Hypnoslowed

Again, as we always say, there are two main approaches. Outside and inside.

And when faced with a new force of this magnitude, inside is the more sensible. Mortality is the classic example. If a person wishes to find agreement between what happens and what they’d like to happen, then they must find a way to want to die (for they surely will). To get there you might read the Bhagavad Gita, or just watch the news every day to get properly pissed about life. I didn’t even want to live – so there!

I only like to remind myself of this inside approach because it’s so very easy to forget about it. It can be very difficult to like the feeling of being hungry, but it’s definitely possible. And when no food is available this sort of mental twisting is a serviceable avenue from one moment to the next.

A more typical example is simply to drown one’s brain in alcohol or television or both. And those are certainly effective if available. I’m reminded of the Hypnotoad of Futurama, a seemingly absurd program in which the viewer is hypnotized by a magnificent, slightly strobing toad. But really, the only difference between this and another program is whatever you take with you after you’re done watching. And if the point was more to put something down than pick something up, then I don’t think there’s any shame in toading around a bit. I’m sure many of us are gazing into its glorious eyes even now.

The stoic, ascetic approach is so antithetical to the life that our culture pushes on us. We are discouraged from abstention in any form. Inaction is equated with loss, silence with failure. In my eyes this has caused all our biggest problems. Now, as the world is forced into relative slowness, I hope we can drift our way into relative wisdom.

Doom in 2020

It does amuse me, to think of all the people temporarily living the way I do, dining out of cans, leaving the house as little as possible, contemplating proper hand-washing procedures. Of course, other than being amusing it’s also quite tragic. It’s funny because it’s sad.

Because the big question hanging in the air (ha!) is how long until this is over. Or if it’ll ever be over. Our seers and diviners are working round the clock, trying to see what the clock has in store for us. It’s conceivable that the coronavirus, or a sickness like the coronavirus, becomes a permanent seasonal fixture. It will roll down from the mountain and plop itself smack center in the river of life. The way of the world will have to shape itself around it.

Personally, I don’t think this is the big one. And that’s a mercy. If this is a light disaster then that’s enough of a kick in the butt for us to take disaster seriously. Doomsayers and preppers have always been there in varying quantities, but most of us in the past fifty years have lived with the expectation that everything can remain the same. And we were largely right about that.

The weird thing is that although our procedures and behavior are less than prepared, emotionally we’ve always been prepared for this kind of thing. We expect the world to end. Our most popular films depict apocalypse in every variation. So when people panic at the grocery store, it’s just a page from fiction.

When I was a child the world had already noticed how computers and the internet were changing the world faster than ever. I think that memes like Y2K and the Mayan 2012 doom spread so fast because it just felt right that something big was coming. If change happens faster and faster, eventually you reach a velocity that is violent. Because of that, I was taught to value the adaptability over security. The ability to learn new things is better than mastering the old. I was always hedging against a time when I’d have to throw everything away and live purely by my wits.

Of course, that was a severe overreaction. The center doesn’t hold, but it also doesn’t combust into an exhilarating display of fireworks. If doom arrives, it arrives piecemeal. We will have time to check our phones before the scythe falls.

Matchstuck

You cannot expect the American citizen to help you. They very well might, but only because the average person is more heroic than you, or their neighbor, or themselves could ever expect. But you simply cannot expect it.

They are like the bug in the ear canal. When faced with the tweezers of reevaluation, can only dig deeper, plunging further into that realm of darkness and wax. If you continue to harass them they will beat at the eardrum like domestic refugees on a secure bunker. Eventually, the way forward will buckle and collapse. They will bust through to the brain behind the curtain, where you have no way of sensing them, where they have no way of sensing you, and their only choice will be to curl up and die as you curl up and die.

We are in that subway train which has paused because of an unknown problem. It’s a problem which exists out there. You know, out there, in the world beyond the subway. It surely exists! We have no access to it but we definitely remember it being out there. Soon enough, this subway will be cleared for zooming. Zoom, zoom, zoom! It feels so good to be zooming because when you’re zooming the air conditioning comes on, and the other passengers have less of a temptation to make eye contact with you. Oh, you can feel the eye contact coming. Every minute we sit here wondering, the sweaty man sitting across from you is more likely to do the unthinkable.

