(no subject)
An interesting thought struck me, tonight. Maybe while I was washing dishes (which I am still in the middle of, technically), maybe before. I can't recall now.
I was thinking about writing, and stories, as I often do. My friend Eli, or Chris, is in the middle of publishing one of his stories, a novel, on the internet as a serial. I happen to think it's quite good, and very funny. It's a space adventure about a happy-go-lucky and very dangerous smuggler named Grif Vindh and his crew of miscreants being asked to do ten impossible things before breakfast. This is the sort of thing that he writes about, in much the same way that Neil Gaiman tends to write stories about men who start out in love with the wrong woman, experience strange and mysterious adventures, emerging mostly-whole-but-never-the-same-not-really, and maybe get the right girl, and maybe not.
I tend to write about solitary men of questionable mental state thrust into circumstances outside of their control, often with unwelcome mental guests. Sometimes I think I do this rather well, and other times not so much. One day maybe I'll finish Voice in the Void, (preferably before NASA gets around to doing half the things I'm writing about in it), and you'll be able to judge for yourself. I've another, much darker one about a man, a fungus, and the utter ruin of the Earth.
And? Well, so what, right?
I'm constantly chewing my internal fat (cud, if you prefer), you see. And recently, this has been moderately productive. The last year ended and this one began with the death of my grandfather, and the spring has been such that my standard response to inquires to my wellbeing has become "I am not on fire." Because sometimes that's all one can ask for. To not succumb to spontaneous human combustion, or an outburst of some sort of self-destructive pyromaniacal fetishism. I have been not-on-fire for some time now, and am rather tired of the endless hamter-wheel-hoop-jumping that seems to make up the bulk of my everyday existence.
My internal soundtrack goes something like this:
Click to viewI appear, most of the time, to be laid back, perhaps even jovial, and have shit under control. This is a lie. I am not laid back, particularly. I am wound tighter than a fucking clock spring. When the machinery is appropriately engaged and in suitable conditions, the spring drives the mechanism, tick-tock, and the hulk goes forward, mellow and conversational like, with a sharp wit and a twinkle in the eye.
Sadly, in environmental conditions outside of design specifications (which are sadly somewhat narrower than one might expect), the gears gum up and do not turn, the hulk becoming shambolic, and yet the spring applies its pressure, wound as tight as ever. Imagine if when the Tin Man rusted up (and how does a tin man rust, he's made of fucking tin!) his internal gears went on gnashing until something gave? And that's how I go about, being not-on-fire only because forward movement provides enough air cooling through the cowlings to keep friction based combustion at bay. I do not operate well outside of specifications.
And really, that's not so uncommon. We're just a bunch of overly organized, mostly-hairless apes, after all. Crammed together too tight, with too little to do that matters, not enough contact with each other, and all our evolved impulses smashing us against the sharp edges of all the shiny boxes we've built for packing ourselves into, and which we love so dearly.
My response to all these little boxes on the hillside, and my particular life experiences thus far, is that I need to be in control. Far more than I ever really realized, and probably more than I realize now, when this knowledge has presented itself to me clearly for the time. I need to be in control, and when I am not in control, I am outside of operating specifications. I am in control when I know what is expected of me, and I can meet those expectations; when I am not dependent on others, and they are not dependent upon me.
The reality is, of course, that no one is ever in control of anything. Life is full of randomness; stochasticity, as we say in the sciences. It isn't particularly deterministic, no matter how hard we try to fool ourselves. Keep your cleanliness laws, buy lottery tickets on Tuesdays, eat the flesh of your god in church on Sunday, go to work early and come home late, buy yourself a yacht longer than a football field, pretend like you've got things under control!
Lie fervently to yourself and often, and maybe it'll be true.
Or maybe it won't be, and one day you can't go fast enough to keep the workings cool, the spring will blow out your chest, and your head will catch on fire.