Brand New “Millstone”: a punk rock retelling of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
I used to be such a burning example.
I used to be so original.
I used to care, I was being cared for.
Made sure I showed it to those that I love.
I used to sleep without a single stir,
‘cause I was about my father’s work.
Well take me out tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
I used to pray like God was listening.
I used to make my parents proud.
I was the glue that kept my friends together.
Now they don’t talk, and we don’t go out.
I used to know the name of every person I’d kissed.
Now I made this bed and I can’t fall asleep in it.
Well take me out tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
Throw me that lifeline.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
I never hit the brakes,
there’s no time to save him.
He just ran out in the street.
Anybody know his name?
I think I recognize him.
Sure it’s him?
He sure as hell paid for that mistake.
So take me out tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
A millstone around my neck.
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
To save my life tonight.
This ship of fools I’m on will sink
A millstone around my neck
If you’d be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.
Nine Inch Nails “Everyday is Exactly the Same”, the industrial rock take on the Myth of Sisyphus
I believe I can see the future,
‘cause I repeat the same routine.
I think I used to have a purpose,
but then again
that might have been a dream.
I think I used to have a voice.
Now I never make a sound.
I just do what I’ve been told.
I really don’t want them to come around.
Oh, no.
Every day is exactly the same.
Every day is exactly the same.
There is no love here and there is no pain.
Every day is exactly the same.
I can feel their eyes are watching
in case I lose myself again.
Sometimes I think I’m happy here.
Sometimes, yet I still pretend.
Every day is exactly the same.
Every day is exactly the same.
There is no love here and there is no pain.
Every day is exactly the same.
I’m writing on a little piece of paper.
I’m hoping someday you might find…
I’m still inside here.
A little bit comes bleeding through.
I wish this could have been any other way.
But I just don’t know, I don’t know what else I can do.
Every day is exactly the same.
Every day is exactly the same.
There is no love here and there is no pain.
Every day is exactly the same.
N.E.R.D. “Sooner or Later” the R&B finale, explicating Murphy’s Law, and the typical course of what happens whenever I find myself infatuated with someone.
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down)
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
but everyone knows now.
So your sad
about the moment
you lost your love (damn),
you couldn’t see her leaving. (You were gay.)
And that sucks, don’t it,
‘cause God yanked the rug,
and holding your heart will not help you breathe.
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down),
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
but everyone knows now.
It all comes crashing…
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
So your sad,
and you should own it
that you fucked up (damn)
you thought that you were the team. (You were gay.)
And now your opponent,
he wears your gloves.
A nightmare just ate up your dreams.
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down),
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
Everyone knows now.
It all comes crashing…
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
So your sad,
Could have had so much done.
You blew it off.
Your chances passing you by. (You were gay.)
Time waits for no one,
and it costs for a loss.
A cosmic joke.
Should you laugh or cry?
Sooner or later it all comes crashing down (crashing down),
crashing down (crashing down)
when everyone’s around.
I bet you would’ve paid up all your cash down (your cash down)
and not make a sound (to make a sound)
but everyone knows now.
it all comes crashing…
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
down…
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
It’s over. Leave it.
Apparently one of my neighbors is either reminiscing about the past, or feeling heartbroken, or both, because he/she was playing this song from TLC from yesteryear:
I never asked for this feeling.
I never thought I would fall.
I never knew how I felt
‘til the day you were gone.
I was lost.
I never asked for red roses.
I wasn’t looking for love.
Somehow I let my emotions take hold
and guess what, all at once
I’m in love.
Oh, I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Why did I act like you mattered?
It was silly of me to believe
that if I just opened my heart
things would come naturally.
Joke’s on me.
I did not ask for love letters,
so why did you give them to me?
How could I let your intentions
get hold over me?
So in love,
so naive.
Oh, baby.
Oh, I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
And, oh, how I hate what you have done.
Made me fall so deep in love.
Got no cure.
You’re the only one I want.
That I love.
Oh, baby.
Oh I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
—”I Miss You So Much” by TLC, on Fan Mail, 1999
It’s about 3am and I’m utterly exhausted. I’ve pushed myself to the brink for no good reason and I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m not entirely certain what I’m trying to prove here.
