Pigsflew.com

If anyone noticed, my away messages have been slightly erratic since i went to bed yesterday night. It was a circular story in three parts, that I kinda wrote on the fly. If you want to, you can read it Here:

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Some things you just know. Like how you just know something’s wrong when you find yourself lying face up in the snow on the sidewalk, and you can’t remember how you got there. Someone was shouting at me but I couldn’t hear them. I watched her mouth form the words, “Wake up.”
“wake up, Adrian.”
“Fuck you,” I say, as loud as I can though no words pass my lips. Wasn’t she the one who abandoned me? Why did it have to be her of all people who could help me. She was trying to pull me off the ground now, and my hearing comes back.
“We’ve got to get him to UHS.” It’s not Kelley though, this time it’s Sarah. Her I don’t mind owing. Except they drop me. I’m in the snow again, my leg… Ah, my leg… If I sleep, i’ll die.

I sleep.

—-

–And I awaken, but not, it seems, on a street. There was no street, no Kelley, no Sarah, no injury, no pain at all, except a mild stinging on my arms; the wind in my face after walking down from my room, headed for work. The sting isn’t the wind. But it’s a sign that I have triumphed, won over my own impulses; that I can feel that stinging simply means I’m still here.

But am I ever sure it’s a triumph and not a failure?

—-

I’m headed down the hill again and I pause at that place I had just (not?) been,  lying in the snow. The ringing in my head is unbearable. I stood on the corner  looking from one end of the street to another, my arms stinging in the cold, my  unshaved whiskers freezing to my face. It was only a moment too late that the  ringing in my head was replaced by a more familiar sound, an external sound, the  sound of a horn being blasted from… too close. I spun on my heels to see the  white toyota losing its grip on the road. Unable to steer, the truck was headed  straight for me. No time for anything except to brace myself, which I did,  throwing up my arms in less a planned stroke than a moment of frustrated panic,  wanting to scream but finding myself too scared to scream, too scared to move,  and suddenly I’m flying, upwards, backwards, I don’t know which direction but it  isn’t by choice and it sure as hell isn’t getting me any closer to my comfy booth  at OIT. I land face up in the snow and lift my head enough to see the pickup  finally grab some traction. It throws itself back onto the road and doesn’t stop  moving until it’s out of sight, but so is everything, fading and blurring as my  head drops once again into the snow.

It could be over. It could end. The knife is in my hand. I don’t have to wait for  someone to come. I don’t have to forget. I can stay here.

What was I saying?

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It’s not bad. Not great, but it was what I wanted to write, i think. Sorta. The last part i had to cut a lot from for the away message because it was about 500 characters over the max. Oh well. I do recognize that the voice is patchy and i switch between past- and present- tense, but i couldn’t get it to sound right by sticking to one, it was only more awkward. So I decided to do whatever I want. ::shrugs:: whatever.

~tchau

My day sucked. It’s really kinda difficult to explain, but I’ll give it a try.

I woke up this morning with a ringing in my ears like none i’d ever experienced. I’d say it had to be on par with the top ten worst hangovers ever, even though i’ve never had an alcohol-induced hangover. But as soon as the ringing subsided, i noted that there was an “other” presence in my head. I could feel it there. Who are you? I asked it. It did not respond. I decided to ignore it for a moment as I realized it was 7am and I had class at 8. I prepared myself to move–and remained in bed. Test one, the Other said.

I couldn’t move at all. What was going on? Had my muscles completely gone to jelly? I ran an internal diagnostic. All systems report greenlight. I attempted to move again. It didn’t work. It felt, actually, as though I was completely enclosed in a space that was no larger than the area of my own body. I began trying to understand what was going on. For some reason a physics phrase came to mind: “An Object at rest tends to stay at rest.” But this didn’t help because I knew that while the sum of my parts were on average at rest, the internal bits and pieces of me were in constant motion and changing direction (thereby accelerating) and because of this, my body was never truly “at rest.”

Why then, couldn’t I move? Another diagnostic check. Still reporting normally. Perhaps I can’t move, not because I’m not moving, but because I can’t move. Warmer, the Other said. Perhaps I was truly trapped inside a bubble of myself; because I can’t possibly occupy more space than I occupy at any given time, can I? And If I don’t have any more space to occupy than the space I occupy, how could I possibly move?! Bingo, Other said. But I still couldn’t move. Understanding the situation was one thing. I had to figure out how to get out of it.

