October 2, 2007
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ceilings
It’s all emptiness now. Everything is removed. I lie there on the floor
and all around me there is so much nothingness it is stifling. And I am
tired, so tired. I stare at the ceiling willing my mind to stop
functions and my eyes to close at least for a moment before they kick
me out of this place. Just a moment longer.But my mind won’t stop just yet, I just keep staring at the ceiling,
the end, the limit. It’s strange that it seems so much farther away
from this perspective for all that I am only a couple of feet lower
than I would ordinarily be when lying in’ bed. And yet for some reason
it’s like I can see more of it. I notice more of the bumps and crevices
on that ceiling, it isn’t the smooth landscape I’d always thought it
was. Or is it all my imagination?Sleep doesn’t come to me. It will, I know, as soon as the caffeine high
sparked my three red bulls starts to fade. So I just contemplate the
task I’ve just accomplished during this time period. How I packed up
and compressed a years worth of life, (or is it more of a lifetime?)
into a small little box of a room in the side of a building where it
will sit for who knows how long until the day I choose to reclaim it.
Its strange that my life should be so small and stranger still that it
is so easy for me to cast it all aside as if it meant nothing.A few hours ago I hated all that junk. It was a waste of time owning
it, a waste of time collecting it, and worst of all an endless waste of
energy moving it about. I wished there was an easy way to get rid of
it, to rid myself of it without feeling guilty about having ever spent
cold hard cash upon it in the first place. But there isn’t. There
options are trash or save. Isn’t that the way with all things in life?Now I don’t hate it though. Now I’m not sure what I feel about it. It’s
just funny to think that this is everything I have, the building blocks
through which someone could if they wished reconstruct my nature
through deduction. Magic cards, video games, books, dvd movies and so many
even more mundane things, what clues would they hold for a detective
seeking to try and deduce the essence of this human’s nature?Now though I think it all just feels so limiting. It’s a ceiling, a
wall blocking me, constraining me. Too much connection to material
things is a limit to my growth. I need to do more than compress and
store this ball and chain of objective desires, I need to be rid of it,
cast it into the sea preferably with my leg not still attached.My eyes are starting to get heavy now, and one of the last things I
notice though is that I was wrong. This expansive emptiness I had
engineered as not quite as complete as I thought it was. I was so sure
I’d gotten everything. Everything. But I cast my eyes about and they
lazily fall upon the far way away from me where sticking out as if to
mock me are pinned two small screws.Ah yes, I remember now. Upon those screws had hung a white board and
upon that whiteboard I had drawn my beautiful diagram. So simple and
elegant I’d felt as I drew it that it held some fundamental truth about
how the world really works. Later I came to have serious doubts but at
the time I knew that what I had drawn was important and so I drew it
all the same. This was many many months ago.
I’d told myself that I didn’t erase that diagram because I might need a
reminder of it or because it was a useful thing to think about every
once in a while .But I doubt that’s the truth. Rather I probably kept
it just because it was a clever idea I had and not just any kind of
clever idea but one simple and elegant and concise enough that anyone
could probably understand it at a glimpse. Just two parabolas, one
describing the economics state of the world as it is and the other as
maybe it ought to be. So simple. Those kinds of ideas are so few and
far between
for me that I want to keep them forever in order to remind myself the
possibility of unlikely things.I told myself I would leave the diagram up until something more clever
strikes my mind. Only nothing ever did during all the months I kept
that white board. But now the white board has been long ago given away.
Actually not that long ago. In fact, maybe it was yesterday, ah it just
feels like an eternity ago when my mind is drawn sluggish through
caffeine withdrawal and lack of sleep.But the screws remain. How could I forget to remove the screws? There
they sit a blemish upon the otherwise perfectly smooth and clean
surface in an apartment truth told was in many ways cleaner than the
day I had moved in. Clean and utterly empty save for the crazy person
sleeping on the floor and two screws sticking out of the wall. I wonder
if that is a metaphor for something.Oh well, screw the screws, I think. And in my sleep deprived state I
find this bad pun of a thought immensely funny, hilarious even. I am
laughing all the way to a deep and thoughtless sleep.And then they come. They walk in on me, exclaim in surprise. There is
annoyance bordering on anger written on their faces as they glare at my
sleepily rising form. Maintenance. They’ve got a job to do and I’m in
the way. I’m a roadblock keeping them from their Just endeavors. I
guess they better just eliminate it, put this poor fool out of his
misery. Wait a minute! Why are they pulling out nine millimeters. Bang!
