former friends.

Increasingly his discussions became about the same topics he dreaded as a younger man. A good conversation in his new life was less likely to be about an interesting book he read than the exploits of a celebrity couple or an Internet video others had seen. He began seeking out information on these topics. If he was going to have an informed opinion, he would need to get informed on the topic. He began scouring news sites, late night talk shows and occasionally the newspaper for information about what other people apparently give a shit about. He avoided topics which were political, religious or otherwise controversial. Polite conversation rarely had room for these topics unless everyone involved was of a similar opinion. And John was unaware of whether the people he knew shared in his opinions. Soon almost all of John’s conversations consisted entirely of small talk.

Even the conversations he had with the people who had been his closest intimates at one point were now small talk. When he would see a friend for the first time in years, the topic was invariably would be something called “catching up.” It consisted of the other person saying “what they’d been up to” which was more or less a laundry list of their life events since the last time they met told in chronological order. Then John would give the same laundry list and at the end they would agree it had been too long and they shouldn’t let so much time pass next time. Completely forgotten and alien to the process were the things which made them friends in the first place.
What John didn’t realize is he had finally become what he always wanted to be. He was now an island unto himself with no one able to know him really. He’d gained the freedom to be whomever he fucking wanted to be since no one was going to be checking in on him anyhow. It was fully within his capacity to make his world as he sees fit and how he wanted it to play out. As his universe had shrunk, the space he occupied in it expanded until he filled it totally. He was everywhere at all times and all at once.

It was in this position he now found himself and it wasn’t what he wanted at all. He didn’t want to make small talk with what used to be his best friends. He didn’t want to be surrounded by people he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know about celebrity culture or the blockbuster which was making millions in cinemas worldwide. He couldn’t buy into it and that would always prevent him from faking enthusiasm for it. Eventually he wouldn’t even be able to pretend to relate to what others thought.

He was going to have to be himself. He was going to have to give a shit about what he gave a shit about and not worry about things he didn’t. It was going to be difficult because it meant he wasn’t always going to be able to please everyone. But he wasn’t worried about pleasing people he couldn’t relate to anymore either. There would be some people who wouldn’t get him or understand where he was coming from. That was now fine in his opinion because he was willing to sacrifice those people in favor of people who did get him and did understand where he was coming from. He didn’t want to be off-putting or closed-minded. Just reasonable in his expectations of others and of himself.

John experienced something on that day which he hadn’t in a long time. It was a sense of longing, loneliness crossed with maudlin sentimentality. He thought back to when he had intimate friends and real conversations. He thought back and wondered how to get them back again.