America the Poor: A Wanderers Tale, Vol Two

Chapter 33: A Room of my very own Finally

Jeff and I discussed what we would do, while others played cards within a few feet, and strangely a few chose to listen into our conversation. Little did I realize then that certain others would find all this interesting as well.

When one doesn't truly enjoy life, your days are filled with mere distractions, the more the merrier. Life becomes time to waste, or pass, in whatever ways are best for you. Time is precious, according to religions, philosophies, and perhaps the long dead. Time is also precious for those who seem to love their lives, although often they don't think of it that way, til the times are gone. For the rest of us, these are moments to be passed, a cross of banalities to bear, until it's all over finally.

Jeff and myself decided to start with a simple task, keeping written records of it all. We decided to start with something simple, psychokinesis, which could be done together, and in person. The manipulation of physical matter, if possible of course. We were both determined to do our best, but maybe all of this was to pass time, to tolerate being and existing in a completely intolerable place. This institution was a complete version of a forced Hell for me, and probably for most other boys as well.

We started easily enough, the office provided dull pencils, and plenty of writing paper. These things were not really restricted, though the pencils might have been abused certainly with the right attitude and psychotic will. I suppose writing paper was allowed by the state budget, so we had it whenever we asked.

We raided the dice from the board games on the shelf, there were many to choose from. Yahtzee had the most available, and also happened to be the least played game on the ward, so no one complained of missing dice. Convenient obviously for our strange purposes. It was in that place I taught myself the law of averages, since school was useless for a mind like mine. I never learned this in school, but here, self teaching, I was an eager apt pupil, as was Jeff, and we were watched of course.

We started with a simple premise, what was average, and does true randomness really exist? Before we started exercising our wills and influences, we had to see and record the opposite obviously. No experiment could be real or legitimate without seeing what would naturally happen without a strong human will. The very first day, all we did were random rolls, no attempts at influence whatsoever.

We blanked our minds as best we could (not hard to do with the right medications of course), and took our chances, and rolled the bones for all we were worth, recording literally every result. This was essential to everything we did in the future, establishing true randomness, assuming it ever existed in the first place obviously.

We both spent an entire day, rolling pages of seemingly random numbers, over and over, each fully engulfed separately in our own strange endeavours, and both intent on seeing the nature of randomness for ourselves. This was merely the very first day of course. By dinnertime, we were intently watched by many other boys, and a few asked exactly what we were doing.

Here's another strange secret of human existence I share now with you, my readers. If you are very intent on what you are doing, whether it be taking out the trash, writing a sonnet, or rolling dice, you will automatically garner the attention of others, whatever the activity may be. Perhaps there's an indefinable quality of acts of intent that ordinary acts don't seem to share. Perhaps the urgency adds importance, and makes them therefore interesting.

Of course, what we were attempting was amazingly interesting, but so much of the truly amazing research is lost in the banality of the moment. Most of the moments of our existence are lost in the boring details. Going to the bathroom, eating a meal, sleeping, staring out the window, walking from one street to another, showing up for work. Banality passes the time, but boringly, yet this is the majority of our very lives isn't it? The moments we forget, and 98 percent of our living existence.