Projection Screen

At lunchtime today, I lay on a reclining cot while platelets were separated from a portion of my circulating blood, returning the remaining fluid into my body, a process I go through a few times a year, letting others have parts of my body free for their use. I call it a civic duty. [When I was a college student, I sold my blood plasma for money, not so much a civic duty as a means to have some cash to party with - I may have mentioned it to you before. I know I've mentioned it in poems and stories.]

Anyway, while there, I saw a 24-hour news show that randomly broadcasts stories from around the world, creating a false sense of history for viewers (as if the broadcasting company is saying, "we put you there virtually where important breaking news was happening, making you feel just as involved in the world as the newsworthy!"). I thought about human social interaction and my part in it. We do not exist in a vacuum yet I often feel like there is a barrier that separates me from the rest of humanity. Was I not held as a baby? What gives me a sense that my visual field of view is a movie screen through which I don't expect the objects out there to intersect? Am I a result of North American TV programming, thinking that the world plays out in front of me like a scripted television show? Why do I keep hoping there's a new channel out there that I haven't seen yet, one that doesn't involve human beings wanting to cross the boundary that defines me?

Last night, I taught a class on computer software. I also socialized with instructors and students not in my class. In all cases, they seemed to need more from me than I needed from them. I heard their words and phrases and saw their body language but felt like they were in a different world. No matter which part of the world they come from or which part of the world they have traveled or will travel, their world feels like a world apart from mine. Their interests are not my interests. I can tell you the reason why: they're invested in the education world in which we mix and I was dragged into it unexpectedly. Just like the platelets I donate to help others, I am donating several hours a week toward teaching to help others, to make up for the six months I needed in 1985 to get my act together and complete a college education. Otherwise, I plan no lifelong relationships with the people who've met me while at the technical institute. I'm getting too old, I guess, to add to the the list of fellow primates with whom I grunt and groom in recognition of one another.

My father can stand and talk with someone, finding a common interest within a few minutes, and converse for hours. I suppose that comes with age. Many older men and women I know do the same thing. I catch my wife and me, either separately or together, playing the same social game.

If my life feels like a TV show and more specifically, a game show, when do I get the big prizes (paying taxes on the MSRP (manufacturer suggested retail price) of the prizes, of course)? [Well, of course I've received many big prizes in my life so I'm only waxing my philosophical surfboard here, waiting to catch the next wave of thoughts.]

Since no one reads this, I can say what I want, can't I? This is a private journal posted in the near-anonymity of millions of voices on the Internet, giving me freedom I never had as a child and young adult when stuck with paper journals and no "living" encyclopedia/dictionary to consult and enrich my writing in real time.

To me, life is a projection screen. I stand, sit or lie down and stare at the projection screen, waiting for others to entertain me. One day the lights will fade and the movie will end and I will no longer process the images that seem to change from frame to frame. As long as that hasn't happened yet, I don't want the characters on the movie screen to become three-dimensional. I've grown up with an artificial barrier and like to keep my distance. I don't want to hang out with others, play games or interact in any way that implies to the movie characters in front of me that I'm interested in writing their scripts. I long ago wished to be a hermit in a cabin in the woods, free from seeing or being human history. I recently discovered that my housemate of 23 years is risk-averse. Maybe it's time I take a personal risk without her and move on to the life I wished for because I have nothing left to give her or anyone else. I don't want to die but I don't want to live in human society anymore, either. As a social animal with a chameleon personality, I know I will always find a way to blend into the local human society; however, I'm tired of being a human chameleon. I'm ready to blend into the natural world where mosquitos and ticks can't see a movie screen and I won't see billboards or get emails advertising stuff I don't need, where I won't care what technology is doing to humans, and species can keep going extinct without my knowledge.

But then again, don't we all feel that way at times and just want to get these thoughts out of our head, sharing them with a stranger? And you thought I was serious. Surely you know by now that I don't take anything seriously. That's what you get for reading my blog! Until next time...