I try a reconfiguration to see if it will make a difference, and I guess I’ve proven to myself what she knew all along once upon a time, that my attempts at fixing things end up being mere rearrangements. I don’t so much clean as reshuffle. Things move around, but nothing really changes.
The sea metaphor always comes easily, particularly in the deep dark night when I’m feeling lonely and abandoned. And I kind of wonder if this is what it’s like to be shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of rescue. You’re bobbing up and down on the waves like another piece of flotsam, just drifting.
I imagine that even if you’re in the deep South Pacific, you’d start swimming. The chance of actually hitting land is virtually nil, but what else are you gonna do?
Still, the thought of trying not to drown for days upon days—alone and with no one looking for you—just steals my breath like a punch in the gut. Trying to imagine that much continuous bleakness and emptiness is quite literally more than I can bear. The idea of never reaching shore is absolutely appalling.
But that’s what I’m faced with: to keep swimming, although with every day, the chance of rescue comes ever closer to zero. The idea that I’ll ever touch dry land again before I die is becoming increasingly absurdly implausible, to the point of becoming utterly fantastic.
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
The first instinct has always been—will always be—to flee from impending disaster. As far as I can tell, I’ve played this game as tight, as taut as I might ever play it, given the circumstances, given what shape I’m in, and I really couldn’t have hoped for more. It wasn’t about not being enough (although that may be true) nor was it about not being true to myself. That’s all there is, there ain’t no mo’. I’ve been down this road so many times, the thought of even one more trip makes me utterly sick.
The open sea beckons, the only thing that seems to accept me. Not so much because the sea really gives a damn about what happens to me, but because there’s really no other place to go.
Time to let the spinnaker unfurl. We’ll run with the wind until it stops. I’ve really got nothing left to say. If you want to find me, you’ll know where to look.
the slow, legato silence, by intervals, by measures
frame by frame, ignition, combustion, explosion, boom boom
that’s my soul up there, in particles and all aerosolized
like an ashen rain falling upon my haunted visage
I taste the firestorms of the fall, and the endless winter
that followed, on its heels came spring and that harrowing
catastrophic thaw, now the floodwaters crest, come summer
sun burning and my soul withers, my soul crumbles to dust
and still there are no endings, just fraught nerves, the pain reminds
you are still alive, against all reason, beyond all odds
in this echoing silence, I am forced to ask myself,
was this thawing worth the inevitable disaster?
my words unspoken, my song stilled and silent,
already I can see it coming like a wave rushing
washing upon the shore, foaming and spraying, gurgling, roar
on the verge of breaking right upon you, crashing down like
a shattered, suddenly shorn mountaintop, cut down mid-rise.
Are the days awaiting, the nights laying awake, alone
in the cursed glow of the full moon, or the mocking glare of
the shimmering stars or with all the lights in your room lit,
striving in futility because the dark is too much
its unbearable weight crushing you with your self-doubt, your hidden shame
wondering if mistakes were made, or if you failed because you suck
or if you were driven by fate, unable to avert the speeding arrow of time
I watched “Wall-E” yesterday and the movie was pretty much all that I hoped for.
But besides eloquently illustrating a sense of vast alienation, and the difficulty. fright, and outright terror provoked by trying to connect with another soul, and besides its obvious eco-friendly/anti-Wal-Mart agenda, it also utilizes some classic tropes of Western literature. I can imagine English majors having a field day with deconstructing this movie.
I blogged earlier about ”Wall-E” before I had even seen the movie. But Ken Turan’s review pretty much hit a lot of the high points. In 2708 (give or take a few years), the Earth is inhabited only by cockroaches, and by sentient robots whose job is to take the gajillion metric tons of garbage that literally cover the entire surface of the earth, and compact it all so that it takes up a hell-of-a-lot less space.
Apparently, a distinctly Wal-Mart-like company called Buy-N-Large has managed to destroy Earth by sheer consumerism. There are trash heaps the size of the Empire State Building, and the air is perpetually brown and hazy, kind of like L.A. in the 1980s. So Buy-N-Large has this brilliant idea of sending everyone out into space, cruising around in Spaceship Titanic-like liners until the robots get the “waste management issue” under control.
