The lifeline's deadline
It has been a while since I equated school with learning. Which, I suppose, is what initially drew me to Chemistry: there were new things to be learned. And there were new things to be learned in Biology, to be sure, but they weren't sequential - there were things to be reasoned yet in Chemistry. Anyone can come up with an arbitrary set of non-sequential data.
A tay is a hammer. A banlich is a law. A korf is a tiger.
Biology just happens to be true.
I am riding something of a cycle here between stressed and bored. It doesn't quite follow a sine curve, the peaks are sharper. I could solve an equation that does what I'd like to do to demonstrate my state of mind for this argument, but I feel that would be a waste of everyone's time all around, and would rather not, in the first place.
It seems every time I sit down in one of my classes that uses the electronic overhead projector that takes about five minutes to warm up before use, the timer that counts down the time before the projector will turn on reads 4:42. Had I any faith in numerology, I might take this as a sign. Perhaps it corresponds to a Biblical verse. Or April, 2042 is the month I will die. In April, 2042, I will be 53 years old. I will be one year older than my paternal grandfather was when he passed away. My youngest brother Jake will be 38, perhaps recovering from a mid-life crisis. We rarely take the time to picture toddlers in their mid-life crises.
I have always been an advocate of holding one's standards low in most cases. That is to say, for this case, if I survive to age 45, I will be happy with that.
Mae: What's the year 2033?
Moose: It's a year that perhaps I will die.
Mae: Okay… that's morbid.
But it's not, not as much so as one would think, initially. I'm just saying that I won't be terribly upset if I am diagnosed with a terminal illness at age 44. And it will make me appreciate every year after that so much more - I think old people start take life for granted.
Carrie: Would you like a cup of coffee?
Moose: Oh, well, I'm not sure if…
Carrie: Ah, don't be shy. Just a minute, I'll get you some coffee.
I was as unassertive at age five as I am now. My great-grandmother's senile but determined offer of coffee was not to be refused if she had anything to say about it.
Moose: See, in my family, we have a history of… oh wow, I can't think of the name of it.
So I drank my cup of coffee. It's probably because of that cup of coffee I had at age five that I have never liked coffee for any point in the course of my life.
Moose: Alzheimer's. That's what I was trying to think of.
I've preserved this memory, but few others from this period of time. We were sitting in the kitchen at 52 Legion, across the street from one that would have a prominent effect on me later in life, drinking coffee and playing gin rummy. And they were testing my great-grandmother. Her memory was failing, and my family wanted to see just how badly. It wasn't looking good.
Marie: And who is that?
Carrie: That's… Billy! No, Jimmy! Kenny!
Ken: Well, three tries…
Marie: And who is he to you?
Carrie: He's no one to me!
Marie: He's your son-in-law.
Carrie: He's no one to me!
So they tried a better example, but her memory proved to be no better. She spent the final seven years of her life in a nursing home. And now my grandmother appears to be headed down the same path. Her memory is slowly but surely fading. She is also roughly fourteen inches shorter than me, so if that has anything to say for how much I take after her, perhaps my memory is safe.
This is a great concern to me. If I lose my memory, what do I have? What is the world to me, or me to the world, in the absence of my memory? It's just as well as if nothing exists, if I can't remember it. All that exists and has existed we know of because it has been observed and committed to memory by billions of people throughout the ages.
All this writing, this little perspective of mine, it's all meaningless unless someone has the capacity to interpret it. And once mankind has fallen, which may not be too far off if the Mayans have anything to say about it, perhaps this will have all been for nothing. We'll have left our mark in the course of action various subatomic particles may take in space, but without anything to observe those particles, it's just as well they're not even there, either.
But neither can we transmit feelings. Which is why I feel it's rather silly to keep a journal of the conventional type: I can write about the events in my day, so that I can look back at it and remember how things made me feel. Which is all fine and good until 2033, (well, with any luck, a good while beyond that,) at which point it's no good to anyone.
This number, this age of 45 has been something that's been floating around in my head for quite some time. Probably because it's the age my uncle John died at, an uncle I never met, but who I am told I take after greatly. So allow me to amend my previous statement: I will have no complaints of dying at age 45, as long as I have accomplished a good amount during my life up to that point. Besides, does it not seem as though the most accomplished in their given fields came to a tragic end in what was considered before their time? Could be a system employed by nature to keep anyone from rising too far above the crowd.
