Guess Who's Back, Back Again

SnoCone's back, tell a friend.

I come back to you ripping off Eminem and stumbling in disheveled and pretending to be unrumpled.

Long story short, I went away, had fun, did some sightseeing, came back, stuttered to a halt, struggled with some stuff, straightened some other stuff out, and here I am.

For a more detailed explanation of my struggle with parents and society I give you this. Written as a sort of catharsis.


They came with their fresh faces and practical hiking boots, crashing and stomping away the green tinted silence. Eyes round with feelings I could longer recognize, they asked me how I became part of this tree. This is what I told them.

Until the moment I had become what I am, I had no intention of being this way. In fact, I hadn’t even intended to stay the night, but I was lost and the sun had set. This seemed as safe a place as any. There was a small hollow at the base of this tree that seemed to have been made for me. Come rest a while, it whispered, surely there’s no other place you need to be at this very moment. And I really was tired.

The next day I opened my eyes to the sun dappled serenity and thought to myself, what a nice place, maybe I’ll stay here a few days. So I did. The woods were peaceful and my tree provided me with food and shelter. It was refreshing to be in a place where I wasn’t hounded by everyday life, and my sole responsibility was brushing away the green tendrils that grew as I slept and wound themselves around me overnight. Sometimes I thought of leaving but the woods would ask me why? and I’d feel a strong urge to curl up in my hollow and sleep. The days ran together like the paints of a watercolor left out in the rain. My voice lost the jarring quality of the city and started to resemble the whispers between the leaves and wind that were all I heard. It became harder for me to extricate myself from the soft green wisps every morning; it seemed pointless to leave the tree’s embrace. The things I needed grew closer in proximity. I knew there was a world other than this, but it grew smaller and further away all the time. Despite never feeling true satisfaction with how I was, I was never discontent except when I was overcome with strange feelings. I had small short bursts of discomfort, when I felt like there was something trying to strangle me and smother my breath. It was as if a fiery being was trying to crawl its way out of my throat. I’d choke and pant and try to scream, then it would subside and I’d be left shaking and confused. Other times I felt a powerful yearning for something I could no longer describe. It felt like a cold hand had a closed over something in my chest, and was trying to wrench it out. I would cry out my loss in mournful wails.

Throughout all this there was a word that kept haunting me. Freedom. I tried to understand what it was but its meaning kept eluding me. Smokelike and hazy, it kept drifting just outside my reach. I tried not to let my mind linger on it because it carried with it an aura of pain. My curiosity towards it was brief and fleeting and soon it was banished to the fringes of my consciousness, forgotten but for the short-lived periods when it struggled to the surface.

Soon, it made sense not to dislodge the vines the curled themselves around my torso, and they grew thicker and took root. My resentment towards the tree faded away. I grew to embrace my captivity until we were one and the same. My memory of otherness seemed to me the imaginings of my idle mind. It was only with the people’s appearance and their probing questions that I became aware of my having been anything other than what I was at this moment. In that moment of realization I hated them. I hated them for their pity, and the sheer purposness of their young bodies. I hated them for making me remember what it was like away from here. Most of all, I hated them because when I saw them I began to understand what freedom was. I hated them because with that knowledge I knew despair.