After having participated in my school’s Laureate magazine, I have come to the conclusion that many people take themselves much too seriously. As far as I am concerned, art is a matter of self-expression, or so the Romantics believed it. It isn’t a matter of trying to prove a point or give the world some sort of self-created meaning. This is where I say, with as much passion as I am capable: you are no more special than anyone else; stop trying to prove that you are.

What The Hell Is It?

Gray scaled

with black shadows cast where the white light doesn’t reach.

Perhaps once green or blue with shades of purple.

The overlapping leaves, tinted with the inconsistent clusters of ink:

round dots black or grey, forming shapes, creating a picture.

The stiff leaves form a frame: a lopsided square cut off by the edge.

In the middle, basking in the white light, small dots of ink spread apart or

not there at all.

What the hell is it?

A flower or some sort of plant?

Am I holding the page upside down?

A flower perhaps. One recognizable to most of the population except for me.

Maybe if it were in color…?

Then the girl at the desk next to me might be able to tell me what it is.

I doubt I’d be able to identify it even then.

It looks like a sample screensaver; the ones that come with the computer when you buy it.

It’s mundane. Ugly even; the colorless image ironed onto the paper

then photocopied until it presented a lighter shade than what it first was.

Of course, making it more difficult to label.

It could be a cluster of bananas: yellow in what is now a white page.

Although why anyone would photograph bananas is beyond me.

But here I am, writing about bananas, flowers, and ink

Trying to help you visualize this gray scaled, photocopied, image with the obvious round dots of ink.

A picture taken by a stranger and presented to me to present to you.

But, alas, remember:

I don’t know what the hell it is.