The modern art of conversation.

Try to keep it lighthearted.

No one wants to be the only Debby-Downer at the table.

Make fun of yourself- but not to the point where they can actually see your shame. 

Don't mention that time you went a few days with no food

because then people actually start to pay attention.

Blend in. 

Allow so many people to speak over you so that

the stampede of your own thoughts is muffled with theirs instead. 

This is a social norm, but difficult to keep up with.

One must find the ground to be themselves, 

but not too much like yourself that people

can see the cracks in the easily acceptable facade. 

Tread on thinner ice than you would normally hold yourself too.

You never know what might prompt someone to contradict you into oblivion. 

No one needs another archetypical wallflower.

But they also don't need another you,

so what must I do when I am the usual wallflower? 

Do I simply cover myself in mud in order to hide my social stature?

How do I imitate the flowers that flew off the wall,

because they were ready to?

Not because they were forced but because it came so naturally?

The wall that I cling to provides the reassurance that 

there is a place in my mind that is still safe to relax into like a plushy pillow?

My mind has come to live in so many different eras that it's hard to tell 

which part of history is repeating itself now as I scramble to 

find a chortle beyond the matrix of pattern recognizing thought. 

I don't really think it's healthy to make the jokes about myself that I do,

because most of the time they're not really appropriate

but that's how the thoughts get expressed. 

Self-expression is a vulgar isolation. 

This isn't what makes a real conversation. 

The mental connections that are meant to be made with two people are no longer tethered.

Modernization was meant to be the connector. 

Not the destroyer.

Human dignity + Compassion = Peace.