Dreams of Caroline

os·cil·la·tion [os-uh-ley-shuhn]

 

The goal is to congregate.

In all things, really. Objects move together. Gravity gave us a cue, and everything has followed since, from rocks rolling down a hill, to birds, to people. This is, of course, not the rule of all things, but as one of the directives of everything, it seems to serve well.

We as a society often function best when we move together. I do not mean as a mass, as a crowd, but as a people. Culture and interaction develop in gigantic leaps as necessity and collaboration demand more and more of us. Is it always smooth and good? No, that would be absurd to assume as much. But is it better than the opposite (anti-societal nomads)? Probably.

I am no scientist, but it is obvious this act has, of late, led to the most rapidly developing society ever seen (or rather, experienced). This is to say, more has changed in the last forty years than the forty before that. Probably the hundred before that. Maybe more.

We’re closer than ever. It may not seem like it when one looks at the news, but the fact that this information is there and being digested at insane speeds is a testament to the truth of things.

A week ago a boy was killed in a tragic explosion in Boston. That same week they caught the bombers while we all watched it happen online (or for the less savvy, the news). A week later, we’ve absorbed it and moved on (while many still mourn)  because we now know this happens every day, all over. This does not diminish the event, but reveals it as one of many pins on the map of our contemporary timeline.

Had this happened in 1960, it would still be something mentioned as a dark and telling time in American history (which, to be fair, it is), accompanied by grainy black and white photos, and be featured in those “Scenes of the 20th century” movies or scrapbooks.

Today, it is that terrible thing that happened in April. It will hover over Boston, but the congregation of absorption and social media propels us forward. A day later, dozens of people die in Texas. A week later, mass bombings in Syria. We can’t stop for breath, we move. Together, we move. Even the unwilling are dragged in defiant fashion.

Things get bigger, and at the same speed, they become smaller. Tiny bright lights sucked into the greater glow of everything else. Suddenly that thing you thought was yours was also someone else’s. A million someone elses. It is the great and horrible revelation of this stage in the law of congregation.

Where once we were those tiny bright lights, apart yet together like a swath of stars swept over the night sky, we are now bound closer and closer. You had that thought that I thought only I thought. What has really changed? Nothing, really. Simply our awareness of it. We are, and will always be those flickering individual lights. Only now the rule of falling into each other has closed the gaps of sharing and exploring. And, somewhat, the mystery of individualism.

As a society, is this the best place one could be at in the known history of mankind? Probably. Awareness is expanding, as is tolerance (even if it doesn’t seem like it). Is everything great, though? Of course not.

More now than ever, the individual is probably not as individual as they thought. While this brings us together, it does so unintentionally at times.

I wear a red hat, no one else I know does. Oh, person on Facebook, you wear a red hat too? I guess that makes us closer, but you know what? I kind of wanted to be the only guy that wears a red hat. Oh, millions of you wear red hats? Well, I am wearing a blue hat now.

I’ve oscillated from the congregation. But the problem multiplies. Because now I find that this person also wears a blue hat. And so do a million other people. So now I wear a green hat. And then a yellow one. And then I forget why I ever liked the red hat in the first place. So now I am here, lost in that massive glow. I’ve forgotten something important about myself, and now I have way too many hats.

This is our dual nature. We are drawn to congregate (not just physically, but socially), yet many of us are also drawn to be the individual. I am keenly aware of this dilemma on a personal level.

To be clear, I am not an amazingly cool or mysterious person. I am not some renegade poet or unappreciated abstract thinker. I, like many of other, drink Coke, watch Game of Thrones, and have my favourite sites for porn. But at the same time, I can fairly say I mostly exist outside the social congregation. Things that are the norm are alien to me. I am not the guy that goes to the club on Saturday night (no, I write instead), or has a barbeque with the bros, or the kind of guy you picture with grandkids in forty years.

I’ve oscillated so far from where you are (or closer to you perhaps, fellow recluse) in my (somewhat unintentional) journey of individualism, that looking back even two years is like looking at another person (and in a way, it is just that).

Do I regret it? Sometimes. Do I think about somehow trying to ‘integrate’ myself back? Often. Because what are the benefits, really?

….

