mahiwaga

The expected high temperature today is supposedly 90°F but the humidity is up to 60% and I’m already going out of my mind. It’s time to find a place with A/C to hang out.

Last night I couldn’t get to sleep. At around midnight, it was still about 70°F outside. I even tried putting a block of ice in front of my electric fan. It improved the heat from stifling to barely tolerable.

I wonder if I bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured it over myself. My mom used to do this to keep our temperatures down when we were sick as kids.

And just when you think physical chemistry couldn’t possibly have any applicability to your life, I discovered that because rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol or propan-2-ol for the pendantic) really only has one hydrogen atom that’s free for hydrogen bonding, you can’t get enough surface tension for a spray bottle to work.

To backtrack a bit, I had bought myself a spray bottle and filled it with ice cold water so I could spritz myself with it and sit in front of an electric fan. While this worked somewhat, I wasn’t satisfied, so I decided to get more serious and I poured some rubbing alcohol into the spray bottle. Nothing would come out of it. Damn.

You would think that because my ancestors grew up in climates exactly like this (freaking hot and humid), that I’d have some sort of adaptibility, but then you’d be wrong. Apparently I can only live in a narrow climate range of about 65°-75°F. This used to be the weather in San Diego year round but it looks like global warming (or climate change, if you like) is changing things quite drastically. I do hope that Southern California manages to turn into a tropical rainforest, rather than a parched, lifeless desert, but it hasn’t rained in like literally a year.

On panspermia and ancient aliens (at least in science fiction.)

While all of archaeology and paleontology seem to reaffirm the idea that life started on Earth as single-celled organisms, eventually evolving into multicellular forms that eventually became intelligent, and that all civilization came about around the same time, in places like Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, and the Huang Ho River Valley, I’ve always been fascinated by the myth that we came from a technologically advanced past, devolving into a long dark age that is has only been recently pierced (and only partially, as the Republican Party in the U.S. demonstrates all too well.)

I suppose it speaks to a Puritanical/Calvinistic interpretation of the Bible, in which we permanently fell from Grace. Supposedly the past was a Edenic utopia, while the future becomes even more and more depraved.

But the myth pops up from time to time, and it’s has been employed mightily from some of the best science-fiction writers.

From Western civilization, the myth of Atlantis looms large. Even the Disney Corporation imagines that ancient Atlanteans possessed highly advanced technology, the likes of which we are only recently matching.

Then there is this book I ran into on one of my trips to Borders that, while smacking of pseudoscience, seeks to explain the almost simultaneous (give or take a few hundred years) collapse of the Sumerian, Egyptian, Mayan, and Anasazi civilizations (to name a few of those cited) and they peg the blame on some hitherto uncharacterized cyclic astronomical phenomenon. (The existence of a yet undiscovered companion star to the Sun is one such hypothesis. Others include contact with extraterrestrials. Less ambitious explanations are the onset of worldwide climate change probably due to a cyclic astronomical event, but more speculatively, may have been a toxic by-product of early civilization.)

Even J.R.R. Tolkien was seemingly obsessed with the idea of a technologically-advanced Atlantis, destroyed by a great wave that matches the description of a tsunami. He co-opted the myth into his own legendarium, and devised the legends of Númenor.

In my mind, the prototypical Intergalactic Empire is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, centered around the world of Trantor. I’ve only read one of the books, way out of order, and what struck me the most was the description of the search for the lost Sol System.

But building upon this prototypical universe, Ursula K. Le Guin imagines the Ekumen(see also The Ekumen: an Ursula K Le Guin reference page), a league of star systems that somewhat resembles the Federation from Star Trek, except that the Ekumen seems to be more of an utopian anarchy than a democratic republic. The agents of the Ekumen are proscribed from interefering with low-tech civilizations. (Compare this to the Prime Directive.)

But part of the Hainish cycle is the conceit that intelligent life started on a planet called Hain (known to Terrans as Davenant) and through terraforming and bioforming, they have shepherded intelligent life throughout the countless milllions of years.

Even Philip K. Dick imagines the existence of a highly-advanced extraterrestrial civilization with whom we once had contact with, and who left the relic known as VALIS in orbit around the Earth to help us re-establish contact.

And likewise, in The Snow Queen, Joan Vinge introduces the notion of an Old Empire which disintegrated, leaving colony worlds stranded for millenia, until one of these worlds recovered well enough to restart a technologic revolution.

The other component that Vinge introduces is the notion of the Sibyl, a human being who (through a nanotechnologic modification of neural tissue) is able to access the latent databanks of the Old Empire.

I’ve always wondered if the words “Sibyl” and “sibilant” were related. It doesn’t seem like it just from the sources that I’ve Googled. And for some reason I’ve always thought of “sibilant” to be similar in connotation to whispering, even though it really more closely means “hissing” (like a ssssnake) But I imagine that’s how the Sibyl would give her prophecies, by whispering, or hissing.

There is also the anecdote that the cave in Delphi that the Sibyl supposedly gave her prophecies from had a volcanic gas vent which emitted complex hydrocarbons that caused hallucinations.

