Pieces Part Twenty-Eight
Dec. 28th, 2007 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
measured_wordsOther Pieces
In an effort to keep myself more on track, I have drawn up a list of priorities for myself:
Anna
Danny
My own mental and emotional health. My independence.
I’m stuck there. There are other things I care about, but I’m not certain how to express them. I don’t care about, or care to be involved in, the Technocracy’s War on reality. It is misguided, and unwinnable – even more than the war on drugs, or the more recent war on terror. And equally supported by lies and hidden agendas… I’m not convinced they aren’t linked, at that. And yet, as Xi would like me to recall, there are factions out there that represent real evil on a scale which most people could never fathom. Not and retain any semblance of sanity. I’ve seen too much to think of the world in terms of black and white, but also too much not to acknowledge that the spectrum really does have its extremes. I’m not sure I accept the linearality of that analogy, but it serves. There is evil out there – should I only care when it threatens the people and ideals that I personally value?
I am, in theory, capable of helping. In practice, I might not be in a fit state to do so. Or, maybe my emotional issues are only hampering me on a personal level. Maybe the only way out of this grey muddle is to strive towards the other end of the spectrum, to return to my earlier unsatisfactory analogy, and regain some certainty or sense of purpose. But where do I look from here? What guide do I have to steer me towards a moral code that I could embrace and endorse? From where I stand, everything is blurred; distorted.
Maybe there is another analogy. Imagine a circle, or even a sphere. The outside circumference represents certainty. Each two dimensional point represents a different ideology. Draw a bisecting line through the circle, or sphere, and you find an opposing ideology. That is your axis of good and evil, maybe it just isn’t the only one. And most people aren’t standing o the outside – they’re somewhere in the middle, and it is hard to find the edge, because all the crossing lines, all the conflicting ideas, are so dense and confusing. It’s hard to find any certainly, because the circle is really just a slice of the sphere – that’s how many different ways there are to go. It just complicates things further, so that you find yourself straying into paths, debates, and philosophies you’d never imagined… I don’t know that it is any better, but it serves to demonstrate my confusion. The more you know – maybe the closer you get to the center – the harder it is to move at all.
And here I am, immobilized. I set myself a goal, I give myself some value to strive for, and still I question. Is this right for me? Is this right for them? This other path seems simpler, maybe, but even from where I am now I can foresee that the quandaries I’d face if I followed Xi wouldn’t be any easier to cope with.
The phone rings, disrupting my fruitless philosophizing, and my attention is drawn back to my surroundings. I am in my living room. The television is on, showing a preview of the ten o’clock news, but there is no sound. I can hear Alita moving around upstairs, and the neighbor’s dog barking outside. The phone, which has lain untouched for days, sits in its cradle on the ledge separating this room from the kitchen. I rise to retrieve it, but I can feel an increase in my heart rate. Anxiety or anticipation? Or some unknown motivator which could help me break free of this inertia? I answer.
“Hello.”
“Daniel?”
I feel cold, but my heart is still beating fast. I wish that I could move past this, and be pleased instead of anxious to hear from her. Perhaps that is too much to ask considering our last encounter. “Hello Anna.” I realize that the pause before my response lasted a moment too long.
“I, uh, I thought maybe it was time we talked again.” She’s steeled herself fro this conversation, and I can hear her forced determination. It’s shallow, and fragile, and I could break it if I chose. Part of me would like to, just to delay the inevitable a little while longer, but mostly I don’t dare to push her away. Someone else, someone more like Xi or Victor, could probably use the vulnerability I hear behind the steel to draw her closer. Would I, if I could, manipulate her that way? What’s the difference between that, and just making her feel the way I want her to? I need to be honest: we both deserve that. “Alright. You’re right. I don’t know where to start.”
“Its okay, I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot. I kept waiting for you to call, but grant kept saying that he didn’t think you would. I thought he… Well, it doesn’t matter. I guess he was right.”
“Anna-“ I try to interject, but she cuts me off.
“No. Don’t. I need you to listen now, please. There are things I need to know, and I want you to… Be honest, please. It’s hard, I understand. You have a hard time talking about it, yes. But you have to. I need you to try, so that I can make some hard decisions about my life.”
She pauses. I’m not sure if she is just collecting her thoughts, or if she wants me to answer. “Alright,” I repeat, to fill the air. I will try, though I’m not at all clear what she wants me to say.
“What are you, Daniel? I know you’re not normal, and I know there are other kinds of, ah, people, or creatures in the world. Grant said you might be some kind of wizard, but what does that mean?”
Grant. Of course. Everything she knows will no doubt be filtered through her family – whatever they have decided to tell her, coloured with their own biases and agendas. “I’m not sure I can explain.” Thinking of the sphere, I’m not sure I really understand.
