Lunacy

 
  <<reverse · index · beginning  
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.

e-mail: aswang@earthlink.net

The design for this page was adapted from Mark Olson's design Retooled, which can be found at Open Source Web Design. Download the sample page.