Through The Wire, Part I (Redeemer)

Part I of III in a short story series entitled "Through the Wire."

---Smoke wafted toward the ceiling like thin blue tendrils, clogging the fluorescent light with its toxic hue. The work lay out before him on the table in a fashion unbecoming of a productive time. A pen scribbled furiously in one hand, the other propping up his head with a cigarette between his fingers. He gave a little sigh. He took another long drag, exhaling to watch his smoke billow across the glow of the computer monitor. The girl wasn’t on the wire. The girl he once loved. It was love that was slowly deadened inside his heart. There was love across those wires, in the air and over the sea. He remembered it fondly as if it happened yesterday and many years ago. He knew he would love again – through those wires – but it was a matter of time, a matter of will. Then his mind wandered. He found himself walking into that citadel again.

Stepping into his private plasterboard cathedral, she was sitting there on the bed. Glasses perched on the end of her button nose, auburn hair tousled down to her shoulders, sea green eyes glistening in the sickly glow of the television screen. Sweetly smiling, he sidled up to her.

“Juanita, baby,” he whispered into her ear.

The hairs on the back of both their necks raised on their ends. Juanita could feel his hand stroke up her side and towards her neck as he planted his lips just below her ear. Juanita closed her eyes and smiled.

“Mmm, yeah. I was waiting for you to get back.”

“Not a moment too soon, hey.” he laughed.

He could feel her hands clutch at the back of his long, thick hair, fingers furrowing through them as he kissed down her neck and caressed the length of her thigh. A wince of pleasure pressed against his ear as Juanita’s hands slipped downward, struggling to open the buckle of his pants. Inserting his hand into her top, he fiddled with the clasp of her bra until she pushed him away and quickly ripped her shirt off. He did the same. Embracing with a calamitous burst of energy, they writhed together in ecstasy until Juanita’s eyes glossed over with passion. She threw him down on the bed, ripping open his fly, urging those flimsy sheaths away. Like a woman possessed, her tongue gently slithered down his torso, head bobbing towards his crotch, her hand sliding up from his knee and across his thigh until…

He woke up with a start. The work was staring back at him and his memories were slowly receding into the background. He gave a little sigh. Where was she now? The wire had been severed and so had that love. She loved another and it was not him. There would be another wire...

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Cont.

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What do you know?

"How do we know what we know?" was a question posed by psychologist and Palo Alto Mental Research Institute member Paul Watzlawick (working with such prestigious alumnus as Gregory Bateson, Virginia Satir and Jay Haley) in a book he edited with a similar title.

So, how do we separate inferences and biases from our map-making or ideation of the world?

Consider an artist meeting a group of people. One works as an electrician, another as an accountant, the third a graphic designer. Introducing himself as well as his occupation, the abstraction process begins almost instantly. The electrician and the accountant, unfamiliar with art figure he is a painter of portraits. The designer, however, cannot accept his abstraction so easily and make a reversal of order and thus probes further. Suddenly, it is revealed that the artist sculpts figures from stone. What we seldom achieve is the self-awareness to ask ourselves how we arrive at our conclusions. Is it intensional assumption or extensional reasoning by way of evidence and testing?

If the accountant and electrician had not gone further in their inquiry they would only have partial knowledge of the artist's extensional occupation - they would have the word the artist used to describe himself and no other real, concrete knowledge. Their maps would be incomplete, shaded by unconscious biases and internal referential indexes based on what they had encountered previously, not in the present moment. Of course, artist₁ is not artist₂, yet it seems awfully convenient to coddle together all artists into an indeterminate class to save on time and mental energy.

I ask the question; does a culture that demands instant gratification inevitably demand the dissolution of knowledge into the manageable and familiar, possibly restricting the range and probity of thought and inquiry?

If expediency breeds increased probability for error, as has been demonstrated in so many cases, could the same lust for rapidity erode maps, distorting them to such a degree that it impairs sane and rational judgment? We are all guilty of this and oftentimes it leads us into despair and ruin. I would implore all people to use their nature's gift of self-reflection and self-awareness to avoid such semantic and symbolic traps and to use their nervous systems and the nervous systems of others for the greatest outcome. How? By routinely asking questions and (almost) never staying satisfied with the first answer you get.

In the words of Robert Anton Wilson: "Doubt. Doubt that you have doubted enough. Doubt your doubts." Never take anything on its face value; the world is infinitely complex and in constant flux; those that attempt to answer simply and definitely we should be especially skeptical of.

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A Static Flame

Looking around this society of ours, we have become so preoccupied with time and its forward motion we have become afraid of its very existence. In one respect, we in Western countries have strode headlong into a complete disavowal of change. We fear it, we reject it and we try to cover it up to the best of our ability.

As Marcus Aurelius said in his Meditations, "The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." We sell bottles of anti-change, we charge money to keep change at bay and we legislate change away in parliament.

In my view, I feel that the fear of change is another source and cause of so much misery and discontentment for so many people. They fail to recognize the only constant is the thoughts of the self and his actions and those too are subject to change. People jump unabashedly into work, into relationships and into commitments that prevent or minimize the chances of change. People foolishly believe that some institutions are forever; that once one problem has been solved, it cannot resurface in another guise as it evidently does in many cases.

Politicians are even scrambling to cover up the fact that change is inevitable; they use scientists with dubious rationality to insist that climate change is a myth; there is no credible reason for things to constantly change, even at the submicroscopic level. Just like a belief in God, they believe that humanity has no agency for change; all is predetermined, all will reveal itself in God's own time. This divine control is filtered down into religion, into politics and even into households that follow the words of God, Allah and Yahweh.

So we attempt to control change and re-label it progress. Like unconscious Marxists, we believe that progress towards higher standards of living and technology will lead us into utopia. With all changes, there are winners and losers. We focus on minimizing harm rather than maximizing utility associated with change; we irrationally suppress all change just in case something bad happens.

And shit does happen; it happens to every one, some more frequently than others. Sometimes shit happening allows us to learn and lead us in a new direction. To embrace that rather than shy away from it is the challenge we must all face. To recognize a life in four dimensions can still lead to one of fulfillment and happiness is the one change I believe that everyone should make.

What was once a great love is now deadened; what was once a routine hobby lies in the corner of a room. There's change everywhere; its ultimately up to the individual whether he stands amongst it or walks along with it, tempering it to his own needs.

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