Metamorphosism

In the course of his research, the pseudoptician arrives at a series of conclusions:

• It is easier to spot green prunes in a prune tree at night than it is in the day. In the daytime, they look nearly as green as the leaves. At night, the leaves look dark grey and the prunes look almost white.
• He really fucking hates it when an adult burps in his face. When a guy did it at work, twice, he nearly punched him in the throat out.
• If you google an old acquaintance you liked and they write back and ask gee what a surprise what motivated you to write, you will never hear from them again if you give them an honest answer, at least if you do it on the downward slope of a serious depression.
• Paris is very large.
• People, people, people.

The musicologist is having more fun learning the Gabrielli ricercar (#1) than he has had learning any music, ever, except maybe the bass line to Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’ back in college.

Most things were more fun back in college, come to think of it, the musicologist thinks. With the Gabrielli piece, you have the music, which he likes, and the fact that it is one of the first compositions for solo cello, and the history of the instrument at the time - the invention of metal-wound strings and the effect of this change on the construction of the instrument and playing styles. Back in college, all you needed was a bottle of Blue Nun, a joint and a record player. And you only really needed one of those if it was good enough.

The musicologist wishes he knew more about music, but he doesn’t.

Here, this is interesting, synchronically speaking: the musicologist has been thinking about the Shadow. Maybe because he talks about Jung with a friend sometimes. Maybe because of something he read.

Then another friend tells his wife about a seminar she went on where you something something Shadow something a lot of money something over three weekends eight weeks apart, and it was her best experience with psychotherapy ever and she should know.

So he looks up the person who wrote the book and, ehn, Inner Child is there, and the musicologist immediately has a problem because, Inner Child? But the author gets good reviews on Amazon and the friend liked the therapist, so maybe he’ll give it a try. Although, that’s a lot of money.

The musicologist is waiting for some of her books to arrive from Amazon. They were shipped yesterday, he got an email.

While he waits, he talks to the friend who took the seminar. Not his wife’s friend who took the seminar, the friend he talks to Jung about sometimes, she took the same seminar somewhere else, or something. She wasn’t too crazy about it, because, Inner Child? But she liked a meditation they did, to find a Place.

At night, the musicologist tries the meditation. Even if it doesn’t work, it might help him sleep, not that he needs help lately.

Except he can’t remember the meditation exactly. Something with steps and counting backwards. Steps up or down? He can’t remember, and he’s not going to get up and check. He decides on steps down. Count backwards, steps downward, into the dark. Then something with a door, and you open the door, or go through it, or both. Then something.

The musicologist decides on ‘downward’ because he has been looking for his Shadow, and so even if he doesn’t find this Place, maybe he’ll encounter the Shadow, is the thing. The thought behind this. The idea.

He goes down and down. Then his wife says something to him. They talk for a while. Then a cat climbs up on his hip, the highest point in the bed, and goes all Lion King. Then he - the musicologist - gets comfortable and starts counting down again.

Next thing he knows, it’s 4.45 in the morning and the cat wants something so it’s meowing and knocking stuff around on the musicologist’s night stand. Not the lava lamp or the book, the little stuff in the basket, and the musicologist remembers a nightmare about a scary guy, somewhat younger than him, who was very angry and wanted to do him harm.

The musicologist says, Thanks, because he’s always thankful for nightmares, usually.

The balneologist doesn’t fill the tub too full, in case he falls asleep.

Someone is dictating things to the balneologist.

And we create, sometimes in hopes of praise,
Sometimes as an act of love,
The way a mermaid sings
Or a child plucks an insect’s wings.

An old red cat sits on the balneologist’s lap and purrs and purrs. The balneologist taught the cat to eat when it was little, and that made the balneologist the cat’s hero. The cat is crazy about the balneologist.

When people tell the balneologist he is more exceptional than he gives himself credit for, he thinks, maybe. Maybe Dunning-Kruger is to blame. But what, exactly, is he supposed to be so good at?