Over the course of 700 years, though, it seems that there is only one functioning robot left, and his centuries of isolation have left him a little eccentric. From the googolplex number of pounds of trash he’s sifted through, he has managed to pick out a few geegaws and thingamajiggers that have piqued his fancy, including a Rubik’s cube, a spork, and quite possibly the last surviving plant on all of earth. And he has a thing for the musical “Hello, Dolly.”
Wall-E’s shy and clumsy courtship of Eve is really cute, no matter how trite and cliche it is. Still, going after a chick who has a high-frequency laser cannon—and isn’t shy about blowing things up with it—when you’re just a lowly trash compactor—well, that’s the stuff of fairy tales.
And either there is something seriously wrong with me, or Pixar did a really awesome job with getting me to care about the fate of two pieces of metal, plastic, and electronics. Nevermind that their fates happen to intersect with the fate of all of humanity. But when Wall-E finally gets to hold Eve’s hand, and remembers everything, it got me right there, you know?
The other scene that was predictably tear-jerking was when Eve is treated to a view of her own security cam (which was on during the time she was in stand-by mode, unconscious.) She sees Wall-E watching over her 24/7. never straying from her side, and she finally realizes what is important to her, and sometimes not even her Directive is as meaningful as caring about another entity.
And the way that she says, “No. No!” and it actually looks like she—a robot!—is about to cry, when Wall-E gets engulfed in an explosion and she thinks he’s been obliterated—that was really cute too.
And then the very beginning, when she gazes back at the spaceship that sent her, and when it’s gone, she starts having fun flying. That made my heart swell.
The eco-friendly, anti-consumerist agenda is pretty transparent, and if a kid can come out of that theater believing that having too much crap is a bad thing, then humanity may survive after all. The key sequence of this movie is when the Captain realizes that the plant is wilting and starting to wither. He gives the plant some water and it eventually starts to thrive. “All you needed was someone to take care of you.” Juxtaposed with his recent curiosity about Earth, he realizes what is manifestly necessary: Earth needs people to take care of it.
But the allusions to Genesis take the cake. There are a lot of ways to read it. The name Eve is obvious.
One way is to think of it as a perversely inverted form of Genesis. Wall-E and Eve—the creations of humanity—stumble upon the plant—an analog to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In a reversal, it is Wall-E who offers Eve the plant, who, upon taking it, ends up being transported back to deep space, with Wall-E tagging along in the name of love. The finding and the taking of the plant result in the disturbance of the status quo—the knowledge that humanity learns is once again bittersweet—but this time, they are returning to Eden—the entirety of Earth itself.
From here, it is possible to read it as a subtle indictment of fundamentalist Christianity. Far from being the source of all sin, the plant, and the taking of the plant, frees humanity from a mechanized, barren Eden of consumerism. It is the guy following orders—Auto—who now plays the role of the serpent by insisting—first verbally, and then physically—that the Captain not partake of the Knowledge reserved to only the gods.
The film also gets its political digs in. The last Earth-bound CEO of Buy-n-Large utters the famous phrase “stay the course,” which is now bound to be remembered in the history books as W’s most singular moment of complete insanity, the tipping point from which American Greatness plummeted into the dark abyss of mediocrity.
And merely following orders without thinking for yourself ought to be criminal in of itself.
Overall, the movie was really enjoyable. I definitely want to watch it again.
Even this late out into the game, I find myself still hoping for a reprieve from a life devoid of tender companionship, a life destined to loneliness and continued struggle.
I mean, c’mon, even Jesus Christ asked God to see if he could somehow defer crucifixion.
Despite what all the novels and movies say, the three magic words don’t do as much as you think they do. It’s the actions behind them that count.
And while I’m starting to recognize that I’m totally falling in love with her, I am frightened.
Frightened that I won’t do the right things, and that I’ll drive her away. Either I will go too quickly, or move too slowly. I’m frightened that, in the end, she’ll flee from me, and we won’t even be friends at that point.
Let me tell you, experience is a painful teacher.
But despie the current odds, I still hope. We’ll just have to see
That is most of it, being a physician—listening and seeing. The rest is technique.
—adapted from a quote by Schmendrick the Magician from The Last Unicorn, with apologies to Peter S Beagle.
