[UA] Memento [OT] (was: One o' them thar pwernomancers!)

[Malagigi at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/3/01 11:50:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time, kane at patriot.net 
writes:
>  I'm a little slow on the draw here due to digest-mode, but also check out
>  John Tynes' excellent short story "The Changeling" at
>  
>   http://www.johntynes.com/rl_changeling.html

Potential spoilers.  Completely OT, too.

























Had a chance to read it.  Not bad.  Don't know if I'd've ever managed
to get as organized as Mitch.  Those lists of self-notes would get
unmanageable.  And I liked some of the small touches.  "It's not good,
but it's cool."  "Another Mitch."  The job.  Miming smoking.  The Big
Brain still works by association.  "I love this girl."  The amazement
of communing with your past selves.  Mitchless.  Like Groundhog Day
backwards, the chance to find a way to put yourself in a perfect place
every day.  Especially the last bits remind me of de Lint.

But there were parts unexplored.

You're a modern fay.  A creature of the moment.  What kind of life can
you have if you can't remember from day to day? Books.  Um, no.
Movies? Screw it.  Self-improvement is a loss.  Find a damn good movie
and leave yourself a note and watch it every damn day if you want.
What do you care if you get a rep as a creature of habit? Heck, you
could always find one for every emotion.

Same with almost any kind of study.  Whatever you do, it's going to be
lost tomorrow, except in the memory of others.  So act decent.  You're
like a living dead person, existing soley in the memories of others.
Treat your new home right; they'll reflect it back at you.  And don't
forget to be good to yourself, too.  It'd be real easy to get lazy, to
cut corners, let your future self deal with the details.  People will
wonder what kind of person left those little timebombs for himself.
Is he just lazy? Or, hell, if he'd do it to his own damn self, how the
hell can we trust him not to do it to us? It's no good laying crap on
the man you'll be some future morning.

And in those dull moments of the day when you'd've picked up a book,
read the newspaper or turned on CNN, you might as well work out.
Maybe even karate.  After all, muscle memory isn't stored in the brain;
reflexes might be the only kind of learning you can keep in you.

Watch your personality.  Are you the kind who puts off calling Mom
until that little voice nags you that it's just been too damn long? Or
do you count the days until you risk her exasperation before calling
her again? Things like that will build up, move to extremes.  What you
put off, you'll never do.  And what you wish you could do everyday you
will.

It'll get lonely.  People already avoid the freaks.  It starts some-
where in the hindbrain, so there's no reasoning around it.  Worse is
the way they'll act.  Friend's'll get wary.  They'll hear the same
routine, the same patter.  But wait.  That's part of friendship.  The
glue, the cement, the mortar.  The sharing of experiences over time,
the casual familiarity....

Stop.

Sharing... familiarity... damn.

Relationships? Forget about it.  If you've got a girl who stays with
you that itself says a lot about what she's looking for in a guy.
There're only so many times you can have the same conversations, walk
someone through the same steps, and be entertained by the recurrent
regeneration of their emotional hymen.  Marriage? Come on.  You don't
know her that well, and she's too safe with the perpetual stranger.
It's too optimistic to believe there's a way around it.  So screw it.

And her.  Morality beyond kindness has to go beyond the wayside.
What's good now is all there is, and all their ever will be.  (Amen?)
So buy her flowers, smile at children, laugh out loud to yourself on
the street if you feel like it.  Live life exactly like we should live
it because there really is no tomorrow.

Call it a mid-summer's night lesson.  The little deaths of sleep will
get bigger.  The shock'll be the same in the morning, the despair'll be
just as deep.  That kind of perpetual emotional turmoil will shorten
your life.

And it's *really* gonna suck when the guy next door smoking sets your
brain on fire.


-Pat

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