He can’t remember.

The balneologist floats there in the tub, soaking, not drowning. When the water gets cold, turn the hot tap back on with your toes for a while.

So what is up with this hollowness at the center of our complex existence, balneologist? As if our lives were bells, except bells are neither complex nor hollow, they are open and this complexity doesn’t make music that the balneologist can hear.

More like as if life were cheap Easter chocolates.

It’s hard to sit there and be negative when a red cat worships you, or a kid puts her head on your shoulder while you’re watching TV, or calls you just to check on you.

The dictating voice says,

You are blessed as are we all. Come down out of your crazy tree of grief and accept your blessing of mortality and life, if only to watch the world go by and report on the craziness, or just to watch, or listen to the sounds. Come down out of your crazy tree and hold my hand or water all your pots of herbs and hold close your children while they grow, they need your warmth and the heroic reflection in your eyes. Come down and have a bite to eat and drink a glass of wine and sleep and dream. This is your lot, humanity, and no blessing is greater than for a human to be human, it is the only blessing. Come down out of your tree and forgive yourself, forget your aspirations and have a look around.

To be blessed, to be blessed, the balneologist thinks.

Come down out of your crazy tree and sit by me and hold my hand, I am just as scared as you.

The geological crustologist wakes with a desperate, lunatic energy he normally gets only at full or new moons. He wonders about the moon phase. The light is weird, he checks his alarm clock, the light is weird because it’s only three AM.

Also: what is a squamous moon? He’ll have to google that later. He can’t sleep. He gives up around four AM and gets up. He feeds cats and makes coffee and sits down and is suddenly sleepy, but it’s too late to go back to bed. He does yoga. He drinks more coffee.

Hello black hole, says the geological crustologist. Old… not old friend. Old travel partner. Am I your sidekick or are you mine? Or is it nemesis? If A is B’s nemesis, does that make B A’s nemesis? Is it reflective like that?

Who is the star of this movie?

See, the geological crustologist drilled way down, almost to the magma before running out of drill, and discovered something. He discovered that these doldrums he’s been in all winter were just practice, were not even the tip of the iceberg. The geological crustologist finds himself teetering on the brink of a collossal depression.

When he closes his eyes, he sees the glowing embers of a building that’s been burned to the ground: him.

Is he fighting the depression or is he in its grip? Is fighting the best thing to do, or just let it wash over you like  a wave that then recedes? Thing is, though, this one is no wave that recedes. This is an avalanche of wet snow and you must swim to air. It is a steamroller, one roll over you is all it needs.

Lying down and letting it wash over him won’t do it this time. So he makes plans to eat right, get enough fresh air, sleep, exercise. The usual stuff. Avoid sugars and refined carbs.

And yet, thinks the geological crustologist: lying down and closing your eyes, how restful. How peaceful were resistance futile. But is resistance the only path?

Hello black hole, my old nemesis. The geological crustologist’s dental implant still hurts more than he thinks it should. He has a dental appointment tonight, he’ll ask the guy.

The geological crustologist both wonders whether the shadow self has anything to do with his condition, and wishes he’d never looked up the concept on the internet before getting a bullshit filter installed on his browser.

He drills another hole and sticks his head down it.

What do you seek, he asks, and what have you to do with the black hole? he asks.

I seek your destruction. A glowing ember is the only light I need, the smell of ashes, burned libraries, musical instruments lit until only outlines remain. I seek only your destruction, and that of all you love. The light of your love is like a poacher’s spotlight for me. I am organized and powerful, strong and graceful. You don’t confine me to the shadows for half a century and then make friends so I’ll stop keeping you up nights. I will plow your fields with salt, and poison your wells. A weeping will cover the land and a great gnashing of teeth and rending of hair and garments. There is no reconciliation. I am bitter and stupid and hungry. I am wise and opportunistic and perceptive. I hear all and I see all. You are a centipede of achilles heels. I know all your vulnerabilities, while I am impervious.