They say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, but in America you definitely should. Because what is a gift horse? A free horse? But they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and so a gift horse cannot be a free lunch because a gift horse needs lunch from you. So unless you are hungry enough to eat a horse (which you are, if they have you where they want you), you should never accept a gift horse. There are no gift horses, only Trojan horses.

So when you get that loan for your house or business, you understand that you are being conned. But you are okay with being conned, because you have a secret: you are the one conning! Yes, this will turn out great for you. All you need is a few years or a few generations, and you will be the one running this town. Those fools, those fools. Don’t they know you know exactly how to ride a gift horse.

But now wait a minute. Never try to con someone who’s conning you. That’s what Nicolas Cage said in Matchstick Men, which is one of the most American movies I’ve ever seen. The language of America is the language of the con. If you meet anyone with money your only objective should be to find the most clever way of accepting it from them. If you have money yourself, the most sensible thing to do is to develop a healthy sense of paranoia. It isn’t paranoid to think everyone’s out to get you if they actually are. And they are. Everyone wants your money, that fungible fungus. Ooh, watch it grow in the dark! They want your money because they too wish to be paranoid. It’s better to live in fear than to live in bliss because the fearful ones are the matchstick men. The happy ones are their willing tinder. You’re either an angler or a mark in America. Heads up: if you think you’re an angler you’re probably a mark. You have to realize that every desire you have, the desire for stability, the desire for success, the desire to start a family, is by design. Every desire you have is not only the lever by which you are being handled, but also the hole which you are being coaxed towards. When Nicolas Cage finds happiness by starting a family, the suggestion is that he has broken out of the vicious life of con or be conned. But that is nonsense. The message itself is a con.

When you start a family you perpetuate the pyramid. You become part of the necessary fuel for this machine to keep on rolling. When you get a job, you do get something out of it. But your employer always gets much more out of it than you. The world of America is the world of the workhorse. When we put blinders on a thoroughbred we cannot expect it to know anything but forward. Do not expect the American citizen to help you. They could have, if they’d been trained in anything else but horse work. They could have. When we see the selfish ones hoarding or grifting, with not a societal bone in their body, why be surprised? They have been trained to be viciously selfish their entire life. They are not the ones to blame.

The House

17.03.21

“The House”, once titled “Viennese Mansion RLQ night w/o plants” was originally the latest variation of one of many user-generated “slates” created in the VR game Furniture Simulator 2 (2027). These slates, as in blank slates, began as simplistic virtual models of rooms. Within a year, a user (jingaloup424) created a website to use these models for virtual Dungeons and Dragons sessions. After a tech blog article “Our 10 Favorite Geek Secrets” featured the site, it began to get attention. Beginning with company conferences and online parties, VR “meets” soon became commonplace. At this time, the Google Lense was already in development. It’s release was arguably a success solely because they scrambled to tie-in this feature. Nowadays we have many smartlenses to choose from and VR entertainment has moved far past the humble beginnings of Furniture Simulator 2. Then why do people keep returning to The House?

It’s ubiquity now is best compared to other odd conventions such as the Wilhelm Scream. Even 10 years later, after the term slate is no longer in use, it is the most downloaded one. Middle school kids use it as a base for their VR movie projects. When you watch a show, pay attention and you’ll often see a room from The House. Though the furniture will be reskinned, it will all be in the same configuration. Here, here, and here are examples of famous artists using elements of The House in their work. We all know The House. The other day when a friend visited me I even used her familiarity of The House to direct her to the bathroom. It made me realize that my choice in apartment might even have been influenced by The House. The corner apartments have more windows but don’t have their bathrooms in the “right” place. The House! The House, The House, The House.

Glances, 3 sketches

The city of Snera tends to gargle its nights. Couriers like myself bounce between neighborhoods like sprites of spittle leaping for the mirror. Tonight one delivery remains in my zip. It’s an antique satchel I picked up in the memory district. Looks to be made of genuine leather. Some nut’s probably waiting to get dressed for an acting party. They can wait.

