Nothing's Really Matter

Originally featured in The Salty Fish Bowl - March 2010

Quantum physicists tell us that 99.99% of an atom's mass is in its nucleus, which consists of (positively charged) protons and (neutral) neutrons, with the rest being made up of (negatively charged) electrons arbitrarily whizzing around (or disappearing and reappearing elsewhere) within the surrounding energy field. The reason there is such a discrepancy in the distribution of mass is that the space taken up by the nucleus is inordinately smaller than the area taken up by those unpredictable electrons. It's been reckoned that if the nucleus of an atom were the size of a grain of sand, the atom itself would be the size of a football field. Essentially what they're telling us is that matter is almost entirely made up of empty space. Non-intuitive? If this is the case, shouldn't we be able to walk through walls? Well, no. The reason we don't just pass through other objects is that most of the particles we're talking about are electrically charged, causing atoms to repel each other, on a quantum scale. The atoms in your hand repel the atoms in someone else's, and thus a high five. So, if we assume atoms repel other atoms, then not only can we not pass through things, but we never actually touch them either. If you're sitting on a chair right now, you're not actually sitting on it, but rather hovering above it.

This may seem like useless information in terms of every day life, but it can be applied practically. For instance, if you drop your mug at the coffee shop and make a mess, don't worry, the case can be made that you were never holding it to begin with. Demand a refill. If you happen to commit murder, just hire a physicist as an expert witness, and they'll tell the court you never even touched the victim. And if you're the unfortunate witness of a criminal act, just tell the cops that the crime in question was merely your brain's interpretation of the photons of light that bounced away from your eyes before ever hitting them. You didn't see nuthin'. The possibilities are endless.

This does raise some more obvious questions though, like how does sandpaper work, and why are my tires bald? If nothing ever touches, how does anything have an effect on anything else? Why do I care if I stepped in dog doo? It becomes a metaphysical problem at this point. If matter is virtually nothing, does virtually nothing matter? Applying what we now know of the microscopic world to our own lives, don't atoms seem like really tiny people? They bounce around, superficially interacting with those in their midst, but never really affecting them in any profound way. Keep upping the ante. Aren't people just like planets and stars; ever orbiting, pulling each other this way and that, but rarely having any meaningful spiritual affect on each other? From the atomic to the astronomic, it seems everything is the same.

So if everything is the same, and if everything we know is 99.99% empty (this column perhaps especially), what does it all mean? Why, and how, are we here? Are we mere byproducts of billions of years of atomic evolution, simply descendants of the first atoms? Theologically speaking, does that make Adam the first atom? I’m not sure that Faith or faith in Science will ever answer that quandary. Perhaps on some level it’s best to not worry too much about the why’s and whatfor’s, on any scale. Some things really are best left to wonder.

Spectral Speculation

Originally featured in The Salty Fish Bowl - May 2010

Recently, whilst frolicking amidst the mist of a public lawn moistener, I was struck by the innate beauty of the Rainbow. As I darted from one water spout to the next, I encountered a perfect circle of colour hovering before me, moving as I moved, like a spectral specter. It was breathtaking. I stood wondering where its end may be, and what might be there if I could find it; but circles have no end, and there is more to rainbows than mere beauty and the promise of gold. Rainbows are more unique, and full of more hidden treasures, than you might think.

