As a man in a childless marriage, I remember why I deactivated my Facebook account — it’s downright depressing seeing/reading about the families with [grand]children.
Time to delete the app and just leave the account hanging out there unattended…get back to my happy childless life!
Appropriately, this blog entry starts while Piano Sonata No. 14 In C Sharp Minor (“Moonlight”), Op. 27/2, by Ludwig van, plays in the background.
Melancholy fills the airs.
The interplay of friendships and miscommunication fills my thoughts.
The renewed sensations of polyamory I first experienced in kindergarten when we took turns being boyfriend and girlfriend on playground swings, in cafeterias, lunchrooms and school buses…
He loves her, but not like that, she loves him unconditionally, he’s got more than one girlfriend, she has more than one boyfriend but wants only him for once.
She wants him, needs him, now more than ever. Forever and ever, lovers and dance partners, alone on the stage making beautiful music together.
He wants to spend time with friends he hasn’t seen in months in her town after traveling across the Big Pond while she travels out of town on business the same weekend, knowing her best girlfriend wants to spend time with him.
Her best girlfriend remembers what she felt like after her divorce — disoriented, lost, afraid of crowds, wearing headsets to drown out the noise of loneliness and despair.
A word fraught with pregnant meaning and cultural connotations — hope — waits with anticipation.
It doesn’t help when insecurity makes her back itch in unreachable places.
And I, the author, like the best friend, am in the middle of all this, no one knowing my name, looking for a cogent storyline, something to hang onto, some hope that someone will remember my name when I’m dead and gone, knowing it doesn’t matter but it feels good to pretend it does while I’m alive because, gee, what else do I have going on in my life right now…really?
If we can’t find meaning, we can make meaning in our lives.
In that regard, we’re all the same even if we’re all different.
Today, I die another death, another forgotten day of hopelessness that stretches until the end of my days.
The joy of forgetfulness is not knowing how many of these days I’ve already died over and over and over and over and over…
…how many days I’ve picked myself back up, the hole in my thoughts of the death of my fifth grade girlfriend reminding me that life is an illusion of happiness that so many people perpetuate it almost feels real.
I take this imaginary dagger and jab it through my ribcage, ripping my heart apart, the pain searing my chest, filling my thoughts as the lights fade, my eyesight dims and…
Bai flipped the wall light switch with her elbow to light her bedroom.
Lee looked over her shoulder at a contraption. “What’s that?”
“It’s my exercise machine.”
“It’s looks like a headless mechanical bull.”
“Sort of. A horseless bucking saddle.”
“How does it work?”
Bai set the drink cups on her dresser. “You sit on it and I’ll tell you.”
Lee threw one leg up and straddled the device. “Like this?”
Bai snickered. “No. You’re backwards. But it might work. Grab the handle and hold your legs up in the air. I’ll turn it on.”
As the saddle rocked forward and backward, Lee tried to hold his balance, sliding from his butt and onto his back, his feet pointed toward the ceiling. “Whoa, Nellie! How do I stop this thing?” When the saddle started rocking side-to-side, Lee lost his grip and slid, falling flat on his coccyx.
They both laughed at Lee’s ridiculous position on the floor as Bai bent over to turn off the machine.
Lee pushed against the machine as he slowly stood up, feeling a stinger in his lower back, scrunching his face in obvious pain even though he kept laughing uncontrollably.
Bai reached out to steady Lee and stopped laughing. “All you all right?”
“Sure.” He stood up straight. “I think you may to start over on me.”
“I can do that, if you’ve got time.”
Lee looked down at Bai. “Thanks. Give me a minute…”
“You know, I’m surprised you didn’t ask.”
“Didn’t ask what?”
“Everyone who sees the machine asks me if I’ve tried to have sex on it. And…”
“Well, I guess I…”
“…you can see why I haven’t. It’s not that kind of machine.”
Lee felt a jolt of pain and his voice fell to a whisper. “Maybe later…”
“What?!”
“Maybe later…”
“Are you sure? You saw what you just did.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
“But I just said…”
“Oh, yeah. I see what you mean. Sorry, I guess I can try it again later after another massage.”
“If that’s what you meant…” Bai seized her cup and finished all the water. “I’ve gotta pee. You can look in my room but don’t try to make my bed. Alaur can do that for me.”
“No problem.”
Lee looked around the bedroom. A paisley suitcase and a pink Helly Kitty makeup case were open on the futon bed. The pair of folding closet doors, painted robin egg’s blue, were pulled open and the closet light was on.
