To Everything Turn Turn Turn

ACT I

You are seated alone in a dark room. The chair is simple wood. In front of you are two screens, behind you two projectors. You have died.

The projectors sound to life, a sound from old movies, of movies being shown as a wheel turn. The movie is of your life. The same picture shows on both screens. Identical.

God’s voice (or is it Leibnitz’s voice?) says:

On the left screen is your life movie where you made all the choices, where you have free will. On the right screen is your life movie from the moment I created everything. Though I saw everything you would do before you ever existed, you were free to choose.

ACT II

You watch your life movie. Your chair swivels to the right and a light pervades a previous darkness. Two new  screens appear. On one screen is your life movie from your eyes out. On the other screen is your life movie eyes on you.

God’s voice (or is it Leibnitz’s voice?) says:

On the left side is your monad, prefect in actuality, without passivity. On the right are the monads of those that knew you, their monads prefect in actuality, without passivity. The two never interact. To interact requires passivity. I cannot create a perfect thing that is passive; you contained the interactions with other monads from the moment I created everything and they contained your monad from the moment of creation.

ACT III

Your chair swivels further again to the right and a light pervades another darkness. In front of you is only one screen. You watch your life movie. You are murdered.

God’s voice (or is it Leibnitz’s voice?) says:

Your murder was the best of all possible worlds. I cannot create a non-perfect world. From the moment I created everything you would be murdered and it would be the best of all possible worlds. Though you winced at your murder, this too was the best of all possible worlds. Your perspective, perfect from the moment of creation, because of not in spite of its ignorance and desire, perfect from the moment of creation, cannot see perfection, though this is perfection. Your murder is for the best.

ACT IV

You are sad and it is perfect. Your chair swivels to the right again, back to where it began, and a darkness pervades a light. And it is perfect.

Family Fugue

He wrote to her often and often cried when he did; So much so that the tears would soak the paper. The salt in the tears grounded him away from his pain but to his reality. He often tore up the letters agreeing with himself that crying was its own reward – the letter need not be received by her. 

He figured that she never read the letters anyway. She probably just put them right into the trash. He thought she might return to sender but knew this would not hurt him as much as not knowing.

                Dear Rochelle,

My sheets ache for you, I ache for you. Our dog, yes the one we got together and named BeeBee aches for you. Back to the sheets. They ache for you because you aren’t laying on them (or is it lying; I miss your grammar lessons!) If only you would come back and lay on the sheets. Then I could be happy and make you ligonberry pancakes again. Remember the time we went to Ikea and imitated that Seinfeld episode? How can you not miss that enough to come back to me? BeeBee can’t be happy without you feeding her the way you do. I can’t be happy because you are with him now. What is so special about him? Ask yourself if his sheets ache. I bet they don’t. I bet he can’t make a pancake to save his life. I know he’s successful and good looking but he won’t love you the way I do. He won’t let you embarrass him at a pet store the way I would. Why on earth would you throw a lizard on me inside a pet store? You know about my gecko phobia! But I only love you more. He’ll never do that for you.

Anyway, have to go now, BeeBee needs walked and I have to run out and get a new hot rock for the gecko. Probably going to run me about 20 bucks!

Love you, waiting.

P.S., please let me know you are getting these letters.

P.S.S., did you watch the Benny Hill discs I sent to you?

Rochelle was a newly engaged woman in her mid to late twenties who suffered bouts of identity loss. Some call them dissociative fugues. Correction, Rochelle, only suffered one bout of identity loss. It was during this loss, or dissociative fugue, where she wound up in northern Minnesota with no memory of who she was or how she got there. Open bus doors and there she is: Rochelle in Minnesota. She met him at the diner by the bus stop and he was more smitten than a kitten with new mittens. Her glazed over look and buttery paranoia rubbed him just the right way. Like a massage with wet rice bags. Who knows where she slept (or, maybe once, bathed) that first week but her disheveled, odorous reappearance at the diner only sealed his fate. Love at first fugue. Though she never said much he fell harder than a Motley Crue groupie; During Motley Crue’s heyday of course. Her rants about ice fishing and periodic losses of consciousness and loss of consciousnesses only endeared her more. So she didn’t talk much, so she was inappropriate with elders and children, maybe she couldn’t hold a job or help with chores, and maybe she was confused about up and down and lacked proprioceptivity after 8pm, she was his and he was going to keep her.

One day Rochelle found herself in the Emergency Room for trying to steal a bag lady’s bag and suffered a broken nose to rival an underdog on the undercard. She then found herself with a psychiatrist; what after a conversation about ice fishing from the water with the nurse. She then found herself on a “ward” of certain sorts that provided certain medications that might help one that suffers from fugues, musical or otherwise. Rochelle got better and discovered who she was. She called home:

                Mom, it’s Rochelle.

                Oh my god honey, are you alright? Where are you?

                I’m ok and I’m in Minnesota.

Well you aren’t ok if you are in Minnesota. Those people like winter. What have they done to you?

I had a fugue Mom, a dissociative fugue. 

What the hell is that? Are you mad at us for something? A fugue??? Do you mean you blew a fuse? You are mad aren’t you? Are you mad we made you retake that psychology class? Honey repeating a course you’ve done poorly in is the best way to raise your GPA quickly. Your father and I just want what is best for you. Is this why you fused in Minnesota? Honey we want you to come back home; you don’t have to retake the class if you don’t want to. Why can’t you fuse here where we don’t have winter? You can fuse in your room right? Is this some sort of new thing, this fusing? Maybe I’m getting old but I don’t know why a person has to go where it is cold to fuse. I mean it seems to me you need heat to fuse. I didn’t major in chemistry but I know a little something about fusing and you need heat to do it…

Mom, mom, mom, MOM!!! I’ll be on a bus today and I’ll be home next week.

