30.EPILOGUE.73: December 23, 2003 -- INFINITY.
"*30*."
PART FOUR: "OWNED!!!!"
Fuck you all.
-- The secret last words of Fred Rogers
BRAIN RAPE
I type these words and save
them to files and send them out over the Internet at the speed of light
which is either getting faster or slower or always staying the same all
the time-- it doesn't really matter-- and you sit there and you read them.
You look at the symbols and decode them, andonce you do that, I am in your
brain. And when you read these words, they physically change the
chemical constituents of your brain, your memory, the cells that constitute
you, the stuff that makes you "you." And I'm there, inside you, changing
you, forcing you to become something different. And the changes are
minute, but they are still changes. Permanent changes to your self,
the fabric of your being. Right now, I am crawling around inside
you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
And even if you stopped
reading right now, the damage is done. Even if you forgot what you'd
read, the act of forgetting would cause physical scar tissue, a substance
kind of like sponge or cork, to form in your brain, destroying the cells,
neurons, dendrites, axons, that once held your memory of reading my words.
Even if you were to forget me, I would have still changed you, I would
have scarred you, made you into something different than you previously
were.
But wait, it's worse.
Because what you read is simply your impressions of the impressions I have
written, what you read is the result of you looking at these words, and
interpreting them, and encoding and then deciphering them in a way that
you can understand, because of this you do not really experience me in
your brain, but rather you create a "me" for you to experience. And
so these words have forced you to generate an entity, and then turn that
entity upon yourself, and infiltrate your own thought processes, and do
the damage I have always wanted to do. Forcing you to crawl around
inside your self and change your self, make you over in whatever image
I intend because, here's the catch: I don't intend just one image.
My intentions are not that simple. Never were, never will be.
In fact, any reaction you have is playing into my hands. My goals
are simple. If you applaud and laugh, good; if you shudder good;
if you're indifferent, good; if you're offended, good; if you turn off
the computer in disgust, good; if you worship me as a god, good; and so
on. All I want is for you to know that a trace of me is in there,
either wriggling like a worm making more and more virulent worms inside
what you call your self; or that I am there, somehow, at least a part of
me, a trace, living on for a while inside you like a disease, making a
permanent, if insignificant change. Even a trace amount of damage
is better than none.
And all language, all reading
does this. But I'm alerting you to it. I'm up front about it.
And it's a hip thing to think this way these days, what with "memes" and
all, but all relative hipsterism aside, it's still valid, and true.
As true as a lie gets, anyhow.
LAST TRAIN OUT THERE
what i/m saying is i/m saying that i/m saying so many things i/m offering
no proof in this epilogue i don/t care don/t care don/t care look it all
up
FINALLY, QUESTION NUMBER, WHAT? FOUR? FIVE? AND THE ANSWER...
So, a long, long pause.
She looks down at the grid and then up at the "sky." Clearly, she
doesn't really know what to think, is regretting being here with me, and
is maybe even a bit scared. But maybe not. Who knows.
Finally:
She: "What's up with
me?"
Me: "Uh... in what
way?"
"Well, let's see I've been
reading *30* for ages, now. I don't really know why I've been reading
it. But when I think about it, I always seem to be in front of the
computer, all the time. And then I fall asleep, and then I realize
I'm, like, either inside your head or in some kind of weird dreamscape
we both share, and then I wait and wait and wait on a grid. And somehow,
even when I don't get to read *30*, while I'm trapped here, I still know
what's going on in it-- and yet sometimes I do get to read it because those
little terminals show up out of nowhere-- but, anyway, I walk and sit and
walk and sit and it seems like I'm here forever. And even when I
don't get a chance to read *30* on , like, those little terminals, like
I said, somehow I still get *30* channeled into my brain somehow.
And so I wait and wait and wait, and here I am, and here you are, and so,
what's all this crap about? Why am I here?"
"That's going to be a lot
of answering."
"I've got the time.
I-- apparently-- am not going anywhere soon. And besides, it can't
be any longer than all that crap you just finished spitting out, so...."
"Well, okay. To begin
with, you're not real."
Warily: "Oh-kaaay."
"You were designed by me
to be, I dunno. To really understand why I wrote you into *30*, you
have to... well... you have to get that, that.... I don't know exactly.
You represent something."
Backing way, slightly:
"I do, huh?"
"I mean, from your very
first appearance, way back in "The Other Way Of Stopping" this meeting
had been planned. I'd created you in hopes that somehow you'd provide
a window onto *30* from outside of *30*-- a kind of commentary on my commentary,
but still coming from within my commentary-- because, obviously, I was
writing you.
"And, eventually, I knew
you'd fall asleep, come into this environment, and we'd meet. And
we'd discuss what had transpired before. The things that brought
you into the epilogue. Which is, sort of, I guess, what we're doing,
now."
"Right...."
"But, all that had been
planned while I was still laboring under an illusion of control.
And, I mean, in a certain sense, I was still laboring under that illusion
when I first started writing the epilogue-- the first epilogue, way back
in 2002. I mean, there's a scene where Bob's dreaming and stumbles
on us arguing, way back in 2002. And, that was to imply that, ultimately,
you and I would converge here and you'd chew me out about some stuff.