I stop at a street stall to slurp on something. A trouber runs a sound test on his brass, probably waiting on the next wave of diners. I stare up into the drizzle and let a drop hit me in the eye. For a moment the streetlamp shines like a sunlit jewel.

 

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On the bridges of Krovth you can take a breath of sociability. You can spot a distant head with its winking hat, and beside it a tiny pink prong vibrating aloft. Wave back! What a squint-worthy sight! That surely is a person over there, imagining what it is you might be shouting.

Afterwards, walk the length of your thoughts, all the way to the next grand vista. Look out across a quilt of rooftops, drink in the warmth of each silent tunnel, nap in the long shadow of a lakeside monolith. Krovth has room for you. Feel yourself enveloped by its staid beauty. Pick up a piece of chalk if you wish, to practice drawing cartoon birds, and perhaps whisper to yourself their playful jokes.

 

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In the wickery land of Pith the besotted youths lounge nearly in the sky, their dangly legs dangling, making a pinetree of each shroomy cloud. How do they rest on those froomy platterns, which hang up there so peculiarly, mountainous puffdrops of pink and cream and winkleberry blue? Why do only their legs hang down, all swinging so unifully in time with the squeeps of the baby birds in their nests? What do they do up there on their backs, strung out on those gossy hammocks, spacked about like some extra pollen?

When I peer up at their soles and hocks I can almost recall the feel of those frothy ledges, the dew a coolant for the propellers in my heart. I would swirl my hands about and squeeze the fine mist into a fine mist. So soft it was, so unlike flesh.

Progost sketch

No one knows Progost better than those who pick it apart. That is to say, those who pick it up again, pick up its pieces, reassemble its dreams. When I visited the ruins of Progost I went with a guide recommended to me by my fortune teller, who happens to run a side business in which he rates and recommends Progost guides. He told me that after I achieve self-enunciation that I too should start a travel agency employee rating business, because guiding others is intimate to my future. It definitely sounds like the sort of thing I’d be destined to do on the side. When I have a vision of my legacy it appears to me as a hat with many pointed feathers, each pointing in a very helpful direction, much the same as Progost’s famous road sign clusters (the very height of interstitchional travel signage, the envy of cities with less directional maturity).

If it’s to be a part of my future, I may as well learn about it as soon as I can. My guide introduced himself as Vindscht, immediately impressing me with the ease at which he was able to pronounce a run of six consonants. I knew from my preliminary research that the people of Progost had been quite sparing in their use of vowels. To navigate their close-toothed world you needed a very quick ear. Unless, of course, you have a guide with you. Vindscht proved quite willing to throw his mouth into slow-mo of varying speeds, and was able to comfortably stretch each syllable well past its expiration date. We stood in front of many statues, volleying nouns until my jaw was plump and pickled with Progostian pronunciation. With him at my side, I was able to read all the travel materials the way they were intended to be read: out loud.

Now, it’s well known that the different parts of Progost are variously at different stages of restoration, reconstruction, preservation, replication, and even demolition. Some of the boulevards have undergone practical corrections over the centuries, but their original routes are nicely painted onto the pavement or marked with gold rimming. These markings even continue through the newer buildings, especially the museums. There are six museums in which you can stand in the exact center of historic Grjshen Boulevard, since many of the ancient dynasties chose to relocate the city center to their own front door. All but one of these dynastic mansions were completely torn down at one point or another, but the bulk of their original material can be found peppered throughout the city, used in other buildings. I grew very fond of strolling the length of New Old Bridge, which had been crafted using only salvaged materials from the various historic digs. Each massive stone is faithfully engraved with its original addresses and eras, or if it had been used more than three times, with its identifying reference number. Those dear nostalgic Progostians and their commitment to navigating the canals of history! It is the least we can do to extend their projects into the future as we vacation in the shade of their greatness.

Robot Perenniality

Yes, you could fill planets with all the things I could never be. One thing that might happen on this planet though, is me becoming a robot.

