Wednesday – Pygmalion
Apr. 21st, 2010 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
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“So,” Jim said, “What makes you think all of this is real?” He nodded toward the Ferris Wheel with its lights and mix of old and new cars filled with soul, revolving in a circle so big that it stretched into eternity.
“I neither believe nor disbelieve much of anything,” I said. “I live in each moment as it happens, and I have no knack for grabbing hold of the future – not even the future as close as tomorrow. When I’m here, with you, seeing all this; it’s real. That’s one reason I haven’t done much with my life; the future is too abstract for me. Tomorrow is too abstract. I can’t make plans for what isn’t real to me, and only the time I exist in at any given moment really is. I get stuck pretty easily.”
“I’m death. I’d think that would me me too abstract for you, yet here you and me talk all the time.”
I grinned at him. “I made you real and tangible so we could. Let’s face it: you’re someone I grew up with. I was born to middle-aged parents and I think I went to more funerals than I did weddings when I was a kid. Then I looked up Juvenile Diabetes in the Collier’s Encyclopedia when I was 9 – which was where all the knowledge ever gathered was kept neatly bound on the bottom bookshelf in the living room – and it told me I was expected to die a lot younger than everyone else around me, so you started becoming less abstract even then. Then I felt myself start to die a couple of times before being rushed to the ER. Then my mom’s cancer happened. Time is hazy and abstract to me. Death is not. I figure I know you pretty well.”
“Don’t nobody know me all that well. Some of you know me better’n others, but nobody knows me well.” He didn’t say it bitterly or in a deriding way. He was squinting at the Wheel and then gently eased the lever backward to bring the wheel to a stop and let some riders off. His dog rose from resting his face on his paws to bark at them once, then lay back down at The Carney’s feet.
“What I mean is, the reality of you isn’t as scary as the abstract idea of you. If someone were to point a gun at my head, and I had to stand there not knowing whether he was going to kill me or let me live, that would be terrifying. But when I felt my body start to shut down on those occasions, instead of being scared I was simply frustrated and a little annoyed, even. On those times, you were real and not just an idea. I was able to deal with you calmly and rationally. I went to the hospital and they chased you off.”
“They didn’t chase me anywhere; I just saw that I wasn’t needed and backed off. If I wanted to I could’ve stuck around.”
“Thanks for backing off, then.”
“But then here you conjure me up and have conversations with me.”
“Look, I’m not crazy, okay? I know you’re only a literary devise and that you’re abstract and formless until I sit down at a keyboard and give you substance. But once I write these conversations down, they are as vivid and real to me as any conversations I have with anyone else.”
“So why’d you create me in the first place? Well, not create me exactly, but give me a face and a voice? Lot of you artistic types do that: craft a literary device around me and what I do. I think it’s cute. Some of you make me scary, some make me evil, some just try to humanize me like you do. I just wonder why y’all do it at all?”
“I can’t speak for the others. I started doing it to freak out my cousin, back when she was the only one who read my blog, and it grew from there. It worked, too. Her initial reactions were pretty funny, and I just ran with it after that.”
“But then it grew from there, huh?”
“What do you mean? I keep writing about you.”
“But you don’t know what you’re goin’ to write about me until you sit down and the words come out. What makes you think I’m not the one pullin’ the strings, now? That I haven’t taken on a life of my own?” He crushed out his cigarette and stuffed the butt into his front pocket. I noticed the tattoo on the back of his hand as he did it was of a hand of cards composed entirely of jokers. The last time I’d looked, it had been something different: a cattle skull with a snake coming out it, I think.
“You’re Death, Jim, how can you have a life of your own?”
“You know us artistic devices. We do it all the time. Didn’t you hear the story of Pygmalion? You create somethin’, and then what you create becomes real not just to you, but to the rest of the world.”
“Stop trying to mess with my head, Jim. It’s already messy enough in there. I can’t tell the real from the abstract, remember? It’s one of my quirks. Achieving a real presence in my life isn’t much of an achievement at all. I just like you because you’re good company and you’re interesting to talk to. That’s the most I ask from anyone in my life. Real or not, you’re one of the few people who come through in those two regards.”
He laughed a little. “Okay, but tell me this, baby girl: when you sat down to write up this conversation, is this the one you planned to write? Or was your idea completely different?”
“It was different. Completely. I planned to write about…”
“Doesn’t matter what you planned to write. I knew how this talk was goin’ to go before you started typin’. You didn’t. That’s all I’m sayin’, baby girl. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
“So,” Jim said, “What makes you think all of this is real?” He nodded toward the Ferris Wheel with its lights and mix of old and new cars filled with soul, revolving in a circle so big that it stretched into eternity.