What you're yelling at me about in Bob's dream is, apparently, some stuff
about relationships. And, don't worry. That scene is
coming up. Bob will be here, in a little while. And you'll
be yelling at me. And then Bob will vanish. Just like in his
dream, way back in 2002. So, there will be a kind of circle created
after all. And all the careful readers who remember minute details
will somehow feel vindicated, and the forgetful ones will be confused.
Or not, because, after all, they'll probably read this stuff and then go
back and check out the first bits of the epilogue-- not this epilogue,
but what was going to be the epilogue, back in 2002."
"Okay. Sure.
But what has that got to do with me, exactly?"
"Well, we're getting to
the heart of it. You see, the problem is you're kind of a failure."
"Thanks."
"Well, I don't mean that
in a really bad sense. I mean, that you're a failure is due to my
incompetence. You're poorly delineated, for one thing. You
also don't have a name. Or much character. Of course some will
say this is evidence of my misogyny, because occasionally I attract that
comment, but the fact is that neither you nor Heather have much personality.
And it'll be primarily university types who have very little else to think
about who will accuse me of saying that I believe that women don't have
much personality, or some bullshit like that. Because most of the
people who read *30* seem to be university types, or likewise inclined.
And that they're university types makes sense, because, after all, so am
I. But, no doubt, they'll be completely forgetting that Bob doesn't
really have much personality, either. He's a pretty badly drawn character,
too. And even my friends who show up in this writing, there's not
much to them either-- no matter what gender they are. In fact, the
only person who has any real personality in *30* is me. Which, I
guess, is fair because it's all about me. And even then the way I
portray myself is kind of inconsistent. So, what you are, basically,
is vague. I mean, you've even been confused with Heather by some
of my readers. And they've asked me, why is Heather with Bob and
why is she on that grid at the same time? What's up with that?
Or, they've thought that you're like, my girlfriend, or something.
It's just not clear what you are, or why you're here. Except as maybe
some sort of plot device, some sort of weird contrivance. I do think
it's significant that you're female, though."
"Okay."
"Most of my writings have
female protagonists, and the ones that don't have female protagonists still
have prominent women and girls who usually are more clued in about reality
than the guys are. This is one of the reasons sometimes I get confused
by people who call my misogynistic, or whatever. And this goes back
to dreams I used to have when I was little, and even dreams that I have
now.
"I have these dreams, usually
haunting dreams, about a woman. The woman changes from dream to dream,
but in a sense she's always the same character.
"She's strong, and intelligent,
and loves me deeply. And I love her deeply, as well. We exist
as equals, and I'm incredibly happy. In these dreams I'm usually
much happier than I am in real life-- I'm bursting with joy sometimes,
and at the outset I'm always content-- and when I wake out of these dreams,
being thrown back into reality usually crushes me. At best I'm depressed
and vaguely sad for a few hours. At worst, the loss I feel when I
come out of these dreams can send me spiraling into a gloom that lasts
for days, if not occasionally a week or more.
"Sometimes these dreams
are sexual, but most of the time they aren't.
"I'm just with someone I
love deeply who loves me in turn, and we make each other happy just by
being around each other. And nothing bad happens-- and sometimes
nothing good happens either. They're just daily-life dreams.
Although sometimes they can take on a science-fictional or fantastic edge.
And, no matter what she looks like, the love is constant. And, like
I said, when I wake up, being stuck in this reality crushes my spirit.
"I think some of that informs
what you are. Although I didn't explore that aspect of you too deeply.
Or at all.
"Maybe I was afraid to."
A DIALOGUE THAT FITS NOWHERE BUT HERE
BRIAN: I'm afraid that
if I had real power, I would destroy everything.
BOB: What do you mean?
BRIAN: I mean... I
would destroy... everything. Every living being. Every inanimate
object. Every rock and tree, and human, and bug, and dog, and cat,
and and bird, and fish, and cloud, and raindrop, and oxygen particle, and
molecule, and atom, and photon.
BOB: Yeah, right.
BRIAN: I'm serious.
I would eradicate it all. When I was younger, I wanted to go into
physics in highschool so I could maybe find a way to de-excite the entire
universe.
(A long pause.)
BOB: You're serious.
BRIAN: Mostly.
But my math sucked. And physics bored me. I hated experiments
with light waves and water. I wanted to get into the good stuff--
Schrödinger's Cat, and alternate universes. Quantum mechanics
and superstrings. And, of course, the stuff that would let me build
my machine. Which, yeah, can never be built. I'm sure.
BOB: But... why...?
BRIAN: Because it
would probably take all the energy in the universe to actually de-excite
the universe and case it to collapse into a singularity, or maybe just
some other neutral, dead state.
BOB: No, no.
I mean, why do you want to do this... this thing... anyway?
BRIAN: It's nothing
personal. It's just that some days I'm so angry I hate everything.
And I mean: I, Hate, Everything. Every lifeform, every atom.
I would destroy the sun if I could. I would rip the fabric of time
apart. I actually have this fantasy sometimes where I can somehow
stick my hands into a hole in time, or a hole in the fabric of the universe,
just like you can poke fingers through the hole in a sock, and then I just
rip, and rip, and rip, and I use my hands to shred the universe into tatters.
And when I do this, of course, I scream really, really loud. Of course.
BOB: Of course.
