more paranoid imaginings
This "it's just a coke" entry in D.'s journal made me think of another one of my split-second paranoid imaginings. D. is contemplating his own motivations, decisions, free will, etc. about something he had an impulse to do: drink a soda.
I have D.'s neurotic worry-bug, or maybe as a buddhist he would describe it as something like "attachment", but anyway I do that too. I respect him for not making arbitrary rules. That level of confusion over free will I can usually handle. The hard to handle part is the imaginary decision.
The other day in SF driving around I was stuck in traffic next to some tall buildings. I had just eaten lunch. The thoughts went something like this:
"There could be an earthquake and those skyscrapers would fall on my truck in such a way that I would be trapped in the rubble yet unharmed. It would be clear I would have to wait for rescuers to lift off the giant chunks of concrete. What is in my car that I could eat? And what if, from stress, I threw up? I'd have to decide whether to eat the vomit or not. If I ate it, how disgusting, I can't even think about it. But what if I didn't eat it, and then 3 days later, was forced to eat the now dried and rotting barf? Maybe it would be better to just eat it right away. But then if rescued pretty quickly I'd feel stupid. Then would I tell people I had done it? Or not?"All this NOT from an impulse to act, or a need to decide, but a sort of phantom impulse, the future ghost of a phantom decision. When it is a decision like "In what manner will I gracefully accept my Nobel Prize?" then it's fun, if slightly embarrassing. Earthquakes and wars, cannibalism and such, are less fun and usually end in me thinking, "Why the fuck am I thinking this?"
One tearful, freaky night of my pregnancy, just before jhk went to the South Pole, I believe I made him promise that if we were in a plane crash in Antarctica, and I died, he would eat me in order to survive. The liver and lights are the most nutritious bits. This, despite the fact that I wasn't going to Antarctica at all.
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