Oh goodie goodie gum drops! What should I do so you can fuse here?

Bye mom. Tell Dad I’m ok.

               

She left Minnesota, went home to Florida, put her fugue behind her and met a lovely young man in her psychology class –Abnormal Psych, her parents didn’t make her retake Intro. 

He kept writing letters to Rochelle -Rochelle from Lake City Minnesota. Same first name same last name. Rochelle from Lake City Minnesota has been trying to explain to her boyfriend, who intercepted the first letter, that she “don’t freakin’ know anyone from Lake City and that even if I did, it wouldn’t be this dipshit.”

Random(ness)

Thinking about the randomness of things right about now. Here is what happened.

I think I went to ‘I write like’ and pasted in my prose and it spat back “David Foster Wallace.”

I think I had heard the name somewhere but couldn’t recall the context.

I went to the library and took out his novel The Broom of The System and loved it. I loved the humor and I loved the stories within the stories, and the references to philosophy, especially the tale of the barber who shaves himself. I loved this because I translated that during my undergraduate symbolic logic class. I think it goes like this:

There is a small town and in this town every man is shaved by the barber. So I think the sentence to translate in class was something like for the barber shaves every man who doesn’t shave himself. The problem, or question, based on the sentence (as Bertrand Russell so brilliantly pointed out) is who shaves the barber?

I think I did some research and discovered that Wallace studied philosophy and English during his undergrad and actually wrote The Broom of The System during his undergrad. I also learned that Wallace killed himself and suffered from depression.

That Christmas, I got a kindle. The first book I wanted on the kindle was, wait for it…Infinite Jest. I loved it. It went nowhere and there was no closure and I didn’t care. The intelligence, the depth of ideas, the pain conveyed in addiction was like nothing I’d ever read. Or will read, I think.

This set off a bevy of reading I had not done since my undergraduate days. 

I lost my job at one college and got a job at another college as an online advisor. At this new college I decided to look at some of the online English course offerings and read the books. I started off with American Lit since 1945. This put me in touch with Vonnegut, In Country, White Noise, The Crying of Lot 49, On the Road, and Everything Is Illuminated to name a few. From here I moved on to Madness in Lit which put me in touch with Catch 22, Breakfast of Champions, Foucault, Girl Interrupted and…wait for it…back to David Foster Wallace. 

I am currently reading Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by D.T. Max and am riveted. Reading about his childhood and especially his undergrad at Amherst has me thinking about my intellectual past and future. I revel in the fact that he really liked The Crying of Lot 49 and White Noise. And it also has me thinking about madness. I am eager to learn what “tripped” things for Wallace and if his genius made things too easy. Or was it “simply” depression? If this is the case, isn’t it just random, random that some people suffer from depression while others don’t despite similar circumstances? What randomness awaits me?

That's Life (Cleveland Fans)

Reckoning

He got an email that at some point had the line: We can be reinvigorated for the future by a reckoning with the past. Then he thought about the word reckon. To come to terms with right? No need for Webster’s. Come to terms with??? Well what isn’t reflected in the words on the page is that it really to hurts to come to terms with the past…for some of us. It hurts to find yourself thinking about the past and apologizing to people that aren’t alive anymore…during your morning commute. Reckoning with the past opens you up to pain in a way that no surgeon with a scalpel can. Reckoning holds up the humanity mirror to your face and frightens you with no suspense or “other” lurking in alleyways or dark interiors. It is encapsulated; just you looking at you and you wonder if you are up to the task of knowing yourself. Of knowing what you are and for what you stand. Sure, they tell you it is worthwhile. But some of us haven’t taken that trip and with all due respect, why should we trust YOU? How do you know our experiences will be the same? What if I hold up the mirror and it doesn’t crack but I do? What if the past is too much to reckon with? What if I am not you and this little experiment of yours damages me beyond repair. Must I be reinvigorated for the future? Can’t the future just be matter-of-fact and lacking vigor? Maybe that suits me just fine. Heidegger said that man secretes time. That all of this hustle and bustle for the future creates the future. The future and the past are bi-products of a busy present. Well I may not hustle and bustle like you do but maybe, just maybe, deep down in places you don’t like to talk about at parties, you know my future isn’t yours and maybe, at the end of the day when you know the wolves await your sleep, you … 

[cut to interior room – rocking chair rocking – shot of feet on floor – camera pans up, old man smiling, looking at photograph book]

…were right. And maybe I reckoned.

3/19/14 Monologue

Bill Nye the science guy recently debated creationist Ken Hamm about evolution and cosmology. 
They polled people to ask them who they thought won the debate. 
Americans got confused during the debate and voted overwhelmingly for the CBS sitcom the Big Bang Theory.

President Obama picked Michigan State to win the NCAA basketball championship. 
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie picked chicken wings in his bracket.

Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady are selling their 14,000 square-foot estate in Los Angeles for $50 million.
Gisele said “My husband can’t buy the house and live in the house.” 14,000 square feet!? Was Vince Wilfork going to rent there? And sell RV’s from the basement?!

Scientist now say that long-term sleep deprivation saps the brain of power even with days of recovery sleep, and that this could lead to lasting brain injury. 
I can finally blame my middle aged foggery on my toddler who didn’t sleep for 2 years. It’s got nothing to do with all the drugs and alcohol from my twenties… and thirties. Thanks a lot, children!