I think it’s fair to say that most of us, at least once in our lives, have uttered something along the lines of, “Look at that rainbow,” and in most instances everybody did, but did you know that not a single one of you saw the same rainbow? It’s all about angles of perception. Light from the sun travels toward us through Space at the speed of light, until it hits something solid or is slowed down passing through an alternate medium (like a prism, or in this case moisture in our atmosphere) causing refraction. Light refraction is the result of the longer wavelengths (red) travelling faster through the moisture than the shorter wavelengths (indigo). This “bends” the light and separates the different wavelengths causing the spectrum you see in the sky. But why do we all see different rainbows? Picture yourself with a laser. If you aim it at a mirror the beam will bounce off at the same angle and hit whatever happens to be in that direction (hopefully not a somebody). Now, trying to keep your laser pointed just so, take a step to the left. Your beam should be hitting something else. Now imagine the same scenario outside, except the sun is the laser, moisture is the mirror, and you are the something. In summary, the sunlight that ends its journey in your eyes is different than that which hits your friends’ eyes, due to the angular discrepancies between yourselves and the sun. The next time you’re out with friends and see a rainbow, you can keep it to yourself, because they won’t be able to see it anyway. Be content in the knowledge that you are the only thing in existence that saw that particular rainbow.

The building blocks of the Universe. It has been theorized that the elements that make up everything we see, including you and me, originally came from stars. Stars are thought to be “Crucibles of Life,” where the necessary ingredients are brought to a boil and then blasted out into the Cosmos to become anything from planets, to people, to jalapeno poppers. How though, do scientists know what is inside a star? Quite simply, by reading rainbows. Light reacts differently when it interacts with different elements, and this can be seen in its wavelengths. With a (very) large telescope astronomers can pinpoint the light from individual stars, and with the application of a spectrograph (I’m not going to pretend I know how they work), they can determine exactly what elements reside inside. Spectrography can be used to determine types of stars, helping astronomers estimate things like age and life expectancy. It’s also used, perhaps most notably, to locate other Sun-like stars in the search for Earth-like planets, and may one day result in scientists finding somewhere else for us to live once we’ve F’ed up our own planet beyond repair.
Spectra of stars and galaxies are even used to observe the expansion of the Universe. The light from distant galaxies, has been found to be “red-shifted”, which means as the “fabric of Space” has stretched out, so have the wavelengths of the light travelling over that time. In fact it is widely believed that light from the Big Bang (approximately 13.7 billion light years ago) has red-shifted so much in getting to us that it is now actually radio waves. And we know all of this simply from looking at rainbows.

So the next time you see a rainbow, while you’re admiring it all to yourself, think on its Cosmic significance. Imagine how far the light had to travel, and all that it’s been through, only to be bent by some raindrops and splashed across the sky. Imagine what it’s trying to tell you about its beginnings, and perhaps even your own Fate.

Relativistic Meanderings On The Way To Work

Originally featured in The Salty Fish Bowl - February 2010

It’s one of those mornings when I wake up for work and my first thought is that nothing has gone according to plan. Pondering this for a moment, while trying to absorb all the warmth from my bed before flinging the blankets aside, I realize again that there never really was a plan at all. It’s been more like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where decisions are made on the spot, at the turn of a page;

You barely graduated high school. You can; Go to College (flip to page 153), or Join the Workforce (flip to page 375).
You have chosen Join the Workforce. With no formal education or significant work experience you can be; a Gas Jockey (pg. 210), a Labourer (pg. 124), Homeless (burn book for warmth).

I crawl out of bed and mechanically prepare for the day. Mindlessly brushing my teeth I stare into the lifeless eyes staring back into mine. Not much going on up there. I need a coffee. And a lottery ticket. One of those things will cheer me up.
Halfway to work, now with half a coffee in me, my mind cogs begin to whir again. I decide it’s about time for that plan. It seems like forever ago that I flipped to page 375. Maybe it’s time to… maybe it’s time... that’s it! The problem isn’t me, or trans fat. The real culprit is Time itself. There just isn’t enough. Doesn’t it seem like all we do is race around trying to complete the things we “have” to do, rarely ever leaving enough time to accomplish the things we “want” to do? Clearly that’s why there was no plan. There just wasn’t enough time to formulate any.

I slow down, because I don’t want to get to work before I finish this thought, and besides, I’m not paying much attention to the road ahead.

So if Time is the issue, what I need is more Time. But how does one make time?