I just legitimately sat here a few minutes pondering this. At no time are you assuming what I write is thought out from start to finish, I hope, because this is not the case. This is me working shit out. And this is what I worked out…

There really are no tangible benefits. I could be that person with the girlfriend and the kid and the barbeque and mortgage. The guy that looks level and ahead, not the one who looks down and inside. And it would work, it would totally work, and in that congregation I could be absorbed, find a new place, and be totally happy.

But at that point, I am wearing a green hat. And as happy as I am in that scenario, I am not me anymore. I am that guy. And while that guy seems alright, he’s not me. He’s just some guy that gave up his red hat. That guy can go fuck himself.

Oscillation is the shifting of beliefs or conditions. In the rule of the congregation, it becomes the great temptation. Do I want the great glow, or to be that tiny light? Do I even know which I am?

Do you?

Here is the secret, so many paragraphs later. We all have red hats. Maybe yours is green now, but you still have the red one. We’ll always be the individuals, to whatever degree. Sure, you have a mortgage and the kids and the marriage could be better, and you have no idea how you’re going to make that car payment…

But once upon a time you painted a picture of trees in the eighth grade. Or played a recorder, albeit terribly. Maybe you used to dance. You played soccer. You wanted to own a store. You always had a dream to work with animals. You wrote three chapters of a novel. Before Saturday night at the club, you wanted to live in a cabin. You thought about owning a restaurant. You wrote a song.

You’re somewhere in the glow. And really, it doesn’t matter where you are in there.

Just remember which colour hat your were wearing when you got there.

 

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 Music I was listening to as I wrote this:

I disappear, a lot.

Depending on who you are, this is sometimes met with a certain amount of derision. When I was bound under the yoke of the almighty webcomic (side tangent: are these even popular anymore? I feel like webcomics should have gone away five years ago), especially after 2006, I would take long hiatuses.  Each time would come with a various excuse, but the truth generally was that I was tired of doing that certain thing. So I would stop.

Most often, I would be gone about six months. Sometimes a year. Once or twice, more than that. I would pretty much wipe my existence from the internet. You’d think in the day of cellphones, Facebook and IMs, this would be hard… but it is not. Sometimes, it is just as easy as not turning those things on (or in the case of cell/smart phones, not having one).

Every single time, though, I would return. The draw was always a new variation on the old thing; some new idea/creative urge that would push me on. That would get me another four to twelve months, but that isn’t the point of this story.

Almost every time upon my return, someone would remark, “You’re still alive.” I would confirm my living status, and we’d all share an awkward chuckle. The awkwardness stems from the fact, I think, that if I had died, it would have been accepted or expected. I don’t think they would wish it upon me (well, maybe some do. Internet toughs get pretty vicious/banal), but if it were to happen, they’d probably nod and say, I saw that coming and then someone would have to pay another person ten  bucks.

Without getting into a laundry list of depressing shit, the cons in my life definitely outweigh the pros. I am in poor health. My reclusive/acerbic nature has basically pissed away anyone close to me. I am in debt. I habitually make poor decisions. Sure, I have a job (not a job I love, of course) and I have a home (this month, maybe next), and in the overall context of badness in the world, I am doing alright. But people with more than this have tossed their idiot bodies off of bridges.

Now, you’re maybe looking at yourself and saying I am in poor health, too. Or, I hate my job. Maybe more than he does. And lets face it; everyone is kind of alone. It is hard to be the person in your head, and the person people see/expect you to be. There is always going to be some sort of disconnect.

Or maybe you’re not. Maybe the paragraph where I listed all the crappy things has caused you to read right through the evasive wordplay and such, and think Oh, god. He’s talking about killing himself! Hasn’t this gone to a scary place?!

Technically, I am talking about it, and it is a subject I have thought about often, pretty much all the time since I was in my mid-twenties.

No, not about killing myself. About why I would never do it. Why even considering it is even more insane than continuing on.

People who get angry about the subject of suicide will furiously call it the coward’s way out, or giving up. I don’t see it like that. I just see it as stupid. Selfish in a way, but not in a way the angry people are all upset. Selfish in a way that makes me go, Are you so self-centered that you think the universe is conspiring against you?

