Panoptic City; or, the fine art of the self inflicted kidney punch.

I ride on the cresting waves of some advanced level of cumulative exhaustion. 4 hours of bad sleep a night is not going to cut it indefinitely. But, things to do, and the body will not rest until it crashes and will not stay down when it does, lurching awake with knotted innards at 7AM, when the heat and the light of summer pour in. After that long and miserable winter and no spring, now the heat. And that damned, damned sun. Dad calls in the evening as I prepare to fire off a special resume to a target that has suddenly been alerted to recieve. My mom I knew would be on the brink of tears, I did not expect it of him, I think, only death does this to him. Hell of a kick in the nuts son, he says, choked, mentioning a time before he knew my mother, understanding the sudden need for space and a new job. Before I brought her home to meet him, he had never mentioned a time before my mother, and suddenly for that new audience he unfolded stories I had never seen before and I saw him yet again with new eyes. We are both strangled, exhausted, he having worked a 12 hour day. My family loved her, and she loved us. I still love her, she still in some way loves us, but that future will never happen now, not in that way, maybe not at all.

The panopticon is a popular literary symbol, based on a theoretical prison suggested centuries ago. Imagine a prison shaped like a cylinder, consisting of an outer ring made of glass cells surrounding a central tower where a single guard can watch the entire population at once, all constantly visible, silouetted against the transparent walls behind them. Imprisoned by light.

Had lunch with RMT today, who is the person to call on when your love life turns into a Strindberg play. Crimes and Crimes, in this case. Funny, I always thought it'd be Miss Julie, what with all those boots and all that power exchange. Anyway, he had good advice, and was as always an excellent sounding board. And if he was once wondering why I chose to confide certain personal details to him long ago, I think today turned out to be the reason why. 'Cause otherwise certain things and attitudes might appear completely mad to the outsider. You are not insane to imagine the future, he agrees, but no matter what though, the next few weeks will be hell on earth.

But on other topics, we noted what a strange and powerful tool Facebook has become, and it struck me later today just how it enables previously unimaginable correlations and linked actions. After firing off the distress flare on Saturday, I've been buoyed up by the incoming onrush of friends, each contribution small of itself, each small gift of advice (from flaky to prescient to vindictive and solicitous) or assistance adding to the pile of tools to work with, things to consider. I ride at the center of a wheel and feel a legion at my back. It is at our moments of greatest loss that we discover the immense reserves of compassion that everyone carries, held in reserve against such a day. I am large; I contain multitudes. I also think in allusions and I can't just turn it off. Fourteen years of university will do that to you. I see patterns everywhere.

And yet, like most swords, it carries that second edge. I have been sleepwalking for a year, and now I am awake and my mind is never more alive and acute than when it is in agony. Only death does this to me. Why do I hate writing? This is why.

Late in the day, I check Facebook by reflex, and note in my newsfeed that she's added an application. For the last several months, Facebook was the point of contact of last resort, as we threw chains of pixellated flowers and hatching eggs and valentines across the Pacific to each other, building up woefully weak defences against something coming that we sensed rather than understood. Fragments shored against ruins. So as she fell into radio silence, I would check it still, just in case, to see if she stirred at all or was doing okay. And somewhere in there, I nudged that little setting to report her actions more often. I clicked the news item out of habit to see what she was up to today, wondered at the name of it as Her profile comes up. "Miss You". Me?

And the pattern corellation function in my exhausted brain fires before I can stop it, realizes that if that was sent by someone, someone currently away from Korea, and that someone also posts on a wall, and a name repeats more than once-

Jesus Fuck. I cannot hit the back button fast enough, there are things you cannot unsee. I know who she is, now, probably. No wonder this was the weekend to clear the air. Fuck Fuck Fuck. I am an accidental stalker. From nowhere, a lyric from somebody rolls across the airwaves of my mind:

You look at her the way you used to look at me.

I fall back, gutpunched. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The pattern corellation function reports back it has no idea who might have sung that original lyric, or what the genders involved actually were, and I contemplate the prattle in the front part of my brain in stunned disbelief.