Make Time;
1. to move quickly, esp. in an attempt to recover lost time
2. to travel at a particular speed.
dictionary.com

Ignoring wormholes and time machines, I don’t think there is any way to actually recover lost time, or at least those are thoughts for another time (no pun intended). It seems though, if we’re to believe this online dictionary, to make enough time we just need to move quickly at a particular speed. But how do we know what speed in particular?

The Theory of Relativity has shown (to those who can fully grasp it) that the faster an object moves, the slower time moves for said object, in relation to other objects moving at different speeds. So, if you were to travel to Betelgeuse (Orion’s right shoulder), 520 light years away, and back, at 99.99% the Speed of Light, it would take 1040.1 Earth years, but you would only age 14.71 years (the reason I didn’t use 100% the Speed of Light is because, according to Einstein’s Special Relativity, the closer to the Speed of Light you get, the more mass you acquire. Reaching the Speed of Light would make you infinitely massive, requiring an infinite amount of energy to move you. Because we are not currently aware of such a source of energy, nor able to harness it were we to find it, and because the human ego is far too fragile to willingly accept infinite mass, it is currently a theoretical impossibility). To figure out how much time you can make at home, just follow this simple equation:

Of course one needn’t move at such speeds to make the kind of Time we need for our petty Earthly pursuits. That’s crazy talk. 40 or 50% percent the Speed of Light would give us plenty of Time to go back to school, write that novel, or take a deep breath, and by my reckoning the energy required for such a minute amount of acceleration can be attained easily. We need only to…

Shit. I’m in the driveway.

Invenginosity

It’s hard to be stimulated when you can’t find anything stimulating. It’s seems like everywhere you look things are lacking substance, stability, god damn ingenuity. When is the last time you heard about an invention for some kind of rocket ship that’s powered by dirty diapers? Never! Because society has lost its inventiveness, or at least I have, and that counts for at least 0.73% of inventions by people who actually have a clue. I’m beginning to rant. I’m just frustrated that since I began my Intellectual Hiatus there hasn’t been a single technological advancement, that I can think of. Sure, they fired up the Large Hadron Collider, but that was invented years before I began my Cerebral Spring Break, and has yet to show us anything we can rub in the noses of Big Religion. That, hopefully, is about to change. I have invented “The Invention Machine”. Now at first glance The Invention Machine doesn’t look like much. It doesn’t look like something that could take the most boredinary mind and make it extraboredinary. It doesn’t look like the kind of thing that could turn scrambled eggs into a Western Omelete. What it does look like, is a four foot by four foot chunk of yellow shag carpet.

You might ask yourself, what the hell does yellow shag have to do with omelettes, intellect, and ingenosity? I’ll tell you. Have you heard of Ben Franklin? Did you know his eyesight was so bad that he had to invent eyeglasses just to be able to reach his laudanum? That man was an addict.

When I step on The Invention Machine it’s like stepping on a small expanse of live sheep’s back in wool socks, because for reasons that will soon become clear, standing upon The Invention Machine works best in wool socks.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The Invention Machine is not the ShamWow. You don’t have to give your credit card number to some crackhead who talks a good game but has obviously never done a hard day’s work in his life unless you count sitting on the toilet all day at truck stops waiting for somebody to nudge his foot from the next stall. The Invention Machine can be made from simple household items. Here’s how:

First, find some shag carpet. Next, cut out a four foot by four foot chunk. If you’re too young to use a knife, you shouldn’t be reading this.

Double next, take the chunk of carpet and lay it down on a hard surface, preferably not carpet. Stand on the carpet chunk. Very important; you must be dry from head to toe. Do not try to use it straight out of the shower. You may think this constitutes a fresh perspective, but really you just look like an idiot, standing naked on a patch of puke coloured carpet.

Second, wear wool socks. The variety doesn’t matter. Pretentious Mountain Equipment Co-op wannabe’s will tell you that Merino Wool is the only wool, but don’t let’s be silly. Before Al Gore invented the wind, oil was the only power that held any sway, and we all know that day has come and….. well never mind.