Or it could be that the most gifted of our race inevitably have something wrong with them. Take Kevin Gilbert, my music recommendation of the week, for instance. He was a musical genius from all that I've read of him, and is evident in what sadly little music I have heard of his. He came to a sudden self-imposed demise at age 29 when he decided that he enjoyed not breathing more than he enjoyed breathing. I would say perhaps I meet this requirement in that I have my glaring obscurity, although this probably means nothing, as many people who are of no otherwise significance have their glaring obscurities.
Maybe 45 isn't so much an anticipation of death by that point, it's a goal: I want to be sufficiently accomplished by that age, so that it doesn't matter so much what happens afterwards. Who knows, I may even get to retire.
Jim: Saving for retirement has never been a priority for me. My retirement may not end up the greatest, but that's okay: I'm using what I have now to enjoy my life now, because I don't know if I'll still be around later to enjoy what I have saved.
That's where I get what comes of as a morbid nature. My father is not morbid in the least, but he talks of death so often, I cannot help it. This little philosophy of his was caused by two traumatic events in his young adulthood: he lost a father and a stepfather, when both were but weeks from retirements that they had planned extensively for, but couldn't see a minute of.
I'd like to think there's a compromise here. Work for a while at a job that pays well, retire early and live cheaply, that seems like a good option at this point. But who can tell what will really happen? There are other plans in the making.
But I'd hate to curse their futures by revealing them now.
-----
My father was hours away from leaving Montreal after dropping me off. I hated to think about it in this way, but his departure did feel an awful lot like being freed from shackles.
We went to the desk of the office building for the residence group I was to spend the next eight months in. I received my identification card, the one with the high-tech microchip built into it. My father, ever the epitome of sociability when dealing with anyone but me, flirted with one of the students. I looked away in shame.
Moose: Okay, here we are. Gardner 100, has to be on the first floor.
We walked down the first floor hallway. There appeared to be five rooms in the hallway, none of which were marked 100. A room was open, a student was inside. Inquiries followed.
Moose: Hello, I'm just moving in here… I'm looking for room 100, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere.
Andreas: Room 100… oh, I think you're in the basement.
He led my father and I down the stairs and through the basement hallway. But there was no room 100. He led us back up the stairs, and back to his hallway, over which was painted '101-107'. Then, in a flash of inspiration, our guide retraced his steps and found the room nestled between the porter's office and the telephone booths.
Andreas: Oh, you're in the other double!
Moose: Yes, I am.
Andreas: I feel your pain.
Indeed, my room, placed where one would normally think to place a broom closet, was one of two shared rooms in the entire building. And its placement was due to the fact that it had served some other purpose before, as evidenced by the two-sink two-stall bathroom on one side of our room.
Christian: Hey, I'm sorry you had to be put there, but I didn't know you, and it was either you and Srijan, or Andreas and Andy. We pulled names out of a hat, really.
Moose: Oh, it doesn't bother me.
Christian: Okay, next item, any allergies I should know about?
Moose: I am deathly allergic to unicorns.
But surely my room's placement has affected my life here at the university. While many students have made friends with the people on their floor of the building, being isolated from the rest of the floor, I have not so much had that opportunity. And I feel awkward just walking up to doors, knocking, and asking to be someone's friend. Not to mention, there's some degree of patheticism to that sort of action.
I have, however, met a large number of people, however briefly, due to my position. Living across from the front and only entrance, I have been acting as sort of the Gardner Hall butler, letting people in who have, for some reason or another, been denied entry to the building by its super high-tech microchip detection system. Usually they either forgot their identification card, or are lying about forgetting their identification card and don't actually live in the building. One thing to be said for it is that it's done wonders for increasing my hours of wakefulness.
Alex: Often I find myself doing things that I, along with most people, might consider unproductive in the larger picture of things. Why, for instance, watch television when I could be researching neuroscience, or planting a tree? But if I never wasted time enjoying myself, I wouldn't care about the things I did nearly so much. In the same way, if you never waste time sleeping, you'd spend your entire life tired, to a similar point where nothing would truly matter anymore.
Moose: But some of my finest achievements have been on no sleep.
September 26th's entry, for instance.
But perhaps my aversion to sleep is in fact entirely misguided, even by my own principles. If sacrifices and compromises are to be made for me to accomplish what I mean to by the time my life is over, and furthermore if I am to do so by a personal deadline, perhaps a bit of rest every now and then wouldn't hurt things.
