“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter,” quoth Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.
Well, the crude matter doesn’t seem to give a shit about that.
All the tortured writings that have littered these pages, they come from the one organ of the body that believes itself to be independent of the others. And those of us inclined to find our bodies to be more cumbersome than a brain case should ideally be will readily ingest the fiction that mind triumphs over matter.
And of course it doesn’t. There is not a single intelligence which death, matter’s enforcer, has not or will not eventually snuff out. All claims to the contrary are at best contrived and at worst delusional. The works of the mind may live beyond man’s years, but for how long? Ask one Gordon Sumner:
They say a city in the desert lies
The vanity of an ancient king
The city lies in broken pieces
And the wind blows, and the vultures sing
These are the works of man
This is the sum of our ambition…
Matter has been very much on my mind these past two days, for an accident of chemistry has rendered me suddenly, inexplicably happy.
Awake and fretful on Saturday night, I took one of my wife’s melatonin supplements, figuring at the very least it couldn’t hurt. Sunday morning, though lacking a full night’s sleep, I arose feeling an immense calm, a sense that everything was, somehow, going to be all right. I spent the day with my son, with the usual mix of fun and child-wrangling stress, but no matter the conflicts, I never once gave way to despair. I simply enjoyed my son’s company, and took comfort in his happiness.
Anyone who’s read my previous writings will note their stark contrast with the above paragraph. My mind could hardly believe it. Happy? What the hell is that?
So I tried it again last night, and though my body is aware that I still didn’t get enough sleep, I do not currently hold that mustard seed of despair in my heart, threatening to bloom at the slightest provocation. But for Pete’s sake, where did it go?
It would both elate and enrage me if all this time, I had simply been suffering from a melatonin shortage. Of course, that would certainly not be the whole thing. I likely did need my recent surgery, and had legitimate recovery issues subsequently. Other medications I am currently taking are also helping, as Aimee Mann would say, to bring me up to zero.
And really, that’s what I’ve been striving for in recent memory. Not superhuman health, just regular human. Hovering a notch below that level is maddening, and demoralizing. Normal functionality is right there, almost within your grasp, but surrounded by a thin, impenetrable membrane that is nonetheless clear enough for you to see exactly what you’re missing.
I’ve been further down, of course, and so I haven’t complained as much as I might have. In those times when normal life is unfathomably distant, when you’re locked in an underground bunker of pain and disorientation, there is no complaining. Only begging your body and all beings real and imaginary to make it stop. I have no interest in going back to that place, and I retain enough vestigial superstition to therefore refrain from overdramatizing small-p pain.
But look at what such tiny troubles have wrought. My entire marriage thrown into a crashing wreck simply because the organs in my body were not receiving enough of a given chemical. It’s beyond offensive. It’s grotesque.
We are puppets on strings. The old ones were right, we do not fully control our destiny. But the gods are neither lumbering Titan nor ethereal sage nor undead father-confessor. They are indescribably tiny. They inhabit the space between spaces, and they govern our lives as surely as salt governs the taste of soup. We are their works, not the other way around.
So, my tiny masters, might I ask one favor? This feeling I have, that it’s all going to be okay, could you just keep that setting turned on? I promise, I’ll give you what you crave, just don’t send me back to the other side of that funhouse mirror. Pretty please.
I think therefore I am, my ass…
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