Shuffle your feet. Shuffle your feet in place like you’re in the Speed Walking event at the Olympics, except you’re doing it faster than an Actual Walking pace, and it’s not a pathetic excuse for somebody who skipped gym class in high school to be an athlete for a day.

Once you’ve been shuffling long enough that your feet feel like two fleshy lightning bolts, stop. Raise your hands, and simultaneously place the tips of your index fingers against your temples. If executed properly you should be incapable of reading further.

Now that you’re awake you should drink some fluids. Electrocution can be draining. You also probably shat yourself. Pull yourself together!

Now, before you lose sight of the point of this exercise, try to think of something. Think of anything, but bear in mind that the more outlandish the idea you try to think of, the more inventive the idea you may…think of…

I am going to zap myself.

So anyway, here are some starter ideas for the beginner. See if you can zap yourself into expanding on these static brainstorms:

1) Some kind of mind enhancement device.
2) A unicorn with plates like a stegosaurus.
3) A couch that is so comfortable you never have to leave it, to work, or to piss.
4) A way to piss on your couch without consequence.
5) A tent with a TV/Satellite dish built into one side so that you can watch Setanta Sports in the morning. Also, some way to wake up to hot sausages while camping. Gay or otherwise.

To conclude, drink rum. It’s a great way to end up writing a rambling piece in the middle of the night about inventing ways to invent shit. Then put that crap on the internet, because if Stephen Colbert ever reads it you might become famous.

Have You Seen This Boy?

Self Induced Insomnia

I’m just not writing these days. My mind is aclutter with useless thoughts. There’s nothing in there worth a tirade of late. There was a time I was filled with irk and ire, intellectual brimstone and fire, and I put it to good use. But lately I’m the cerebral equivalent of an old fortune cookie. I don’t taste very good, and you won’t find anything enlightening inside. So what’s happened? I have a pretty good idea. I’ve been drawn out of my hermitude. I used to have it pretty good; not many friends (that I talked to anyway), and a job that didn’t require conversation. But now… now I’m playing soccer again, which is good in that I’m playing soccer again, but bad in that I’m part of a social circle again, and have less time to do nothing but wonder, surmise, and study quantum physics. I also now have a job that flies in the face of all my hermitic beliefs. I answer a phone for a living, and spend all day every day talking to the kind of people I spent previous years attempting to avoid; the drabbest minds on the spectrum of smarts, the "<" to my ">", those hobbled by crippling inanity. At the end of the day I find myself brooding over the stupidity of my surroundings, instead of postulating, conjecturing, and studying quantum physics.

There was a time I did all of those things with the fervor of an Evangelist, and I’d like that time to return, so I’ve come up with a plan. The last time I found myself in this state it was a dire state indeed. I wasn’t sleeping much at all, drinking cappuccinos like Gatorade, and generally shuffling through my days like a blind deaf mute with his shoelaces tied together. I hit rock bottom. Eventually though, I had a re-awakening, a renaissance if you will, and my mind came racing back like a death proof car, smashing conventional wisdom to bits, and leaving gory, severed limns all over the information highway. My plan now is to plummet back to those depths. I need to hurl myself into the Loneliness Chasm with only my wits and a small pocket knife for protection. I need to immerse myself in my pain once more, to feed off it, and let it feed off me. Maybe a little water boarding of the brain is in order. Then, when I’m convinced I’m drowning, I’ll pick myself back up and write a novel, or maybe a magazine article, that will literaturely blow your minds.

River of Thought

My stream of thought is immense. It’s a vast flowing river. It has many tributaries, bringing with them knowledge from the Far Reaches. It is slow moving, but ever changing. It meanders to and fro, always searching for new sources, always threatening to burst its banks. My river of thought is warm and inviting, clear and refreshing. You can frolic at the water’s edge, or let yourself drift away on its gentle current and be whisked away to witness wonders beyond the scope of your Mind's Eye.