“Please try.” I can’t squander the chance she is giving me here. But what can I say that she’ll understand and accept?
“There are people in the world who can change the rules, or at least bend them, to suit their understanding of what should be possible.”
“How? Just sort of… Will to power?”
“In a sense. Usually it is channeled through a focused belief in some specific world view, or a belief that they have access to some specialized knowledge or technology.” I have thought a lot about this – trying to balance the biased view held and taught by the Technocracy with my own experiences and observations.
“What do *you* believe, then?” Her tone says that she is curious but critical – wary still.
“I’m not sure, Anna. My perspective has changed a lot.”
“You don’t seem to know much about anything lately, Daniel.”
“I’m sorry.” Her frustration only echoes my own, but I’m sure that is small comfort.
“I know.” There I a moment’s silence, but I’m not sure what I should say at this point. I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, I’ll just repeat myself. Maybe she needs the silence. Finally, she breaks it. “What happened to you?”
It is such a loaded question, with so many different possible answers, and so many nuanced variations to each! Overwhelming, for both of us. It can’t be grasped as a whole, only broken in to pieces. Where can I start? Something to build on – something to give her some grasp of the magnitude of everything I’ve seen, thought, and done. “I went to another world.” It’s a start. I can sense her surprise from here. Should I push this? I think I have to. “There was a war….” But then what? “It was complicated. It made me question a lot of things.” Once again, the silence lingers. “Anna?”
“I guess… That is a lot. To go through, I mean. To think about. And you’re still questioning things.”
“I told you. It’s complicated.”
“You’re right.” She is rallying, recovering. I hope my last response didn’t sound too much like a cop out, but of course she hasn’t forgotten what brought us to this conversation. Although I recognize that it is better to continue now, rather than for her to leave with only more questions and more time to doubt, I’m running out of energy. But it is better to try and build a more solid foundation for the future. I’ll just have to sustain this as long as I can. But how do I pick this up? Why is it so hard to translate everything that is in my head to words?
“Daniel?”
“I’m trying to make a place here, for me. But you’re he only anchor that I can trust, Anna.” I don’t know if I already had a headache and I am only noticing it now, or if it is just blossoming freshly, but I can feel it, and auras of light dance at the edges of my vision. I lean back against the wall. Everything seems sharper. Why is it that whenever I have these little breakthroughs, there is such a strong physical manifestation? At least I am still in control now – I can feel that sharply as well. I push aside the pain. “But I now, it isn’t simple at all.” My voice sounds stringer, clearer. “There are things going on with you, with your people… Everything turns grey.” It’s the sphere; I just need to hold on, to not get lost in the mist. Anna is a good person. Whatever else happens, whatever does or doesn’t remain between us, I trust that absolutely.
“Is that why you asked about Alan Tanaka?”
“Yes.” Because things are going on, yes. Not because of the grey, but I don’t know if she’s followed me there.
“I don’t know him – not well. But Grant does.”
“I thought so.”
“Then what happened?”
“That’s harder to explain.” Can I take myself back to that moment with any safe distance? I have to. This, more than anything else, is what she wants to know about. She wants to feel safe.
“You were upset. I can see, that if you though maybe, I don’t know, that I’d set you up for something… Really, I know. I know you…” She hesitates there. She’s almost as uncertain as I am, on top of being confused and frustrated. But is it with me? “I know that Grant doesn’t trust you. Maybe it’s the same on your end. No one has really told me anything, so I can’t say. You were upset. That I understand. But I *felt you here*.”
“I wasn’t thinking.” It was a reaction I was barely conscious of, and a poor one. It was dangerous and stupid. “I should never have done that.”
“And then it all went cold, and my head hurt…”
Of course. “I’m so sorry.” I’m pulling back. I sound flat and insincere. As though any emotional distance I reach for now can possibly help. But maybe she does know me well enough now to understand.
“I was scared, and then worried about you. I tried to get a hold of you…” And Victor answered. “And then I was angry. You keep saying that you know this isn’t easy for me, but I don’t know that you do. I don’t know that you can.”
Is that fair? I suppose it is. “You’re right. I don’t know very much about your situation now.” I could have looked in to it, but I don’t trust any of the avenues of investigation open to me.
“You could have asked me, Daniel.” Is she reading my mind now?
“Maybe I should.” How can I only see now how utterly self-absorbed I have been?
“Why don’t you?”
“This line isn’t secure.” Its true, I am not hiding. It wouldnt’ be safe for her to divulge that kind of information to me this way, although I know how weak it sounds. How much like an excuse. I’m fairly sure it isn’t. "Would you meet me somewhere?”
“Are you up for that? A serious face-to-face discussion?”
Do I have any other real options? I don’t know if I am any more ready face her in person that I have been in the past. “It seems I need to be.”