In the middle of the closet stood a shoe shelf, every hole, meant for a pair of shoes, stuffed with four or five pairs of shoes — sneakers, dance shoes, dress shoes, sandals, boots — about eighty pairs in total. To one side of the shelf were three special hangers designed for scarves, including the handmade ones Bai had shown Lee and his wife the last time they had visited.
Next to the scarves were six or seven party dresses.
To the other side of the shelf hung pants, blouses and coats, hidden in shadow because of a big box blocking the closet light.
On the floor were more boxes, some with the lids off, containing belts and yarn.
Lots of yarns. Yards and yards of yarn — thin yarn like wire, yarn with thread as thick and hairy as a cat’s paw, shiny yarn, dull yarn, matted yarn and yarn neatly wrapped around a spool.
Lee stepped forward and one of the spools of yarn moved.
At first Lee thought the yarn had merely fallen.
He leaned over to put the yarn back in the box when it rolled out of his reach and into a dark corner.
Lee felt a hand in the small of his back and almost jumped.
A voice from nowhere whispered to Lee. “Whatcha doin’?”
He thought it was Bai and turned as he stood up, planning to put his hands on her shoulders and ask about the yarn.
No one was there.
Lee shook his head and turned to see if the yarn was still in the corner. It was gone.
He walked over to the measuring cup and finished the water, which tasted sweet and cold as if fresh from a mountain spring.
The bathroom door opened.
Bai stood silhouetted by incandescent light from the bathroom.
Draped around her neck, the multicoloured scarf hung down from both shoulders.
The pink cashmere scarf was tied around her waist.
She wore brown boots with leopard print cashmere lining folded four inches over at the top.
Lee felt light-headed — the image of Bai seemed to float toward him.
“Did you finish your water? Do you want more?” Bai took the measuring cup from Lee’s hand.
Lee noted that Bai had removed the barrettes from her hair.
“What do you think? Do you like my hair? Thanks for letting me take the time to work on it. Did you have fun in my room while I was gone?”
Lee stood motionless, as if he was frozen, although his insides felt like they were warming up. “You…uh…”
“Uh-huh? I what?”
“You’re wearing the scarves.”
“You noticed! You aren’t a zombie after all!” She spun around and around several times, sending the multicoloured scarf out like bird’s wings from her neck.
In his daze, Lee thought he had never seen so much of Bai’s body before. He had yet to capture and record a good label to describe the colour of her skin which was brown, but brown was too generic, it didn’t describe the angelic figure in front of him who still floated like a spinning top, a gyroscope pirouetting down on an imaginary rope.
The brown of her hands was different than the brown of her forearm, upper arm and shoulders, different than the brown of her face and her neck, different than the brown of her back and her waist, different than the brown of her legs, calves and feet.
If there was a rainbow made of brown colours, then Bai would be the essence of the rainbow — from light browns like the dry soil of an ancient forest, medium browns like an oak tree, to dark browns like a mug of hot cocoa.
Highlighted by the best colour that accented her face — blue eyeshadow.
Lee was losing his train of thought — purple, blue and brown seemed to fill his world.
Like a tornado, or the Tasmanian Devil, Bai swirled into Lee and pulled him into the piles of yarn in the closet.
Lee had already lost track of time, not able to synchronise the time Bai said she had spent in the bathroom with what felt like the few seconds Lee had looked around her bedroom.
The swirling continued.
Blues, browns and purples mixed with reds, yellows, greens and blues.
Feathery boas tickled Lee’s nose.
Spools of yarn awoke from a deep slumber, dancing in Lee’s face, rolling down his arms, bouncing up and down his legs.
Lee’s eyesight dissolved away, his five senses cooked into one extrasensory stew, touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight blended into a window onto a new universe.
Scarves talked to the inside of Lee’s skull.
Suddenly, he was a waterfall carving a path out of the bottom of the closet.
Bai was laughing in his ear like she was a horseback rider having the time of her life, riding free in the wild.
Lee wanted to be confused but he had no time, becoming thousands of water droplets cascading over a rock precipice, oxygenated by the pure air, headed toward a pool at the end of a ravine, feeding a herd of feral horses.
Lee left the ravine as a gamma ray burst, traveling across the universe like a beacon with a message searching for a recipient.
He began to feel his heart’s rhythm again, his temples pounding.
He opened his eyes.
Bai pressed the top of her hand on his forehead.
