[791] There Goes Gravity

Think I just wanna take a stroll.

It never ceases to amaze me. Now. I had a memory of turning incorrectly during a practice driving session as a teenager. Drifting into the next lane as I turned, thinking to myself, “I should probably just go with it, but we were taught to maintain our lane as we turn” and proceeding to “correct” myself before the teacher swerved me back to the “wrong” path. Even if there wasn't a car next to me, it was close enough that cutting back would have been dumb. Part of me registered it would be dumb. I'd been anchored in something I learned in class.

There's something of an infinite anchor list, no? Down to which of your genes bother to turn on and off. I wonder pretty consistently why I don't appear to be in abjectly terrible health with the amount of fast food I eat. I think my body figured out when I was younger, when it all began, that this was “food,” and figured it out. I'm not saying I'm in particularly good shape or anything, but I manage to not look at myself disgusted nor think I'm ever more than that 2 to 3 months of actual effort before I start showing off before and after pictures. My body is anchored to the shitty food I was raised on.

It might come as no surprise that anchored ideas I find the most interesting. The love stories. The cultural mythologies related to family. The specificity of different areas and time periods in what they're going to take pride in or be willing to die for. I think about how deep those anchors must go for us to be persistently flirting with totalitarian thinking. I think about the murdered relationships and never-weres because people never left the land of their first ideas. I think about how, if you're “now,” you've an infinite capacity to reside in the deepest joy and harshest pain of whatever idea it is you're observing at the moment.

I'm subscribed to a subreddit dedicated to asking women over 30 questions. Today there were stories about 4 or 17 year relationships, husbands dying, things fizzling out, and then people finding their current love and never being happier. There's desperate 30ish women looking for rays of sunshine in their lonely or heartbroken space that's just now beginning to realize the special connection with their boyfriend in high school wasn't the kind of healthy thing shared between functioning adults. Everyone's “now” exists one click away from the last. Your single digit years relationship went bust? HAD 4 OF THOSE SISTER! And the surviving guy is the best so far!

Reading that kind of stuff makes the problems that have been related to me about my relationships feel exceptionally petty. But then, I've been reading the opinions and offered wisdom of old people since I had internet access. The drama has always felt, fundamentally, boring. The work of tearing through your first love and constant reminding yourself of death just wishes people would get over themselves and have another drink. That's kind of the energy and perspective I'm always looking for, I just got there 30 or 40 years too early. I'm still in the bracket where people say without irony what lengths they'll go to have a kid if they aren't married and pregnant by 35.

I consider when I've said I don't really have a conception of “forgiveness.” My new best stab at what it, incorporating “now,” would look like keeping whatever the offense is in your mind while you do your best with the person in front of you. “You broke my heart....okay, can I buy you an ice cream cone?” “You murdered my son....okay, I still don't think advocating for the death penalty is the best at-large decision.” “You shattered something that will never be repaired....okay, here's what I have to say about it, and now I can take responsibility for myself and how I'll go forward.” Forgiveness as a function of a kind of resilience I could understand. Forgiveness as a measure of pragmatism is, practically, a cop-out.

I don't know how often I want to “be forgiven.” I want to be talked to. I want to be taken seriously. But when I think back to times in which people have offered “forgiveness,” it's come with that condescending or matter-of-fact string. “I forgive you, foolish animal, you don't know any better.” “I forgive you, for I am pious and perfect in my exercise.” “I forgive you, will that make you shut up now?” God forgiving your sins comes with the presumption of guilt. To the extent you want to keep blaming other people for what neither of you tries to understand, perhaps the forgiving instinct grows. Old, tired, people no longer willing to bother, forgive you your brash and ignorant youth. What a better time to let things go then as life beckons letting go of you?

I just feel weird. I'm still as present in some of my memories as I am writing this now. And given that memory is but a tool, I wonder if I'm still hammering away at the same project, or if there's a singular space we all inhabit. I wonder if that ability to inhabit it is choice or circumstance. I wonder if any, or every, message is being translated through it. I wonder if I clench my jaw because there's something wrong with me, or what I'm connected to. I wonder if our future or inevitable demise are determined in the infinitely indeterminate.

When I'm even more obscenely wealthy, I already know what I'm going to do. I'm going to invite everyone. I'm going to look for more lasting images and impressions of what “now” means, and I'm already coping with the letdown and the surprise smile or sentiment that tricks me into thinking it was all worth it. I'm gonna pause and look around, and briefly pretend to reminisce on every conversation and cost that went into making the picture look the way it does around me. I'm going to be as poking around in the dark and floating around lost “then” as I am “now.”