When people ask me what I want to do with my life, I tell them I want to live on a spaceship.
A cargo freighter, hurtling through the "empty" space between star systems, alone for years at a time while the galaxy grows stranger all around me. I'd grow out my beard and spend my days walking upside-down through empty maintenance tunnels, boxing shadows and singing at the top of my lungs.
I'd invent meaningless rules that I'd eventually take with deadly seriousness-- "Today is blue day. Do not operate buttons with your tongue." There'd be thousands I'd write and re-write them on a giant pane of glass, with a bar of soap. When not in use, I'd let it drift free through the cargo hold. It could shatter at any moment. This would mean absolutely nothing if it happened, and yet for some reason it would be extremely heartbreaking.
Without a sun or moon of my own I'd decide which hours to sleep, or maybe I'd alternate between states of consciousness until I couldn't tell the difference anymore.
I'd have a room full of plants with automated watering routines because I'm horrible with green things but I love them nonetheless. I'd sleep in here sometimes, or maybe all the time. Maybe I'd only ever be truly awake in there.
I'd have a dog, nothing too small or too big, maybe a Labrador, maybe a robot. Maybe a cyborg, so that it could talk but I wouldn't have to worry about it ever murdering me and taking command of the ship as long as I kept up a constant supply of doggie treats and occasionally threw a rubber ball around.
It'd be cool enough to wear a light jacket but never cold.
I'd set up an old projector and watch eighties movies every day.
It would be perfect.
It's a cover for having no idea what I'm actually doing. And it quiets the tiny voice in the back of my mind that suggests I'm not going to survive the next decade, let alone long enough to see a spaceship.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
escape
About a year old, but I don't want to lose it so I'm throwing it up here. One of my few attempts at stream-of-consciousness that I actually kind of like. Brinley was "my" solemn-eyed pit bull, and Keara and ShayLee my lovely roommates at the time.
_______________________________________________
I am struck with a consuming need to understand that which is what I call myself.
What am "i"? What am "I"? What am I?
I grasp my neck and feel my pulse, sweaty fingers clutching at my face as I try to feel everything at once, process every sensation in one expanding moment. It's almost there for a second, as I crawl across my skull. It's a golden ripple of understanding, a wave of nirvana as I interpret what screams under my skin when I slap my jaw. But it passes over me like the edge of a blade. Any lower and it would probably sever the head from my shoulders.
I'm gripped with desperation as I recall these feelings. The wake is fading and the waters are settling. I'm afraid that the moment of clarity will never return. Every second that passes I settle more into the questionless concept of Me, the fright of suddenly not knowing who calls itself I is being paved over.
I close my eyes and try to recreate it but the realization is instant: "I am simply pinching myself."
The knowledge is there again. And the emptiness at the core of that. For a moment I thought I could recreate that shell, for five seconds I was outside the sculpture that is my body and I was afraid and excited.
I wonder if that was what being crazy is like.
I turn to Brinley and say, "I almost had it, Brinley."
And then I realize that there is no Brinley. Brinley is the face I put on the striped dog at my feet. Brinley is a bundle of emotions and unspoken concepts. It isn't the animal there, sleeping on the tile. There it is again, laughing at me-- that thing I almost understood.
Is Brinley me? Is part of what I call myself Brinley?
That thing in my head called "Brinley" isn't the same floating jumble as the one in Keara's head, or ShayLee's (whoever they are). We force ourselves to share pieces of them, maybe so we don't kill each other. But they're not the same.
The same concept applies to people. What is the other? Who are "you"? You're certainly not me (right?). But in a way, you are. You're not all that I make you. And yet, so much of you is, just like you make me.
This is degrading into something. I'm moving away from the simpleness of the thought. Or maybe I'm moving towards it and I can't process it without making it more complex.
That's scary.
_______________________________________________
I am struck with a consuming need to understand that which is what I call myself.
What am "i"? What am "I"? What am I?
I grasp my neck and feel my pulse, sweaty fingers clutching at my face as I try to feel everything at once, process every sensation in one expanding moment. It's almost there for a second, as I crawl across my skull. It's a golden ripple of understanding, a wave of nirvana as I interpret what screams under my skin when I slap my jaw. But it passes over me like the edge of a blade. Any lower and it would probably sever the head from my shoulders.
I'm gripped with desperation as I recall these feelings. The wake is fading and the waters are settling. I'm afraid that the moment of clarity will never return. Every second that passes I settle more into the questionless concept of Me, the fright of suddenly not knowing who calls itself I is being paved over.
I close my eyes and try to recreate it but the realization is instant: "I am simply pinching myself."
The knowledge is there again. And the emptiness at the core of that. For a moment I thought I could recreate that shell, for five seconds I was outside the sculpture that is my body and I was afraid and excited.
I wonder if that was what being crazy is like.
I turn to Brinley and say, "I almost had it, Brinley."
And then I realize that there is no Brinley. Brinley is the face I put on the striped dog at my feet. Brinley is a bundle of emotions and unspoken concepts. It isn't the animal there, sleeping on the tile. There it is again, laughing at me-- that thing I almost understood.
Is Brinley me? Is part of what I call myself Brinley?
That thing in my head called "Brinley" isn't the same floating jumble as the one in Keara's head, or ShayLee's (whoever they are). We force ourselves to share pieces of them, maybe so we don't kill each other. But they're not the same.
The same concept applies to people. What is the other? Who are "you"? You're certainly not me (right?). But in a way, you are. You're not all that I make you. And yet, so much of you is, just like you make me.
This is degrading into something. I'm moving away from the simpleness of the thought. Or maybe I'm moving towards it and I can't process it without making it more complex.
That's scary.
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