The Long Road back to the Middle

From the desk and mind of M.P. Braget

The following is partially true, two-thirds fictitious, a bit sarcastic, but mostly honest and in places brutally so. Our memories are a bit like that, though lacking a bit in honesty I wager. Larry Woiwode wrote a book called What I Think I Did and in it he discusses the reconstruction of memory. Memories, after all, aren't real, they don't exist in the here and now. That book is also about the North Dakota winter of 1996 which some may remember gave us the flood of '97, both of which were quite brutal. You should read it, it's good. But don't take my word for it. "Take a look/in a book.."

I've been walking in circles which is to say I've been busy, busy, busy living. But I've also been literally walking in circles, breathing in the musty cool air that only a concrete structure can flavor, listing to the click-clack echo of my hard sole boots bounce rhythmically through the automobile hotel, marching me along as I hold a book, of some color or another, up to my nose. This is my lunch hour, or 40 minutes of it, walking in circles reading a book for the physical and mental exercise. Walking and reading. I'm no doctor, so I won't tell you what Americans need but more walking and more reading surely couldn't hurt. I'm not here to tell you that though, I'm just setting the scene.

In this parking structure where I spend my lunch hour, book held to my nose, relying on my peripheral vision to guide me around the metal guests, my hearing to warn me of the occasional arriving/departing metal-soul, I occasionally stop reading long enough to notice the particular breed of the automobiles. This is my temporary escape from the office-rat cubes of corporate America. The cubes where all our dreams comes true.

I'm walking, click-clack, click-clack, and noticing on down the line: Toyota Prius, Lexus, BMW, Prius, Mercedes, non-Prius Toyota, Prius, Nissan Wannabe Prius, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Mazda, Prius, Prius, Prius. Californians, myself excluded, don't buy American Metal Souls. They either guzzle too much gas, or just do so unreliably. Either way, "made in America" is too far below the average, and certainly the above-average Californian-American. Thirty-five Million people live in California with 30 Million registered vehicles which have better health care and bathe more often than I do, drought be damned. Life is irony. Irony is God's sense of humor alive and well.

Because aliens will first visit North America and North America has just as many cars as people, and cars can be seen more from space than people, the first alien contacts will attempt communication with a Prius, I'm certain of it. I'm also certain they'll get all the information they came for from the Prius, forgoing the whole "take me to your leader" bit. We don't really have any left, and if we did, Gravitas is dead anyway. One of the old gods discarded like so many others.

Click-clack. I walk in laps, book to my face, surrounded by metal-persons, all with their backs turned to me unless their organic master parks knowing the satisfaction of pulling out of a parking space driving forward. An indifferent audience to an indifferent event, in an indifferent place, of indistinguishable time.

But, maybe not so indifferent to the actor.
I've read, click-clack, in circles:
The Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut fans might notice I'm stealing from him here. So it goes.

Click-clack.

Misty cool, walk the circle, read the book, I reflect on America via it's cultural masterpiece: the automobile. The new gods holding concrete court. They've judged me indifferent but what is the point? A question, you, my reader, might be asking. I think I have one but an attempt to make it obvious will kill it. So I can't. I can't because I drank heavily from the Alan Watts kool-aid:

"Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything" (The Wisdom of Insecurity, page 49).

You should read this book, experience it. It's teaching me to let go, to be in the now, to stop regretting the past and fearing the future. To Live. Tom Petty said the waiting is the hardest part, I say it's letting go. But I don't have the time, space, or desire to flesh this out more. Watts is part the point.

Click-clack.

Walk the circle, listen the world inside the concrete metal-soul hotel, listen to life outside it, feel the ground, the slight breeze breaking in easily for metal souls require no windows and little for walls.

Click-clack. Here. Now.

What is the meaning?

Some way our's is a short life, or a long road. Shakespeare lamented it's meaningless: all that sound and fury. Again from Watts: "...for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark" (The Wisdom of Insecurity, page 19).

Click-clack.

Life is a long, or short, road back to the middle. Watts' point, or really the jumping off point, is that we fear meaningless so we ascribe meaning to it all which ultimately makes us unhappy by constantly being worried about being happy. Storing up stuff  now to make sure our future is good.

Click-clack.

From Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, his religious prophet, Bokonon, describes the creation:

"In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said, 'let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.' And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as mad alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked, 'what is the purpose of all this?' he asked politely.
'Everything must have a purpose?' asked God.
'Certainly,' said man.
'Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,' said God. And He went away."

Some of you might not like this much. Maybe there isn't much to like about it. Watts, I imagine, would say that's his point but without actually saying so. Vonnegut, I imagine, would look upon us with a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye. The only man I can imagine who would be laughing in the face of the apocalypse.

But here I am.

Click-clack.

Walking in circles.

Here you are.

Click-clack.

Reading this in circles.

What is the meaning? I can't say. But hey, fuck it, at least we're getting our exercise.