I’ve continued plodding on in my re-read of Gödel, Escher, Bach° by Douglas Hofstatder (interspersed with *Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, as well as The End of Time by Julian Barbour.
One of the things that struck me about Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems is the resultant stratification of all human knowledge
true things that can be proven true
true things that can’t be proven true
false things that can be proven false
false things that can’t be proven false
One way to simplify this is (1) fact (2) instinct (3) lies (4) nonsense
Or perhaps (3) can be error, because it can happen unintentionally, too.
The point being, no matter how much any of these realms of knowledge expand, the basis of clinical medicine will always be the same: history-taking and physical-exam. The rough estimate is that at least 60% and up to 90% of the diagnosis can be derived from history alone. A good physical exam can probably narrow the gap by another 5-10%. Leaving lab tests and imaging to determine the last 5-10%.
So the skills to being a good clinician are exactly what Schmendrick says makes a good wizard. Being a good listener enables one to be a good history-taker. Always looking enables one to hone their physical exam skills. Everything else is mere technique, which can be easily overturned by adequately large clinical trials.
No, I haven’t watched it yet, so there aren’t any spoilers. I just read the review in the L.A. Times from yesterday, and it seems like it would be very much my movie, the way, I suppose, I got obsessed with “Beauty and the Beast”, even.
The sense of the protagonist’s shy, tentative optimism despite the overwhelming sense of loneliness, abandonment, and alienation that is already just palpable in the 5 min trailer is a little heartbreaking.
I can relate.
OK, I should’ve warned you, Kenneth Turan’s review of Wall-E does have a few details that could be construed as spoilers, although it doesn’t actually give any part of the plot away. The details make it sound almost like something that Douglas Adams would write.
Wall-E (which stands for Waste Allocator/Loader/Lifter - Earth Class, basically an autonomous, intelligent trash compactor) is the only sentience that seems to remain on Earth, excluding insects. He is tasked with the goal of reducing the amount of space all of the Earth’s garbage takes up.
Seemingly at odds with the typical Disney stereotype of “singing Zippy-dee-doo-dah out of your asshole”, “Wall-E” starts off with a rather dystopian vision of a planetary eco-catastrophe. The writers take our fears about rampant global capitalism and the inexorable expansion of the consumer culture, and they extrapolate them to their logical conclusion: the Earth basically becomes one large toxic landfill from which every human has fled, cavorting off into space polluting the rest of the universe too. The vision of lonely ruins of modern cities buried in garbage is extremely haunting, mostly because its probably going to be right.
And yet, despite this utterly hopeless desolation, you get the sense that Wall-E can’t help but harbor a spark of hope. As meager as his existence is, he finds small, meaningless joys in small, probably ultimately meaningless tasks. But none of this fulfills the need for companionship. For communion. For connection.
In a literal act of deus ex machina, EVE (which stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) arrives on the planet, armed with a high-energy laser cannon. She is apparently the herald of the exiled, morbidly obese, wanton and gluttonous humans who have been living on interstellar cruise ships since the mass exodus—reminding me very much of the Golgafrincham B class as created by Douglas Adams in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe—an acerbic, sardonic send-up of humanity as a whole. Idiots, the lot of them. And that is where the mostly predictable plot begins.
Still, maybe that’s all there is to life. While I’ve had my moments of companionship, communion, and connection, they have, for the most part, been brief exercises, not going too deep, not getting too difficult. People slide in and out of life like set pieces. As long as you don’t ask too much, you’ll get by, but you won’t get much, either.
And it seems the moments that I’ve tried to bridge the gap, tried to reach out and go for something more meaningful have all been shot to shit somehow.
There’s no point in connecting closely, meaningfully, to anyone, because no one wants to be that close to me, and even if they did at the beginning, in the end, they leave as fast as they can physically go.
Times like these, I end up asking: why continue to burden the universe with my existence?
It would be one thing to be bitter and angry about all this, to learn all the wrong lessons. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Get yours while the getting is good. Fuck everyone else. But all of that is pretty much just as meaningless as my one-dimensional existence of microscopic, ultimately meaningless, achievements. Why trade in one set of nonsense for a whole new set of nonsense, when the current set gets me nowhere just as well as the new set probably would?