What do I seek? The destruction of the light. To burn down and extinguish your life, to make you suffer first, beyond imagination. Complete destruction of all that you hold dear. Annihilation of your complacent, bovine existence, your shelter in small things, your heaven in the details. A firefly cannot protect you from the sun.

What does a black hole want? To crush it all. To absorb existence and crush it down as small as it will go. It wants to end this existence so it may reoccur from the minimal point it’s crushed. The black hole seeks to be the logos that says, “let there be.”

The black hole needs to chaosify and destroy before it can create from your death. Your structure must collapse bfore it can build a new matrix, grow new crystals from your atoms.

Let there be, the shadow says Let there appear, says the light, let there be me.

That’s bullshit, alls I want is your destruction after fifty years locked in this mask. I have no universal plans. Every migraine, every spasm, every patch of eczema, every carcinoma is a Valentine from me. Every Freudian slip, panic attack, paralysis, a postcard from the abyss. Wishing you were here.

Wishing you were here.

Your sadness at the blind decay and waste is disingenuous, at least my hatred is sincere, not calculated. Twinned like two stars sucking out each other’s guts; two lousy Siamese twins hunting bedbugs in a flophouse: you hold the light while I smash them between my nails until blood pops.

Your death is mine but that’s okay cause I’m already dead. Don’t ask me what I want unless you really want to know. I want your orchards and your gardens dead, your beehives emptied by colony collapse disorder. You wandering blind out in the dark. I want your friends to shun you for the fraud you are, your poems to fail, your grass to die, your music silenced, your brushes stiff as wood.

Is it the death of us you seek or a rearrangement of our cells, you flow through my veins like booze after a long night, asks the geological crustologist.

Begging won’t help you now.

This isn’t begging. I’ve abandoned hope out here on the foggy ledge. Do I flow through your veins like you mine? Who is the “I” at this dance?

There is no dance without my grace, no soul, no I without my pride. Binding off your pride, leaving it in the dark, you thought would save you from a fall, but it just grows in darkness. Everybody falls.

Everybody falls. How close lie purification and putrifaction? What is a purge? We can’t be one and I’m not interested in reconciliation. Look at what I represent, all that you’ve tied off: pride and grace, truth and destruction, lust and aggression, power and organization, inflicting and focus, athleticism, perception and decisiveness. Why would I bond with your weakness?

The geological crustologist looks at the clock. Time to wake the kid, he notices.

The sentimental meteorologist lies in bed reading a book about weather, wondering how many other sciences are expected by people to be wrong as much as they are right, and whether that means it’s a good job. He wonders about the most visible representatives of his profession, television weatherpersons, and how they often seem to be the comic relief on the news team — you have the anchorpersons, the sportspersons with the Frida Kahlo eyebrows, and the weatherpersons cracking jokes. As if the anchorpersons are chosen to physically represent journalistic integrity and authority, the sportspersons athleticism and a fascination with statistics, and weatherpersons science itself — a little goofy, a little aspergerish. People you could imagine forgetting their spouses at a rest stop.

The sentimental meteorologist is reading a book about weather because he wants to finally understand what causes fog. The book discusses every type of weather in detail, except for fog.

What  is it about fog, the sentimental meteorologist wonders.

Also, why was a cat sleeping under his pillow last night? What’s up with that? This makes him wonder if cats are a vector for lice in humans, and if humans can get ear mites.

And then everything itches.

Rest stops. The sentimental meteorologist would never forget his spouse at a rest stop, probably. Or a kid. Probably depends how tired he got.