“…Alright.”
“I will let you know where, and when.”
In an effort to keep myself more on track, I have drawn up a list of priorities for myself:
Anna
Danny
My own mental and emotional health. My independence.
I’m stuck there. There are other things I care about, but I’m not certain how to express them. I don’t care about, or care to be involved in, the Technocracy’s War on reality. It is misguided, and unwinnable – even more than the war on drugs, or the more recent war on terror. And equally supported by lies and hidden agendas… I’m not convinced they aren’t linked, at that. And yet, as Xi would like me to recall, there are factions out there that represent real evil on a scale which most people could never fathom. Not and retain any semblance of sanity. I’ve seen too much to think of the world in terms of black and white, but also too much not to acknowledge that the spectrum really does have its extremes. I’m not sure I accept the linearality of that analogy, but it serves. There is evil out there – should I only care when it threatens the people and ideals that I personally value?
I am, in theory, capable of helping. In practice, I might not be in a fit state to do so. Or, maybe my emotional issues are only hampering me on a personal level. Maybe the only way out of this grey muddle is to strive towards the other end of the spectrum, to return to my earlier unsatisfactory analogy, and regain some certainty or sense of purpose. But where do I look from here? What guide do I have to steer me towards a moral code that I could embrace and endorse? From where I stand, everything is blurred; distorted.
Maybe there is another analogy. Imagine a circle, or even a sphere. The outside circumference represents certainty. Each two dimensional point represents a different ideology. Draw a bisecting line through the circle, or sphere, and you find an opposing ideology. That is your axis of good and evil, maybe it just isn’t the only one. And most people aren’t standing o the outside – they’re somewhere in the middle, and it is hard to find the edge, because all the crossing lines, all the conflicting ideas, are so dense and confusing. It’s hard to find any certainly, because the circle is really just a slice of the sphere – that’s how many different ways there are to go. It just complicates things further, so that you find yourself straying into paths, debates, and philosophies you’d never imagined… I don’t know that it is any better, but it serves to demonstrate my confusion. The more you know – maybe the closer you get to the center – the harder it is to move at all.
And here I am, immobilized. I set myself a goal, I give myself some value to strive for, and still I question. Is this right for me? Is this right for them? This other path seems simpler, maybe, but even from where I am now I can foresee that the quandaries I’d face if I followed Xi wouldn’t be any easier to cope with.
The phone rings, disrupting my fruitless philosophizing, and my attention is drawn back to my surroundings. I am in my living room. The television is on, showing a preview of the ten o’clock news, but there is no sound. I can hear Alita moving around upstairs, and the neighbor’s dog barking outside. The phone, which has lain untouched for days, sits in its cradle on the ledge separating this room from the kitchen. I rise to retrieve it, but I can feel an increase in my heart rate. Anxiety or anticipation? Or some unknown motivator which could help me break free of this inertia? I answer.
“Hello.”
“Daniel?”
I feel cold, but my heart is still beating fast. I wish that I could move past this, and be pleased instead of anxious to hear from her. Perhaps that is too much to ask considering our last encounter. “Hello Anna.” I realize that the pause before my response lasted a moment too long.
“I, uh, I thought maybe it was time we talked again.” She’s steeled herself fro this conversation, and I can hear her forced determination. It’s shallow, and fragile, and I could break it if I chose. Part of me would like to, just to delay the inevitable a little while longer, but mostly I don’t dare to push her away. Someone else, someone more like Xi or Victor, could probably use the vulnerability I hear behind the steel to draw her closer. Would I, if I could, manipulate her that way? What’s the difference between that, and just making her feel the way I want her to? I need to be honest: we both deserve that. “Alright. You’re right. I don’t know where to start.”
“Its okay, I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot. I kept waiting for you to call, but grant kept saying that he didn’t think you would. I thought he… Well, it doesn’t matter. I guess he was right.”
“Anna-“ I try to interject, but she cuts me off.
“No. Don’t. I need you to listen now, please. There are things I need to know, and I want you to… Be honest, please. It’s hard, I understand. You have a hard time talking about it, yes. But you have to. I need you to try, so that I can make some hard decisions about my life.”
She pauses. I’m not sure if she is just collecting her thoughts, or if she wants me to answer. “Alright,” I repeat, to fill the air. I will try, though I’m not at all clear what she wants me to say.
“What are you, Daniel? I know you’re not normal, and I know there are other kinds of, ah, people, or creatures in the world. Grant said you might be some kind of wizard, but what does that mean?”
Grant. Of course. Everything she knows will no doubt be filtered through her family – whatever they have decided to tell her, coloured with their own biases and agendas. “I’m not sure I can explain.” Thinking of the sphere, I’m not sure I really understand.
“Please try.” I can’t squander the chance she is giving me here. But what can I say that she’ll understand and accept?
