Picnic Where Possible

It’s a natural fact of being human that we perceive time as linear. The way we see life, things start and end, and progress along a certain path, and we do things that enable us to prepare for other things that result in yet more things down the line. I surely can’t be alone in finding this the most terrifying thing about existing- admitting that there is a future, and that it will turn up unbidden. I see a lot of the things that normal, functioning adult human beings do as concessions to the linearity of time - procreating, especially - and their bravery is beyond me. When is anyone ever ready to admit that the future exists? That’s admitting we won’t be around someday, and Christ, who in the hell is ever ready for that.

Keep doing things that trip up your narrative, that would confuse the hell out of your biographer, that create lacunae for literary critics to puzzle over - if life absolutely *has* to be a novel, with a beginning and an end, make it a postmodernist headfuck with a metanarrative and interlocking plot threads and no fixed setting. God damn it, people, we have to be interesting. Having an unmanageable life is the only thing that makes the very concept of living manageable. Make no concessions to the linearity of time, and it’s got to be possible to break its power in some small way, even if we can never break death. Who knows. Maybe one day we will.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Berlin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.