Wishful Thinking
Tue, May 21, 2002 01:38AM -0600
T minus 9 days 6 hours 22 minutes
I would like to say that I'm OK now. I would like to say it, but
it wouldn't be true, not by a long shot, but you can only caper
around and wail like a raving lunatic for so long before you have
to just sit down and brood in silence.
Things insane people ponder as they're wandering through the
juice section of the grocery store:
Beginnings are such arbitrary things, I suppose. So let's say
this all started that fateful July three years ago when I had to
decide what I was going to bring on my 2000 mile sojourn from L.A.
to Chicago. Two boxes, a suitcase, some CDs. Oh, of course, my
computer. Everything I thought I would need for the one year that I
was supposed to stay out here. Everything else (which was mostly
useless trash that I had accumulated as an undergrad) stayed.
Now, I am an incorrigible pack-rat. For the longest time, I
couldn't bear the notion of throwing something away. It was
completely alien to me. I would always let someone else throw it
away for me, that way when I missed it, I always someone to
blame.
But when you have to go somewhere, when you have to do
something, nothing beats being unencumbered. I mean, sure, there's
always the risk of ending up wet because you forget to bring an
umbrella, of being hungry because you forget about food, of
having to go
commando because you forget to pack your underwear, but for the
most part, less is more. They can't steal what you don't have. And
all that shit.
So now I have to do Something--a Quest, if you will--and I
suppose that, despite my aching loneliness, I've had to do a lot of
letting go, especially this year. Maybe not throwing things away in
a material sense. But in retrospect, it seems like I've had to
shave off entire chunks of my soul, possibly things that I need in
order to live a normal life. But at this point in time, perhaps
normalcy is a sheer impossibility.
So back to what I was thinking in the juice section of the
grocery store: It's all a metaphor. Somehow. I have been pondering
Saturn Vs. Those multistage rockets that had to jettison their huge
empty fuel tanks as they pulled out of Earth's gravity well. Until
all that was left was the command module. Suffice it to say, these
things weren't exactly reusable. The ultimate in our disposable
culture.
This is what I feel like: I don't know if you've watched enough
science fiction to want to comprehend this, but sometimes you are
being pursued by enemy spaceships, or perhaps you are fast
approaching some strategic target like the infamous shaft of the
Death Star or maybe the Home Planet of the Bug Beings, and at some
point, you might have to start ejecting things in order to get
light enough in order to get fast enough so that you can do your
dirty work. And in space (except in "Star Trek" and "Star Wars"
and, I suppose, in any fictional universe that has mastered
nanotechnology and the skill of turning energy into matter),
because it's such an effort to make things out of raw materials
pulled out of gravity wells like planets and such, there is
something of a rationale for installing the bare minimum in
spaceships. So when you actually eject something, it tends to be
something important, and its importance is usually proportional to
how badly you want to get to your target. Often times, it's the
auxillary life support, because you figure your chance of surviving
before hitting the target is pretty slim, much less the
chance of actually surving after hitting the target and
requiring auxillary life support. Sometimes you toss the FTL
(faster-than-light) engine (e.g., the warp drive, the hyperdrive,
the worm hole generator, etc.) because odds are you won't be making
the trip back home on your own power anyway. In really specific
cases you might eject the AI and its cybernetic core since you want
to do something that the AI has been expressly programmed to
prevent you from doing. My point is that at some point you end up
throwing away something that, in normal circumstances, you would
actually probably consider as necessary.
And my point being is this: I feel like I am approaching that
strategic target, also known as the USMLE Step 1. In retrospect, somewhat
pathetically, this is the end point of these past three years out
here in the Midwest, and since none of my hopes, dreams, plans, or
schemes really panned out, it is now apparently the end-all-be-all
of my existence. Everything remaining in my universe is somehow
geared to it, whether I wish it or not.
So I think I've dropped all my stages already. They're already
burning up in re-entry. I've even ended up having to toss out the
auxillary life support and the extra spacesuit. I chucked three of
the four iron-core onboard computers too. All that's left is my
command module floating around in orbit, loaded with nothing much
but the neutron bombs I'm supposed to drop on my target. It's so
peaceful up here in LEO. You can see everything.
And I realize the thing with dropping bombs is that there comes
a point where you have to commit. Eventually you get to a point in
your dive that even if you do try to pull up, all that's going to
happen is that you'll stall, and then you're full of holes from the
anti-aircraft guns. So when you fall, it's all the way, baby. The
point of no return.
But honestly, I don't think the USMLE has got all that much
firepower. I'll probably take some hits, but I'm pretty sure that
I'll pass, that I'll survive the mission. I mean, I know I
shouldn't think too far into the future, I really shouldn't think
about what happens after the test, but all I can really hope for is
that I'll get rescued pretty soon afterwards. Because without those
huge fuel tanks, my range of motion becomes seriously limited, and
like I said, I have thrown out my auxillary life
support.
OK. So maybe this wasn't the slickest of metaphors. I'm not
ashamed to admit that, given my currently less-than-human state,
I'm really not at the top of my game. All I've got left right now
is not much, just enough to propel me through these last days until
I do what I need to do. Beyond that, who knows. What can I say.
Deep down inside, I'm hoping for that rescue. Although I know I
shouldn't count on it.
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