The Grand Orchid

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

I don't take care of myself. I don't eat enough, and not well enough when I do eat, I drink too much soda, I don't exercise. I'm rail thin, but I'm fighting a gut the size of Camelback Mountain. It's not a place I ever imagined myself.

I don't go outside and interact with people enough because, quite honestly, they frighten me. I know all too well the bad things people are capable of doing in a moment of stupidity. I know that whenever I walk out that door, someone is waiting to sell me something. I don't like saying no to people, but I also don't like it when people try to manipulate me. It's an insult to my intelligence, and I get enough of that treatment from my own conscience.

I'm an intelligent person. That is not a boast, just a statement of fact. I have the test scores and numbers and aggregates recorded. I have many strengths, and I have a ton of talents. But I'm also an irrational person. I look outside to see who is walking by just to make sure that people still exist - that I'm not imagining this whole life thing. I watch them walk past the window, and I imagine what they are most likely thinking or perhaps where they are going.

Odd that I'm such a prolific people watcher, and I don't even like going out into public. I have always been shy, so maybe there's something more to the antisocial feelings than just simple paranoia. Maybe I just sense something, an all-encompassing bad thing that is waiting to lower the boom on mankind, and I want no part of it.

It can be strange walking outside in the middle of a very large busy public gathering location, such as a baseball game or the local shopping mall. Huddled in a cloak of anonymity with one eye on the surroundings and the other on the people. Imagining what they are thinking or where they are going. Picturing entire slices of the lives they might be living. Listening to conversations, and building complete personality profiles to store in my memory banks - the ones specifically allocated to store my "human social behavior" files.

I know people. I have been so good at reading people based on a few sentences and a sampling of body language, that I have told relative strangers their entire sexual and/or relationship history. Some people are easier to read than others, and they make me most uncomfortable. I usually end up feeling like I'm talking to myself, since I already know what they are going to say.

That's the predictability of culture, though. If one pays enough attention for a long enough period of time, a person can really learn some things about their own society.

Tangential, yes. Just one giant cog in the man machine.

The point is that the machine isn't functioning as it was intentionally designed. Sure, I can go out, put on a smirking face along with the "big wankin' deal" attitude, but I'd rather not overload my delicate circuitry with such an unfulfilling task. It's just not who I am.

I'm a "big picture" guy. I see things from a uniquely universal perspective. I'm detail oriented, so I see all the little bits and pieces that make up the bigger pictures. And I pay attention long enough to see how those details make up those bigger pictures to the point that I see them all add up to an even grander scheme. I call it an Orchid - so many seemingly unrelated parts joined together in such a way as to create a pattern of beauty. Any small piece on its own seems insignificant. And in truth, the part it plays alone is not only replaceable but expendable.

That's how I see everything. There is almost a Matrix feel in being able to decode the patterns that make up life, the universe, and everything. (42 is not binary, and according to Doug Adams, "No one writes jokes in Base 13".)

I look at the world and see the same things happening over and over again. Conversations repeated independently between anonymous and variously numbered groupings of people. Everyone has the same choices in shoes, ring tones, cars, furniture, coffee. . .no wonder it's so easy to predict behavior.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be spontaneous, unpredictable. Not so much in actions as behavior. I have a quick, unbridled wit for that very reason. But now everyone is a smart ass, and the true art of satire and sarcasm is lost in a deluge of finger paints and water colors. I'm replaceable, if only for the reason that no one can make the distinction anymore.

I write. A lot. I get the thoughts and observations out of my head before they lead to a Howard Beale moment.

And somebody is listening, which is cool. There is a small platoon of media militia following the action. But I am no leader. The only thing that I'm good at is planting bad ideas into stupid people's heads. (What can I say, it's a gift.) No one is going to listen to me when it counts. I am not contributing to the bigger picture, the grander scheme. So I'm expendable.

I don't take care of myself as I am told I should. How can I take anything seriously when I see exactly where whose actions leads to which consequence? People try so hard to be meaningful, too. God, art, consumable goods, self-help gurus, sports. . .all the trivial stuff that prevents us from doing what we were designed to do, whatever that may be.

Me - I'm a coal burning toaster in an eco-friendly world.

I'm not fit for this world, and I'm bored of it. I can see where all this is going, and I'd rather not be around for it. I'd like to move on, now. Just slipping into the shadows unnoticed, so quietly that my existence fades from memories slowly, forgettably.

But, no. I'm designed to go out there and put on a cynical face and tell the world, "Fuck you," but with a genuine, pleasant smile. I am caught teetering between pretending that I know what I'm talking about, and pretending that I really don't know anything. It's a strenuous and tenuous circumstance in which to find yourself. It's the kind of stress that can lead a perfectly normal, intelligent, eloquent person to commit a ghastly social faux pas.

I went to Seattle at the end of March to attend a memorial service for a close friend who had passed away. Upon seeing me for the first time in 14 years, my deceased friend's mother asked me how I've been. Without consideration for social etiquette or consciousness of my surroundings, I offered up my standard, cynical reply - "I'm alive."

Believe me, it is not easy being so out of touch with humankind that I could forget I was talking to a person whose daughter had just died. Looking back, it was rather hilarious. Honestly, only I could pull off that maneuver, and I did so with more subtlety than a Houdini body switch.

I am meant to unleash that candor onto the world, yet I don't have the program installed that would give a normal person "tact". People just aren't ready, I suppose. No one wants to hear that their life is meaningless, that all the things in which they find joy are absolutely pointless. They don't want to hear that they are ignorant, drooling masses that can be swayed at the drop of an adverb.

They want to hear that they're special. If I can't convince myself that I am in any way special, especially with a complex thought process that breaks down the concept of infinity to its more useful components, then how am I supposed to lie to anyone else? I'm not built for that. I was shipped to the wrong address. I'm either 40 years too late or 400 years too early, I don't know. I just know that this is not the time or place to hone my craft.

Under the right circumstances, I feel that I could be this generation's Hunter S. Thompson. But the way things are arranged, I'll more likely end up as another Steven Hunter. (Too much basketball.) As it stands, I am just another one of Howard's Humanoids.

Maybe Cobain had the right idea, after all. Maybe he realized at just the right time that he was a speck of pollen on this great Orchid.