Sayonara Ponytail

When I used to lurk some older, more obscure imageboards there was a music thread. And posting so often, clicking around, someone inevitably shared this band.

Another thread talked about other imageboards closing, an anxiety about this one going, some regret knowing you’ll never see the same anonymous faces with each shutdown. Looking back I could only wonder how they ever managed to be anything at all. Because, after all, you can only get so many (You)s and share the same vague anxieties or small chatter life litters itself with. “A waste of time!” you’d chide.

You could also have it on the other monitor, watching some show, playing some game, fueling some semblance of belonging that you learn to evict as the budding and delusional Venetian man.

What I love most about this song is how it captures the unspun string between each of us. Where graduation meant something for a bit.

It’s all gone. And I know every single member is marching on in their own way. It may have meant nothing, sleeper cell you’re forgetting, but it summons an image, a whirlpool vortex splitting interlocked hands. Some screaming and hoping to bend a body back while the winds lacerate each finger, unraveling to a kindergarten cohort frame. Tears fly around. You can (not) stop the time passing.

I no longer look at imageboards because whatever animated it is gone now. Or maybe because whatever archetype that roams there now is hard to jive with. But I won’t forget that it was the closest I ever gotten to someone who could share the same experience. The same existence, the same college honors inclination nesting an indifference and wrestling with unfair realities you’re beaten down to believe Justness.

Who doesn’t love empty auditoriums? A class photo twenty years passed, working and employees you stare at. It’s the only thing that makes sense, where you hear the volleyball patter across the echoed court and you bind your suitcase for the next business lobby.

I always hoped that somehow I could preserve that inner rebellion and jewel. Hoped that I can talk the same way I always did, back in imageboard days.

But on the back of the bus talking about Scientology and given a grimace, shaken head, never a laughter leaving each station. We’ve reached the final stop, and it’s a ghost town. There are faded scribbles and hopscotch etched in the platform. A radio plays generic indie pop in the distance. I write this on the bench.

We all agreed we were going to deflect asteroids. Well, in this desert I’ll drag each umbrella and kick the pebbles at least.

I will extend my hand to the wretched and torn.