BRIAN: Well, yeah,
I mean, if I'm gonna do something that I'm gonna scream really really loud.
It goes without saying.
BOB: So. Basically,
when you were little you wanted to be a comicbook supervillain. You
wanted to be Lex Luthor. And you've never really grown out of it.
BRIAN: Actually, probably
more like Galactus. But you're right in spirit.
BOB: That's kind of
nuts.
BRIAN: What can I
say? I get angry. And when I get angry, I want to get revenge.
But not on people, per se. Like I said, it's nothing personal.
I want to get revenge on the entire universe. I want the fabric of
spacetime to crumble before my mind. I want to make the photons scream
and cry.
BOB: Why?
BRIAN: I think it's
partly because I'm in a lot of pain. Like, physical pain. Knees,
back, hips, arms, neck, eyes. Most of the time. And when I'm
not in pain, I'm usually so tired I can barely move.
BOB: Why?
BRIAN: I don't know.
I've been like that for years. When I was a kid, my back and arms
and legs hurt a lot. And I got headaches all the time. And,
of course, I was just angry and alienated all the time, too. Lots
of unfocussed rage.
BOB: And now?
BRIAN: Now, my back
hurts, my eyes are always burning. My throat and neck hurt almost
perpetually-- or at least for weeks at a time. My head pounds-- either
the back of my head where my neck joins my skull, or the top of my head
or above and behind my eyes. I barely sleep because I get so angry
and hyper at night all I do is toss and turn. My arms hurt, I have
nervous twitches, I'm so tense I grind my teeth. I'm maybe the only
person who gets more tense when they fell asleep than when awake.
Most people relax when they sleep, but me, I'm tense when I'm awake and
even more tense when I sleep. And when I'm asleep, I usually get
so exhausted from being asleep that it's almost impossible for me to wake
up. And then I'm groggy when I wake up, and my eyes burn and my head
hurts. And then, on top of it all, there's all this unfocussed rage.
BOB: Uh....
Oh.... Umm....
BRIAN: And then, when
I'm through being angry, I lapse into deep, long depressions. Where
I brood on everything until I get angry again. In between, sometimes,
I'm in a good mood. Or at least I act like it because that's what
you have to do in order to interact socially in this society. Usually,
though, a single day doesn't go by where I don't ball my hands into fists
and silently scream because I get this burst of anger and energy.
And then I'm fine.
BOB: You don't sound
fine.
BRIAN: Most of the
time I don't know what the hell to do.
BOB: Maybe you want
to do this because of power. If you really and truly could destroy
the entire universe with your mind, you wouldn't feel so powerless any
more.
RISING INDEX
Also, really, don't forget that
I do really like math. It's a pure thing. Pure artifice.
So very precise and insane and pristine it refers to absolutely nothing
but itself. Listen to some Bach, or some Philip Glass. See
a Robert Wilson opera where everything is placed on a perfect grid and
the actors on stage move like animated quadratic equations. Read
an equation where everything balances out in perfect form. Form a
magic square, a series of pristine relationships that only exists because
we pulled them out of the noise, put them into shape, and made them infinitely
beautiful. Study the alphabet of a graph, and what it implies.
And, In that sense, in a way, math really is God, like Rudy Rucker suggests.
Numbers are perfect because they don't exist. And they should be
worshipped like any infinitely wise non-entity that hides from us behind
the secrets of Being.
IN THE CONTEXT OF NO MORE CONTEXTS
And, yeah, really:
We should be off this planet,
now. And I mean off en masse. That's why the rollover to century
21 was such a disappointment-- and it was already a disappointment in advance.
A new century, a new millennium came and there is no where else to explore.
We have no place left to go. Not really, anyway.
Nowhere to go but up and
we can't get there yet.
And it takes its toll.
We see it in all the ennui and "pragmatism" that infects society.
People who don't care about anything new, who just want to reuse the old.
Who just want to get good jobs and raise kids and then die forgotten.
We see it in the lack of dreams. Or sometimes there are dreams--
but the dreams are small like wanting to be in a band, or wanting to look
like our favorite stars, or wanting to get a high-paying job.
Way back in The Old Days
there was stuff to explore. And that fueled art and culture.
Exploration fires the imagination. In the days of the early Greeks,
the world was flat and filled with an infinity of mystery. This gave
rise to stories of gods, and the creation of myths and legends. And
even when the Greeks figured out that the world was round, it was still
filled with mystery because they only inhabited a little part of it.
The Romans had something
similar. They stole from the Greeks, but even then they really had
no way to really know what was out there. So even though their stories
were lifted from another culture, they still weren't disproved, and their
myths had vitality.
The Japanese and the Chinese
were insular, but because of that they were surrounded by an unknown universe.
And there was a sense of mystery, and wonder, and there were new stories
and new ideas and new inventions. And with that mystery maybe came
a sense of something greater than the mundane.
Even the Christians even
though they set back scientific advancement for hundreds of years, they
did so because they didn't know what was out there and they heard stories
of devils and witches and weirdness and life had mystery.
Celts have legends, and
tribes in Africa have legends-- because they do not know what's beyond
their kingdoms and so they need to invent something.
In the Renaissance and the
Restoration and all the years that followed, people explored more, and
charted new territories, but they were still sailing out into the unknown
and coming back with stories of alien cultures and bizarre landscapes.
