Stem Cell (Phase II)
I know, I know. I've been hitting the multi-part vaguely related threads a bit too much, but that's to indicate some continuity. I'm not racking my brain every day for new ideas: I need to flesh more of them out. and in the end I will be the patriarch, content at last on my grand armchair as grandchildren play at my feet. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Some of these future scenarios are far-fetched, but all are doable.
The Nationalist: A brief trip to the old country inspires me and ignites the flames of an ancient race-memory. I scuttle the trappings of the Western man and buy and build a homestead in Bosnia. I compare my former life to "a lion forced to dress up in little stripy clothes and parade his civility through the streets of the boorish, drunken town". I shun the English language and spend my days reciting patriotic poetry and singing songs of old days, of old heroes and saints who chose a heavenly kingdom over an Earthly one, committing their people to eons of suffering which will pay off a thousandfold in that time to come after death. in short: I will become everything I hate, just like that discoroporeal shade of a father back in the old country whose fucking drunken boorishness left the rest of us in the lurch, who tries to soothe his conscience with yearly e-mails. Go dance in your traditional clothes and recite your ballads, you piece of shit! (What? Me having issues? Unpossible!) But from where I come from, diametrical shifts of attitude are not uncommon.
The Family Man: Not anyhting remotely resembling the patriarch I alluded to in the first paragraph. The way I envision this is most similar to James Joyce's Dubliners, story number 8: "A Little Cloud". The basics: I will be forced into family life when the domineering wolf's teeth come out. I will be made to feel guilty for not having children by parents and the in-laws. A few years will pass and I won't be sure who I'm living for. Forced to give up writing. Forced to switch to decaf. Watching my dietary fiber. Worrying about varicose veins. Looking at colour wheels for hours on end to find just the right off-white for the den. Arguing with the lanscapers about their choice of turf. Lounging to nondescript classic rock. Buying the really expensive doilies. Worrying about the price of gas at the pump and listening intently to the morning traffic reports. Finding out the value of really good seats at the game. Browsing the catalogue of Baby Einstein products. (This doesn't need to go on: I've riffed at this lifestyle enough.) At least one positive: I've survived long enough to know I'm not schizophrenic.
The Man in Room 2039B: Schizophrenia has its onset in males during the early twenties. Everyone has a 1/100 chance of developing it. Everyone. In this scenario, I'm thirty-four. I rant. I like to talk: echoes of a life long since disappeared. Things fleeting catch my eyes and mind: foregrounding and backgrouding is really difficult. I wish they'd just leave me be with my books and peotry, to rock bakc and forth and memorize every line ever written and ever read. What's the harm in that? Can't they set me up outside somewhere. They don't know how far I've come from their mores, the mores that bind, the mores that do their lariat thing and bind. It's just a lot of old cheese anyway, dreadful clacking at the ward C talent show. Who plays bluegrass music anymore? Don't we know how reticulated our culture has become such that you can't draw genre distinctions. It's more a measure of coherence than a measture of distance; I've become convinved that's how the mind works these days and I'm well on my way to furnishing a statistical methodology to bakc up my assertions. Too bad I'm a fucking nutter and nobody except the nice social worker will believe me, but that's just to reduce her own cognitive dissonance. But I swear to you it holds the key to unlocking all the problems philosophy and science and politics has thrown at us. It's too fucking bad I'm a fucking nutter.
Zarathustra: Once, crows pecked at my gardens. I was beset by doubts that are insoluble. I was as the great teeming mass was. I was afraid. But I overcame the trepidation in my soul and while I withdrew I longed to return bearing my staff. I longed to pour out what I had learned at the marketplaces and the meeitng halls. I longed to return to the bars, the opium dens, the cocaine rooms of the world, the night clubs and taxicabs and talk. Talk with everyone and everything. "Digging" it all, as we tried in the 50s. Dig, but also change. Change and awaken. Awaken with the gentle teachings of A Siddartha, and then counter with the brutal pessimism of a Schopenhauer. We shall, in our lifetime, reconcile the Holy of Holies with an downtown San Francisco S&M joint, and we shall see it is good. We shall see how both are good, and how both are necessary. What is not necessary is the completion of my sermon to the world. The world is too mature for sermons. It dies not accept the prophet on its knee as it did in days of old. This new world effloresces because, and only because, we have heard all the stories of suffering and overcoming and some of them set off respective empathies within our own circumscribed areas. These areas were circumscribed but overlapping. And so the world have a final Yes, a final cleaning and a final act of will, a glorious affirmation to all that is vital. Not good or evil or just or unjust, but just vital. And its power grew. And it grows.