Not that I want to be a robot. I mostly identify as mostly a robot, but it isn’t a big dream of mine to complete the transformation. My dream is the complete opposite, to one day be just a regular human bean and be planted in the soft earth of society and poke up my little bean face into the thinning air. How light a first first light feels on one’s tiny green face! How absolutely tubular, the sensation of unfurling into one’s promising, promised, promisable form. All around are others just like me, shoulder to shoulder swaying in the wind with me, blind to the stars with me, striking silly poses in the rain with me, and all the other sensible grown up things. To be trampled on together would be a neutral thrill. It’s no one’s fault being trampled on. This is just the will of the wild. We were crushed because being crushed does not matter and we do not matter. The warthog stepping on us means no offense. He is just being his self. Not his best self, just his most acceptable, accepting self.

What a blessing, to die in such a vibrant world, and to know I’d be recycled back into the mix, that some new creature or lump of clay would be made from what I once was. A world in balance, where nothing I did could disturb it, where nothing I was could infect it. My living, permitted. My leaving, planned for. My staying, impossible. How peaceful that final sleep.

What I dread is one of humanity’s most widespread fears, but so few of us are even aware of it. The fear is that we get to stay. The fear is that this experience has no guaranteed end, that’d life would indulge our petulant desire for eternity. I dread that I’ll be scanned into some dreadfully bright machine, and when the light clears I’ll find myself in a space with no space, in a moment beyond moments, in an experience with boundaries I cannot sense. I will be greeted by a dutiful slave-being who was created for this small, precise purpose, to greet me in this moment, to orient me to eternity. Congratulations! You have been preserved for all time. If you have any questions, ask at any time. Until you intervene I will proceed to replay the entirety of your recorded experience thus far. Initiate autoplay, special conditions introductory, measure full.

Because it really is a possibility. Even if you manage to die, there’s no guarantee you can’t be brought back. We’ve only existed in this universe for a tiny blip of time. Every year further that we manage to survive is a year in which we can further progress our mastery of this place, this giant empty cold brick of time we call everything. If humanity lives another hundred years, it seems a certainty that a human will live to see a thousand, and then a million, by then no longer human, perhaps technically not even alive, but still awake. Very, very much awake and hating it.

Then there is the deeper fear that this has already happened. That when I finally close my eyes I will wake up in a greater space. Welcome back! How was your lifetime on simulated Earth?

And then, of course, it would be back to work. I would be a robot. I’d need to robot-do my robot-duties. I would be a boy robot of course. Everyone knows that girl robots are exclusively the creation of strange and lonely men and their … purposes. Boy robots are created for every other purpose, no matter how inane. My task would probably be to stride out into the flattened terrain and scan the ground for intruders. I’d find those tiny budding curls from antiquity and stamp them out, iron them flat with my titanium feet. Nothing personal, just a job. Saving up credits for my next vacation.

Cerberus sketch

One thing’s for sure though. I’d make a terrible three-headed guard hound to the underworld. This is primarily because I have a weak neck. You need to have a really strong neck to support three heads, or at the very least have three necks (again, not a strength of mine). You also need to be able to breath fire. I suppose that’s something t I could train for if I really wanted to, but even heartburn sounds a bit scary.

You also need to be a stickler for the rules. Cerberus is a real grammar nazi. Even worse, he’s a Grecian grammar nazi, which in Pokemon terms is probably like the mega-evolved form. You have the Nazi era German grammar Verfechterizers. You don’t want to mess with them with their prescriptivist uniformity and strong Special Defense. Then you have the early history Roman grammar Pedagenies. Watch out for the Seize move, they love that one. Then of course the Sophistocrats from ancient Greece, who still perform their duties even to this day. (They consider retirement a dirty word.) Cerberus is only their most well known co-worker, really more of a public face, kind of like how Neil deGrasse Tyson is the only scientist anyone knows. If you thought IRS or Immigration Services were strict, then you haven’t died and then been stuck in processing for a few hundred years. They say the road to hell is nice and paved, and it is (taxes!), but the gate to hell is lined with bureaucrats. Seriously, they just line up for the fun of it and ask each other census questions. Anyway, I heard that place always runs out of pens.