And it doesn't matter if these stories were true or not, the important
things is they generated a feeling of the unknown.
And, with all this exploration,
with all the confrontation with the unknown, comes cultural, artistic advancement.
New ideas are generated. New types of writing (poems, novels, prose
poems, essays, travel books, satires, etc.), new types of music (different
kinds of scales, instruments, ways of notation, keeping beats and bars,
Pythagorean and non-Pythagorean systems), different kind of painting (the
discovery of perspective, allegory giving way to realism, and even religious
paintings have a sense of mystery, and then there's stuff like cubism and
even collage)-- and just plain new ways of expressing ourselves.
And that is what gives life meaning, what enriches the culture. Expression
and mystery.
But now we have run out
of space. Almost every inch of the planet has been mapped, and the
parts that haven't been mapped are not going to be worth mapping, really.
From a culturally enriching standpoint, the exploration is done on this
planet.
If we dig into the rainforest
and find some more Bushman tribes they're going to be remarkably like every
other Bushman tribe: kind of skinny, easily frightened, superstitious in
a predicable way, and talking with clicks.
If we travel into the sea--
huge parts of which as still unmapped-- what are we going to find?
More fish with lights on their heads, maybe some sea cucumbers that, because
of the pressure, look like 12-sided dice. Interesting for specialists,
maybe, but hardly Earth-shattering.
And, hell, who knows-- maybe
someone will actually find Atlantis. But so what? If it happens,
if Atlantis turns out to be real, it's just going to be a big pile of Greek
ruins that looks like most other piles of Greek ruins, except these ruins
will be filled with fish.
And then we'll go back to
playing Doom 3, or the new Halo, or Grand Theft Who-Gives-A-Shit.
And don't give me any of
that crap about how the real exploration is interiour. That's been
done to death, too. And any experiences you get from gobbling mushrooms
or pills are just more of the same old stuff that people have been saying
for years. People have the same types of experiences over and over,
and they amount to nothing, And maybe they're significant to you,
but they hardly inspire the culture as a whole. Descriptions of drug
dreams are all remarkably similar, and banally transcendent:
Peace, a sense of living
organic intelligence, mathematical relationships, God in a twig.
Either that or mugwumps and bugs. And mugwumps and bugs are great
when someone like Burroughs talks about them, but Burroughs had talent
and a brain. He wasn't just some schmuck off the street with a few
extra bucks and a desire to open the doors of perception because he read
a book and saw a movie and wants to embrace the face of the cool, and besides
there's nothing better to do anyway.
"Even the seemingly infinite,
subjective inner realms have been almost thoroughly explored so let's invent
some artificial insights we'll forget the second we come down." And
thus it turns out that even inner peace through chemicals has a pretty
short shelf life.
So, long and short is we
need to get off this planet.
If we find another Earthlike
planet out there, just think how that will open our minds. There
will be an explosion of fear and hope, wonder and terror. And everyone
will suddenly have a purpose again, and wonder what the hell it's like
up there.
And even if the cultural
revitalization this new find brings us ends up being more recontextualizations
of our old myths and stories, these recontextualized myths and stories
will be placed in a context that will make them seem new, and fresh, and
otherworldly. Because, as we know, context is everything.
It's just a shame that we've
also seemingly run out of contexts.
THE WOMAN
"So, ultimately, you're not
real. And, sadly, you're a failure."
"Thanks."
"And maybe a contrived plot
device. Or a symbol of something I can't quite nail down. Or
maybe an image of someone I can never have."
And she's been taking this
in stride for a while now, and I'm reminded of the few times I told Bob
he wasn't real, and the way he condescendingly dismissed me, or ignored
me.
And I guess that's fair.
After all, no one likes being told they're not real. Even fictional
characters.
Especially fictional characters.
And then she looks at me.
And she says:
"You're pathetic."
FLOWERS IN THE BARRELS OF RIFLES MEAN SO VERY, VERY MUCH
Or, maybe the tragedy that occurred
on Sept. 11, 2001-- the whole fucking reason that *30* keeps going and
going and going (well, maybe not the whole reason, but I reason I'd like
to exploit because, well, I mean, it's been like 3 years and that ridiculous
explosion is still up for grabs)-- gives us cause for pause and a chance
to really analyze how this corrupted Capitalist culture really is bringing
us down. Wouldn't things be better, oh dear readers, if the IMF just
vanished off the face of the earth? Wouldn't it be better if the
Youth of Today simply stopped spending all their hard-earned cash on clothing
and mobile phones and simply retreated into a state of ennui and glassy-eyed
flower-picking? Wouldn't it all be better if we all just stood absolutely
still and went "mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" until we "saw" "the" "light"? Or
maybe retreated into the desert, unwashed and dehydrating, dying of malnutrition,
all thirst and scabs and seeking forgiveness from an absurd and flawed
conception of the divine that's one part error, one part speculation, ten
parts confusion and about a million parts self-indulgent, egotistical,
anthropomorphism? Then we could simply whither away and crumble into
dust, or sit around being "enlightened" or "saved" or "fill in your term
for your measure of unverifiable yet somehow objective spiritual success".
It all amounts to the same thing.