Meanwhile, the supposed etymology of the word “sibyl” is theoboule, meaning “divine wish”

I haven’t been this affected by the death of a character ever since Gandalf fell into the abyss in Moria.

I’m trying to think of other literary moments that moved me deeply. There is that scene in Minas Tirith where Merry is half-dead from facing the Lord of the Nazgûl and as he stumbles along, he runs into Pippin, who has to carry him to the Houses of Healing. As Pippin is carrying him, Merry asks him if he is going to bury him.

Miriamele’s despair-filled, cynical, and nihilistic deflowering in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn has also stuck with me for a decade and a half, ever since I first read that book in 1990.

And finally Lir’s final farewell from the Unicorn in The Last Unicorn always pulls at my heart strings as well.

Can you still be human when you’ve purposefully amputated your capacity to love? When you’ve decided to never feel another goddamn thing again, and there is nothing in your heart but dark emptiness?

When flesh, when lust, becomes only yet another material object to consume, instead of being part and parcel of a sacred emotion?

I didn’t think you could transform into something monstrous by sheer inertia, but I guess I was wrong.

The feelings still come, but they die stillborn as soon as it comes to me.

It’s almost reflex now.

I can probably stand this numbness for a few years or so, but certainly not for much longer.

Either my transformation will be complete, or I will be dead.

Although in the end, it means the same thing.

To be loved, you must love…
But those who have so little, the ones who need it the most…
are the least likely to give it…

because anybody who has so little is afraid to lose what he just barely has got…

it seeps out of me, evaporates
this living water
without purpose
I am dying, drop by drop

(Did you ever know what love was?
Or is, like everything you have ever wrought,
a fairy tale? A madman’s dream?)

When was the last time anyone believed in you?
Outside of the trappings of your profession
without the aegis of your Oath?

When was the last time someone saw that fleeting, flickering fire
that light that echoes the beams of starlight streaking through the merciless void?

The glimpse of that dark amber window
into the gleaming sea of your soul?

(I am a shadow, a ghost
a flickering, fading thing
a wisp of a memory of a dream)

Time wears all things
and even mountains crumble
and oceans turn to desert
and what is one soul in a million?

Light flickers, fades
And only the silent darkness

But it is not the darkness that I fear
Only the emptiness

every thought is second-guessed
every impulse examined
every sliver of hope is processed
every emotion filtered

veering away is reflex now
turning around is routine
(you say you want a revolution…)
reaction, transaction, perdition

innocence burned away long ago
and ethics and morality a bare, ragged sheet I hang on to
and I’m four years old again, clinging to my security blanket
gripping tightly the cords of my parachute
and all I know is falling, falling…

every surprise evokes a startle response
every unexpected moment of joy smothered and choked
every pleasure deflated, conflated, derailed
and equilibrium is stillness, is silence, is death

skipping to the end again
looking too far ahead
the second hand ticks away
the grains of sand fall
and dreams of starlight decohere

only a hologram
an illusion
stray photons randomly striking my retina
painting images upon my fevered mind

not hate, but indifference
stifles me, muffles my voice
binds my writing hand
pins me to the ground
and I am a silent witness
to the atrocities I commit
worst against myself

everything is a clinical vignette
I can critically deconstruct
my own implosion
my soul crumpling inward
watching myself with perverse fascination
deviancy, voyeurism

watching myself die
microsecond by microsecond
and feeling hopeless to stop it

“will you come with me?”
and she would say “yes”
just that
and I would know

but I am Diogenes
with my flickering, failing light
looking for what cannot be found
lost, forsaken, abandoned, bereft

I imagine
clinically
scientifically
empirically
objectively
we are who we are
by the rough edges
that signal not only intent
but identity
integrity
solidity
uniqueness
singularity

and by accident or masochistic subconscious intent
I’ve shorn the sharp protrusions clean-off
scraped off any of the cruft that would tell the world what I am
who I am
and the answers are lost
down that memory hole that is time
as irrevocable as if it were spaghettified
by a supermassive black hole

nameless
faceless
silent
drifting
come unstuck
untethered
into the vacuum
punctuated only by the cold ancient light of a billion stars come too late to make a difference

I’ve only myself to tell me what i’m worth
and if I believed anything I said
I’d be truly worthless
and it’s only in dreams
that I am reminded of what I am
or at least what I could be

(The branches are shorn off
amputated
and cauterized
and time waits for no man
even quantum indecision decoheres)

I don’t remember the last time I dreamt
of joy and happiness
even my dreams are filled with sadness and despair
loss
grief
stillness
silence

the fragrance of her hair haunts me
the way her eyes sparkle when she smiles
the sound of her laughter
the curve of her face
the quiet grace of her every move

and still, my heart grows colder by the moment
my soul mummified,
dessicated

(All things seem ever distant
farther than the farthest star that I can see)

Of the things that I have feared
I ponder which is the worst
the silence
the darkness
or the emptiness