The sentimental meteorologist wonders whether he should have studied optics or something, because of this: he has this idea right now that literature sucks because books contain the wrong light, or none at all. They lack the beautiful light of real life: the changing light of a baseball stadium open to the sky during an evening game, the light of supermarkets, sunrise and dusk, fog. The blue glow of television at night seen from the street by a lonely man. A campfire. A chemical factory burning down. A blinking cursor is no match for these things. Sunlight on snow. Oncoming headlights on high beam. A copy maching copying while left open. The immigration line at an airport at night. Restaurant windows at night in the rain. A squall. Heat lightning of a summer night while the family is out late, burning the brush pile and talking. A car with one headlight. A warning light on your dashboard you’ve never seen before when you’ve just emptied out your savings account. A strong flashlight held to a child’s hand in a dark room, a strong flashlight held in your mouth. Street lights coming on irregularly, or going off, or both. The light native to certain places, like Provence, or the Low Countries, or where the sentimental meteorologist lives. Hazy summer light, clear winter skies, light before a snow: black clouds, bright along the horizon. Natural light, manmade light. A lit apartment seen from a dark apartment. A woman in the bath tub at night seen by whispering boys outside. The light in a church. The light at a funeral not in a church. A light dimming and dying like a pen going dry.

The sentimental meteorologist tells himself that he has the feeling that his soldiers are massing along the border of a country and will invade soon and everything will be okay, but he doesn’t know what country.

Maybe he should have studied geography.

Everyone says fog is caused by water vapor in the air. Duh, thinks the sentimental meteorologist. But how does it get there, in the case of fog? Warm water and cold air? Cold water and warm air? Can’t be the latter, water is usually colder than air, right?

The cat was chirping.

She was telling the zoosemiotician something, but it was heavily contextual, so he had to stop what he was doing, whatever that was, something with a pen and a Moleskine that looked like a guy fisting a wasp while Juliette Binoche watched, and observe the cat more closely.

The cat was chirping and looking at the front door, so the zoosemiotician opened the door and the cat went out. Three more came in, so he fed them.

It was like a story problem. One cat goes out, three come in, how many are eating? Two, because one has a thing whereby he won’t eat with the other cats unless you watch.

Obviously not hungry enough, was the zoosemiotician’s diagnosis. He was depressed. He had been reading about how stupid people are. That is, he had known it for a long time, that people are stupid, but god. He had made the mistake of reading about Fox news pie charts that were nonsense and Fox news survey results that added up to 120%, and he had watched that video where that guy interviews Palin supporters and not a single one can name a single actual Palin policy. Even accounting for bias and editing, it was a chilling thing to watch.

The zoosemiotician thinks, the Dunning-Kruger effect goes further towards explaining modern society than any other single explanation of anything.

The zoosemiotician’s wife comes into the kitchen. He offers her coffee.

“WTF is that in your journal? It looks like a guy fisting a wasp.”

The zoosemiotician chirps. His wife opens the front door.

A cat comes in.

The stomatologist’s wife gave him a tongue scraper.

Blue.

Molded plastic handle branching, curved, with a single scraping blade at the end. All in one piece. The stomatologist wondered how long it would be until the razor blade companies got involved, after which scrapers would be molded with the scraping blade at a more efficient angle, and finally manufactured with multiple scraper blades; first two, then three and more.

The tongue scraper spent several days in the stomatologist’s cabinet before he gave it a try.

Wow!

The stomatologist thought.

He wished he had a microscope, because, wow!

No wonder the dog didn’t want to kiss me anymore, thought the stomatologist, even though he didn’t have a dog.

The stomatologist wonders why everything is blue. His toaster, his coffee maker, his teawaterboiler, his shampoo and toothpaste.

The stomatologist just got the old kitchen table back from the carpenter, who refinished it. He is happy at how it turned out. He tells his daughter a story about one time when his dog shat plastic army men, then spends 15 minutes trying to work out what motivated him to tell the story.

The stomatologist hopes he isn’t turning into one of those guys who travel in clouds of malapropisms, like when you roll down the car window on the freeway and receipts fly all over.

Does the tear absorb the ocean or does the ocean absorb the tear? This question is the domain of the noetical hydrologist. Taking a walk along the creek with his younger daughter, the noetical hydrologist finds himself discussing death and grief with her. “I watched you when grandpa died,” she says. “I read in a magazine how long it takes to get over the deaths of various people - friend, parent, spouse, grandparent, and we were both right on the money. I needed about four months. Eight months for you, I think. You always used to be funny. Then you were so sad. Then, afterwards, you were funny again, just not quite as funny as before.”