My river of thought is deep, its true depth as yet unrevealed. It is a seemingly endless torrent of contemplation, analysis, and introspection. Most dare not venture far from the surface, for the warmth and clarity that are at first so inviting soon fade to blackness and cold that pervade the soul. My river of thought is deep, much deeper than it might seem at first glance, and the depths are not to be plumbed without due care. There are things in the deep that are best left undisturbed.

Many streams are shallow. They may move quickly, but they don’t possess any significant depth. Many of these are the recipients of few tributaries, and meander very little. As a result, these streams of thought carry with them precious little nutrients. They don’t have the capacity to sustain an abundance of life. Most peter out in lakes or small ponds, never contributing to much more than the local tadpole population. Some are so lacking in substance that they run dry when things heat up, and many are so polluted and befouled by the course they take that they spread only evil thought, contaminating everything in their midst.

The final destination for my river of thought is unclear thus far. It could dry up like so many others, but I do not think this is its fate. Its thirst for knowledge is too great, and its sources too substantial for such an insignificant end. More likely it will soldier on, surviving drought and hardship, and eventually achieve that which all streams are meant to achieve; the Holy Grail of streams of thought, the Sea of Enlightenment.

Bare Knuckles

I get excited a lot. I dive right into things and do them whole assed, as if they were the very things I was meant to do. But then I get bored. Once I’ve done it a little I want to do a new thing. I need a new love, a new fancy, anything else to pique my interest. I throw it away (insert apology to every ex-girlfriend here), but it’s not because I don’t like it anymore. It’s because I love it. A long time ago, perhaps in a dream, I decided that I don’t deserve happiness, so I actively seek the things that make me happiest, and cut them out of my life. I’m a psychopath. I torture my victim. I promise him escape and then take it away. I serve him a feast, and spit in it right before his eyes. I love my captor. I trust him. I’ll do anything he asks, even though I know he hates me beyond reckoning. I’m the venomous snake who slithers through a room full of mice, jubilant that he’ll never have to hunt again, right before he bites his own tail. I’m the most self destructive person I know.

I have a new motto that I’m really excited about. It goes; “Never get excited about anything because you know you’ll only let yourself down.” I’m really going to try to stick by this one, because it’s the only motto that has ever rung so true. I do that. I get excited about lots of shit, and I always quit. I don’t do all of my favorite things; read, write, play drums, watch/play soccer. My life is like a steeplechase, except that every obstacle is a mirror that punches me in the face and tells me it hates me, and I’m always in last place. It’s a bare knuckle bout against my shadow that I have no intention of winning. I’m just waiting for myself to tap out.

Re-New Chapter

Have you ever been in the middle of a really good book, but for reasons unknown you just stop reading? You think about it occasionally, and say to yourself, “I really should start reading that book again,” but you don’t. It can take a long while to get back to reading again, and by then you’ve forgotten where the story was going. When that happens, I usually read the last chapter over, to refresh my memory, and remind myself of where I was. That’s sort of what the last year of my life has been like. I stopped moving forward, started stagnating. Eventually I forgot which way I was headed, so I skipped back a chapter to try to remember. The thing about re-reading a chapter though, is that nothing is new. There are no surprises, and the more you read, the more you realize you always knew what happens. I’ve been re-reading that chapter for some time, but I’m finally on the last page. I know how it ends, and now all I need to do is power through so I can begin a new chapter, and get on with this book. That’s always exciting.

Idle Hands

Lately, writing has taken a backseat to another of my strengths (and not a good backseat, like my proverbial driver, he’s been quite silent of late). The strength I refer to is the result of a life of complacency and/or malaise; slacking. Now, I’m not a slacker in the conventional sense, the Costanza sense. I’m a hard worker when moved. Give me a shovel and I’ll dig a tunnel to the moon if you want me to. My inner sloth however, bears its claws when it comes time to use my mind. Let’s say, for instance, that I have a blog, which I use to hone my writing skills, in hopes of one day penning a children’s book or some such thing. Let’s imagine I have loyal fans, all of whom wake up salivating each morning, thirsty for a healthy word shake in blog format. And let’s make pretend, just this once, that I try to always have something new there to nourish them. I spend most of my days trying to think of something sweet to write that night, so my fans can begin the following day with a nice warm word lump in their brain bellies. But that’s when my mind so often plays possum, or sloth, or whatever. Anyway, I’ve been a very lazy boy lately, in a literary sense.

