Victus In Crepusculum
I am stuck like a dim drop of blood hung in mid-air in Nightwatch's Gloom. Nothing changes.
There's this great bit that I keep going back to from Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix: they found an immortality serum and administered it to test mice. Three hundred years later, one of the mice is still alive scurrying around his cage. The protagonist lifts the cage away from the mouse and it keeps tracing out the confines of the cage, pulling itself up imaginary bars. It is so used to the cage, so locked into its patterns that it cannot deviate: the bars are hardwired into its brain.
We've been stuck in our transitional house for seven years-- the shit hole between rental and a real house. I am tired of pretending that will change; so I've picked up a Judo master's skill of taking a fall, so that when I trip over piles of crap or cables or toys, I don't break anything. Really, I shouldn't bother: that would be something new. For that reason alone, I should be cavalier: I am immune to change so I can dare the universe into showing its hand-- that it's keeping things static no matter what. Most of my world consists of a 3'x 3' corner of the living room. I wonder if the next place shouldn't solely be a half-bathroom with a hot plate and Internet: then it would have everything I am allowed to experience.
I am on a perpetual diet: my weight does not move. Seven weeks ago, I threw an exercise routine into the mix: that changed nothing. I am openly breaking the laws of physics.
I pay our debts for the sport of it: they will never really go away. In the last few years, my income has grown enough that the difference between then and now alone could, in one year, swallow up our entire debt load, but still it remains. No matter much I pay and how little I spend, the levels shift like balls in a shell game, but they do not change.
The Internet is the font of all murk. No matter what I do or say or post, nothing noteworthy comes of it: you and the other six people who read this can confirm that. I do side projects because that's what I hit in one corner of the cage. Perpetually, the projects don't close off or pay off: they just go on. And on.
And on.
I have seen all of the movies I want to see: they're stuck in my brain so much so that I will turn off the sound, turn my back on the movie and keep belting out the dialogue in it's place. I know what people will say in new movies because Hollywood only produces gray water now. This is the real reason why there are no immortals: 500 years of this is too cruel a trick for the Cosmos to play. If I could literally drill out the memories of those movies, I would do so in a second just to get back novelty. Forgetfulness isn't a curse: it's a blessing. I have over 14,500 days of crap stuck in my brain.
I have not been on a plane in almost twelve years. I have not been east of the Rockies in 32 years. I get offers dangled out there but then they're snatched away from me at the last minute with Truman Show-like Deus Ex Machina. I'm no longer interested in doing the trip-planning dance because I know how it always plays out. I've gotten so tired of the game, that I have tried a new game: I now actively push away trips to see how much reverse astrology kicks in. Some work emergency or family emergency or financial crisis pops in to kybosh it; so there is no jeopardy in pushing to go or pushing to stay, there is only one outcome. I should provoke a Taliban orbital bombardment of O'Hare and Heathrow by buying a plane ticket.
If Sebastian Cabot came out from behind the curtains and said, "But, this is the other place." I would reply, "Sorry, fat man, I figured that out five years ago."
There's this great bit that I keep going back to from Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix: they found an immortality serum and administered it to test mice. Three hundred years later, one of the mice is still alive scurrying around his cage. The protagonist lifts the cage away from the mouse and it keeps tracing out the confines of the cage, pulling itself up imaginary bars. It is so used to the cage, so locked into its patterns that it cannot deviate: the bars are hardwired into its brain.
We've been stuck in our transitional house for seven years-- the shit hole between rental and a real house. I am tired of pretending that will change; so I've picked up a Judo master's skill of taking a fall, so that when I trip over piles of crap or cables or toys, I don't break anything. Really, I shouldn't bother: that would be something new. For that reason alone, I should be cavalier: I am immune to change so I can dare the universe into showing its hand-- that it's keeping things static no matter what. Most of my world consists of a 3'x 3' corner of the living room. I wonder if the next place shouldn't solely be a half-bathroom with a hot plate and Internet: then it would have everything I am allowed to experience.
I am on a perpetual diet: my weight does not move. Seven weeks ago, I threw an exercise routine into the mix: that changed nothing. I am openly breaking the laws of physics.
I pay our debts for the sport of it: they will never really go away. In the last few years, my income has grown enough that the difference between then and now alone could, in one year, swallow up our entire debt load, but still it remains. No matter much I pay and how little I spend, the levels shift like balls in a shell game, but they do not change.
The Internet is the font of all murk. No matter what I do or say or post, nothing noteworthy comes of it: you and the other six people who read this can confirm that. I do side projects because that's what I hit in one corner of the cage. Perpetually, the projects don't close off or pay off: they just go on. And on.
And on.
I have seen all of the movies I want to see: they're stuck in my brain so much so that I will turn off the sound, turn my back on the movie and keep belting out the dialogue in it's place. I know what people will say in new movies because Hollywood only produces gray water now. This is the real reason why there are no immortals: 500 years of this is too cruel a trick for the Cosmos to play. If I could literally drill out the memories of those movies, I would do so in a second just to get back novelty. Forgetfulness isn't a curse: it's a blessing. I have over 14,500 days of crap stuck in my brain.
I have not been on a plane in almost twelve years. I have not been east of the Rockies in 32 years. I get offers dangled out there but then they're snatched away from me at the last minute with Truman Show-like Deus Ex Machina. I'm no longer interested in doing the trip-planning dance because I know how it always plays out. I've gotten so tired of the game, that I have tried a new game: I now actively push away trips to see how much reverse astrology kicks in. Some work emergency or family emergency or financial crisis pops in to kybosh it; so there is no jeopardy in pushing to go or pushing to stay, there is only one outcome. I should provoke a Taliban orbital bombardment of O'Hare and Heathrow by buying a plane ticket.
If Sebastian Cabot came out from behind the curtains and said, "But, this is the other place." I would reply, "Sorry, fat man, I figured that out five years ago."
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