Was not ready for that. Eventually, sure, okay, but not today, not like that. Jesus. Fuck. I've creeped myself out beyond all recognition. The beast at the back of my brain murmurs about wondering just when someone met someone, as it's probably all there if you look for it. Fuck. Fuck. Get thee behind me. I am not this. I will not cross that line. There are crimes and crimes. She tortures herself because she imagines she has betrayed me. And I, in turn, see for an instant my own reflection in that mirror, unrecognizable. I get out of the bulding, try to get away, go home, do something, anything else.


yeah.


So, anyway, turns out I had to tweak that resume to get it out tomorrow morning, so I had to go back, get online. I gingerly open a tab and I flick the news setting to bring me news stories from that certain user a little less often. Maybe time to back off the net oh so slightly, step back from the light. The flare has fired and the cavalry are on their way, serried ranks assembled. I am off to the Island tomorrow, and for the first time since discovering facebook a year ago I'm glad it doesn't work on My Mom's ancient iMac.

I'll buy her a newer one, yes.

But not this week.

Ripcords

So, went in to work today and pretty much realized I would be a basket case -wait, I should back up.

So, after not getting much sleep the last couple days, I found myself on Facebook getting unsolicited advice from my first high school crush about how to get on with my life now. It's beyond weird at this point, how Facebook can seemingly collapse time and space so the different eras and areas of your life can interact almost at will. Even in my state, I know this is not the natural order of things. I note the time, yelp, and bolt out to the laundromat, where my clothes are drying. Of course, I arrive too late and my stuff's locked up overnight. No problem, I'll pick it up when they open at 7AM. Then, of course, comes several hours of trying to get to sleep, explaining myself to no one in the dark while the cat circles, entirely convinced I've lost my mind.

Sure enough, when I stagger out of bed and get to the laundromat, they've decided not to open today until what I presume will be 8ish. I stop by the bank, transfer some money, then go to get a coffee, then realize my card is locked inside the bank machine.

So, back to the bank at 7:50, where an employee assures me I can get the card once different staff arrive at 8:30. And of course, the laundromat is still closed at 8.

So, home, grab a shower, back to the bank, grab the crad, grab the clothes from the laundromat, hustle to work, throw appropriate pants on and sit down at 9 sharp to try and keep myself occupied.

I'm immediately struck by three things:

1)There is NOTHING on my docket.
2)I am still completely exhausted.
3)I am in fact, a basket case, and keep having to stop and get ahold of myself when the salutory effects of documenting a program error keyword proves insufficent to distract my forebrain from the implosion of my personal life.

So, after an hour and a half of shredding stuff and generally keeping a grip on things (usually my desk, with white kuckles at times) I make it to the 10:30 staff meeting, where comes the news that senior implementer M is quitting, and thus I am suddenly next in line to head the section. My dreams of quietly thinking things over for a couple weeks are up in flames, so I ask to meet with the Vice President, who although she doesn't know it, is now my Ex-Prospective-Stepmother-In-Law.

I somehow manage to outline the basic situation without breaking down entirely (minus the whole "other person" thing, which is really not my conversation to have) and take the week off, mentioning that given the circumstances, I'm prepared to stay on for the rest of the year, but will likely move on around the new year. So just like that, the ripcord comes out, the parachute fires, and I've begun the process of leaving a job that, while it had its moments, was definitely unhealthy for me. Huh. So now I have 7 months to solve the riddle of what the hell to do next in my oh-so-Gen-X uncareer. I couldn't get anything when I left grad school that was remotely a)local and b)anywhere near any of my fields, so let's see if things are any less crazy now.

I guess that big thing way down there is the ground. I wonder if it will be friends with me.

Signs

...ridiculous, the waste, sad time, stretching before and after.
-Eliot, The Wasteland.

There is a line in the (excellent) book version of Out of Africa to the effect that when we cry out to the universe for a sign, one will appear, some symbol that we can seem and find meaning in, even if it's private and for the viewer only. I can't entirely unpack what follows for you, but come with.

Coincidence or not, it's funny how the random pop culture ephemera around us can sometimes align and form brief constellations of meaning at key times in our lives.

Most of last week, I was run off my feet, exhausted and tired, and stuck by things wistful and melancholy, and well, then at last on Saturday the leviathan broke through the ice. But it was odd to see nonetheless.