Cons: "Ability is of little account without opportunity."
The Nationalist: A brief trip to the old country inspires me and ignites the flames of an ancient race-memory. I scuttle the trappings of the Western man and buy and build a homestead in Bosnia. I compare my former life to "a lion forced to dress up in little stripy clothes and parade his civility through the streets of the boorish, drunken town". I shun the English language and spend my days reciting patriotic poetry and singing songs of old days, of old heroes and saints who chose a heavenly kingdom over an Earthly one, committing their people to eons of suffering which will pay off a thousandfold in that time to come after death. in short: I will become everything I hate, just like that discoroporeal shade of a father back in the old country whose fucking drunken boorishness left the rest of us in the lurch, who tries to soothe his conscience with yearly e-mails. Go dance in your traditional clothes and recite your ballads, you piece of shit! (What? Me having issues? Unpossible!) But from where I come from, diametrical shifts of attitude are not uncommon.
The Family Man: Not anyhting remotely resembling the patriarch I alluded to in the first paragraph. The way I envision this is most similar to James Joyce's Dubliners, story number 8: "A Little Cloud". The basics: I will be forced into family life when the domineering wolf's teeth come out. I will be made to feel guilty for not having children by parents and the in-laws. A few years will pass and I won't be sure who I'm living for. Forced to give up writing. Forced to switch to decaf. Watching my dietary fiber. Worrying about varicose veins. Looking at colour wheels for hours on end to find just the right off-white for the den. Arguing with the lanscapers about their choice of turf. Lounging to nondescript classic rock. Buying the really expensive doilies. Worrying about the price of gas at the pump and listening intently to the morning traffic reports. Finding out the value of really good seats at the game. Browsing the catalogue of Baby Einstein products. (This doesn't need to go on: I've riffed at this lifestyle enough.) At least one positive: I've survived long enough to know I'm not schizophrenic.
The Man in Room 2039B: Schizophrenia has its onset in males during the early twenties. Everyone has a 1/100 chance of developing it. Everyone. In this scenario, I'm thirty-four. I rant. I like to talk: echoes of a life long since disappeared. Things fleeting catch my eyes and mind: foregrounding and backgrouding is really difficult. I wish they'd just leave me be with my books and peotry, to rock bakc and forth and memorize every line ever written and ever read. What's the harm in that? Can't they set me up outside somewhere. They don't know how far I've come from their mores, the mores that bind, the mores that do their lariat thing and bind. It's just a lot of old cheese anyway, dreadful clacking at the ward C talent show. Who plays bluegrass music anymore? Don't we know how reticulated our culture has become such that you can't draw genre distinctions. It's more a measure of coherence than a measture of distance; I've become convinved that's how the mind works these days and I'm well on my way to furnishing a statistical methodology to bakc up my assertions. Too bad I'm a fucking nutter and nobody except the nice social worker will believe me, but that's just to reduce her own cognitive dissonance. But I swear to you it holds the key to unlocking all the problems philosophy and science and politics has thrown at us. It's too fucking bad I'm a fucking nutter.
Zarathustra: Once, crows pecked at my gardens. I was beset by doubts that are insoluble. I was as the great teeming mass was. I was afraid. But I overcame the trepidation in my soul and while I withdrew I longed to return bearing my staff. I longed to pour out what I had learned at the marketplaces and the meeitng halls. I longed to return to the bars, the opium dens, the cocaine rooms of the world, the night clubs and taxicabs and talk. Talk with everyone and everything. "Digging" it all, as we tried in the 50s. Dig, but also change. Change and awaken. Awaken with the gentle teachings of A Siddartha, and then counter with the brutal pessimism of a Schopenhauer. We shall, in our lifetime, reconcile the Holy of Holies with an downtown San Francisco S&M joint, and we shall see it is good. We shall see how both are good, and how both are necessary. What is not necessary is the completion of my sermon to the world. The world is too mature for sermons. It dies not accept the prophet on its knee as it did in days of old. This new world effloresces because, and only because, we have heard all the stories of suffering and overcoming and some of them set off respective empathies within our own circumscribed areas. These areas were circumscribed but overlapping. And so the world have a final Yes, a final cleaning and a final act of will, a glorious affirmation to all that is vital. Not good or evil or just or unjust, but just vital. And its power grew. And it grows.
Cons: "Ability is of little account without opportunity."
posted by A. D. at 1:19 AM
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