“I neither believe nor disbelieve much of anything,” I said. “I live in each moment as it happens, and I have no knack for grabbing hold of the future – not even the future as close as tomorrow. When I’m here, with you, seeing all this; it’s real. That’s one reason I haven’t done much with my life; the future is too abstract for me. Tomorrow is too abstract. I can’t make plans for what isn’t real to me, and only the time I exist in at any given moment really is. I get stuck pretty easily.”
“I’m death. I’d think that would me me too abstract for you, yet here you and me talk all the time.”
I grinned at him. “I made you real and tangible so we could. Let’s face it: you’re someone I grew up with. I was born to middle-aged parents and I think I went to more funerals than I did weddings when I was a kid. Then I looked up Juvenile Diabetes in the Collier’s Encyclopedia when I was 9 – which was where all the knowledge ever gathered was kept neatly bound on the bottom bookshelf in the living room – and it told me I was expected to die a lot younger than everyone else around me, so you started becoming less abstract even then. Then I felt myself start to die a couple of times before being rushed to the ER. Then my mom’s cancer happened. Time is hazy and abstract to me. Death is not. I figure I know you pretty well.”
“Don’t nobody know me all that well. Some of you know me better’n others, but nobody knows me well.” He didn’t say it bitterly or in a deriding way. He was squinting at the Wheel and then gently eased the lever backward to bring the wheel to a stop and let some riders off. His dog rose from resting his face on his paws to bark at them once, then lay back down at The Carney’s feet.
“What I mean is, the reality of you isn’t as scary as the abstract idea of you. If someone were to point a gun at my head, and I had to stand there not knowing whether he was going to kill me or let me live, that would be terrifying. But when I felt my body start to shut down on those occasions, instead of being scared I was simply frustrated and a little annoyed, even. On those times, you were real and not just an idea. I was able to deal with you calmly and rationally. I went to the hospital and they chased you off.”
“They didn’t chase me anywhere; I just saw that I wasn’t needed and backed off. If I wanted to I could’ve stuck around.”
“Thanks for backing off, then.”
“But then here you conjure me up and have conversations with me.”
“Look, I’m not crazy, okay? I know you’re only a literary devise and that you’re abstract and formless until I sit down at a keyboard and give you substance. But once I write these conversations down, they are as vivid and real to me as any conversations I have with anyone else.”
“So why’d you create me in the first place? Well, not create me exactly, but give me a face and a voice? Lot of you artistic types do that: craft a literary device around me and what I do. I think it’s cute. Some of you make me scary, some make me evil, some just try to humanize me like you do. I just wonder why y’all do it at all?”
“I can’t speak for the others. I started doing it to freak out my cousin, back when she was the only one who read my blog, and it grew from there. It worked, too. Her initial reactions were pretty funny, and I just ran with it after that.”
“But then it grew from there, huh?”
“What do you mean? I keep writing about you.”
“But you don’t know what you’re goin’ to write about me until you sit down and the words come out. What makes you think I’m not the one pullin’ the strings, now? That I haven’t taken on a life of my own?” He crushed out his cigarette and stuffed the butt into his front pocket. I noticed the tattoo on the back of his hand as he did it was of a hand of cards composed entirely of jokers. The last time I’d looked, it had been something different: a cattle skull with a snake coming out it, I think.
“You’re Death, Jim, how can you have a life of your own?”
“You know us artistic devices. We do it all the time. Didn’t you hear the story of Pygmalion? You create somethin’, and then what you create becomes real not just to you, but to the rest of the world.”
“Stop trying to mess with my head, Jim. It’s already messy enough in there. I can’t tell the real from the abstract, remember? It’s one of my quirks. Achieving a real presence in my life isn’t much of an achievement at all. I just like you because you’re good company and you’re interesting to talk to. That’s the most I ask from anyone in my life. Real or not, you’re one of the few people who come through in those two regards.”
He laughed a little. “Okay, but tell me this, baby girl: when you sat down to write up this conversation, is this the one you planned to write? Or was your idea completely different?”
“It was different. Completely. I planned to write about…”
“Doesn’t matter what you planned to write. I knew how this talk was goin’ to go before you started typin’. You didn’t. That’s all I’m sayin’, baby girl. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 06:53 pm (UTC)I have other slightly-unstable people to worry about now... my mother... my HUSBAND! You're sane in comparison.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-22 06:45 pm (UTC)