So, instead, I’m just sad. And I wake up in the morning like everybody else, take a shower, get dressed, go to work. If I’m lucky, some of the meaningless little things I do will actually have measurable results, no matter how small.
Like I said, it’s not that there aren’t awesome people around me who are looking for deeper meaning in life. But they can usually find someone less mentally convoluted and more physically attractive than I am.
Bn likes to say that I’ve never (or at least, almost never) tried, and that’s why it hasn’t worked out for me all these years, and maybe it’s true. But each year I’m a little more tired. The gangrene affecting my soul advances just a little bit. Each advance, I feel less and less pain. Eventually I won’t be able to feel a damn thing at all, and then they can rip my soul out of me and I won’t even flinch.
Only hope can keep me together.
Love can mend your heart, but love can break your heart.
—”Message in a Bottle” by the Police
Then again, when we’re talking about someone who is just awesome in so many ways, even just being friends with her is probably more than I deserve.
So I woke up at 2:30 am because of some excruciating left upper quadrant (LUQ) abdominal pain, with some referred pain to the neck. The abdominal pain was a burning, almost boring, continuous sensation. I wasn’t short of breath or diaphoretic, and this was pretty typical for the problems I’ve been having with my GI tract, which I’ve basically written off as either really bad GERD or quite possibly some peptic ulcer disease. I blithely entertain the notion that I’m having a heart attack, but since the only symptom is this quite caustic sensation in my belly, I don’t buy it. In any case, the neck pain goes away after some Tums and ranitidine (Zantac) 300 mg (4x the over-the-counter dose.) But the acid pain is still there, and I figure I may as well eat. And since I’m eating, maybe I should go to the grocery store.
I’m done with groceries by just after 6am, and while the pain has abated, it still quite annoyingly there. I end up buying some omeprazole (Prilosec), too, and gobble down 40 mg (2x the over-the-counter dose.) In about half-an-hour, the pain finally goes away to the point where I can get some sleep.
I end up having some really vivid and intense dreams. At first, it just starts out with me doing rounds with the new interns on internal medicine. It so happens I’m also taking call for the neuro service at the same time (which is completely nonsensical.) And my neuro attending is doing some really weird-ass research.
It turns out that, through sheer accident and some fucking around with the functional MRI scanner (fMRI), he has stumbled upon a region of the brain that lights up specifically when we’re trying to predict the future. (Would it make more sense to call it the Feynmann area or the Schroedinger area?) With a few other weird techniques including hypnosis and such, he has figured out how to get a snapshot of what this future prediction looks like, and essentially, the patient is able to make her imagined future environment persist, so that she can always go back to that timeline she predicted and make changes and do whatever. It’s like the ultimate immersive experience.
In slightly clearer language, basically the test subject is prompted to imagine something about the future, and then induced to dream. The test subject will then find themselves in a vivid dream set in the exact future that she imagined. Say that you make a prediction about Tokyo in 2038. Your brain does some calculation that includes the Feynman center, and spits out a likely scenario from which you can extrapolate whatever it was that someone wanted you to extrapolate. What my neuro attending’s contraption allows you to do is not only figure out the extrapolation, but actually make the Tokyo 2038 scenario you envisioned persist, so that you can return to it whenever you want and see whatever it is you want to see.
Now, since he hasn’t been doing this research long enough to figure out whether or not there’s anything to the futures his test subjects are predicting (no winning lottery numbers, sadly), all he’s really been doing is dutifully recording the extrapolations and scenarios. Well, it turns out that he figured that this would be really lucrative in the video game market, what with the extraordinarily fanciful futures that some of the test subjects have predicted.
As time goes on, he also figures out how to actually read the visual cortex and the images that flicker through it, and he can turn it into a computer model that can be manipulated and navigated in three dimensions. In this way, he becomes less dependent on the test subject’s recall, and it becomes easier to actually build a game this way.
Some of his results are particularly interesting, many of the test subjects evoking this world that feels like some weird melding of Japanese manga/anime tropes that are replete with mecha, cyberpunk dystopia, and interplanetary travel. One of the first games he manages to develop in this manner is a standard fighting game a la Street Fighter where you can choose to be various samurai from the Genji era, a few fight club participants from America in the late 1990s, or some kind of futuristic high-tech mercenary a la Boba Fett.