HAPPINESS
My first year at University:
And I'd come home after
school and Mom would be there-- and the air outside would be kind of cool,
and still kind of warm-- the way the air gets in the fall-- and it would
smell fresh and clean, and still sort of old at the same time--
And before supper Mom would
be in the kitchen cooking and Dad would be out somewhere. And before
supper I'd go into my bedroom and put on the headphones and, kneeling on
the floor in front of my stereo (kneeling because the headphones weren't
long enough to reach the bed-- wearing headphones so the music won't drive
my parents nuts) I'd fill my head with Philip Glass.
And I'd look at the record
sleeve, and I'd stare at the track listings and the cover art, and drift
off, creating abstract paintings in my head.
I had a record player that
skipped on all my records, except the ones by Philip Glass.
And now it's Grade 11, maybe
Grade 10, and this is the first time I ever heard Philip Glass. All
those loopy arpeggios and all the flutes and saxes and the voices and the
violins and pianos, and they just repeat and repeat and repeat and somehow
still somehow change. And it's like touching infinity.
And I would lie in my room
and listen to Einstein On The Beach or Glassworks over and
over and it was amazing. It was like some sort of pure singing, like
the entire universe singing-- the fall of Grade 11 Alex'd taken some records
out of the library because there was a library a block away from the school
we used to go to and he took some records out because they looked weird,
and he knew Laurie Anderson had a connection with Glass. And I borrowed
them and listened to them, because Alex didn't really know what to make
of them, except that he was pretty sure he didn't like them-- and Glassworks
had these cool long prisms on the cover and Einstein had this writeup
abut how some of the opera took place in a computer room on the moon, or
something-- and it was like the world had finally really and truly come
into being when I heard this stuff and it drove my parents crazy but when
I listened to it I imagined all these colours dancing and swirling like
infinite glittering tornados swallowed up in colour and motion while standing
still. So I didn't really care what my parents thought.
Like I mean for example
the music from first scene of Act III of Einstein On The Beach where
everyone's counting numbers in unison and it sounds kind of stuck but the
patterns of the numbers shift and it sounds kind of like a computer struggling
not to break down and the numbers are the beats of the music and they're
kind of jerky and the organ behind them is stuck in an eternal loop and
it's kind of blue and weird and paranoid and now and then there are bursts
of glittering colour it also drove my friends nuts too--
OOZY RAT IN A SANITARY ZOO
And I laugh.
"Pathetic?" I say, scandalized
and disbelieving. "But... but... how?"
SHITTING OUT THE RICH, DANK PUDDING OF HAPPINESS
Everyone should be able to think
what they want to and say what they want to, but I mean, give them all
a tv station. That way they can all do what they want. And
if they want to preach 24 hours a day, if you like it you can watch it
and if you think it's B.S. you can go watch something else. Everyone
should just mind his or her own business, businesses, whatever, but don't
bother me at home or yell at me on the street. If you want to just
stand on the street and just do it quietly, sure. But don't harass
me. Don't wave things in my face when I'm walking by, don't get me
out of the tub to tell me about truth, don't try to trip or shove me in
front of a car because I don't give a fuck about your own personal Jesus,
don't sit down at my table when I'm eating in a restaurant. If I
want to be saved, I'll be saved. If I don't want to be saved, leave
me alone. Let me burn quietly.
However, weirdly enough,
I find that the group that has the most lopsided asshole-to-nice-person
ratio are Atheists. For some reason, most of the Atheists I've met
are complete assholes. And I don't know why, because the popular
stereotype is of the arrogant Christian, or the generic blind ignorant
follower. I mean, I've also met Satanists who are really nice people,
and you'd expect Satanists to be malignant. But it's the Atheists
who are actually the biggest, most self-riteous, most conceited, and often
most under-educated, assholes.
HAPPINESS AS A WARM PINGU
"Why are you pathetic?
"You hide. Behind
all these masks. All the time. You never let anyone get close
to you and yet you whine about how lonely you are. What do you believe?
I can't tell. I've been here, reading *30* and I can't tell what
you believe, what you think. You claim that this is all about you,
and you never zero in on anything that I can point to. What do you
think, believe, about anything?
"You hate science and yet
you obsess on how wonderful it is. You alternately seem to be either
a rampant Atheist or a foaming Theistic mouthpiece for some sort of...
God-thing.... You say you hate irony and that irony wrecked the world
and your generation, and yet I can't take anything you ever say seriously.
But at the same time you're not being ironic either. You babble on
and on about what you think is cool and then seem to like the exact opposite--
you do a whole thing about how Electronica is 'where it's at' and the guitar
is dead, and then *30* gets filled with references to guitar-driven Alternative
Rock bands and Death Metal.
"And you're not confused.
You always say you're confused, but you aren't. I can tell this.
You're just saying that you're confused to propagate some sort of image.
And I don't really get what that image is. And yet you don't seem
to be certain about anything either.
"You have an ego the size
of this galaxy and yet you also seem like you're crippled by insecurity
and self-hatred. In fact that your self-hatred seems to fuel your
ego, somehow. Almost like a narcissist, but you're so self-aware
you can't really be said to be narcissistic.
"You repeat yourself endlessly
like you think that the entire world is so stupid it can't understand what
you're talking about, and yet you never bother to explain anything.