We'll see… I'll sleep on it.
A tay is a hammer. A banlich is a law. A korf is a tiger.
Biology just happens to be true.
I am riding something of a cycle here between stressed and bored. It doesn't quite follow a sine curve, the peaks are sharper. I could solve an equation that does what I'd like to do to demonstrate my state of mind for this argument, but I feel that would be a waste of everyone's time all around, and would rather not, in the first place.
It seems every time I sit down in one of my classes that uses the electronic overhead projector that takes about five minutes to warm up before use, the timer that counts down the time before the projector will turn on reads 4:42. Had I any faith in numerology, I might take this as a sign. Perhaps it corresponds to a Biblical verse. Or April, 2042 is the month I will die. In April, 2042, I will be 53 years old. I will be one year older than my paternal grandfather was when he passed away. My youngest brother Jake will be 38, perhaps recovering from a mid-life crisis. We rarely take the time to picture toddlers in their mid-life crises.
I have always been an advocate of holding one's standards low in most cases. That is to say, for this case, if I survive to age 45, I will be happy with that.
Mae: What's the year 2033?
Moose: It's a year that perhaps I will die.
Mae: Okay… that's morbid.
But it's not, not as much so as one would think, initially. I'm just saying that I won't be terribly upset if I am diagnosed with a terminal illness at age 44. And it will make me appreciate every year after that so much more - I think old people start take life for granted.
Carrie: Would you like a cup of coffee?
Moose: Oh, well, I'm not sure if…
Carrie: Ah, don't be shy. Just a minute, I'll get you some coffee.
I was as unassertive at age five as I am now. My great-grandmother's senile but determined offer of coffee was not to be refused if she had anything to say about it.
Moose: See, in my family, we have a history of… oh wow, I can't think of the name of it.
So I drank my cup of coffee. It's probably because of that cup of coffee I had at age five that I have never liked coffee for any point in the course of my life.
Moose: Alzheimer's. That's what I was trying to think of.
I've preserved this memory, but few others from this period of time. We were sitting in the kitchen at 52 Legion, across the street from one that would have a prominent effect on me later in life, drinking coffee and playing gin rummy. And they were testing my great-grandmother. Her memory was failing, and my family wanted to see just how badly. It wasn't looking good.
Marie: And who is that?
Carrie: That's… Billy! No, Jimmy! Kenny!
Ken: Well, three tries…
Marie: And who is he to you?
Carrie: He's no one to me!
Marie: He's your son-in-law.
Carrie: He's no one to me!
So they tried a better example, but her memory proved to be no better. She spent the final seven years of her life in a nursing home. And now my grandmother appears to be headed down the same path. Her memory is slowly but surely fading. She is also roughly fourteen inches shorter than me, so if that has anything to say for how much I take after her, perhaps my memory is safe.
This is a great concern to me. If I lose my memory, what do I have? What is the world to me, or me to the world, in the absence of my memory? It's just as well as if nothing exists, if I can't remember it. All that exists and has existed we know of because it has been observed and committed to memory by billions of people throughout the ages.
All this writing, this little perspective of mine, it's all meaningless unless someone has the capacity to interpret it. And once mankind has fallen, which may not be too far off if the Mayans have anything to say about it, perhaps this will have all been for nothing. We'll have left our mark in the course of action various subatomic particles may take in space, but without anything to observe those particles, it's just as well they're not even there, either.
But neither can we transmit feelings. Which is why I feel it's rather silly to keep a journal of the conventional type: I can write about the events in my day, so that I can look back at it and remember how things made me feel. Which is all fine and good until 2033, (well, with any luck, a good while beyond that,) at which point it's no good to anyone.
This number, this age of 45 has been something that's been floating around in my head for quite some time. Probably because it's the age my uncle John died at, an uncle I never met, but who I am told I take after greatly. So allow me to amend my previous statement: I will have no complaints of dying at age 45, as long as I have accomplished a good amount during my life up to that point. Besides, does it not seem as though the most accomplished in their given fields came to a tragic end in what was considered before their time? Could be a system employed by nature to keep anyone from rising too far above the crowd.
