This is an entry about a character very much like myself who lives vicariously through his own fiction based on events that have happened or will happen; this is a diary. It was supposed to a be a journal, but it’s not. I can’t account for my time. Time isn’t the anchor but is an anchor. I drift to much to keep a journal. I like to think I am unfettered, I’m not; I’m untethered.
I’ve been here long enough to have forgotten how to be direct. I use the words probably, might, mostly and the like with greater frequency; sometimes I’m trying to be funny, but mostly I probably don’t even that I might be doing it. I was listening to a song the other day as I was driving, there were things in the air, floaty white fluffy things, I thought it was milkweed at first, but I don’t know if there is milk weed around here. It was sort of like that movie Legend, always things floating in the air. The invisible things in the air and water are doing strange things to me. The visible ones are beautiful in an impressionist sort of way, broad strokes on a blue palette, and little details, textures.
The song ended and another one began. At the press of a button I could have made the other song come back; two buttons and the same song would repeat on a loop. I suspect that there was no big bang or god, but that the same big bang and same god loop around; they lost time as an anchor, and the other anchors were not enough to keep creation moored. A lot of folks use god or rationality as an anchor; it’s a bit like getting in a life boat on the deck of a luxury liner. In that analogy I just meant to suggest it’s even more step further removed from the ocean; that which gives life but in which we can’t survive without contrivance or invention.
Invention. This is a diary, it’s not the world as it is filtered through my perceptions, it’s an invention of how the world feels as it might if I focused my perception on it instead on the pieces of fluff that fill the air.
It’s been a long week. The character that this entry is about doesn’t know quite what to make of it and yet this week he asked about what he makes of it. Years and years of having an opinion that no one asks for and now --- well he answers sort of the way an answering machine answers, the same thing looped and repeated each time the phone rings.
I imagined a conversation I overheard at the café I haven’t been too, one explaining to the other that the internet was like all the worlds information gathered together in the Aether, in the clouds, buzzing at the hint of a keystroke. The other is horrified “It shouldn’t be in the air waiting for our touch,” he or she gasps in an antimated stage whisper “It should be in our heads and the craft of our hands.”
Yeah, I don’t know what that means either. It’s a bit frightening the not knowing what the hell I’m talking about. It’s also frightening the idea that our collective knowledge is on-line. There is the speed dial effect just waiting to bite us in the ass. I have this friend who is very important to me, I don’t know her number; I press the name I’ve told my phone to give her and it dials her number. I know that without my phone I don’t know how to call her and still I haven’t bothered to write the number down somewhere or memorize the simple seven digits. That’s an awfully negligent way to handle all the worlds information, it’s seems like it must be part of that same loop but not a wise part of it.
We are awfully cavalier or else arrogant or cocky with our collective knowledge. Even knowing this I haven’t took the time to think about what I actually know, how much of all that knowledge I could recall if I had too. I am my own worse critic and I am, or try to be, humble, but I’m also sure I’m not where near the least prepared. I am probably more like the most indifferent of the best prepared. Or, at least, this character I am writing this entry about is or was or will be; wait for the loop to come around.
There’s an old gospel song, a familiar melody, given the proper timing it makes the throat swell and the eyes tear up. The song asks Will the Circle Be Unbroken? No. I think the answer is No.
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