Make Them Gold [Temple & Quest]
Oct 23, 2018 12:45:55 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2018 12:45:55 GMT -5
There in the madness
Us against the world
And every heartbeat felt like
This is what we deserve
---------------------------------------------------
Life sucks and then you die; it’s the phrase that’s been ping ponging around in my head for the past week. Life sucks and then you die – I think there’s supposed to be something after that, to lift you up and make you feel all warm and fuzzy. Life sucks and then you die, just hanging in the air for us to figure out. Is it on everyone else’s minds, or am I the only budding existentialist? I guess not everyone wants to think about death. There’s a select few of us that revel in the darkness, the unknowing, the finality of it all.
From what I can gather, the lower and upper districts are similar in that way. As a career, you’re supposed to be familiar with death, with fighting, and break people apart. There’s a repetition for them in that they use their bodies toward a purpose; for the lower districts, it’s replaced with pulling cotton or corn, herding animals, or digging coal. But I think there’s more room for thinking about death in district six since we’re not so defined. My parents were nurses, but some folks work on trains, or in junkyards. I played music in abandoned warehouses, and Ether is piecing together an automobile. He told me he was going to drive the thing at my coronation, just as soon as I came back.
My parents never indulged us by talking about an afterlife. Both of them worked with the sick and dying, in hospice and palliative care at the biggest hospital in the district. My father once told me that the only thing he could do was make sure that they were comfortable breathing their last breath. A lot of folks wax on about ceremony in death, but he said the surest thing is to hold their hand, listen to what they might have to say, and do everything he could to see that they weren’t in too much pain. I can picture him at a bedside, hand in hand, whispering out that the worry was almost over. Life sucks and then you die – but at least he could say they went with dignity.
By pressing the “R” in the elevator, you get spit out onto the rooftop of training center. It’s awash in green, with fountains nestled around corners. A path of stone circles up and around the edges and through the middle, winding past a pond of gold fish and up toward a thicket of trees. Little torches blaze along the path to provide light, though overheads blaze in the late evening, detracting only slightly from the serenity. There’s a whole portion dedicated to fruits and vegetables, all ripe and ready to pick – tomatoes languid at the end of vines, and berries rolling over bushes.
I wind around a corner that’s mostly shrubs and taller trees. Off the left hand side of the path sits a fountain with the capitol crest, and each of the districts carved into the length of the column of the fountain. I sit along the cool marble at the edge of the fountain, and stare off at the skyline beyond the trees. There’s thousands of lights in the distance, lights of people that are coming home and going out, of lives that go on without thinking of us. I wonder what it must be like to turn off a television and have all of it fade away from existence?
I pluck a little chrome box from my pocket, and place it next to me. For days I’ve been accessing files from the library; music, mostly – sounds from years past, of artists that the capitol has not yet condemned or considered treasonous. The cube hosts a set of songs I like to play when I get to sit and think (which is most of the time, sneaking away on my lonesome). Tonight, when the box comes alive to my touch and lists the songs in the air in front of me, I scroll through until one piques my interest. Children of the Wild, the singer through static and an electronic rhythm calls out. And I turn a light to my cigarette and listen, coming alive.
From what I can gather, the lower and upper districts are similar in that way. As a career, you’re supposed to be familiar with death, with fighting, and break people apart. There’s a repetition for them in that they use their bodies toward a purpose; for the lower districts, it’s replaced with pulling cotton or corn, herding animals, or digging coal. But I think there’s more room for thinking about death in district six since we’re not so defined. My parents were nurses, but some folks work on trains, or in junkyards. I played music in abandoned warehouses, and Ether is piecing together an automobile. He told me he was going to drive the thing at my coronation, just as soon as I came back.
My parents never indulged us by talking about an afterlife. Both of them worked with the sick and dying, in hospice and palliative care at the biggest hospital in the district. My father once told me that the only thing he could do was make sure that they were comfortable breathing their last breath. A lot of folks wax on about ceremony in death, but he said the surest thing is to hold their hand, listen to what they might have to say, and do everything he could to see that they weren’t in too much pain. I can picture him at a bedside, hand in hand, whispering out that the worry was almost over. Life sucks and then you die – but at least he could say they went with dignity.
By pressing the “R” in the elevator, you get spit out onto the rooftop of training center. It’s awash in green, with fountains nestled around corners. A path of stone circles up and around the edges and through the middle, winding past a pond of gold fish and up toward a thicket of trees. Little torches blaze along the path to provide light, though overheads blaze in the late evening, detracting only slightly from the serenity. There’s a whole portion dedicated to fruits and vegetables, all ripe and ready to pick – tomatoes languid at the end of vines, and berries rolling over bushes.
I wind around a corner that’s mostly shrubs and taller trees. Off the left hand side of the path sits a fountain with the capitol crest, and each of the districts carved into the length of the column of the fountain. I sit along the cool marble at the edge of the fountain, and stare off at the skyline beyond the trees. There’s thousands of lights in the distance, lights of people that are coming home and going out, of lives that go on without thinking of us. I wonder what it must be like to turn off a television and have all of it fade away from existence?
I pluck a little chrome box from my pocket, and place it next to me. For days I’ve been accessing files from the library; music, mostly – sounds from years past, of artists that the capitol has not yet condemned or considered treasonous. The cube hosts a set of songs I like to play when I get to sit and think (which is most of the time, sneaking away on my lonesome). Tonight, when the box comes alive to my touch and lists the songs in the air in front of me, I scroll through until one piques my interest. Children of the Wild, the singer through static and an electronic rhythm calls out. And I turn a light to my cigarette and listen, coming alive.
tag: Geebs! words: 697 notes: :eyes:
