ten years ago, i had a hamster named irving. he used to run around my apartment free, exploring things and stealing peanut-butter crackers, until one day he went outside and it was hell finding him again, so i bought a "freedom ball," a big plastic ball to put him in. he could move it around the house; in theory, he was almost unrestricted (though he couldn't steal crackers anymore) but safe.
when i look at my life today, i wonder who bought the freedom ball.
i mean, in theory, i have almost everything you could want: a job that pays enough to live on but doesn't take up too much of my time, creative projects that intrigue me, amusing housemates who keep domestic life from being too lonely or dull, friends all over the place (real-life and virtual), stuff to do on weekends, dates every now and then, occasional experiments with mind-altering chemicals, books to read, a diet that's working really well... if you described my life to me, i'd think "wow, cool, sounds fun."
but it all tastes distant, like it's something i'm reading about in the paper, not something i'm living. except for periodic flashes of intensity (that usually don't last more than a few hours at best), the day-to-day reality of meness is *boring*. i get up, check in on the net, go to work, go home, eat dinner, go to sleep. trundle, trundle, the freedom ball rolls across a few more inches of floorboard before i collapse into sleep. and sleeping's just so i'll have the energy to push the ball a tiny bit further the next day. but where am i going with this? what's the point? is there any reason to keep moving? if i keep it going for a few more days, it'll be friday and i can get vaguely intoxicated and go let music flow through me like a shower and everything will feel deeply meaningful for three hours. then i'll go home and go to sleep again. i don't even think having a permanent lover would change much; it would just make things inside my hamster ball all that more crowded. i mean, at least this way i can see everything all around me with minimal distortion. i'm not even sure that this state is a problem, unless over-realism is problematic.
the ball i bought my hamster had a little door in the top you used to put the hamster in and take him out. sometimes i think that i do things like drop acid as a way to look for that door, to figure out its mechanism. if i ever found it, though, would i be brave enough to go out? and what would i do out there, run off into the front yard and play in the leaves? or just creep around the edges and steal crackers?
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deb | sine
"we'll inherit the earth, but we don't want it
it's been ours since birth, whatcha doing on it?" -- the replacements