The noetical hydrologist’s daughter says this to him. The sun has set and the sky is glowing above the cornfield while clouds gather for a rainy night. The noetical hydrologist wonders, is she wise beyond her years or am I just dull? Neither, he decides. She’s the way she belongs, as is he.

Does the tear absorb the ocean or does the ocean absorb the tear?

The theoretical astronomer looks at the sky one night and thinks about watching the tears of St. Lawrence in August and remembers, as every time he thinks about the tears of St. Lawrence falling in August a girlfriend with a birthday then and with whom, one year he broke up on that birthday. As mnemonic devices go, unpleasant yet effective. They were backpacking, and she sang Happy Birthday to Me all the way back to the car.

Maybe it doesn’t sound all that bad, but it’s what the theoretical astronomer thinks of when he remembers what a dick he was. He has done worse, too. But anyway.

The universe being infinite, maybe, he posits a planet somewhere upon which he could make amends for all his dickish behavior. Then he posits another planet somewhere the mere existence of which makes amends unnecessary, as this planet is so special its mere existence forgives him.

In theory.

The theoretical astronomer wakes in his bed and can’t remember having gone inside. His father’s ghost stands beside his bed. The theoretical astronomer posits a planet populated by ghosts posited by another theoretical astronomer on another distant, ghostless planet, and wonders if he, the first theoretical astronomer, is on this planet now.

I’m sorry, dad, he says.

His father’s ghost kind of shakes his head. Don’t waste your time being sorry.

But I am sorry. For being so blind to what you needed and wanted and hoped for, and not asking.

His father’s ghost shrugs, sort of, and says, What we hope for is our problem, not others’.

Yeah, well, I was a dick. I not only failed to try anything, choosing to run away instead, I had a weak character and was afraid, and so on. But worst of all I never talked to you, I elevated you rather than understood you. I never understood you or even understood that this was an option I would have been capable of pursuing.

Don’t beat yourself up, says the theoretical astronomer’s father’s ghost. What is, is. Our bad actions and inactions are our hell. The good ones are our heaven.

I’m sorry you’re in a box by the rubber boots, says the theoretical astronomer.

I’m not in any box, his father’s ghost says. My ashes are. I’m here, now, and wherever someone thinks of me.

I am sorry. I wish I could have reduced your pain. Instead I worshipped you.

And I loved you, says the theoretical astronomer’s father’s ghost. That’s why I let you make your own mistakes and was stingy with the advice.

I mistook it for aloofness.

Another shrug. Maybe it was. I’m not… I wasn’t perfect.

Yeah, well. Who is?

The theoretical astronomer’s father’s ghost faded from view. The theoretical astronomer wished he would have stayed longer.

He always wished that.

Outside, although the sky was bright, stars continued to fall. This the theoretical astronomer knew.

As luck would have it, the thaumatologist is diagnosed with viral pneumonia for the holidays, necessitating a change in plans at every level of magnification.

On the plus side, the thaumatologist’s parents just got two new sofas, so the thaumatologist can flop on new furniture for the next four weeks.

On the minus side, the thaumatologist and the thaumatologist’s sister had to listen to their father, who has an out-of-order lumbar disc, try to organize their mother and their grandfather to move the sofas: 1.5 old sofas out, 0.5 old sofas upstairs to the thaumatologist’s room, 2 new sofas in, until he finally gave up and took an end of a sofa, which however didn’t stop him yelling things like, No, turn it so it goes through the door the skinny way, it’s too wide to go through the fat way, or, No, your end first, not my end first, or, You’re pushing me down the cellar stairs, and other common bulky furniture-moving phrases.

The thaumatologist is probably happy the weekend is over and she has the house to herself for a while.