I never went. What’s it like?
Here is today’s vid.
It’s a great story (in my mind) because it so deftly illustrates both what a strange child I was and what a little smartass I’ve always been.
But seriously, I can’t imagine having reacted any other way. For me this “test” was insultingly easy and back then I basically didn’t have a filter – I was so damned blunt – so the idea that I should conceal my reaction was many a parsec away.
I might have learned to read at an absurdly early age (3) and I talked like a tiny professor but tact would not make an appearance for some time.
Presumably, the test was not so simple for the kids around me. I don’t know that for sure – I find it hard to imagine what being a normal child that age is like – but presumably these grownups had some idea of what they’re doing and were, say, child psychology professionals and they had just never encountered a kid like me before.
Trust me – neither had anybody else.
Well, okay, I don’t know that for sure. Sheer probability suggests that I can’t possibly be a completely unique human being. There must be someone out there like me.
One has to assume there’s a whole bunch of us, actually.
It’s kind of like the question of alien life. No matter how improbable you think the rise of life on Earth was, compared to the vastness of the universe it’s a virtual certainty that it has to have happened more than once.
But I suppose that means my own improbable existence compared to the nearly 8 billion human beings on this planet has its own Fermi paradox :
Where are they?
Where are the other people like me?
Do I really, truly have a tribe somewhere or am I a bespoke weirdo and completely unique and doomed to be alone in my strangeness forever?
And do I really want to know?
Of course, it’s not quite THAT stark, although it feels that way sometimes. I have my wonderful nerdy friends, both RL (love you so much, Felicity, Julian, and Joe) and VR (way too many fuzzies to list) and we and they are enough alike to relate to each other on at least some levels.
And maybe that’s really as close as anyone gets to another person.
But I don’t think so.
I know much greater closeness is possible. The media is full of close loving relationships far more intimate and interdependent than anything I have known.
And I worry about that. I’ve been alone on this cold little island of mine, touching no one and no one touching me, for almost my entire life.
I’ve never been any closer than friends with anyone, and even my friendships, while precious beyond measure to me, are not the close kind some appear to have.
We enjoy one another’s company and we do things together and we talk and laugh and have a lot of fun, but that’s it.
And I am very worried that it’s no longer possible for anyone to get closer than that to me at all. That if you don’t use your capacity for real connection, it dies off forever and that my lonely little island is all I will ever know.
I could fake closeness, probably. And maybe that would be enough.
Maybe fake love is better than being lonely.
Maybe fake closeness is the best I can hope for. Maybe for me, life can only ever be a performance, a show, because my real heart closed for business a long long time ago and all I can do now is simulate one and then maybe, just maybe, you and I can pretend it’s real for a while and share some imaginary warmth.
There’s probably a song in that somewhere. Hmm.
More after the break.
Brace your heart for warming!
Because this is just about as wonderfully life-affirming as it gets!
I might have posted that to my blog once before. If so, I’m sorry.
But I mean, come on! It’s the story of a man meeting the lioness he raised as a cub on the savannah seven years after they parted ways and now she’s a fully grown lion and she greets him with such evident joy you’d think she was Dino greeting Fred!
How can you not love that?
I should probably put a sentence break in that paragraph but ehh.,
My meaty marinara
Crunched the numbers and found that I had enough slack in my budget to order in, so I am now quite happily stuffed with my beloved Meaty Marinara pasta from Pizza Slut.
I will finally exit this second of two 5 week months a week from now, and my financial ship is just fine. I’m not exactly rolling in dough (any more) but I have money for groceries, Denny’s, and McD’s, and that’s all I need.
So being financially OK and full of meat, I feel pretty good.
I’m happy with how today’s vid turned out. I still long to do things which have a higher production value and/or a more professional look, but for now my eccentric little talking head videos will have to do.
By the time I am done editing a video like today’s I am usually quite tired. So that suggests that at least if it would involve more effort than that, it is not on the table.
Not for now, anyhow.
But who knows, maybe I will stumble upon a formula for high impact low effort content, maybe something with comedy, and be able to up my game that way.
I mean, I have all this comedic genius lying around. Might as well use it for something. I am sure that modern AI tools could help me make another webcomic.
Surely artificial intelligence can handle generating text balloons by now, right?
Or I could do audio skits via one of those AI text to speech sites. Have Mark Rubio argue politics with LBJ to the tune of MacArthur Park or something.
Who knows. It all depends on how many spoons the day gives me.
I’m working on it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.