He seriously has a lot of brand recognition though. I mean, Cerberus makes his way into all sorts of circles. When he goes back and hangs out with Scylla and that one Boar, they’re always struggling to act unimpressed with him. Don’t encourage him, yo. He’ll get all puffed up and start talking about how he met the chupacabra. Yes, so insulting, and the chupacabra isn’t even real. What—you can’t just say he isn’t real, that’s racist! Racist? Not at all. If anything, it would be speciest, as racism is in reference to ethnicity and culture while speciesism is prejudice based on a difference in biological species. Oooh, technicalities. Well did you ever consider that he’s called EL chupacabra? He’s straight up Spanish! No no, that’s, no, ugh, let’s just drop it and get through this evening. Alright, we’re cool—ooh here he comes, play it straight. And then Cerberus comes along with not one, not two, but three toothy grins. The mean dog with three heads, from the ninth planet, with the twenty eight years as a private equity firm. He’s in his second career.

When I was a kid I was pretty into Greek mythology but Cerberus always confused me. Why three heads? I figured maybe someone thought of a dog with two heads and someone else was like okay, but what about three heads. And then someone else tried to go to four heads but everyone immediately shut them down. Four heads? On a dog? What are you crazy? It was like a high stakes version of that one dice game. After that it was decided. Comedy routine aside, there is somewhat of a feel to numbers. When George Costanza wants to name his child Seven, there’s a reason he picks seven and not any of the other numbers Seinfeld snidely suggests. There are mechanisms in our mind at play, giving us feelings about different numbers. We know some of these, like how small numbers are processed in a different part of the brain. Well, “we” don’t know. Someone out there knows about these things. But the rest of us don’t know. The rest of us only know that Cerberus has three heads. And at least one really strong neck.

Focihood

When I was a teenager one of my peers remarked that I would make for a good father. While it was clearly a false and preposterous statement, I knew exactly what she meant to convey by saying it. She was bringing attention to my unusual level of maturity in that moment of my life. She wanted me to remember it. She meant me to understand that if I took note of her image of me in that moment and modeled myself on this ideal extrapolation of who I was (to her) right then, and maintained an unwavering commitment to this idealized version of myself for the majority of a theoretical child’s upbringing (and then some), that I’d end up being an unhorrible father. Of course, that would never happen in reality. But still, I knew exactly what she meant.

Or perhaps she didn’t mean it that way at all. Perhaps she made the statement in earnest and truly believed it all the way through to the wood. If so, then she was either a poor judge of character or a poor judge of me or a poor judge of what it takes to be a parent. If so, then I’m glad I didn’t take her statement at face value. My takeaway was undoubtedly the better take to be tooked. And that’s a funny thing about statements. The giving and taking of statements is sometimes very asymmetrical and/or incongruous.

Or perhaps her statement was not in earnest at all, and more of a speech act intended to flatter or test me. That’s a common enough sort of speech act. Regardless, it matters little. Since I’m no telepath her intentions don’t overly determine my interpretation. I can’t pierce all the layers of deception that exist between her and me, and her and herself, and me and myself, and language and humans. Whatever her intention was, my mind automatically shuffled through the possible interpretations and selected one which made sense to me. Even if I were a telepath, I’m not convinced the “true” meaning would reveal itself. Intentions simply aren’t uni-dimensional. She may have had any number of overlapping intentions and then her mind shuffled through the possible expressions and selected the one which was the most central approximation of the bunch.

Any act of speech is only ever the best approximation that can be made within the given time. One of the deadliest misconceptions about language is that words have precise or reliable meanings. And you know what, also some other grand pronouncements I have no intention of standing behind! ETC.

