bioxoid
bioxoid:mcullArchive for Attempts to Categorize My Life in a Meaningful Way
A nuance
There’s no fear of the dark;
There’s just fear, and the dark
does nothing but amplify it.
I was troubleshooting my phone
When I list all the things that I wish I could reset to factory settings, my phone is near the bottom of the list.
Smoke
Thr smoke from the campfire revealed the sunbeams that had been there the whole time.
It was night
it was night and the stars made me think of the speckled skin of a rainbow trout. I concentrated on feeling the stars below me–me hanging from the bottom of the Earth like an iron filing.
I watched the red coals clouded by the embers they were becomming and thought of the birth of a star in the cold of space. how different star fire is, I think, than the flames I’m familiar with.
clouds came and I could only see the stars in patches. with concentration I was able to invert the foreground and background, but that’s lie. I wasn’t able to.
the sounds of waves grew louder in the darkness. i imagined all the starlight shining on the sea, warming it slightly. I huddled closer to my fire.
blood mist
Four days after I was born, the US Patent Office approved patent 3992558 for “a process for coating discrete particles of less than 20 microns with a high polymer coating.” 20 microns is the diameter of blood cells and fine mist. The industrial application of patent 3992558 is probably interesting. But, I am distracted by the idea of plastic wrapping blood and mist, particle by particle. Keeping them fresh. For what?
Authenticity
When I was young, I was hurt by my father’s access to the obviousness of the fact that it’s easier to make actors look older, with makeup, than to make them look younger. I assumed and had asserted the opposite. Because: old people know what they used to look like, so it’d be easier to get it right.
Say something novel, beautiful, and true.
I have food in my belly. I have loving sons and a lovely wife. My roof doesn’t leak and my health is good. I live a life that must rank among the top .01% easiest, most comfortable, richest, rewarding lives in human history.
So do you.
What obligation do we have to the billions of backs we’ve climbed upon to get here? The multitudes are eavesdropping–the generations of uneducated toilers, of stupid brutality, of tragic loss and weakness and vulnerability–they are gathered around in eager anticipation of what we, their champions, their superiors, their finest projects, of what we have to say from the towering vantage of our easy education and unearned luxury.
That’s a lot of fucking pressure. I’m glad we’re up for it. (I believe in you, Internet friends.)
Say something novel, beautiful, and true.
origins
I have a prurient fascination with origin stories. So do you. But don’t they always disappoint? Too often too much of a character’s origin hinges on one crucial event. The time he falls down a well into a cave filled with bats. Etc.
It’s a no-win proposition. The only characters we crave to know back stories for are the ones rich, smokey, contradictory enough to want to puzzle them out, to deconstruct them and retrace the forces that bent them into (or out of) shape. Thus, the greater the disappointment when, the rounder they are the harder they fall flat with a simple explanation, a single event or loss or injustice that exclusively marks their transition from the-path-of-an-otherwise-ordinary-life to the path-of-extraordinary-virtue-or-passion that we will come to know only in later episodes of life.
Thinking about it, I don’t even reject that we people are sometimes crafted or disproportionately made into ourselves by one singular trauma, obsession, epiphany. So origin stories are sometimes accurate. But, like many accurate things, the knowing is just so rarely as satisfying as the wondering.
What are the origin stories you tell yourself about yourself? What have you decided are your formative moments? Do allow yourself to be a mystery to yourself, or must you have an explanation? I was formed in fire by fire, and live to avenge and pay retribution for my father’s sins. I also played tee ball, had a hamster, and was crippled by shyness around girls. Who the fuck knows…maybe the falsity is that we are unitary enough to warrant only one origin. Maybe the real question is what are the various origins of myselves?