The fringes of a scarf brushed against his eyelashes.
She held the back of his head with her other hand, which rested on her lap, the warmth of her leg pressed against his back.
“How do you feel?”
Lee laughed. “I don’t know.”
“What? You mean the Great Lee doesn’t know? Did you actual lose control?”
“I did?”
“I told you that you were mine until I said otherwise.”
“Yes, you did.”
“You aren’t the only one who has been taught how to access ancient pathways through our universe. You aren’t the only one practicing the ancient arts. I, too, am a Mesmeriser.”
Lee closed his eyes and relaxed into Bai’s body. A fellow Mesmeriser? Lee let the idea sink into his thoughts.
Lee gave his body to Bai, every last atom of his set of states of energy was hers.
How many Mesmerisers were there?
He knew the answer.
He also knew the answer wasn’t available in a database attached to the Internet or stored in some deep cavernous treasure trove in forgotten lands.
There was only one Mesmeriser.
Lee didn’t need to hide the answer because he knew the universe was what is was, the embodiment of the Mesmeriser which in turn reflected itself in every ounce of its being, being both the parts and the sum and more than the sum of the parts.
Lee rotated his head, rubbing his hair in Bai’s palm. “I am the Mesmeriser.”
“I know. And now we both are.”
Lee opened his eyes and looked up at Bai, who was bent over, her chin just touching his stubble beard.
They smiled at each other.
Lee’s heart began beating regularly again for the first time in weeks. He was finally in synch with Bai.
For the first time in two years, he understood why Guin made his heart leap from his chest every time he saw her or thought about her. After all, she was Guinevere, the White Enchantress. She had stepped into his life or the other way around, it didn’t matter.
From the beginning, there was a familiarity with Bai that Guin had prepared him for, as if an imaginary triangle had been trying to form for millennia and found its shape when the three of them met, their friendship cemented out of reach of spacetime when Bai and Lee discovered they were each other’s Mesmerisers.
An enchantress and two mesmerisers. Magic labels for special friendships.
If labels are signposts that don’t exist, then what was magic about friendships that have labels?
Guin held out her hand across the miles and minutes, connecting her heart to Bai, Lee and a endless line of friends.
If Lee was ready, she wanted to return to Mars again and write their stories together.
Bai lifted Lee’s head out of her lap. “I think we’re done here for now, don’t you?”
Lee gripped Bai’s elbow and lifted them both up. “I don’t know.”
“And that’s a good thing!” She laughed and led them to the kitchen to refill their cups. “You need to drink lots of water…just like the doctor ordered!”
Lee held onto the kitchen counter as Alaur walked back into the flat.
She stopped and looked at him, wobbly on his feet. She upturned an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Alaur, I think it’s your turn. I’ve had just about all I can take.”
Bai laughed. “But look how much straighter he is! Next time, I’m going to work on your hips to get that curve out of your lower back. Alaur, get on the table. I’ll be there in a moment.”
As Lee pulled on his Irish winter parka, wrapping the Munster rugby scarf twice around his neck, he saw an older Orlando Jones on a TV show for a couple of minutes, then watched as Bai started rotating Alaur’s arm, Alaur’s purple-and-black eyelids shut tight as she attempted to conceal the pain.
“Lee, Bai doesn’t know it but I have two massage therapists — her and a guy who gives me the kind of massage that makes me relax…”
Bai interrupted. “Hey, I give the kind of massages that I like to get!”
Lee nodded in agreement. “That you do! So, Alaur, does he use aromatherapy and relaxing music?”
“Yes. He pretty much puts me to sleep every time. I tell him he gets me in such a mood, he could do anything to me and I wouldn’t object.”
Lee replied with a smile in his voice he directed at Bai. “I know what you mean.”
Bai looked up from massaging, texting and changing the TV channel at the same time, giving Lee another one of those mysterious messages from women he didn’t know how to interpret, which probably meant…
“Well, I better go. I’ve got things to do at home.”
Alaur looked up in surprise. “Leaving so soon, Lee?”
“Umm…yeah…I should go.” Lee was getting warm again.
Bai held her look at Lee, as if she was half paying attention to Lee and half somewhere else. There were times when her exotic, Filipina face froze Lee in place, wanting as he did to trace the outlines of her eyelids with his fingers, to get to know every pore, every wrinkle on her face, every chapped crevice of her lips, the feel of her skin above the weeping cherry tree tattoo running down her back, kiss the butterfly tattoo on her wrist and feel the touch of her skin on his lips. That is, if he hadn’t already? Had he?