(The numbness binds me to the floor
smothers me
sucks the will to live out of me
Why fight it?
Disorder ever increases
And the emptiness is all that will be in the end…)

and yet I am not so far gone to give in to the nothingness
the black void of the vacuum
to let my body fall into the eternal night and burst
this slim thread of hope tethers me to reality
(and how it burns, how it aches)
pulls me down into the gravity well
(it feels like it’s tearing me apart)

knowing that I am ill at heart
ill in mind
is not enough
and even the tools of modernity
(these yellow and red pills)
only keep the emptiness at bay
so that it merely abrades
rather than lacerates
scrapes and rasps
rather than bites
(and the emptiness inside me is like a ravening creature,
hungry for my soul)

What words might there be that could turn her heart?
I have asked the night how many times?
I have asked the sea
and the wounded city
I have asked the thunder clouds and the lightning bolts
I have asked my heart in the still silence
and nothing stirs
and the question still remains

and no words will come
now and perhaps ever
and the silence will be my legacy
unto the grave
(and still my soul stirs uneasily,
restless
not yet willing to dissipate into the starry void)

and the songs come to mock me
(and to comfort me)
promising things that can never be
(not on this world line
not in my light cone)
and I am still bewildered
still heartsick
about how it all went wrong
and how the words failed me then
and how my faith in the words falter
every time my heartbeat quickens
and my breath catches

and yet the words are all that I have
all that I have to give
all that have any meaning
in this downward spiral
this frozen moment in time
this threshold between what is
and what will never be
this singular space
this fated moment
(and this too shall pass)

and only hope will remain
until it too breaks apart
fissions into a scattering of deadly light
sterile
sterilizing
still

(and even in this dying moment
the possibilities still exist
the potential lies dormant
latent
waiting to be tapped
if only I could find the right words.)

I first heard this song one fevered night that I was driving to L.A. the long way around, up I-15, somewhere between Escondido and Temecula. Mix Master Mike was DJ’ing Spin Psycle.

It was also the first song that played on my iPod as I drove away from my ex-girlfriend’s wedding reception, leaving me with a curiously empty feeling that has been magnified over the past few years. (My soul seems to have curled up upon itself, what with the trial-by-fire that is residency training. The lost nights of sleep, the hours locked up in the hospital, the train wreck patients that run you over as they careen towards their inevitable deaths, unheeding of anything that you might do. These things alone have consumed my life, leaving me numb and unfeeling. But I digress. I’ll only briefly mention that there have been brief sparks of hope that flared then quickly died, stillborn in my confused mind.)

(I think I’ve forgotten how to have fun. Not the desperate “fun” that EtOH provides, but honest-to-goodness, actual fun. As a consequence, I rarely have anything interesting to say to anyone that doesn’t involve work. As a corollary, I rarely have any thoughts about what might make a fun date. Hence, this continuing solitary existence of which I can see no feasible way out of, at least in this life.)

What is interesting is that this song is used as the theme song for that hospital drama “House, M.D.” Disturbingly, just like those train wreck patients that have left indelible marks all over my soul, I find myself careening down a track that will lead me to a fate akin to Hugh Laurie’s dramatis persona, except I doubt that I’ll have a cute intern who will moon over me. My only hope is that I don’t get hooked on Oxycodone like the good doctor on T.V.

tortured?
you’re damned right my soul is tortured
twisted and wracked beyond even my darkest imaginings
fraught with pain and blood and death (though it is the vomit, the piss, and the shit that gets to me the most
and worse yet, the stench of bacteria feeding on still-live flesh
I have nightmares about resistant Staph aureus and Pseudomonas more than any of my other fears combined)

but I try my best to hold my shit together
because ain’t no one else gonna do it for me
and in the end I chose this path
with both eyes open
knowing full well what I was getting myself into
and what I was leaving behind

and so my madness may manifest itself in stolen moments
spurts and gurgles
a sick desperation in my laugh
and this violently deranged spew that writhes out of my mind
and onto the paper
or into the endless medium of the vast ether
the only one who will listen
to the ravings of a lunatic

still I awaken in the morning to face the day
with the will to do good like a raging fire in my heart
driving my unwilling flesh
and there is no reward
and there is no return
only knowing that I am who I am
that I decided this fate
and that I accomplished what I had set out to do
though it will never be enough

not enough to fill the emptiness
the vast void that used to be my soul
evaporating like moonshine
spilled carelessly upon the filthy concrete sidewalk

and I might ask “was it worth it?”
knowing the answer is “what else could I have done?”
and “what else could I have been?”
far greater men than I have failed to escape their destinies
and who am I to ask that this cup be taken from my hand?

and “do I regret?”
but what can I regret
except fantasies that were destined to never come true
and the sleepless nights of wondering if I was good enough
smart enough
strong enough
and letting that uncertainty eat through my heart like acid
the lesser of two evils
in a world that may very well be hell
and I have far less blood on my hands than other denizens
of this diabolical plane

I do not seek your pity
nor your understanding
nor even that you listen
I ask only for your abeyance of judgement
for the story has not yet run its course
and at its end you can tally your verdict
and condemn me if you must