I’d like to say I’m going to turn that back around again post haste, but let’s face it, I’d like to say a lot of things. “Professor Fingerbottom,” but that’s just fun to say. I have had a few ideas for blogs lately, like the one where I compare my life to that of Jesus (by the way, can anybody think of any reason that I may be a martyr?), but nothing stuck with me, other than this pesky Tinea. Maybe I’m out of ideas. Is the mine played out? Are there no gems left to dazzle my readers? I’ve done zombies, done birds, done gymnastics…what’s left? My mind is a blank canvas and I feel as though I’m out of brushes, or paint, or whatever. How can this be?

There is actually one reason I can think of for my lack of limn of late. I’ve pretty much become a Guitar Hero hero. I’m a Rock God on the small plastic button guitar. I can play Paranoid flawlessly behind my back, behind my head, pretty much behind any part of my body. I used my Linus to play Welcome to the Jungle, and even lit the guitar on fire to play Knights of Cydonia, but liquid plastic dripped onto my sack and I had to smother the fire with the soil from a house plant and dip my danglies in yoghurt for about two hours (hey Catfish, what would that be called?) I also suffered a rotator cuff injury trying to “drop the needle” mid-Mississippi Queen. It was an ugly incident. I’m just not as spry as I once was. I don’t have the cute, nimble fingers of a Kevin Shen, but I do pull shapes and make guitar faces like Mick Jagger (if Mick Jagger played Guitar Hero…or guitar) while I shred through Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames, on medium difficulty. Perhaps I am spending a little too much time on this.

I guess I can justify all of it by saying that in spending my time playing Guitar Hero instead of doing something productive, I have, in effect, been physically training to be a writer by nimbling up my fingers for prolonged writing sessions, and virtuosic word sprints. Now I’ll be able to shred through a stream of consciousness odyssey with nary a worry about writer’s cramp. I’ve basically trained my way from amateur writer to Olympic writer, in that I’m still amateur, but that much more fit. And now that I’m back to “lean writing machine,” I can concentrate on the mental aspect, and try to shake that sloth off my back, or monkey, or whatever. First up: some quality hammock time with my newest writer’s reference, The Writer’s Journey – Mythic Structure for Writers. Stay tuned.

The Serpent and The Chimp Entertain

The Serpent and The Chimp woke up very excited. They had decided to live together, so they were moving The Chimp’s things to The Serpent’s house-barn in the country. They ate oatmeal, loaded all of The Chimp’s belongings onto The Serpent’s back, and began their long journey home. It was a very long journey. First they missed the bus, then they missed the ferry, and then they paid $3.65 for Mr. Noodles. It took the whole day to get home. They were both tired, hungry, and a little cranky when finally they arrived at the barn. All they wanted to do was slither into bed and say goodnight. But when The Serpent opened his door he found a very distressing scene. It seemed Mr. Moucifer had thrown a mouse party in The Serpent’s absence, and left little kernels of evidence all over the house. There was poop on the table, poop on the fridge, poop on the counter, and poop all over the gigantic pile of dirty dishes. There was poop on the bookshelf, poop on the couch, and The Chimp discovered Mr. Moucifer had even pooped while he slept in the bed. There was nothing that didn’t have poop on it. It was a very large party indeed. Realizing they couldn’t touch anything, and had nowhere to sleep, without getting all poopy, The Serpent and The Chimp set about cleaning up after the messy little mice.

