INEVITABILITY
sleep another coin flip
.
under the frosted streetlamp amber light illuminating the specks of air frost. stars? can't see that shit with all this light polution bouncing back on the frozen mists between me and the clear sky. hand to pocket, camel crush pulled out, the lighter held by the other to meet it at my face, automatic, no thought at all. crush the menthol immediately. On a cold 3 am wandering the empty streets, the hot cigarette air without that chill of menthol just doesn't feel right. the blanket of relaxation weighing down on me after the first long drag. when returning the lighter to it's pocket, i take awareness of my left hand and find the silver coin that's there. give it to the right hand as left takes possesion of the cigarette work. Flip the coin, catch it, and lay it on the back of the left hand. Heads. Again, flip the coin. again heads. again. again. again. just something to do, deciding after the fact that I would continue till it didn't land heads. again. again. again. how many was it now? 5? 7? what are the odds? again. again. again. again. again. ......... I just finished hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world. I needed a break between bursts of being annoyed by Bataille. I figured I'd like Murakami's other work after 1Q84. Guy's got a perspective on things that i vibe with. I wouldn't say I like hardboiled as much as 1Q84, but i did like it. It would benifit from 100% more words. There is this moment about 2/3-3/4 the way through where shit is explained and from then it basically drops all the set dressing entirely. This is a very strange movement in a story. spoilers ahead. The begining of the story focuses a lot on "the System" "inklings" "calcutecs" and "Semiotecs". There is this stress on the character's position within this society and how things are related. But they each only show up breifly. It gives this feeling that there is going to be some intricate political manuvering to get out of this espionage/counterespionage situation the protag finds himself in. but then there is the exposition dump. I need to mention at this point. I don't know how much I trust this guy's words. The scientist. He's already an awknowledged liar, so what's another lie to compound it? but let's not get into the weeds of a schizo theory about a book no one reading this has probably even read. after what has to be hundreds of flips, the shock has given way to distracted musing. The cigarette long dead. I know the coin has both a heads side and a tails side. I've flipped it many times before, but after 15 or so flips I had to check again to make sure I was sane. In theory there is nothing wrong with this result of course. Given enough tries anything that can happen will happen. but seeing that manifest in reality is something else entirely from the theoretical understanding of it. The human mind just isn't prepared to see a 1 in 10 to the 60th event in reality. He explains the character's plight. How he inserted an artificial mental blackbox into the protag's mind, and had him activate it, underhandedly, and now is unable to deactivate it because his lab was destroyed. at this point the protag just accepts everything the scientist said, throws up his hands and goes, well i guess i'm fucked then and goes about his remaining time. he spends the remaining time renting a car, buying random music and nail clippers, going out on a date with a librarian he met earlier, goes to a park and gets glared at by a mom with her kid. buys too much popcorn and feeds the birds with it, then goes into his car to meet his eternal unend. the system, inklings, calcutecs, etc all fail to exist under the weight of the inevitablity of his accepted fate of compressed time and unending consiousness in a world entirely inside his mind. the later part of the hardboiled story is so mundane so ordinary it makes the tonal whiplash of the alternating "hardboiled" "end of the world" structure seem plain. At least with those it's going from weird cyber-noir to fantasy agraria. this is just a tuesday in several thousand more words. it's this しょうがない feeling that sticks... resentful. eventually I give up on the flipping. Of course, I could keep going. One could argue that having seen it this far I have some kind of devine mandate to see it through to the conclusion. But it's cold outside, and spending the rest of eternity fliping a coin that always lands heads feels like a looming hell that i should just sublimate into the me-s that are left. god knows how many world lines i've already seperated from assuming the odds after 5 or so flips was the same as the first flip. There is of course the possibility that after 5 or so flips it became exponentionally more likely to flip heads, that the universe had decided it so a tails after 30 is really the odd world line out. I head back to my home, in a haze, undress and get into bed. and then I wonder unprompted, apropo of nothing, what are the odds of finding myself out of wherever my consiousness goes when I sleep.
tags:
dreams mind myth pink safe