"You go on and on explaining
what the title *30* means by throwing up all this crap about Postmodernism
and the century and God and math and logic and 'the end of everything'
and all you do is make it seem like *30* doesn't actually mean anything.
"You even have me, here,
saying this, cutting into you and cutting you down for what? For
what reason? What could you possibly gain from having me say these
things because you're not doing it in any sort of subtle way, you're not
being self-reflexive to be clever, and yet I think you must think you are--
you're addressing this part of the epilogue directly to yourself but still
with an audience in mind, but for what? All it does is bring more
confusion and obsfucation into the picture. And yet because you're
aware that you're confusing things are you really confusing things?
Or are you just being pretentious because you can? You're totally
self-indulgent. But yet, can you really be self-indulgent when you're
aware of how self-indulgent you're being? And are you really pretentious?
Because people who are pretentious don't realize that they're pretentious.
Or at least they don't admit it. But are you admitting it?
"And you hide behind all
these layers of crap for what reason?
"You say you're alienated,
but all you ever do is set up scenarios where you make yourself seem--
to the public-- to be alienated, which in turn actually alienates you.
And you do it to your friends, too. Or at least that's what it seems
like you do, when I think back. Unless you simply want me to think
this-- but why would you want people to think this? To make the world
seem more alienating than it really is?
"You create Bob to be a
foil, and then you create Heather to be some sort of love interest for
you. You're supposed to be falling in love with Heather in this weird
little world you've created, in the coffee shop. She's supposed to
be your crush-- and then she hooks up with Bob and you paint yourself as
being miserable. You can't even let yourself fall in love with your
own fictional creations.
"And so it looks like you're
going to try to make some sort of statement about how you can't even get
the girl when she's a girl you create-- that even your fictional creations
either abandon you and leave you alone or never give you the time of day
at all. But then her relationship turns into a nightmare that you
seemingly imply is the end-result of all relationships. So what did
you want with her? Did you want to enter into this nightmare you
seem to believe in-- but, then again, do you really believe in it because
even though you whine about how love is just a chemical reaction and doesn't
really exist anyway, you pine on and on about how no one loves you and
will you ever find true love?"
From the corner of my eye:
A shape in the distance.
"And then you write me as
being mad at you for not being able to allow yourself to 'get the girl'--
or mad at you for simply behaving like some kind of douchebag-- but since
you're aware of what you're doing and your audience and the fact that I'm
simply you addressing yourself again, as well as your audience, and we're
all soooooo utterly very self-aware at this point-- everything gets thrown
into another confused, muddled spiral.
"Unless it's not."
It grows larger.
"Unless it's all much simpler
than what you're letting on."
I can tell out of the corner
of my eye-- and also because I'm writing this sentence and I know how it's
going to end-- that the shape is a man.
"Unless having me saying
that it might be simpler is just another way to confuse things again, which
means that it's not simple at all."
At first I can't place the
shape (which is a lie-- I clearly can), but then I realize that, wait,
it's Bob.
"It all seems like a way to keep
everybody away from you, and feed your own sense of misery and confusion.
Things you created by yourself, for yourself. Unless they're not."
And on cue, I look away
from her, and towards Bob.
"Ultimately...."
And when Bob sees me, he
begins running to me.
"I think, frankly...."
But I hold up my hand, and
then he stops.
"It all boils down to this...."
And she says, through clenched
teeth:
"You never, ever, ever give
anyone a chance."
"I know," I say to her,
but looking at Bob.
"You're not even listening,"
she hisses. "You gave up years ago."
I nod.
"Hey, Bob," I say.
"No words of wisdom today."
And then I smile.
And when Bob feels my smile,
everything-- for him, but not me-- goes black.
And I go back to what I'm
doing.
HAPPINESS, AGAIN
Think your name.
Think your name. Lock
yourself into an identity, lock yourself into you. You are you and
I am me, we are singular-- not some mutant hybrid third thing edited into
existence in both our brains, both delusions of the Other and of our Selves.
No. Think your name. We haven't fused-- tell yourself this--
I haven't invaded you, crawled through your gray matter like a Brazilian
brain worm, laid my eggs in you, and now they're slowly hatching, blossoming
into some sort of indeterminate effect-- mostly harmless and begin-- but
for some, malignant. There is some malignancy in some of you, I know
that.
I'm triggering something in someone.
Think your name, become
you, not some half-formed viral bastard human stink-baby cobbled together
out of two confused babbling idiots, one on the giving the other on the
receiving end, one passive and the other resistant and struggling or maybe
liking it a bit too much-- either that or lying there and taking it like
any other tired whore.
Think your name and ignore
me. Or don't. I can't do it for you.
Either way, I win.
THE BOY THAT EXPLODED
And when I read The Ticket
That Exploded I think: Jeeze is this what you can do with a novel?
And at this point, I'm not
used to possibilities.
I'm only in Grade 9, so
I still think that everything follows certain formulas. That the
world flows in real patterns, not imaginary ones.
And yet here's this novel
was that doesn't follow any real rules at all, or at least not any rules
I understand. It doesn't even have any structure and it doesn't really
even make any sense. Most of the sentences themselves don't make
sense. Not in any conventional sort of way, anyway.