I need to ask one of my Latin reading friends whether there’s an equivalent phrase to QED for “I did not prove this nor do I intend to nor do I think anyone ever could, but you probably get the point, so I don’t really have to now do I. I’m basically just inputting words onto a page and the output is nods from your head, or exasperated sighs of impatience, or eye rolls filled to the foci with met expectations.” (Wow! There’s a mathematical metaphor I just pulled out of nowhere. I should save that for when it really matters. It could be a life saving metaphor one day. Because life is like an ellipse, and every ellipse has two centers, called foci. Kind of like how New York City had two central towers. Except not like that at all. Hm. Because witty saying are like ellipses because they seem simple at a glance but actually the geometry and equations can make your head hurt and your calculator tired. Well, that doesn’t sound right either. Hm. Maybe it only kind of makes sense because eyes are ovals like ellipses and since I wanted to stuff “met expectations” into eye rolls I figured I’d stick ‘em right in their off-centered centers.) On second thought, I need to never ask one of my Latin reading friends anything so silly.

After attempting to write for so many years I realized that the majority of my most creative moments have essentially spawned out of not knowing the correct way to say something but really, really, really, really, really wanting to say it anyway. It’s like how my best friend will occasionally slip up with language. Like one time instead of saying “undress” he said “declothe.” And people laughed about it, but this laughter was actually a shared recognition that this so-called slip up was actually pithy proof of his creative wit. I mean, declothe gets across the idea that he wants to get across, and it does so in the same number of syllables, and it’s original to him in that moment which makes that moment more worthwhile which makes it a part of my life, my past. I took it with me. That’s one way my friend’s momentary ignorance (and forced creativity) enriched my life.

Like in my senior year of high school I wrote arguably the best thing I’ve ever written about a fictional technical linguistic term for single syllable words with two adjoining vowels. (I called it the “däüb”, pronounced dah-oob.) I hadn’t even finished writing the damned thing when I learned there was already a technical linguistic term for that: a diphthong. My name for it is better, I said to myself, because it’s an example of itself. But really I was annoyed that I had to rewrite a bunch of the story to account for the existence of already existing diphthong. But this made the story a great deal better and spicier so it was just another blessing. BUT OKAY, what I’m really saying is that none of that would have occurred if I’d already known what a damned diphthong was in the first place.

This is really the curse of having lived a life where I continued to learn more things. Because I have a pretty decent memory, every time I learn some technical definition it removes another opportunity for my creativity to be forced into dishing up a fresh one for my ignorant half (okay, two-thirds). On the other hand, it also simultaneously forces me into new territory where I stumble across a great many more things I’m ignorant about, and thus gives me multitudes more opportunities to be creative. And yet, to bounce it back to the first hand, these so-called opportunities are often much more niche and well outside my comfort zone and much less approachable as both a writer and a reader. So these “opportunities” are actually just unworkable problems in disguise.

Yup, that’s what I always say! That’s one of my catchphrases! Every opportunity is just a problem in disguise! Yes, yes. I absolutely insist that the glass is half empty. Oh, it isn’t half empty, you say? What if I keep drinking until it is? I’ll even drink and drink and drink until it’s completely empty. So there! Just another one of Joel’s self-fulfilling prophecies. As you can see, this is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t have made for a good father. One of the many, many, many reasons. But I only needed one, or didn’t I? QED.

18.03.24

18.03.24

Are stars simpler than stories?

The comparison is a distant one, though romance novels can get mighty hot at times. However, the might of their hotness does seem to fall short of celestial. The real question is, why am I stalling in a paragraph that I can just go back and edit beforehand?

Stars do seem simple in that they don’t mean very much. They’re very “samey”, what with all the hydrogen, and the burning, and the brighter than thou attitude. They probably would have a lot more to say, if only we knew how to read them. You know, almost like pi, they contain all the combinations. Endless. And then hydrogen atom 18asdf013hg01237 fused. And then hydrogen atom 129fsagh127ahdf refused fusing. Fusey snoozey. It just gets kind of old after the 12838asfda237334df129st time.

The night sky is a nice bookshelf. Either way, you’re staring into the past. Write a poem about it and in a few hundred years maybe someone will spot the distant twinkle of your presence. They won’t be warmed by it, since it’s likely to be a fairly cerebral comparison. In a quite cold and intellectual way, they’ll appreciate you, regard you, dismiss you. Peck me on the cheek, future reader! Dress me with your eyes! Put on me a bowler hat because of your poor knowledge of time periods.

