Pennies
If I had a penny for every-time I questioned myself, I’d be broke. Not because I wouldn’t have any pennies, but because pennies have no value anymore. In fact, I imagine I’d be swimming in copper plated coins, scooping the thousands and thousands of nothings against me. Everything would smell like batteries and sweat. I’d have a metallic taste in my mouth, ideally not from the coins. And I would exist. In the pile of nothings.
For every thought I have, I wonder how many on average it takes for me to have a good one. If I was sitting in a pile of pennies, I imagine it would be like spreading handful after handful of them flat in my lap to find a limited edition coin. The kinds that they make for the Olympics, with a tiny curling stone and a tiny player etched onto it.
I’m a coin collector. I find joy in pulling the one special coin out of my pouch and tucking it somewhere else so I don’t accidentally use it to pay for something. But special pennies are a little more difficult to find. Pennies are too small and were made to represent the smallest value of currency in Canada. They are overlooked, tossed into tip boxes to avoid carrying extra loose change. Because its just a penny. Case in point, they were deemed as more work to make than of value to use. I collect pennies anyways. What if someone, someday, comes up to me and wants to know about pennies? It’s just like thoughts; what if someone, someday, wants to know about me? Of course, I’ll want to show them the special ones, the interesting ones. Even if they don’t matter. Even if they aren’t worth anything. At least I can say I had special pennies to show them, and not more nothing. No one wants to see more nothing.
There must be some sort of odd behind-the-scenes penny distribution system. No one uses them anymore, but you’ll always see them in the most generic places, as if forgotten. I would know. I am the crow that picks up shiny things. I thread the coin through my fingers, flipping it back and forth, wondering who it belonged to, where it was made, how it got here. I wonder how many people have touched it, if it’s ever been in some toddler’s mouth or chucked in an ashtray. At the end of the day, it’s still a penny to me, is it not? It’s a piece of metal with 2 sides and Her Majesty looking back at me. I suppose it’s too much effort to be putting into a penny. It’s not like my perception of it will make it worth something again. Maybe if I was some well-know, fancy coin connoisseur, I could point out the printed date as a historical timestamp and convince people they should be paying hundreds of dollars for a penny. Because I think it’s special. It’s more than it was designed to be. But I’m not that. I am the coin crow. I hog all the pennies and collect them in a jar. I don’t know why.
Once someone asked me, “A penny for your thoughts?”. I find that saying odd, but I think it makes sense. Thoughts are endless, and recursive, but you need an opening to see them and understand. A penny has no value, and when someone says that, they never actually give you a penny. The sentiment is “let me in”. It’s one that asks for permission to understand in exchange for nothing. When someone asks to listen, you give background, explain how you got to that thought and what it is. It’s difficult but well-rounded. You think to explain thought in a way that can be understood. It’s not a commonly used phrase. I wish it was.
If I had a penny for every word flowing through my head, I feel like I would run out of space. I wouldn’t have space for furniture or my belongings. I’d build an arm chair of coins, and maybe a dresser and a bed. Glue their shiny flat sides together, stacking them from oldest to newest, and I’d build myself a house. Everything would be the same colour so it probably wouldn’t be the most functional or best looking place. But I think I’d make do. I’d have made myself a big something out of nothings. It would be pretty cool to be honest. I don’t know what I would do with the leftovers though. I’d slowly pile them into each room, heave the big copper door shut on another room until one day I would not have space for me in my house of nothings. It would once again be a pile of nothings.
The part that I would like is knowing that I did something with my nothings. I know what’s hiding in those messy coins, I know how it all got buried again. If life could continue like that, maybe it would be okay. I would have fulfilled myself if only for a bit. At the end, I made it full circle, so no harm, no foul. But this is not how life works. Life works such that there is no privacy in a pool of pennies. People walk by and stare at any given opening you provide, others don’t look at all. People see me in my piles of nothing. They see pennies. Mountains and mountains of pennies and they wonder if I’m insane. They wonder who would keep so many and what I’m doing with them. And the problem is, they’re pennies. No one ever stands long enough to see me swim in them, then glue them together and build a house, only to finally resemble a pile again. They just see a section. And that’s what they take with them. While someone might see my building, another might see me at the end of the cycle. And more than anything, people see pennies. I could love each one for each individual story behind them, but they are and will always be pennies. There are millions of them and even if one was special, who’s going to take the time to find the special one other than me? Who’s going to tell the crow to let them go, or to give them away. No one does. No one care about pennies.
I’ve let too many people see the pile of pennies. I wonder when they will get bored, or decide their time is better spent somewhere else. I wonder why I can’t throw them away, and why I care so much. I’ve referred to “pennies” 28 times on this page alone. I want to believe that I’m not crazy but it feels as such. A crow’s lifespan is at most 30 years. I don’t know if I can keep up for that long. I’m bad at hiding. I’m bad at giving them away. I feel like I’ve been chucking them at people. I can’t stop, even when I try. I hate my pennies. I hate them all sometimes. I want to cover my face with their shiny faces and I want to disappear in them. If I become the pile of pennies, no one can call me crazy. No one can know me. No one ever will. And slowly people will forget about it all.
I am the pile of nothings that hides in the pennies. At least I wish I was sometimes. It might be easier that way.