And then later on I find
Cities
Of The Red Night, and I love that too. And this is in the spring
when everything is warm, melting, and fresh. And I remember reading
Cities
Of The Red Night in my bed with the windows open and the March air
blowing across my face.
And Cities is was
more linear than Ticket. The sentences make more linear sense.
But the plots in the book collide and time is ripped apart and characters
fuse with each other.
STRAW MAN / STRAW WOMAN
"You gave up years ago," she
says. "And it all boils down to you never open up to anyone.
Or anything. And that's what all this crazy, loopy, self-contradictory,
relativistic junk looks like to me. You're afraid of anyone really
knowing what you think. Yet you manage to still make up opinions."
"It's not that I never open
up. It's that it's hard for me to open up. Because every time
I open up I get shot down."
"That's a risk you take."
"Sure," I say. "Except
with me it's not a risk, it's a certainty. If not immediately, then
later. I always get stomped on. Always. And I don't set
it up that way. Hard for you to believe, maybe. But it's true.
"There have been people,
and lots of people, who have been critical about my stance on loneliness.
And everything they say usually ends up boiling down to: 'Oh it's not that
bad. You talk about being lonely all the time, you just need to get
out more.' Etc.
"Unfortunately, I know that
the majority of those people are either married or in long-term relationships,
and so frankly they don't really know anything about being truly
lonely. And don't give me that 'Oh, I know all about being lonely
because I was alienated in highschool' crap because in the majority of
your cases, that so-called 'loneliness'-- which is only really a bit of
teen posturing anyway-- only lasts until you meet your favorite cutey-snuggle-pie
in Grade 12 and then live happily ever after. Or maybe you meet your
match some time in University, and then live happily ever after.
Or whenever. And then live happily ever after. Which, even
if 'happily ever after' is sort of rocky, is not loneliness. So,
if you think you've been there, chances are you haven't.
"Until you've spent years
and years alone, the better part of a decade without any sort of pleasurable
human contact-- and we're talking about not even holding hands with another
human being-- don't tell me you understand-- because you don't. And
don't tell me to 'get over it' because, in all honesty, you have no idea
what 'it' even is.
"Here's an example.
"Years ago, there was a
girl named Alana. She was a fellow writer and we met in a writer's
group. I was active in lots of little informal writer's groups a
long time ago. We spent every week looking at each other's writing,
and sometimes we even hung out together at University. This was back
when I was in University for the first time. The early 1990s.
So we hung out together and I can honestly say I was probably either falling
in love or I was in love because the endorphins and serotonin were sure
saturating my brain. And one night after the end of one of our group
meetings where it was actually more like a party than a bunch of writers
reading each others' writing and trying not to insult each other while
somehow still managing to imply they thought everybody else's writing was
unreadable garbage and yet still somehow remain friends, I drove her home
and she invited me up to her apartment with a smile and a giggle and as
the Old Romances say 'one thing led to another' and then-- wow! Good
Golly Miss Molly! Yes, we had sex. And was I ever fucking happy!
For maybe a day because then she suddenly didn't answer her phone and the
next time I saw her I bumped into her at the University and she called
me a bastard and said I disgusted her and she had a bunch of my writing
and she threw it on the ground like suddenly the world had turned into
a shitty soap opera and she said she didn't ever want to see me again.
And I said wait and she said fuck you and then she actually kicked me in
the shin and ran off crying and everybody was staring at me and I felt
like my entire universe had shattered into a billion pieces. And
that was it. I never saw her again. She never came to one of
our meetings again. And after that the group broke up partly because
I just wasn't into it any more and I was the guy who could always be counted
on to produce reams of work and so I was the guy keeping that group
at least going.
"I wanted to ask her I know
no means no but since when the fuck does yes mean no? If that's even
what happened. And what the fuck are you, anyway, crazy or something?
"And then I saw her a few
years ago in a mall and she'd gotten married and she looked really tired
and she was civil and distant and I hated her in a detached sort of way.
We talked briefly.
"So, when I don't get shot
down, that happens to me.
"So, unless you've been
shot down time and time and time and time and time and time and time and
time and time again, unless you've been betrayed and mocked by the people
you've fell in love with, unless you've confessed your feelings to someone
and had them look at you in horror and go 'God, no,' unless you search
and search and search and find someone and then are utterly ignored, laughed
at, or belittled publicly, you have no idea what I'm talking about.
You're along for the ride, maybe, but you're not driving the goddamn car.
"And, because you have not
shared this experience with me, you are also no judge of how melodramatic
or ridiculous I'm being. Because, ten-to-one, what I'm talking about
is so far outside the range of your experience you probably can't even
comprehend it, other than in some way frame it in your mind as a behaving
like a caricature or spouting whining hyperbole. And because this
level of loneliness, this kind of disconnection, is not part of your frame
of reference, you-- quite honestly and understandably, don't get me wrong--
do not know what this kind of stress-- because this kind of disconnected
existance is stress-- can do to a human being's mind and self perception.
Even if that human being is reasonably intelligent, is capable of a small
degree of semi-critical self-analysis, and is somewhat outwardly social-seeming.
"See, I'm not a recluse.
I actually do spend time with people. I go out an do things.
But it's like there's a wall between me and the world. In fact, it
would be far easier, in fact, if I wasn't a social being and just stayed
at home masturbating to the Internet, eating nachos, and watching Star
Trek all day, never feeling an urge to leave my apartment.