Bang! Bang! They are shooting me. Again and again. They aren’t
stopping. Just shooting and shooting and shooting.Hah I truly am remarkable! I feel no pain at all from the bullet!. I
must be Superman or Wolverine or maybe better than both put together.
With a little bit of Xavier and Storm and Hiro and Raven mixed in. Yep
I kickass. Why do these fools think they can stop me? Or maybe, my
stupidly logical brain points out, just maybe I’m only dreaming. Shut
up brain. Leave me to my fantasies. Damn it!My brain is insistent though and I awake only to find that the banging
was quite real. The maintenance people are outside banging on something
or another. I force myself awake, force the grogginess out of my system
and walk to the front door to see what’s going on.There they are. Right outside my door. Banging. I can’t parse what they are doing but it is making quite a racket.
“Oh we didn’t realize you were still here.” One says.
I mutter something about just finishing up a few last things. The other says “Ok, just let us know when you are done ok.”
Sure. Sure. I close the door and contemplate my fate. The banging
continues for only a few minutes more. I check the time and see that I
have only been asleep for a little over an hour. In about another hour
the storage facility will be open again and I can finish my tasks and
go about my life.What until then? Sleep? Makes sense since I had not intended to sleep
for only an hour. But although I’m still tired, I’m no where near as
sleepy as I was when I lay down an hour ago. Now I find that trying to
lie down again I find that hard floor nowhere near as inviting and
comfortable as I did but a moment ago. Sleep eludes me this time though
I struggle with it for about forty minutes trying to find a way to get
comfortable. The screws are no help whatsoever.Finally I get my vehicle drive around aimlessly for a while. I stop at
some 24 hour convenience store and buy some more caffeinated bevereges
because why not, it will only kill me in the long run right? I decline
food because I am afraid eating will make me tired again.Eventually I get back to work and the hours of the day pass by with me
trying to decide definitively what the heck to keep, to throw out, to
take with me, or to leave on the side of the road hoping some happy
person will find and take for their own use. So much junk.Why would anyone own a set of 40 glasses? Will ever 40 people need to
drink liquid in my presence at once? Why own 6 mixing bowels when I
don’t even bake? What’s the point of that juicer that I only used once?
That jar opener’s a pretty cool device but in the grand scheme of
things its only purpose in existing was to replace a single unopenable
jar that had been sitting around for months untouched with a jar opener
that gets to sit around for months untouched.Do I really need to keep those msdn magazines I’ve never read or even
cracked open and which I have on DVD anyway? How many books do I have
that I say to myself “one day I’ll read it” only to never crack it open
ever again? What about all those books I’ve read and have no reason to
ever read again? Why keep them? And the notebooks, so many notebooks
each with just a little bit written in them but little of any merit. As
if to be their companion there’s also a big container filled with ink
pens and pencils. Many may still work but surely many more are long
dead. Why on Earth did I keep it all?A small grill. I’ve never cooked out. A baseball bat. I’ve never
played. A staple remover. A power drill. A programmable thermostat.
Weather stripping. So many pointless bottles of various cleaning
products. Why do I have three bottles of electronic dust removal spray?