Thursday night I was struck - really struck - by how sombre the new Indiana Jones movie is. Silly and frothy and fun, yes, but there is a note throughout the film of sadness, of mourning for lost friends and family, both dead and alive. It hangs lightly on Ford's shoulders, but still: if we live long enough, we all get old, even Indiana Jones. And being a survivor means that you survive what others don't.

To my mind, it makes it a strong picture, superior to Last Crusade, which was fun and exaltant, but also a bit Jokey, a father/son adventure with Connery and Ford veering ever so slightly into hammy fun. Glorious, yes, triumphant, yes, but nowhere near as rich as what the older Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas and their cast of ringers manage with Crystal Skull. I saw it Thursday, with E-Man and H, E-Man still wearing his original fedora from when we were all teenagers, lining up to see the first one. Impossible to see it and not think of time passing, moving on. When the line is given, at the end,

"So much of life is wasted, waiting"

it was hard. And then I rushed across town to let Dad in the apartment on his way through town. Thoughts swirling, old and tired, both of us. Slept about 2AM.

Friday night, then, after a long day of getting up at 630AM for breakfast with Dad before he took off upcountry for another shutdown, perhaps his last or at least one of his last, then working 9 hours, picking up that fucking eBay package, gaming, and stopping by the office at midnight to check for news from or a chat with Wryette, as I had done religiously every night for a year, almost all in vain in the last three months. There I found this served up on Boing Boing, and found it hypnotic and strangely heartbreaking.



It's a song mashed up from tiny audiobits of Alice in Wonderland, and it's perhaps the Rave-iest thing I have ever seen. Alice has always been sad and a little disturbing to me, an incarnation of primal childhood terrors and the lost world that all adults dimly recall. (Those pansies terrify me, somehow) All children's stories are stories of loss for an adult, and particularly this adult. I cannot think of playmates and telling stories without thinking of the playmates and listeners who I will never see again, and something of this struck me at a very early age. Today, writing, it comes to me - I watched Wryette play with Alice in Kingdom Hearts, and would read to her sometimes from a dozen books. Never occuring to me that any of them might be a final time. I will pack up her children's collection for her future children sometime next week. It will be hard.

I was hoping to see and review Prince Caspian this week, but I'm not sure I will now. Lewis is steeped in that sense of childhood's transience, of the preciousness of time, of meeting someone for an instant and knowing that if you somehow ever meet them again, it will be as best of friends, forever. There is a scene in Dawn Treader to that effect which is more powerful than a hundred Milton stanzas. For all we ever have is an instant, and we can never keep anyone at our side when their story calls them away. What is heaven but the place where we never say goodbye? Who could argue with the appeal of that vision. Wouldn't it be lovely.

So no, I am not entirely sure I can deal with Narnia this week, even if it's only in the company of the bland young Caspian.

And so on Saturday, after the call, I went out as previously planned with jedischooldropout to see Crystal Skull again, but now with the primary goal of occupying the front part of my brain, and found that almost final line was not so much revelation but coda.

So much wasted, waiting.

Monday awaits.

Völlig losgelöst / völlig schwerelos.

24-05-2008 18:47

And like that, the call, like a brick, finally comes through the window. Four years, 66 days, a few hours and change. I look around my apartment, surrounded my her things. Not ours, any more. If I squint, I can see the last outlines of our future together, fading like mist.

I feel I've failed, somehow. A thousand missed opportunites, misunderstood gestures, simple things that I will never get to make amends for. But even that is too simple.
The heart wants what it wants, and it does not want me, does not want what I represent, does not want what I have become, most of all does not want me as much as it wants this other woman who is there, present, while I, three thousand miles away, am only a distant fading ghostly custodian of her memories and keepsakes.

I did it for her. Became this caricature of myself, functionary, her father's employee. Did so much, gave up so much, would have given so much more, if she had only asked. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for her, would have followed her on every adventure, but she did not ask, will never ask, now.

She loves her. She won't be coming back for years. And it's time to let me go, to at long last cut that final cord and throw the call, like a brick, though my window while her cat - my cat - curls about my feet and does not, cannot understand what it means when I finally close the phone, open my throat, and for the second time in my life, understand what it means to wail.

Roundelay.