"Also, if your idea of being
'lonely' is having a fight with your snuggy-wuggy and then feeling sad
for a whole week until you finally make up; or if you're one of those people
who wakes up one morning and realizes you're kind of bummed in a vague,
existential way and so decide you need to go out and get a girlfriend (or
boyfriend), but not until you smoke a bowl to mellow into a cool vibe--
and then you go get this girlfriend (or boyfriend) and enter into a 2-dimensional
shallow relationship for awhile... until you get bored and move on, only
to wake up 'lonely' again a week later, and then repeat the process-- if
you're one of those people you're pretty sad in your own way-- but you
still have no idea what really being alone is.
"And don't give me that
'we're all alone in the end because we're all alone in our heads' existential
Descartian bullshit because, yes, we are all alone in our heads.
And our perceptions are the only thing that makes the world. I know
that. And so thus we are all ultimately, infinitely alone.
Each and every one of us. For all eternity. Stretched out before
the void. Yadda yadda yadda. I realize this. You're not
the only one who read Existentialism For Beginners five years ago,
and only half remembers and half-understands it. But, you out there
with your cuddle-bugs and honey-poos and pooky-bears, even if you pay lip
service to the idea that we're all alone in our heads-- you know for
a fact that having someone else around takes the edge off that deep,
pretentious, but no less cosmic, loneliness. Makes us forget it.
After all, that's why you hooked up together in the first place.
"So, you know that we are
social beings. And you know that being with someone does cut
down on the misery of being alone. And you also know it's a trick
and / or an illusion. But you still embrace this illusion because
you have to, so pulling out that 'we're all ultimately alone' line when
you're clearly not physically alone-- which is as good as it gets,
but at least it's something-- is again just more adolescent, pseudo-cool
posturing.
"Because, again, you embrace
that illusion. And, so, why is it wrong for me to want a bit of that
illusion as well?
"And yeah, you can feel
alone in a crowd-- that's true. Old cliché #3312. There
were lots of afterschool specials about that one in the mid-1980s.
But the feeling of loneliness is still a million times worse when you're
alone all by yourself. At least a crowd offers distractions away
from the permanent presence of the moment.
"So, ultimately, at the
bottom of all this:
"I am getting very sick
of being alone, sick of loneliness, and sick of the women I try to care
for shoving me aside for other guys that are ultimately much stupider,
but far cuter.
"Also, I'm sorry I'm not
a shy rich boy with a blushing baby face and a transparenlty cultivated
air of sensitivity--
"Or a riveting 'artiste'
with tired old socialist theories about 'people's art' and a gooney, vacuous
grin--
"Or an empty-brained, non-threatening,
blond pretty boy who strokes off your innate sense of shalowness--
"Or whatever else that comes
along and is clearly determined by the elusive Other to be ultimately better
than me.
"And, I'm sorry I think
too much, and I'm sorry I sometimes make you feel uncomfortable or sad,
or maybe I make you feel way too serious. Oh no, anything but that.
"I'm sorry I'm not as 'fun'
as some people.
"Sorry I'm not as cute,
sorry I'm not as blonde, sorry I'm not as muscular, sorry I'm not as thin,
sorry I'm not as fakely sensitive, sorry I don't spout turgid poetry, sorry
I don't have a job in computers or accounting, sorry I'm not as funny,
sorry I'm not as chisled, sorry I'm not as rich, sorry I'm not as naive
and non-threatening, sorry I don't praise Jesus every chance I get, sorry
I'm not locked in the past, sorry I'm not clueless and bland.
"Sorry, sorry, I'm so fucking
sorry.
"And I am also getting so
extremely sick and tired of seeing almost everybody else around me getting
some sort of modicum of human happiness. Real human happiness, or
at least what passes for the illusion of real human happiness, not just
some sort of manufactured or purchased happiness-- which seems like about
the best I can do these days.
"And, believe it or not,
I do not enjoy being miserable. I would relish the chance to think
about other things in my life beyond my own unhappiness-- if only because
it's so very exhausting to be so unhappy every goddamn day.
"At the very outset, my
teeth hurt and I need sleep.
"And, believe it or not,
I actually do want a little bit of real, honest happiness, for a change.
I want to forget my troubles and have a good night's sleep next to someone
I love. I want to experience at least some joy.
"Is that too much to ask?
"Love is like telepathy,
it's like losing yourself in white light, it's like merging with pure bliss.
And it's an illusion, sure, the bliss is all just a trick, sure, but, still,
where is my bliss?
"Did I use it all up somehow,
accidentally? Is there only a finite allotment of happiness?
Do you have to ration it, and when it's gone, it's gone?
"And, even so, a couple
of weeks of bliss about a zillion years ago, that still doesn't seem like
I've used up my share.
"Unless I don't deserve
anything more.
"And who decides that?
"No one. As far as
I can tell.
"Unless there is someone,
and in that case I want to have a little tête-à-tête
right now.
"I'm waiting.
"Get you fucking ass down
here, now!"
CHAPTER 64: IN WHICH BRIAN WAITS.
And so I stand there, silent
for a long time, waiting.
30.EPILOGUE.73: December 23, 2003 -- INFINITY.