Coded green.

Thursday 21 September 2000

River

Pic of the day: I took this picture from the bridge near the old church, down into the still water. It was a bit of a walk, and then when I came there I could not make myself cross over. On the other side is the church and the graveyard, where the body of an old friend of mine is still lying. I had planned to go all the way, but at the bridge as I looked down into the water I felt this vertigo and a kind of alarm. I backed away, unable to go any further.

Engage or withdraw?

No, I'm not getting engaged to be married. Not in the foreseeable future. (That's humblespeak for "never ever in all eternity under any conditions". But saying things like that is assumed to upset a Higher Power.) I use the word "engage" in its more general meaning. Sort of like gears, you know. Or military, engage in battle. Sorry about that, to my romantically inclined readers. :)

In fact, what I think about is the opposite: Whether to continue my current path of withdrawal. The way it is going, I basically detach myself more and more. This has the benefit that when I die (and you know I am a human, so I must die sometime) there will be no sorrow. No one will miss me, and I count that as a good thing. Honestly I do. There is enough human suffering in the world. I want neither my life nor my death to cause extra grief. The problem is, this way none of them will cause much joy either, except possibly for myself. (And then just the life!)

***

In one way, it seems bad to detach myself from humanity. I feel like that guy in the Bible who dug down his money. (For those who haven't read the story, this turned out to be a bad move. He should have invested it.)

I'm not nearly as important as I thought when I was very young (then again, who is?) but even at this age I'm probably more intelligent than 99 out of 100 random people I meat. Or at least 49 out of 50. (You, of course, are not exactly random, or you would not have found your way here. Ahem.) The numbers used to be like 999 out of 1000 or so, back when I was young, but time takes it toll on us all. (And there's the Flynn Effect too.)

I've never had any ambitions in this world to speak of, I guess mainly because I never trusted the humans to treat me fairly; and later their opinion did not count so much, in the years when I tried to become a god. Actually, their opinion still does not count all that much; it is yet another crisis of conscience instead. It just does not feel right to use a brain like this only to devise new gaming strategies and memorize comic strips. It feels like, you know: Putting a lamp under a bowl, or some such. Not only doesn't it shine for people, but I bet the flame will eventually suffocate from lack of air.

***

The trouble is, I don't really know what to do. I feel like a stranger in this world now. I used to be able to do miracles with computers, way back when. But I burned out. And I never really finished any education - just flitted around. I guess I could translate between a couple languages if need be; but there are people making a living from that already. And it's a bit late to start an academic career now, whatever that might be good for. By and large, life has marched by while I was playing quietly by the riverbank. God knows how much time I have left at all.

And anyway, people don't really need all that much intellect. What they crave is emotion. There seems to be no end to their emotional needs, which of course is one thing I don't know the first thing about. Trying to talk sense seems to do more harm than good. As I say, I feel pretty much like a stranger. And it gets stranger as I go. The frail threads that bound me to the human values are fraying badly. Without my Best Friend to keep me connected, I sort of feel myself slipping away. And it feels good, that's the most disturbing thing. If I don't actually do something (and I don't even know what) I will grow ever more distant from humanity.

It would give me more time to play computer games, though.


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