Typing Without Glasses (experimenting intro)

    This is an interesting experience, having to maintain two monitors in order to actually see the text that I am writing. This is a peculiar experience to not need eyewear of some kind in order to see what I'm doing. Normally, I fall about, running into inanimate objects, or animate ones if some unlucky individual happens to fall into my path -- much like those unlucky characters in action television or cinema where the characters are trapped inside their vehicle and a train is roaring towards them, while a black SUV pushes them onto the tracks. While they could move, merely pressing on the gas pedal and placing the car in gear -- like some light stricken dear or out of the cliche driven madness of a script writer whose got only 20 more minute to finish that scene before the latest episode of Young Justice comes on Cartoon Network -- they stand in awe of the coming doom and do nothing, or worse, try to put their car in reverse of all things and back up! Yes, people who fall into my path are like these -- unable to move for the awe-striking mass of my girth, and await the crushing inspiration that said mass will spell for their lives once they are supplanted by a tumbling ball of flesh and sinew.

My Writings for February 16, 2013

Prompt One Response:

“Crap!”, thought Eros “In over 35,000-years of doing this job, never once have I missed. Is this what mortals call, 'getting old'? If it is, I want my money back.”

The gracefully winged immortal tossed his long, hazelnut brown locks and began pondering his next move. Since he'd never actually missed a target (or as he affectionately called them, “Aphrodite's play things”), he was rather outside his field of experience. What was he going to do? Should he contact dispatch and ask to speak with the infuriating empress of pink futons and oversized boxes of truffles? Or, would it be better to try to figure this one out on his own?

“Maybe, Eris would have an idea how to get me out of this mess? She's always causing grief, yet somehow manages to not tick-off upper management. Now, where did I put that phone?”

Prompt Two Response:

Iceberg: A big-ass chunk of ice in the Arctics that floats around and runs into boats whose crews are too focused upon making money than general safety of their passengers. Most of the mass of an iceberg exists beneath the surface of the water.

Humans are such complex creatures of design or accident. Because we lack some magical telepathic ability that lets us know what others think, feel, experience, know, the lives they have lived or the people they have met – basically, we know very little about people beyond what our physical appearances.

Each person is rather like an iceberg into of themselves. We travel about on our own, independent of one another's thoughts outside of sense experience and shared language, custom, etc., running aground every so often, passing by, but unless there is a great upheaval or just an especially shallow individual, so many of us pass by unexamined.

I'm one of those people. Unexamined by others – residing deep within the waters of the world, hidden away, and so unknown as to my true self.

Besides the Creator of this world (if such a being truly does exist), I know not of a single person whom I truly can claim “knows me”. It's a morbid experience, wandering aimlessly and listlessly through the world from my formative years onward – ceaselessly searching for companionship, yet never seeming to find it.

Lately, I've been blessed enough to find people with whom I can relate on some level, but I fear my future may not speak so kindly. Furthermore, it is only those who have experienced grievous pain that in some way can appreciate one another. It's like trying to explain to someone who has never before seen a mountain to visualize a mountain. Can this be done by one so ill-equipped? I know not, but it begs the question, “If life sets us immortally and immaterially alone, separate and apart from our fellow beings of waking sentience, then how can we be expected to live?

Perhaps, in this small way, I see this as the great burden of humanity. Whether it was by design or merely personal choice that humanity was split asunder from our capacity to truly know one another, can it be said at what cost this rendering of flesh, spirit, and soul has caused? Not just onto those for whom this fate befell, but for all those who were to follow – how is it that we as beings can survive the great immortal toil of this frail existence without ever being known save by a spirit in the sky and within our own hearts? How can we relate; how can we love; how can we feel the caring breath of this world when we are all alone within it?

I know not answers to these questions.

I am told that humanity's greatest adaptation is cooperation. What constitutes this “cooperation”, I know not, but if we lack capacity to truly know one another, how can we cooperate? Every action I might take, every feeling, ever fiber of my being could be stifled the the actions of another, but unless that person knows me, they wouldn't be able to truly, viscerally comprehend my fate. This seems a vitally critical component to cooperation irrespective of its nature. All parties must be on the same page of the manuscript of the same edition and form in order to see what the other is speaking of.

This poses a great deal of challenges for us as people to befriend and form lasting relations with one another. The pain we feel can be a truly comprehensive part of our being – something that may never escape us. Life is hard, and simply wishing for it not to be or even worse, pretending that it was not so, drastically undermines the abilities of humans to form relations.

