Afterword: In Space, No One Knows You're A Scream

[NOTE: Some days I have to deprogram myself - this blog entry is not meant for general consumption - see the next blog entry for more explanation]

31st December 2009

According to the tradition of my local culture, today is the last segment of a 365-numbered set of segments that have repeated themselves over and over for as long as people cared to number the revolutions of the inner-cooling sphere orbiting the hotter but also cooling inner sphere of this place we call a solar system.

I have tried to understand this condition that calls itself an intelligent species. "I" have even learned to say "I". Despite applying the training, conditioning or brainwashing that provides a common path for bodies like mine to travel, little have I picked up to tell me there is anything significant to do with my body.

All this time spent deprogramming myself...sigh...

If I had only accepted the fact that I already knew everything before the habits of my fellow social creatures wrapped around me and absorbed me into their repetitious behaviours...

I had written a blog in hopes that I'd find another person with whom I could relate, justifying this continued, repetitive perpetuation of the concept of self. Instead, I discovered that I am like everybody else I met, my basic needs having been met, leaving me with no other course of action than/but to seek a little bit of attention from others to satisfy the programmed conditioning of social intercourse that being this body in a species of social creatures creates.

We want to know we're who we are because of who we were. We may wish to forget the past, or erase selected parts of the past - our personal history - including parts that only a few may know about. We way wish to remember everything and everyone, intensely so. In all conditions, preexisting or newly developed, we are these combined states of energy, or so I currently believe in my limited understanding of the universe.

I, this body, have many thoughts, ideas, dreams, observations, insights. We all do. Some may put their bodies to use in ways I cannot imagine, creating new devices or new ways to live that will benefit many bodies of our species. I have tried. I have wanted to scratch my name on the tablet of history by inventing some electromechanichemical gizmo but either I am incapable of such inventive magic or I have led myself to believe I am incapable. No matter. I have reached the conclusion that these words are all I have. These repetitions of the mandatory labor of my youth have governed my life.

I am past the point of middle age. In all likelihood, there are fewer days ahead of me than behind me. I have no burning desire to save the starving children of poor, uneducated, underemployed parents; orphans; people suffering from local climactic disasters. I am not a fully-integrated social being. I know that. Therefore, with the days I have left, I make do with what I have, with who I am, with whatever it is that comprises this densely-packed set of energy states.

I toyed with the idea of being the next "it," the next interesting thing to come along but I, like so many others, have seen that being "it" gives a false sense of personal security / hope / fulfillment. I have heard the prodding that says we shouldn't hide our light under a bushel basket, that if we have a capability which meets the needs / wants / demands of others, we should share. I am not such a socially-driven person.

Given all the above, how does one go about deleting the information in one's body that told the body it was important enough to be distinguishable as an entity separate from and/or more interesting than other bodies? Is elimination of the body the only answer? Isn't this world full of people who blend into the background, not wanting to be interesting or unique, one more faceless cog on the wheel? Can't I be one of them, happy in my anonymity?

I have a limited number of days to live. I don't mind sharing my life with those I encounter but I don't want to have a personality with a "gravitational pull" which attracts and drags others along with me as I journey through these days. I want to learn more, including how to combine 12-toned, octave-scaled musical notes into interesting compositions. I also want to continue to record my observations about life using these hieroglyphic electronic ink splotches.

To be here in this place and time, seeing it as antiquated, ancient history, knowing how little much of what I say will exist in any form one thousand years from now, I pause...I remember the poem about Ozymandias...I remember the tens of millions who died in intraspecies fighting. I give homage to my species. I fall back on my training/conditioning.

To escape, to leap out of this body, to see the "what's next" beyond a plethora of "what's next"s...the difficulty in going to the state of being where a being like me is no longer a being like me...to know we are creating virtual beings (e.g., using software like WoW, Sims or other virtual reality games) in order to experiment with what an electromechanichemical version of such virtual beings will be like in the near future...

I know why I weigh the elimination of my existence against living any longer. Nothing I imagine is new. People much more integrated into society and/or whose body structures accommodate greater imaginative scenarios have already imagined anything I could possibly imagine.

What to do, what to do...talking to myself here, masturbation of the mind...back to putting these words on a laptop computer so I don't attract the attention of those who don't know who I really am.

Who am I? I am the person who sees no one knows what's going on. We all pretend to know. We all spread lies and innuendoes to placate people we think can't handle what we think of as the truth. We create enclaves where we can wallow in the happy mud of jointly-shared limited knowledge sets. We accept the fantasy that we're living in the time of the best discoveries ever made, in the time of the worst economic/ecological calamities to beset any group of seven billion people on this planet, that there were always better times in the past that we should have preserved and perpetuated, and the grass is greener on one side of the fence (sometimes our side, sometimes someone else's). We purposefully accept contradictory thoughts. I am the person who sees (and knows there is) nothing new under the sun but who looks for something new anyway, at least for me, even if I know that I/me doesn't exist and whatever is new to me is an old, moldy hat to someone else. I am happy being me right here and now talking to myself by rubbing smooth places on the surface of small, plastic, trapezoidal cubes. When my happiness wanes, I find something else interesting to type to myself about.

One form of reality calls. Alive in this moment, it's time for a midmorning nap so I can stay awake at midnight to celebrate the new year with my wife and mother in-law.