Imagining Here…Imagining There…Being
Hardly Anywhere
I am here. I’m
nothing here. I shouldn’t be here. I have
stumbled here. Here is where I’m fated to
be. Here it is. It is here. Here I go. Here and now. Now and here. I
hear voices talking about here. The voices say God is here. The
voices say God is not here. Nothing but hearsay. Hearsay about
nothing. Hear about here. Here and there, but it is here that
predominates. Here and here, there and there. Here, here, here. Yet
shouldn’t I be there, not here? My
existence is here, but I want to be there existentially. Here I go
again. And again. Does anyone here hear me? Why am I here in the
first place? Here…
I am there. How can I be in two places
at the same time, without cutting myself in half? Maybe that’s
what Hell is, being two places at the same time and neither place
making a whole lot of sense except during the most inclement weather,
when it’s raining truths, as much as that
hurts one’s body, or the memory of one’s
body. Or it could be Heaven, where you’re
rewarded with two selves in two Heavenly locations, each self lying
to the other, the lies miraculously culminating in sense and the
memory of having been there. There…
I am here and there, a swirling of
discomforting contradictions in search of comforting dilemmas, sleep
as waking, waking as sleep. I do have a recollection of the most
senseful loving kiss imaginable, but I can’t
for the life of me remember if it was here or it was there. That’s
what this attempt to grasp chronology and being must be, locating and
seeing oneself, spatially here and there, trying to imagine the
imaginable, and realizing that the thinking about where I am is what
is most difficult to imagine. Imagining here…
Imagining there…
Being hardly anywhere…
*
The Beginning of an Imaginary
Autobiography
This is my autobiography, begun today
at the crack of dawn, even before I’ve had my first coffee of the
morning or felt my first pang of regret, yet it isn’t chronological
or especially personal and has an awkward coherency. But it’s not
dishonest, even if it may be short on the factual. Basically,
fragments bouncing off fragments like an angry chain reaction in a
far-off lab. I cannot tell you my name because God may be watching
and I do not want to alienate God any more than I already have in my
chaotic, jumbled life. I'm also not going to say whether I'm married
or not, if I have any political affiliation, my favourite breakfast
cereal, even my age, and I'm not going to divulge my religion, or
whether I fear dying or not. Before I get too far into my
autobiography I should mention that I’m imaginary, and don't want
you getting me mixed up with the author. What an uneasy relationship
I have with the author, to say the least. We don't talk, even over
drinks. I like to keep my distance from authors, even the one who has
created me. But all this said, or not said, most or all my
autobiography is a love song, contradictory as that may sound.
Off-key maybe, somewhat strident, but a love song all the same. Yes,
a heartfelt love song of existing.
In my autobiography,
dreams are important, both waking and sleeping. You know, the dream
within a dream within a dream, and then there's a gargantuan
thunderstorm and Zeus thunderbolts wake you but you're already awake,
and you realize by the process of elimination that it’s not a
reality-TV show, or a low-budget feature film, or a controversial
stage play, or even a dreadfully tedious home movie. It's one of
those disjointed days. Along with the dreams, prominent in this
autobiography will be musings and introspection and existential angst
and— Whew, let me pause and take a deep metaphysical breath. A life
lived, that's what this fragmentary exploration is all about. How
many thoughts does a person have in a lifetime? How many words and
regrets and desires and fantasies and apologies? What is the proper
measurement for a life? Where is the consciousness odometer? However,
I'll leave the statistical appraisal to the census takers and score
keepers and those who have perfected systems of keeping track of the
days while incarcerated. Let me continue before I run out of time.
That's one of the dangers about life or writing an imaginary
autobiography—running out of time.
*
Who Would Have Predicted That First Contact Would Have Been Made
as Early as This Winter?
With me yet, of all the planet’s
billions of beings. And during a winter snowstorm that makes it hard
to see much past one’s nose. This
first-hand report isn’t official, of
course, but hard to argue with such face-to-face empirical proof,
even during a snowstorm. Astonishingly, the odd space creature asks
me to reveal my biggest existential disappointment ever. I can’t
deny I’m much more surprised that this
creature pronounced existential beautifully than its odd otherworldly
appearance. After all, I’m a retired
philosophy professor who has the fondest memories of lecturing to
thousands and thousands of undergraduates over the years about
existentialism, which was my beloved academic field of expertise and
research. Enough of dwelling in the memories of a not all that
out-of-the-ordinary life. I’m part of
something transcendently historic in the here and now, and I’m
fumbling for words, but here it goes: Until a few minutes ago, the
winter of my one hundredth year, never meeting an extraterrestrial…