“I set some live traps before I left” The Serpent told The Chimp. “Mr. Moucifer is just too clever. And I don’t like using death traps. It’s not very sporting.”

They continued cleaning long into the night, and even began to see humour in their situation. It was after all, The Chimp’s first night living in the barn. After a few hours The Serpent suggested they take a break. The couch was clean by then, so they had a place to relax. He went to his secret stash of homemade chocolates for a treat to cheer up The Chimp, only to find Mr. Moucifer had a sweet tooth. “Funk and Wagnall’s!” cried The Serpent, adding with a hiss, “I’ll kill the motherfather.”

The Serpent was especially upset about this. He’s a chocolate miser, and those special homemade chocolates can only be acquired once a year. It would be almost twelve months before he could get more. So he went to the cupboard and produced a rusty old blood stained guillotine, and smearing it with peanut butter said, “Let’s see our little friend outsmart this shall we?”

The next six nights were dark ones for the local rodent community. One soft, doe eyed cutie was killed each night. Bodies were piling up outside. The Serpent justified this killing spree with a twisted Darwinian logic.

“It’s survival of the fittest” he explained to a distraught The Chimp. “By pooping where we eat and sleep the mice were, in effect, attacking us, biologically, and we have a right to defend ourselves.” The Chimp was convinced, but The Serpent suspected it was just because she too loves chocolate. After a week of deaths word had gotten out. Mice stopped coming to the barn, and things began to go back to normal. The two lovers continued to scour and disinfect every cubic inch of their nest until it was almost safe to eat crumbs off the floor again, and as the weeks went by they even caught up on all the dirty, poopy laundry. Intimacy flourished once more, and they began acting as two honeymooners should; kissing, snuggling, and watching old episodes of Arrested Development, without a care in the world. At least not about rolling around in crumbly bits of feces.

Odd Socks

Yesterday Chimpit called me an odd sock, and I’m not sure what she meant by that. Did she mean I’m one of a kind, or was it something more sinister? Could she have been trying to tell me I’m obsolete? Perhaps I’m reading too much into it (although there was the time I was going to a party where everybody was dressing up as dairy products, and Chimpit told me to go as a Kraft single). Perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions because that very day I had a drawer cleanse. It was one of those times when you’re doing laundry and you notice you have a lot of odd socks. Way too many. I had just about as many odd socks as I had pairs, and they weren’t even similar. There were black ones, blue ones, grey ones, outgrew ones; socks with holes, socks without soles, socks as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Half my drawer was full of odd socks. I had to get rid of them, but instead of throwing out the whole lot, I kept a handful of the good ones. These were the cream of the odd sock crop. The ones that had obviously only been worn a few times before their twin went MIA. They were too good to toss, because who knows, one day that errant twin could show up at my drawer.

What is it about us that makes us keep things like that? Is it Faith? Hope? Do we cling to relics like odd socks in the hope that one day The Fates will conspire to show us our diligence was not unwarranted? Do we hope that one day all things odd will become like, and Balance will be restored? Maybe it’s an allegory for the rest of our lives. Maybe we symbolically lament for our lost socks, and always keep their room just the way it was when they left, so we don’t have to face the real issues. Maybe those odd socks represent the hauntings of lost loves, or missed opportunities. Whatever it is, I’m too much of a realist to believe that my wayward socks will return with horns blaring to restore the glory of my second drawer. Even so, I often allow the odd socks to linger on, forgotten, neglected, nothing more than moth fodder, as if some part of me actually does believe in Resurrection. Perhaps a small part of me is optimist after all…

You may have noticed that I mentioned Chimpit earlier. In an unexpected move she told her boss to stick it and came home to me. The left sock has returned to join the right and complete the pair. These two odd socks are like once more. Perhaps we’re proof that it’s possible. In that case maybe it isn’t foolishness to cling to our odd sock-like possessions...I wish I’d thought of that before I went to the dump. I could have devoted a separate drawer to my odd socks, a shrine if you will, or at the very least made an army of sock puppets.