I've greatly struggled establishing deep friendships on account of this paradox: Those who are most capable of understanding you often manifest the same flaws and struggles as you and often make having friendships more difficult, yet those people are often the only ones who can truly appreciate your situation for they have been through similar ones themselves.

One of my friends of late, Jacob French, suffers from HIV. He's also had an extremely rough life outside of that – being adopted by his parents from Romania where he was left suffering and sick as a baby by his too young Roma parents. Jake experienced a great deal of trauma from all he's been through, and it is this experience, his suffering that bonds us together. We can relate, but not just in our pain, but in many other things that show that we are “ancient souls” or however one wishes to call those of us who've lived and lived an examined life.

One of the greatest struggles, parental relations with my mother, suffers grievously, on account of a lack of understanding. Mom, a wonderful person in my mind, cannot relate on some levels with me because she's stuck in her own world. I guess I can appreciate that – being lost in my own world a great deal of the time – focused only upon what is in my immediate vicinity – ignoring all else in my path.

Life truly is a struggle, especially, when you are a human iceberg. If only I could find other icebergs who were willing to look beneath the ocean's surface.

 Prompt Three Response:

 

[Explosion]

“Captain! The aliens! They're... they're... Green!”

“Yes, Johnson... They are green. What color did you expect little green men from Mars to be? Chartreuse, maybe? Now, can you please hand me that bottle of astro-dent-remove?”

“Um... but, sir... Chartreuse is green.”

Shaking his head, “Johnson... Chartreuse is not green. It is a 50/50 mixture of primary green and primary yellow, thereby making it not green, but chartreuse. Now that you are done lecturing me on the merits of elementary color theory, can you hand me the bloody tube?!”

The overzealous private turning, “Oh, I'm sorry Captain. Yes! Right away.... Here you are, sir. Is there anything else we need to secure the air lock?”

“No Johnson... not at this time. However, I would appreciate it if when our guests of the International Space Accounting Office for Sol System and outer planets arrive you would try to be tactful for a change and not give the Taractilian Ambassador On Interplanetary Economics an exploding toilet seat. While I realize that you and Horace have been making habit of pranking one another since primary, considering he has now been promoted to the ISAOFSSAOP Admiralty, and considering you have been eagerly seeking promotion, I would suggest avoiding making a scene like last years Colloidal Neutron Milk Rectal Ramming Incident occur while in the presence of the Martians. They take a rather dim look on these matters.”

“But, Captain Eltman, just because the green Vulcans don't have a sense of humor doesn't mean the rest of us have to suffer. If I don't prepare myself, Horace is going to pull every prank he can think of until I retaliate. You know the Taractilians are?!”

“Johnson, I realize, that is why I've already spoken with ambassador Horace. He's agreed to not pranking you during the Martians stay. I fear he may be planning something, given the ease by which he agreed. He hasn't been in contact with you recently regarding this?” the Eltman replied.

“Sir, not that I am aware of, although, he may have messaged me. I'd have to check the dataservers.”

“That's fine. Please go and check and return. The Martians will be through the hanger deck at any moment.”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

Turning and returning to his previously abandoned duties repairing the hole in the airlock sensors, Captain James T. Eltman (his father an overtly obsessed Trekie naming him after James Tiberius Kirk sans the surname modification) was pondering how he got stuck piloting a floating relic from the mid 21^st century. At least, he wasn't forced to eternally spend his days shipping rotten vegetables and plutonium arsenide to his uncle's generating plant or give Universal Studios Intergalactic Tours of the Stars for one more day – he somehow made it through University working at these putrid excuses for employment and it would take more than an outdated star transport or a misguided private to make him forget the numbers of hours he spent in the academy's detoxification chamber to meet the genetic purification code for admission into the program.

It helped that his allergies in primary had enabled him to meet the academy's chief medical officer. Strangely enough, the small village outpost where James spent his formative years was also the research headquarters for a very peculiar medical researcher who would become his friend – Doctor Shiro-Matsumata Andreas Chesterton the third, or Cheesey Shinjiro or “Cheesy” as he was affectionately called by his friends. Considering the guy could take your head off with a single move (he was a quarter Nexmoxian, a quarter Martian, and half-human. In other words, a mutt like the rest of us, but old enough—his alien gene pool securing him extreme longevity—to not be required to register for the genetics purification exams for employment and neo-patrician citizenry.