Nevada Smith

When I put things about feelings on here, people tend to enjoy them, no matter how shitty, as long as it’s blunt. This goes even for some of the most shallow things I’ve written.

When I write something layered and difficult to interpret, but ultimately much more important to myself, and that deals with much deeper emotional stirrings that are often more communicable and important to a greater range of people, almost no response.

I find this interesting for this website in particular, where multiple communities claim to be (outright or not) of a higher intelligence level, more educated, more *refined* than ‘the rest of the world’. Typical ‘tumblr critiques’, as I have decided to call them, and photo-sets expressing rage that some witticism went misunderstood are examples. Strong *social justice* feelings mixed with very extreme and often condemning elitism follow as well, which always made me wary of the intellectual level on the website as a whole. Add to that the fact that so many people with “always reblog”s and “that’s so tumblr”, and “wow you’re not from the internet”, etc, whether by outright statement or general content, seem very self-satisfied with their apparent level in intelligence, it’s strange that there aren’t more people asking questions of why certain writings, pictures, etc are receiving more attention than others; more to the point: what do the people of this website enjoy and is that in fact a healthy/intelligent thing to enjoy/promote?

Poems about self-loathing and suicide get me tons of love, but if I put my positive anthems on here I’d imagine they’d not do well. *Feminist* anything does well in regards to text posts and quotes, but looking through the sources on most of it, I can find very little that actually comes from peer-reviewed sources or anything other than other blogs, for the most part, and a lot of it, at least in terms of studying theories of oppression, is…. flawed. Is that what this place is about?

Think critically until you arrive at where you want to be, but don’t question that position? Erin and I talked about this, not in terms of tumblr, but in life in general, a while back. She encouraged me to question even why I felt the *right* way about certain social justice norms, because I need to really know why I believe in what I believe in, and I need to know that on an intelligible level that I can sustain a real debate in, to truly align myself with that position. This goes for standards of poetry, standards of feminism (multiple positions within each feminist movement and being able to understand all of them), LGBTQ alliance,  musical standards, anything.

What distresses me about this site is that, unfortunately, ‘critical thinking’ seems only to apply when convenient to most. This seems to lead to a self-satisfied air of “oh I’ve thought hard enough until I reached the conclusion I wanted so I’m smart”, as opposed to “well, I’ve reached a position that seems to ally with what I want to believe and why, but why is that position good? Are there flaws here? Is it enough to be on somebody’s side, or should I question that side as well? Does being on the *right* side of an issue immediately make me blameless or are there flaws here to work toward solving as well?”

True critical thinking doesn’t really end, you just find out what’s wrong with your side and then try to fix that too, and then start over again.

Where are the thinkers?

I come for the past.

My world has been long since
brushed aside, juiced
and plagued with empty stardust,
the gravity is failing.

Here, there is a poison. A blue
wreak of wraith, the animals
can feel it, breathe it, *shudderrolldashshoot*

That one was consumed by it.
My plan was always the same, land
and take stock, learn to survive
on myself, and take the past with me,
wherever it comes from. These ruins,
these people, they left me love notes
etched in booby-traps and sour rain
that bites the skin and lungs, told me:

“Hon, you were meant for great things,
but you’re going to have to die to get
to them.”

Please.
I have screw-balled the last two planets
into oblivion, and the frigate of broken dreams
that took me here
no longer exists. I think
I can find a way to do what I need
without having to change so much
as the color of my armor.

This planet is dying already,
the life is slow, and violent,
full of spiked punches
and sharp corners.

I am not permanent, here, 
nor anywhere else
but the recesses of my ship.
It’s how I live forever.

I am here to collect my past,
and leave.

I hope they’ll tell me who I am before they kill me.