He raised his eyebrows slightly, asking Bai what had just happened.
Denying him a direct answer, Bai broke their stare and glanced down at her smartphone.
He took it as a signal. “Yep. Time to go.”
“Oh, okay.” Alaur turned from Lee to Bai, as if she wanted to say something else.
Lee walked out of the flat without another word from Bai. If she had said anything, he would have stopped in his tracks and completely vanished into his Mesmeriser role, changing the direction of the major channel of the river of history.
Alaur walked out of Bai’s bathroom. “Where do you keep your toothpaste?”
“Oh yeah. I’m out, aren’t I?”
“I can run to the store and get you some.”
“Great. If you’re going, then I’ve got a list of stuff to get.” Bai patted Lee’s back. “I’ll be right back.”
During the few minutes that Bai conferred with Alaur, Lee tried to listen to the show on the tellie. He heard a portion of an argument about going after a killer and decided the plot was as old as time — revenge — reduced down to a 22-minute screenplay, a morality tale for mass consumption, and Lee wasn’t going to learn much about life from the show, just about the imaginations of screenwriters and the acting/directing skills of the ensemble.
“I’ll be back soon!”
“Take your time. I’m going to have to spend at least another thirty minutes on Lee.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, Alaur!”
“Bye, Lee. Have fun!”
Bai set her right knee on the massage table pressed into the nape of Lee’s neck, her thigh parallel with the top of his shoulder.
She laid one hand on his shoulder blade and held it there, almost motionless.
Lee knew what it meant — Bai was texting someone.
She had told Lee she had attention deficit syndrome and needed a lot of distractions for her when she was massaging someone — the TV, the phone, the laptop computer, even someone else in the room to talk with — in order for her to concentrate.
She let go of Lee with her hand and pressed her kneecap into his neck, causing Lee to turn his head. He looked up to see Bai tuck her smartphone into her bra.
Bai saw him looking up. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Do I really look thinner?”
“Yes.”
“I’m wearing a girdle.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you know I want to wear a corset but a friend told me to practice with a girdle first, so I get used to how it rearranges your organs. Then, she’ll show me how to put on a corset that I can lace in the back and tie in the front.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You really like the way I look?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Cause the first time I put it on — wow! Talk about pushing my organs around! You don’t care if I take if off, do you?”
Lee, his head turned, Bai’s knee pushing against his Adam’s apple, tried to gulp.
“Oh, dear, I’m sorry. I’m not choking you again, am I?” Bai pulled her knee off the table. “I’ll be right back.”
Lee raised his arms that were dangling down both side of the table and placed the palms of his hands on the mat, pushing himself up and breathing, catching a glimpse of his dance partner walking from the dining area, past the kitchen and into the bathroom.
Lee performed a few situps before Bai returned.
“That feels much better!”
Lee glanced at Bai as she walked toward him, her hips at eye level. She had slipped on a charcoal-gray fleece hoodie and a pair of matching gray sweatpants with the letters H E R stamped across the backside he saw when she turned to get the smartphone off the sofa. He couldn’t tell if her stomach pooched out a little or it was the pocket on the front of the hoodie — either way, she looked grand.
“Where were we?”
“You were loosening up my other shoulder.”
“Oh, yeah. Hey, did you really buy me that scarf?”
“Yep.”
“What gave you the idea?”
“You really want to know?”
“‘Yep.'”
“Well, it’ll sound strange, you know.”
“But, of course. I wouldn’t expect anything else from you!”
“Okay, here goes. I wanted to give you something special…”
Lee lost his breath as Bai climbed on the table and pressed all her weight on Lee’s left shoulder. “And…?”
Lee raised his feet in the air, unable to squirm with Bai using her body to put point pressure on him. “Uh…unh…”
“Wow, Lee! I felt that pop! You feel better?”
“Maybe.”
“Your spine is getting straighter. It’s almost disappeared between your shoulder blades!”
Lee voluntarily took a breath before Bai demanded that he did.
“Ooh, that’s good. Take another deep breath. Breathe! Breathe! That’s it. Wow, I can feel your shoulder getting looser!”
Lee closed his eyelids as tight as he could, gripping his hands into fists until the coldness in his fingers chilled his palms.
“So, why did you buy the scarf? You’re not getting away with not telling me just because I’m working on you!”
“Unh…okay. Oof! That hurts!”