Or it could be that the most gifted of our race inevitably have something wrong with them. Take Kevin Gilbert, my music recommendation of the week, for instance. He was a musical genius from all that I've read of him, and is evident in what sadly little music I have heard of his. He came to a sudden self-imposed demise at age 29 when he decided that he enjoyed not breathing more than he enjoyed breathing. I would say perhaps I meet this requirement in that I have my glaring obscurity, although this probably means nothing, as many people who are of no otherwise significance have their glaring obscurities.
Maybe 45 isn't so much an anticipation of death by that point, it's a goal: I want to be sufficiently accomplished by that age, so that it doesn't matter so much what happens afterwards. Who knows, I may even get to retire.
Jim: Saving for retirement has never been a priority for me. My retirement may not end up the greatest, but that's okay: I'm using what I have now to enjoy my life now, because I don't know if I'll still be around later to enjoy what I have saved.
That's where I get what comes of as a morbid nature. My father is not morbid in the least, but he talks of death so often, I cannot help it. This little philosophy of his was caused by two traumatic events in his young adulthood: he lost a father and a stepfather, when both were but weeks from retirements that they had planned extensively for, but couldn't see a minute of.
I'd like to think there's a compromise here. Work for a while at a job that pays well, retire early and live cheaply, that seems like a good option at this point. But who can tell what will really happen? There are other plans in the making.
But I'd hate to curse their futures by revealing them now.
-----
My father was hours away from leaving Montreal after dropping me off. I hated to think about it in this way, but his departure did feel an awful lot like being freed from shackles.
We went to the desk of the office building for the residence group I was to spend the next eight months in. I received my identification card, the one with the high-tech microchip built into it. My father, ever the epitome of sociability when dealing with anyone but me, flirted with one of the students. I looked away in shame.
Moose: Okay, here we are. Gardner 100, has to be on the first floor.
We walked down the first floor hallway. There appeared to be five rooms in the hallway, none of which were marked 100. A room was open, a student was inside. Inquiries followed.
Moose: Hello, I'm just moving in here… I'm looking for room 100, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere.
Andreas: Room 100… oh, I think you're in the basement.
He led my father and I down the stairs and through the basement hallway. But there was no room 100. He led us back up the stairs, and back to his hallway, over which was painted '101-107'. Then, in a flash of inspiration, our guide retraced his steps and found the room nestled between the porter's office and the telephone booths.
Andreas: Oh, you're in the other double!
Moose: Yes, I am.
Andreas: I feel your pain.
Indeed, my room, placed where one would normally think to place a broom closet, was one of two shared rooms in the entire building. And its placement was due to the fact that it had served some other purpose before, as evidenced by the two-sink two-stall bathroom on one side of our room.
Christian: Hey, I'm sorry you had to be put there, but I didn't know you, and it was either you and Srijan, or Andreas and Andy. We pulled names out of a hat, really.
Moose: Oh, it doesn't bother me.
Christian: Okay, next item, any allergies I should know about?
Moose: I am deathly allergic to unicorns.
But surely my room's placement has affected my life here at the university. While many students have made friends with the people on their floor of the building, being isolated from the rest of the floor, I have not so much had that opportunity. And I feel awkward just walking up to doors, knocking, and asking to be someone's friend. Not to mention, there's some degree of patheticism to that sort of action.
I have, however, met a large number of people, however briefly, due to my position. Living across from the front and only entrance, I have been acting as sort of the Gardner Hall butler, letting people in who have, for some reason or another, been denied entry to the building by its super high-tech microchip detection system. Usually they either forgot their identification card, or are lying about forgetting their identification card and don't actually live in the building. One thing to be said for it is that it's done wonders for increasing my hours of wakefulness.
Alex: Often I find myself doing things that I, along with most people, might consider unproductive in the larger picture of things. Why, for instance, watch television when I could be researching neuroscience, or planting a tree? But if I never wasted time enjoying myself, I wouldn't care about the things I did nearly so much. In the same way, if you never waste time sleeping, you'd spend your entire life tired, to a similar point where nothing would truly matter anymore.
Moose: But some of my finest achievements have been on no sleep.
September 26th's entry, for instance.
But perhaps my aversion to sleep is in fact entirely misguided, even by my own principles. If sacrifices and compromises are to be made for me to accomplish what I mean to by the time my life is over, and furthermore if I am to do so by a personal deadline, perhaps a bit of rest every now and then wouldn't hurt things.
We'll see… I'll sleep on it.