But a lot of the games are merely just background worlds. For example, there’s a future where the world has been totally wrecked by eco-disaster, and most of the world’s surface is covered by water (a la Waterworld.) But civilization hasn’t collapsed quite as much as in Kevin Costner’s movie. Naturally, the Japanese, being island dwellers who are used to extremely limited tracts of real estate, manage to survive quite skillfully, by building environments and habitats that are not only mobile, but can actually transform into mecha.
The also manage to either find a new fuel source other than hydrocarbons, figure out how to mine hydrocarbons from the Saturnine moon Titan, or actually discover an anti-gravitational force. Because, in addition to the mecha/habitats that roam the oceans of Earth, some people have actually taken to living on air-borne arcologies.
The world I enter is extremely dystopian. I have images of Depression Era 1940s, coupled with images from the [Spanish Inquisition]. Conservative Christianity holds sway over the entire Western World and the Reformation never happened. Islam enjoys the same niche compatibility that Judaism has, and the real ideological enemy becomes the East. The See of Rome intends to convert the believers of Hinduism and Buddhism to the Way, the Truth, and the Light.
So I find myself at a construction site which kind of reminds me of Mission Valley but in reality has no similarity to it at all. In fact, the mall reminds me almost of a favela. But some construction workers are building another parking complex, and some bizarre accident happens so that a really young black guy with cornrows wearing a wife-beater falls five stories and gets improbably impaled on a steel spike. Somehow, he manages to still have a pulse, although part of the steel spike has apparently penetrated into his brain, and he really isn’t saying much. Some of us assert that the guy wouldn’t’ve wanted to live brain-injured, and we try to cajole the on-site physician to at least give the guy some morphine until EMS arrives. However, because the Church has his fingers on everything, the on-site cleric puts the kibosh on that, saying that that would be euthanasia. I end up registering my disgust and try to get off the work site, knowing full well that I make myself an excellent target for the now 1.75 century old Inquisition.
The attending neurologist’s prodigy, however, is a 15 year old Hapa kid who is half-Japanese, half-French. His name is Shinji Yakamura, and from his labor alone, they have been able to sell two blockbuster games to Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, basically securing funding for further research.
Another alternative future is something of a transportation dystopia. The world has apparently been, quite literally, paved over. We don’t notice the environmental catastrophe that ensues mainly because most of our environment is almost completely artificial. Roads and freeways run in and out of the Grand Canyon. Rivers are wantonly redirected to make road-building easier. Everyone drives their hydrogen-fueled cars with retrofuturistic features like the fiberglass hatch and afterburners.
Even the air-borne environments which I mentioned previously have roads going to and coming from them, so much so that most maps have to be rendered holographically, because it is nearly impossible to draw a usable map in only two dimensions.
I would love these vivid dreams if not for the fact that they leave me completely exhausted.
This song, which recaptured my imagination a few months back, popped back into my head today.
Love of mine some day you will die
but I’ll be close behind.
I’ll follow you into the dark.
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white,
just our hands clasped so tight
waiting for the hint of a spark.
If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied.
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs.
If there’s no one beside you
when your soul embarks,
then I’ll follow you into the dark.
In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule,
I got my knuckles brusied by a lady in black.
And I held my tongue as she told me
“Son, fear is the heart of love”
so I never went back
If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied,
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs.
If there’s no one beside you
when your soul embarks,
then I’ll follow you into the dark
You and me have seen everything to see
from Bangkok to Calgary
and the soles of your shoes are all worn down.
The time for sleep is now,
It’s nothing to cry about
‘cause we’ll hold each other soon.
The blackest of rooms
If heaven and hell decide
that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
then I’ll follow you into the dark.
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
—”I Will Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie
The YouTube star Kina Grannis and her sisters sing a cover of this song.
At first, it makes me think of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, with Orpheus heading out for Hades in order to bring his beloved back.
But I met one of my patients again whose wife had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 8-9 years ago, and they had moved into an Independent Living facility. He has a lot of medical problems and is in fact on oxygen for his ephysema and has been somewhat saddened by the fact that he can’t really take care of her. He and his daughters have decided that it would probably best to house her in the dementia unit.