Bai laughed. “Good. It’s supposed to hurt. It shows I’m doing my job. Now, go on.”
“I’d love to get you a piece of jewelery to wear. I like seeing women wearing jewelery I’ve bought them. Janeil doesn’t wear jewelery very much.”
“I see. And you didn’t because…? I mean, I love the scarf and all but…”
“Who says I didn’t?”
“Uh-huh. Ooh. I felt another pop. How does that feel?”
Lee sighed. He took two breaths. Pain was washing over him again. “Okay.”
“And you gave me two scarves, instead, because…?”
“Do you think jewelery is too personal?”
“Depends.”
“I thought so. I…I wanted…ouch. Woof! Did you feel that one?”
“Sure did. You’re doing great. Your shoulders will be almost straight this time when I’m finished. So the scarves aren’t personal?”
“They are. I picked them out just for you.”
“And why did you do that?”
“The first one reminded me of the ones you showed us you’d made. I could imagine you wearing it.”
“Imagine me wearing it in what way?”
“Around your neck?”
Bai worked on a knot just underneath Lee’s left shoulder blade, old scar tissue from the wreck he was in when he was sixteen years old.
Lee grunted loudly, like a bear. “That…really…hurts!”
Bai stepped off the table and rubbed his shoulder blade for a few seconds. “You need to take a break.” She walked over to the dinner table and swallowed a couple of pills, part of a supplement package made by a company named Advocare that she believed was helping her lose weight. “I’ll get both of us a drink of water. You need to sit up and stretch again.”
Lee pushed himself up and rolled over, raising his torso up like a straight, stiff board, not wanting to move his back or shoulders until the throbbing pain subsided.
Bai handed him the measuring cup again and looked coyly in his eyes.
“I don’t think the scarves go with this outfit but there might be something in my closet it goes with. How are you doing? Do you need to rest a little longer?”
Lee nodded his head.
“Okay, then. Let’s see what your scarves will go with, if you don’t mind.”
She took both their cups and motioned him toward her bedroom.
To be continued…
I wander this planet in a fog, my thoughts in wonder, my eyes catching rays bouncing from stray objects that barely stand out from the background.
I contemplate the universe in imaginary silence, bounded by vibrations in the central nervous system, a repetitive process that my body interprets as rhythmic ringing inside my ears, surrounding me as in a fog.
I exist.
That truly suffices.
I do not see beyond the simplest gestures of friendliness that acknowledge my existence.
Saturday morning, a woman in my age range, say…oh, 40 to 60 years old, about five feet, five inches tall, shoulder-length black hair mixed with gray streaks, wearing glasses (reminding me of a friend from long ago, Deena Ramos), while helping to set up the food line for the marathon runners who would arrive shortly, struck up a conversation with me.
She seemed determined, as if she had a plan in her thoughts to complete in action that morning, with me as part of the plan.
She quickly gave me a rundown of her autobiography, letting me know she had three children who did not like her ex-husband (it took me a while to connect that he was their father (or “sperm donor,” as they told their mother they thought of him)), a man who divorced this woman on the grounds that she didn’t make the kids’ beds in the morning after they got up, which indicated to him she didn’t care for them, even though she fed them and handled all of the school homework assignment without his assistance.
The way she pounced on me and dwelled upon the divorce, I felt that she was trying to tell me something about men who choose to divorce and the thin excuses they use as the marriage dealmaker.
She was not a man basher or man hater — she clearly sought to keep our conversation going, or at least wanted me to listen to her, pushing aside interruptions from others with a wave of her hand.
I understood she wanted more than sympathy, which I supplied by recounting my sister’s divorce stories and the divorce stories of other people I knew.
She wanted empathy.
Hadn’t I just been in a similar situation with Bai a few weeks before?
When does fiction and reality mix?
I had abandoned the love story of my life, the tale of Guin and Lee on Mars, in order to return to Earth for some me time away from the future, and here I was, getting all I asked for, and more!
I interpreted the woman’s insistence on holding my attention as a side effect of my people-pleasing personality and had learned to accept the consequences long ago, forsaking the career of a priest in order to live amongst everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.
I am not a trained mental health professional — my interest in matters of thought sets are merely amateur curiosity.
As wax from a Scentsy burner, sold to me by Guin months ago, melts nearby, reminding me of what might have been and might still be, I know my journey is neither long nor short in the discovery of what only one body can experience in one lifetime.