It isn’t. The universe isn’t a thing. It is not a committee of shitty people who have decided to be utter dicks to you. There is no conspiracy. They’re not pouring piss on you, waiting for you to kill yourself so they can have party with cake and tears and handjobs. The universe doesn’t give a fuck about you. It is dust and fire and gas and ice and empty space. Get over yourself.

How is in any way positive? Technically, it isn’t. It is neutral. But in this case, we’ll call it a positive. Why? Because the universe gives zero fucks about you, your fate, and your narrow scope of experience. Every goddamn day is a chance for a change to come. Most of the time, nothing does change, but the chance is always there.

When I wake up tomorrow, it will probably just be another mundane day. But there is always the chance, one in a trillion, that… I don’t know, the hallway will be full of blonde and redheaded girls wanting to give me chain blowjobs. I am not certain this would increase the quality of my life in a long, lateral sense, but it would certainly improve upon my Tuesday.

The truth is, while that chance is always there, the best bet for change (but maybe not for blowjobs) is you initiating it. I have not always practiced it, but I still know it to be the truth. Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids has an absurdly applicable quote…

“You’re your problem, Annie. You’re also your solution.”

Don’t put it on the universe. Don’t be so selfish to think that things will never change. You’ve seen nothing of the world. You’ve met so few people, I don’t even want to try and make up the percentile. Life is a lottery ticket of hope, and you don’t even have to buy it.

You just have to wake up tomorrow.

And that’s why I didn’t die. And why I won’t. Until I do, but that will just be a from a fucking bear attack or something.

Fucking bears are legit as hell, yo.

---

 Music I was listening to as I wrote this:

To call a spade a spade is to basically say something in the most simplistic of language. And the simplest way to say what I have wanted to say for the past five, six, seven years is that I don’t think I can commit to any sort of continuous project outside of the written word. And only then, sequence would be observed from the start of any piece, and discarded by the end. Chapters don’t happen. Continuity is a fucking unicorn to me now.

I am not sure what happened, nor when it did. I assume it has to do with some sort of chemical problem in my brain, one that medication that I will never take would solve. All I know is that at some point, I tended to get tired of things after one month. Sometimes two months (I probably should not have kids. Thankfully, to avoid that ever occurring, I was given this face).

The guts of the problem was, of course, that I loved (and maybe still love) making webcomics. I had gotten into them when the years started with a nineteen instead of a twenty, and thought it was something I would do for a very long time. But along the way, what I wanted to do started to conflict with what I could do. I wanted to have well drawn, flowing stories, but I only seemed really capable of disjointed episodes.

This lead to a tonne of starts and ends… and not finales, just… stops. Comics with great design and ideas with characters I enjoyed just fell off the face of the earth (and me with them) because within one to two months, I hated everything about them, or I had a ‘better’ idea.

Most recently it was the comic that this site now occupies, Dreams of Caroline. I was trying for something half-story/half-autobiographical, something that went from dark to funny, and that was at times as hard to read as it was to write. I loved it.

For two months.

To call a spade a spade would be to simply say, I can’t trust myself (or be trusted to) do comics anymore. Or even write within the boundaries of a long form scheme (i.e a blog about gaming or movies or Teagan Presley). But one thing I did take away from writing Dreams was a) I think my sense of humour has evolved into something brutal and fearless and a bit funny now, and b) I kind of liked sharing the dark side. People connected with it and saw a bit of reflective truth.

These are things we think, but never have the balls to say because we think maybe it is just us. Guess what? It never is. It never is. Because you know who Teagan Presley is. Or now you do because you Googled her. And then did an image search. You dirty bastard. But we have that now.

There is one thing I can trust myself to do, and that is say what I am thinking, in the most vivid and explicit language I can. And most likely against your own will. But it is a thing I can do. Sure, I still love to draw, and I think with the shackles of ‘four frames by Wednesday’ off, I may do it for fun (what is fun?) more often. No promises.

But this I can do. One never knows the context (could be a game, movie, music, work rant. I don’t know), but I think I can stick to it. I think. I mean, I totally don’t trust myself, but in this form, who gives a fuck if I don’t post for five months?

At least this way there are no shattered dreams, no stories with no endings and no characters without resolution. It’s just you and me and Teagan.

That is possibly better than what you had yesterday.

(Future posts will be funnier/more entertaining than this one. This just had to happen, in this unfortunate state. Like your birth.)

(ZING!)