It was an interesting paradox, but time was ticking and I had to get to class. Time! That was the key. Motion doesn’t deny the fact that I’m completely motionless at any given instant in time, it is just the tracking of differences of position over many instants in time. A decent answer. Other said, and I was suddenly able to move again. An interesting thing I noted was that from now on, if my parents ever asked me to “Get over here this instant,” I could quite accurately respond, “I can’t!” Because even in calculus, an instantaneous velocity is the value of a limit as the amount of time between two measurements approaches–but never reaches–zero.

Oh man, you would not believe how worried i was that i’d miss my class. But my troubles weren’t over. Once in class, I was quite frankly surprised by how unprepared, and how… well, to say it bluntly, unqualified Professor Utgoff seemed. He spent almost half the class attempting to figure out how to use his own computer, the screen projectors, the simple one-button projector, that he barely said anything useful at all. Needless to say, I was stunned. But at last he figured out the projector and asked me to turn out the lights.

Simple task, right? Wrong, the Other said, Test Two.

The lights wouldn’t turn off. I flipped the switch as far down as it would go, but they did not turn off. In fact when I noticed that the lights weren’t off, I also noticed that the lightswitch remained squarely at on! I tried again, and again, and nothing happened. “Sir, I believe this lightswitch is faulty.”

“That’s impossible, Adrian. The lights are on, just turn them off.” What the heck was going on?! I guess I had to think it through once again. Ok, so the lightswitch wasn’t moving. This was the issue. It wasn’t stuck, it wasn’t broken, and my arm is definately strong enough to push it. Why then?

Because I couldn’t move it? You’re catching on. Ok, so I can’t get the switch to the bottom of its track because I can’t get it there… without going to the middle. Exactly. And I obviously couldn’t get to the middle without getting to a point exactly between the middle and the top. And i couldn’t get to that point without getting to a point between that and the beginning, and so on, ad infinitum, until i can’t move the switch more than an infinitely small amount. Or, effectively, I can’t move the switch.

Ok, so I know what’s going on. How do I solve it? Too late, Other said. Professor Utgoff was staring at me. “Forget it Adrian, just take a seat.” I must have looked so stupid trying to operate a lightswitch. Even he could do that. I moved towards my seat but for some reason I couldn’t get to it. Oh no! I thought, I didn’t solve the problem! Now it was working in reverse, allowing me to get infinitely close to my seat, but never reaching it.

I had to figure it out quick, before anybody noticed that I couldn’t sit down! Perhaps if I allow for rounding in real world scenarios? Not good enough. Crap! Can the sum of an infinite series be a finite number after all? Like 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 and so on ad infinitum; can it really equal 2 after all? Is .3 repeating x 3 equal to 1? Yes. It should follow that if it’s infinite, you have no choice but to take the limit! The limit of this function is me sitting in my seat. But you never reach the limit. How about if I go an infinitesimally small distance beyond my seat then? Done.

Whew… I sat in my seat, and prayed to god that wouldn’t happen again.

Congratulations, Adrian, the Other said. You have passed the tests. There is only one thing I must ask of you: What is the set of all sets which are not sets of themselves?

Oh shit.

Because what the hell, it sounds like fun.

Because we all need a break from reality:

January 27th is the birthday of Lewis Carrol, author of ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Alice fell down a rabbit hole into a place where everything had changed and none of the rules could be counted on to apply anymore.

January 27th, 2005 will be the First Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day. When you post on that Thursday, instead of the normal daily life and work and news and politics, write about the strange new world you have found yourself in for the day, with its strange new life and work and news and politics.

Are your pets talking back at you now? Has your child suddenly grown to full adulthood? Does everyone at work think you’re someone else now? Did Bush step down from the White House to become a pro-circuit tap-dancer? Did Zoroastrian missionaries show up on your doorstep with literature in 3-D? Have you been placed under house arrest by bizarre insectoid women wielding clubs made of lunchmeat?

Let’s have a day where nobody’s life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let’s all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what’s there. It will be beautiful.

Everybody get your acid ready…. let’s go trippin’ on the 27th!