I think this pair of shoes I’ve havent worn in 4 years and are so worn
I wouldn’t wear in a hundred even if you put a gun to my head. What
the? A Halloween themed table cloth? How the? Three old broken travel
clocks? Where the? A scanner that looks like it must be from the
eighties? And no I don’t know why I have that mysterious block of wood.It goes on like that for a while until finally I reach a state of
organization I can accept. I am taking more with me than I’d originally
planned but at least I don’t have to rent a bigger storage unit. And I
got rid of more junk overall. That always makes me happy.Maybe owning objects doesn’t mark a ceiling capping off my nature after
all. They constrain but not all constraints bind. Sometimes barriers
just guide your path like the walls in a maze. Objects invoke memories,
reminding me of choices good and bad, right and wrong. They make me
feel solid. The world feels more real because them. Whereas to cast
them all aside would leave me untethered, floating free, even more
unsure of myself than I am now.At this point in the day I know that there’s no rush to get where I’m
going. I won’t be able to get in until late unless I dare get myself
lost seeking a new place which is not the kind of thing I want to try
to do when having slept only an hour in two and a half days. So now
what? I’m starting to feel sleepy again so that old apartment floor
is looking inviting again. I drive back to my abode.Alas it is not to be. The door now has a sign on it that says
‘maintenance within’. I guess they saw me gone and took it as a golden
opportunity to begin doing whatever it is that they do. What happened
to waiting for me to ‘let them know?’ Oh well.With lack of anything better to do I drive around the small little
neighborhood slowly with my laptop out looking for wireless signals
strong enough to power my internet habit. It isn’t long before I find
one that is unencrypted and entirely usable. This is one thing I love
about wireless networks. How they can all sort of re-enforce one
another giving people multiple backups increasing reliability for
everyone. Of course you’re technically not supposed to use other
people’s connections like that, nor are people supposed to leave their
connections open for you to do so. But people do and people do. I don’t
know if it is just laziness or lack of knowledge about the security
risks inherent in having an unencrypted wireless connection or if the
people are leaving their network open on the principled position that
networks should be free and sharing your connection is an inherently
good and nice thing to do. For those of you out there who have
unencrypted wireless networks for the latter reason. You are my heroes.
And you’re far braver than I.Well connection established I am able to kill some more time browsing
my usual haunts before my laptop battery runs out. I even start to
write this, though ultimately it turns out I won’t finish it until
tomorrow. And all the while I dream and wonder about the nature of
ceilings, the power of limitations for good or ill.I could write more I guess but the story gets less interesting from
here, if that is at all possible. I sleep in my vehicle some. I eat.
Eventually I drive to my destination again fortified with more caffeine
and loud music which I sing along to to keep me awake. I also bought
some spicy food snacks. That works remarkably well at helping to keep
my mind sharp. So luck of lucks I only almost get into an accident
twice and I think both times it is not my fault. Eventually I arrive
and an uneventful evening ensues.But I can’t keep thinking about limitations. Barriers. Ends. I keep
seeing that ceiling so far above my head and yet so ever present. And
you know try as I might to see the good in them for some reason or
another I just can’t bring myself to believe in ceilings. I don’t
believe there are heights to which we can’t reach, walls that we can’t
cross. I don’t think there are battles that can’t be won. It just isn’t
in my nature. If we were to meet someone who claimed to be God and had
every possible power you could imagine to prove the truth of his might.
I would not be particularly awed. I’d just presume that each and every
one of his powers had an explicable explanation and that anyone could
one day learn and master them. The idea that he was somehow above and
beyond us, at a level which we could never obtain or approach. That
would be unbelievable to me. Impossible for me to accept. Impossible.Sometimes though I think accepting and believing in limitations and
ends makes life easier for people. For example, if you believe that you
just aren’t capable of all that much, that you are entirely average and
normal in every way then what big deal is it if you don’t accomplish
something, if you don’t achieve something you set out to do? But what
if you believe that there are no limits on what human beings are
capable of? Then if you think you are average you’d still know that you
could still accomplish virtually anything if you put your mind to. So
each and every one of your failures would be oh so much more of a
bitter pill to swallow. And worse, since let’s face it nobody really
thinks they are entirely average, you’d always be thinking about all
the ways in which you are better than average but always be left
wondering what fundamental flaws in your nature keep you from achieving
any of the things that you want. IF you don’t believe that reality has
limitations, then you’d have to conclude that the limitations must be
within you. How sad.But there’s a positive side to not believing in ceilings too. Hope.
When something seems unlikely or impossible you can still hope.
Irrational, mindless, crazy hope can still well up within you. You can
feel hopeful even against all odds, even when everyone else thinks your
crazy to have hope. The word impossible just doesn’t mean anything to
you. It’s all choices and decisions. We can and will achieve whatever
it is that we want. The only issue then is deciding what it is that we
want. That’s the philosophy of the person who see’s no ceilings above
him, only clear blue endless skies. That’s the philosophy of the kind
of person I strive to be with all the good and the bad that comes with
it.