“There are people in the world who can change the rules, or at least bend them, to suit their understanding of what should be possible.”
“How? Just sort of… Will to power?”
“In a sense. Usually it is channeled through a focused belief in some specific world view, or a belief that they have access to some specialized knowledge or technology.” I have thought a lot about this – trying to balance the biased view held and taught by the Technocracy with my own experiences and observations.
“What do *you* believe, then?” Her tone says that she is curious but critical – wary still.
“I’m not sure, Anna. My perspective has changed a lot.”
“You don’t seem to know much about anything lately, Daniel.”
“I’m sorry.” Her frustration only echoes my own, but I’m sure that is small comfort.
“I know.” There I a moment’s silence, but I’m not sure what I should say at this point. I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, I’ll just repeat myself. Maybe she needs the silence. Finally, she breaks it. “What happened to you?”
It is such a loaded question, with so many different possible answers, and so many nuanced variations to each! Overwhelming, for both of us. It can’t be grasped as a whole, only broken in to pieces. Where can I start? Something to build on – something to give her some grasp of the magnitude of everything I’ve seen, thought, and done. “I went to another world.” It’s a start. I can sense her surprise from here. Should I push this? I think I have to. “There was a war….” But then what? “It was complicated. It made me question a lot of things.” Once again, the silence lingers. “Anna?”
“I guess… That is a lot. To go through, I mean. To think about. And you’re still questioning things.”
“I told you. It’s complicated.”
“You’re right.” She is rallying, recovering. I hope my last response didn’t sound too much like a cop out, but of course she hasn’t forgotten what brought us to this conversation. Although I recognize that it is better to continue now, rather than for her to leave with only more questions and more time to doubt, I’m running out of energy. But it is better to try and build a more solid foundation for the future. I’ll just have to sustain this as long as I can. But how do I pick this up? Why is it so hard to translate everything that is in my head to words?
“Daniel?”
“I’m trying to make a place here, for me. But you’re he only anchor that I can trust, Anna.” I don’t know if I already had a headache and I am only noticing it now, or if it is just blossoming freshly, but I can feel it, and auras of light dance at the edges of my vision. I lean back against the wall. Everything seems sharper. Why is it that whenever I have these little breakthroughs, there is such a strong physical manifestation? At least I am still in control now – I can feel that sharply as well. I push aside the pain. “But I now, it isn’t simple at all.” My voice sounds stringer, clearer. “There are things going on with you, with your people… Everything turns grey.” It’s the sphere; I just need to hold on, to not get lost in the mist. Anna is a good person. Whatever else happens, whatever does or doesn’t remain between us, I trust that absolutely.
“Is that why you asked about Alan Tanaka?”
“Yes.” Because things are going on, yes. Not because of the grey, but I don’t know if she’s followed me there.
“I don’t know him – not well. But Grant does.”
“I thought so.”
“Then what happened?”
“That’s harder to explain.” Can I take myself back to that moment with any safe distance? I have to. This, more than anything else, is what she wants to know about. She wants to feel safe.
“You were upset. I can see, that if you though maybe, I don’t know, that I’d set you up for something… Really, I know. I know you…” She hesitates there. She’s almost as uncertain as I am, on top of being confused and frustrated. But is it with me? “I know that Grant doesn’t trust you. Maybe it’s the same on your end. No one has really told me anything, so I can’t say. You were upset. That I understand. But I *felt you here*.”
“I wasn’t thinking.” It was a reaction I was barely conscious of, and a poor one. It was dangerous and stupid. “I should never have done that.”
“And then it all went cold, and my head hurt…”
Of course. “I’m so sorry.” I’m pulling back. I sound flat and insincere. As though any emotional distance I reach for now can possibly help. But maybe she does know me well enough now to understand.
“I was scared, and then worried about you. I tried to get a hold of you…” And Victor answered. “And then I was angry. You keep saying that you know this isn’t easy for me, but I don’t know that you do. I don’t know that you can.”
Is that fair? I suppose it is. “You’re right. I don’t know very much about your situation now.” I could have looked in to it, but I don’t trust any of the avenues of investigation open to me.
“You could have asked me, Daniel.” Is she reading my mind now?
“Maybe I should.” How can I only see now how utterly self-absorbed I have been?
“Why don’t you?”
“This line isn’t secure.” Its true, I am not hiding. It wouldnt’ be safe for her to divulge that kind of information to me this way, although I know how weak it sounds. How much like an excuse. I’m fairly sure it isn’t. "Would you meet me somewhere?”
“Are you up for that? A serious face-to-face discussion?”
Do I have any other real options? I don’t know if I am any more ready face her in person that I have been in the past. “It seems I need to be.”
“…Alright.”
“I will let you know where, and when.”