When you squeeze an orange, you’re meaning to make it as fresh as possible. Yet it’s an ancient taste you’re creating, handed down from generation to generation (of oranges). It’s hard to escape that orange taste if you’re of orange descent. Orange you orange, you orange?

When you squeeze a star, you’re a god-like being in your trillionth year. You’re impatient though, so instead of watching the star’s adolescence play out, you’re applying pressure to shave off a few billions years. It’s like when I set a YouTube video to x1.25 speed. I feel you. You feel star. I fast forward through songs while making a mix tape for my girlfriend because I’ve listened to these songs 17 times in 17 different orderings already. (This was years ago, and it was actually not a mix tape but a music CD that I burned for her that I wanted to get exactly right. Then I watched her listen to it, which was very boring for both of us.) You squeeze balls of hydrogen in the hopes of spawning sentient beings who might one day ascend to your level and give you someone to play backgammon with.

Whenever I imagine a dialogue with someone from my past, I try to role play the me of that time very accurately. So if I did something Then that I regret Now, I make sure not to regret it in the replay of that Then moment because that wouldn’t be faithful to my Then-self, however much my Now-self would want my Then-self to be more Now-like. You can’t just go around imagining the past differently than it was. Have some respect.

Now, it’s true that you can only actually imagine the past differently than it was. What if you couldn’t though? What if you had perfect recall. Let’s take it one step further. What if you could override Now moments with Then moments? If you could handpick your experience from moment to moment, you’d become trapped in these perfect past moments, a prisoner of your own happy highlights. You could never tire of a single one, since in these perfect recreations, you have no Now thoughts, only Thens and hence Thens forever and forever. The perfect drug!

Some day when all of experience is perfectly recorded, down to the snap by snap of each synapse, we’re going to have a problem. The super rich will lock themselves into these euphoric comas, experiencing the best moments from all of human experience. With trillions of lives to draw from, they will be able to drink of the freshest moments without pause, without repeats, a life of everlasting brightness.

Or maybe no one will want that? Maybe it will be more satisfying to experience arcs, climaxes, conclusions, and the suspense of all that’s betwixt. Perhaps they would tire of stardom and choose stories instead.

Hard to say.

I will say though. When you squeeze hydrogen in a very particular way. Well, eventually you get me.

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20.03.06

I’ve written so many 500-1000 word things. I don’t even know what to call them. Pieces? Rants? Essayettes?

I ran out of creative ways to begin them years ago. A well I often go back to is the meta-hook, where I call attention to the some aspect of writing. The hope is to get the reader into a slightly more open-minded and cerebral mindset, (or at the very least to filter out incompatible readers). I have no idea if this works. I just keep doing it.

You have that luxury when you begin in a non-fictional space. You don’t need to commit to a wholly enclosed reality. Fiction, ugh, so stifling! I’m kidding, I love fiction. But I don’t have the imagination required to construct an enclosed world in any reasonable time frame, or the skill to imbue it with the material I have on mind.

Posts like this typically begin with a feeling that there is some level of vibration between two concepts that I can bounce around on. It’s like the two ideas form some simple harmony that can I riff off of. Ideally, I find a way to loop back around to the beginning, either by reversing a common assumption or giving credence to some original thought, or something like that. I find that this circularity gives the essayette a nice, full mouth-feel (whatever THAT means).

In this case the beginning idea was that comparing stars and stories could make sense in any way. And the reversed idea is that a life of eternal bliss might not be so great (hooray drama).

Of course, you can’t end abruptly after that. It leaves a formulaic aftertaste. No one likes tasting formula in their prose. That’s really a poetry only thing, and an old timey thing at that. I like to at least attempt to inject some emotion into it by the end. Make it personal, or at the very least end with something slightly more familiar and relatable. And ideally it also gives some reread value, or puts a twist on something memorable.

Over all, not the most successful piece. But I would love to be able to write something like this a few times a day, just to put life in perspective. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’d gladly trade a year for a thousand essayettes.