I am humbled that any one person or persons would want to talk with me, their pure selves, being the only people they can ever be, standing before me in their personal glory, angelic vestiges of sets of states of energy in motion, exchanging energy states freely.
Thus, as the woman continued to talk with me, I sought to learn from her what in her life would make both of our lives better now and into the future.
I expanded my inquiry into what she wanted, what it was that would ease the perceived weight of the burdens she had carried as a single mother providing for her kids — from whom did she most need affirmation of herself?
Frequently, especially here in the heart of the Bible Belt, I discover the person in front of me has been well-trained to believe that straying from a childhood of religious training is perceived as a cause of one’s ills; if a person expresses that belief, then I help steer that person toward an internal forgiveness and permission to return to childhood beliefs that had been abandoned due to feeling no longer worthy.
This woman did not go in that direction.
She seemed to want something specifically from me and it wasn’t just forgiveness.
I was at a loss for words to keep her going.
She eventually just stood and looked at me, her eyes expressing a want I could not understand as I pulled grapes off of stems and put them in a bin to hand to marathon runners as nature’s free energy pills.
This went on for a few minutes, the woman glad to stand and watch me without saying a word.
I wasn’t familiar with the arrangement of her facial features but it seemed as if her face was not in tune with her thoughts; or, perhaps, her thoughts were mixed and her face reflected the puzzled mix.
Her mouth was slightly open, as if she was about to say something, her eyelids apart wide enough to give me the impression she was mulling over words to say to me, her body leaning against the food table and her arms folded across her chest.
I had no problem with her standing there if she wanted, because she had already completed her morning duties, so I kept working until the first marathon runners arrived, which forced her to move on to her work area around the corner in the hotel hallway.
We exchanged farewells and I added her to the list of hundreds of people I met the rest of the day who made my life so much more complete than the day before, thousands of insights into why I should never have given up writing about life on Mars with Guin.
On the countdown clock in front of me, 13,290 days remain until the Martian storyline goes into full swing.
Meanwhile, back here in regular domestic time, on the way home after the marathon, my wife inquired about the long conversation I had with the woman who watched me prepare grapes.
I told her what I could remember.
She told me that she had been about to go over and tell the woman that I was married and she was my wife, to back off, that just because I looked like a single man didn’t mean I was available.
She reminded me how many times this has happened, a woman digging into my life to find out my marriage status, and how many times she’s seen I haven’t stated for the record that I’m married.
Am I that clueless in real life?
Have I been so seemingly innocent, so lost in a fog of happy self-delusion that the universe is here simply to acknowledge my existence and nothing more, driving me into fictional tales in the moments I want to keep my thoughts going as if there is more, that I’ve missed when single, available women have been hitting on me? Even if I had missed them hitting on me, what had I really missed?
I explained to my wife that I am an innocent flirt who has maintained a clear boundary between myself and others that has, for all but a couple of instances, kept me from becoming a dangerous flirt — marriage is as much a protection against sexually transmitted diseases as a social nesting habit — when I put on a wedding ring in 1986 in front of my wife, friends and family, I bound myself physically to the marriage contract that I understood meant my body belonged to my wife for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, till death do us part.
Otherwise, if that marriage contract has no validity then the society in which I was raised and the global economy in which it was supported has no validity.
And, by extension, if they have no validity, then the universe is a false front, a magician’s illusion.
If the latter, then what am I doing here writing this blog when there’s more to discover than reiterating historic falsehoods?
I did not speak with that woman at the marathon again so I didn’t get a chance to hear if she had learned as much about life in our brief conversation and the hours of conversation snippets with the runners as I had.
I hope she did.
Regardless of the number of days left in the Martian countdown, life is a learning experience, a way to maximise the exchange of sets of states of energy.
All I have is myself and these fingers that have learned to form callouses from tapping on plastic keys, a habit not anticipated by my ancestors thousands of years ago.
Yet, here I am.
I am alive, despite my worst habits.
As a person who assumes the godlike viewpoint of a writer determining the lives of fictional characters, I choose to go on with my stories regardless of how much they do or do not reflect the possibilities of a real future.
Where the writing leads me, I do not know with 100% certainty.
Uncertainty is my best friend.
Change is all I truly have to depend on.
Our short lives and civilisations based on inconsistent narratives give us an easy way to believe all sorts of forms of permanence, no matter how fleeting they really are.
Thank God.
John:
Me:
Stranger comparisons have been made…e.g., Chuck Norris, Ron Howard…
treetrunkdings 