But I think of his devotion to her. She will always be his one and only, even though the disease has been stripping her of what makes her her.
And I got pretty damn teary eyed. “For better and for worse, they told me,” he said matter-of-fact. “She would do the same, maybe more, if it were the other way around.”
And, even though I know I may never find an answer to this question: how do I find a love like that?
Transport, motorways and tramlines,
starting and then stopping,
taking off and landing,
the emptiest of feelings,
disappointed people, clinging on to bottles,
and when it comes it’s so, so, disappointing.
Let down and hanging around,
crushed like a bug in the ground.
Let down and hanging around.
Shell smashed, juices flowing
wings twitch, legs are going,
don’t get sentimental, it always ends up drivel.
One day, I’m gonna grow wings,
a chemical reaction,
hysterical and useless,
hysterical and
let down and hanging around,
crushed like a bug in the ground.
Let down and hanging around.
Let down,
Let down,
Let down.
You know, you know where you are with,
you know where you are with,
floor collapsing, falling, bouncing back,
and one day, I’m gonna grow wings,
a chemical reaction, [you know where you are,]
hysterical and useless [you know where you are,]
hysterical and [you know where you are,]
let down and hanging around,
crushed like a bug in the ground.
Let down and hanging around.
—”Let Down” by Radiohead
Man, I really hate how my mood is totally pegged to the weather. Gray sky dawning means a touch of melancholia.
It is weird to observe new beginnings without actually being part of it. Like when A+E first got together, for example.
But today the new interns started, and the heady mix of excitement and apprehension was intoxicating. I wish them all well. The next three (or so) years are going to be an adventure.
For a while, I felt like I was soaring, blown upwards by paroxysmal blasts of wind, wanting to do impossible things, forever chasing sunlight. But weariness creeps in bit by bit. In a lot of ways, I know that Bn is right, that my life is still ahead of me, that it’s too early to settle down and take root.
Even though the past four, eight, twelve years are finally catching up to me, and I look at the cold hard road behind me, and I realize that there’s no going back at all.
A part of me yearns achingly to claim this place for my own, to make that decision that this is enough.
That I am home.
A part of me recognizes that no place will ever be home, so long as my heart is sundered into sharp, jagged fragments. Just as I belong to no land, to no country, so too can no place lay claim over me. My soul lies fallow. What’s left of my heart is cold and still.
Maybe our hearts always know our destinies. As much as I’ve clawed, kicked, and railed against Fate, it has moved on inexorably, leaving me floundering in its wake, gasping for air and only swallowing sea water.
It’s been a long, long time since I remember knowing what I wanted. It may still be a long, long time to go.
OK. I’m too exhausted to make up a video. I know it’s crappy, and I must warn you, there’s a possibility your tympanic membranes will rupture, and you might be enraged and/or disgusted by dropped notes, off notes, and screwed up timing, but I just had to post it.
But, yeah, this song has been making my heart want to burst this past week or so. I realize that, one way or another, whichever way the cookie crumbles (and I’m not holding my breath), I’m finished. One way or another, there will be no point in looking any further.
Non certior ubi omnes illi inceperunt. Fuisset ubi ea et meus laboramus pariter, ante omnes res quid ea subire. Pro nonscitarum rationalibus, ea meum accrediderat.
Importans est quid te subdare, scio quid eam mittendam ab caelo esse.
Ea mirabilis persona est. Ea curans, lenis, cogitabunda est. In unum verbum, ea verenda est.
Et dehinc ea paene moritur, et adhoc non subdo quid posse perdida.
Et dehinc aliqua, pro quippiam rationalis, ea meum vocaverat, in incapentio ver.
Cotidie ea meum diem illuminat. Solummodo quid meum scire quid eam existat magna felicitas pro meo est.
Aliquis similis meus fortem cum alicujus similibus ea non habeo. Non scio cur somnio.
Adquo possum amare, credo qui meum amare eae. Ea meum lucem solis fiat, meum lucem guidentem. Adqui si partem eae vivae non habeo post omnibus rebus, commutatus est pro major, et scintilla eae ignis semper vivebit in mea corde.