Went down to Seattle and did EmeraldCon on the weekend, and it was very good. Now why I did that is a story in itself, but that post is taking a while. In the meantime, I'll let Jennie Breeden of The Devil's Panties sum up my average experience of meeting some of my longtime heroes:



Ms. Breeden herself is pretty darn approachable, and while I wasn't familiar with her work before going, I sure do now. She didn't know where Richmond or BC is, though, so I may just have to send her a postcard.

Carl Sagan meets Barbara Frum. Blood everywhere.

Speaking of the Onion, I think they've put a finger on why media literacy has been dropping for decades. Half the time when I tune in to the news to hear the experts, they come across like this:


In The Know: Situation In Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex

Harsh? Maybe. But when a media personality tries to talk about a subject they don't know much about, they don't always succeed in pulling it off. They're particularly bad with anything science related. A few months ago I almost drove off the road in a rage while hearing a show about the pine beetle epidemic on CKNW, where one guest was adopting a "take a lawnmower to the province" approach, while the other guest was saying that we should try to at least leave dead trees in place around river valleys and eroding slopes, lest we get sudden massive flooding. The host was hostile and acting as if this was the most lunatic hippy idea imaginable. "They have to cut everything and make their money now, before they have nothing left to cut!" Cue a few months later, and my hometown is pretty much under water.

No one's immune to this. I was really shocked when I recently saw this 1988 interview where Barbara Frum - who I had previously had nothing but respect for - seems to be trying to play gotcha! with Carl Sagan. Frum was a respected journalist with decades of experience in political analysis, but here she comes off really badly and almost ignorant.



I suppose it's natural for people who are experts in one field - like, say, politics - to think of everything else in terms of politics; from an interesting crooked timber post here comes the argument that many fields - engineering, science, management - tend to disregard anything outside their own field, complete with this great quote from CP Snow:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question—such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?—not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had...

It's a fantastic line of thought, and I now want to seek out the original source material; but it does drive the point home to me why we're having such problems now around global warming and the pushback against evolution; people who are not scientists, but philosophers, or religious figures, or politicians, see science as just another social construct, one in which the truths are relative and can be manipulated. But the fact is, you can be an expert in your own field and still be completely ignorant about another one. There is such a thing as reality, science is all about the real, and scientists are canaries in the global coal mine. Eppur si muove.

The facts that science studies are indifferent to economics, politics, or religion; it wouldn't take very much to cause (for instance) widespread global famine, and there are few belief systems that than outlast the starvation of every adherent. The media might want to interview a few Mayans about that. Ask any farmer: a few degrees' difference in temperature here or there at the wrong time of year, and localized disaster awaits. A bit of drought, and you have catastrophe. And if you have that going on in many places at once...

But the media have not been asking the farmers, now have they?

I Am Iron Man! (do do do do dooodooo do do do)

I saw it last night with JediSchoolDropout and his pal Dave, in a discount low-rent theatre on the east side, and what can I say? That was a fantastic movie. It's very hard to get a blockbuster to be that light on its feet, but the cast is excellent right down to the bit players, and the film is full of subtle nods, winks, and bright sparkly moments that make the whole thing a delight. When you get a movie that can get laughs out of the personality of inanimate objects, you've got something special. Jeff Bridges and Gwneth Paltrow are revelations, Robert Downey is charming in the role he was born to play, and the whole thing was just plain fun. (Okay, the origin stuff was grim, but that's kind of the point; and it works much better than the original, Vietnam era creation story).

After the show, we wandered about commercial drive with Dave, before meeting up with his blind date at what turned out to be a stealth vegan restaurant. JDS was pleased with the acting and the lack of condescesion to the material, as well as the screenwriter's ability to get the actors out of theior masks at the key moments. Dave was happy with the secret fanboyservice scene at the end of the credits, which writes a huge check for any potential sequel. But given how cocksure and charming Downey and Favreau were while beating the odds to get this one made right, why shouldn't they be able to pull it off?

And while the Onion hit it out of the park last week, it's nice to see that their fears were unfounded:

Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

And for posterity...

Let the record show: Cats and Air mattresses do not mix.

I'm thinking some bloggy thoughts, but work is busy. I think...I may review some comic books. BUt that makes me think I may want to start a second blog, which makes me think I'd better shut down that line of thought quick. Write first, publish second.