Daryl’s Brain

I really should have gone into a different line of work, but now I’m stuck. It’s not that I hate my job, I don’t. I actually really like my job as far as jobs go. Great pay, good people, excellent atmosphere, awesome bonuses, flexible start times and I have the option of working from home on occasion. What’s not to love? No, I definitely DO love my job. What I hate is knowing that I don’t make a difference.

If I was no longer working their, what difference would that make? None. Well, not none. They would have to get someone else to fill my position and there would be the unfortunate paper work requirements for my boss, true; but even our clients wouldn’t really even notice a hiccup. So, if I define myself in terms of what I do -like most people in our society- then that’s really what my value boils down to: I prevent my boss from temporarily having to do interviews and from paper work.

I wonder if this is why I like donating money to charity; not because I’m such a caring or righteous person, but because I’m selfish and chasing that feeling of having made a difference like an addict chasing his next high.

Meh.

It was unavoidable, just an instinctive reaction to the signals in his brain; neurons whispering promises the universe itself would be unable to fulfill, cascading signals through his body to cause a momentary glimpse of all his hopes, and forcing -yes, forcing- his hand to reach out towards that which he already knew the truth of: an illusion.

- Daryl’s Brain

“So,” Mark started, and then paused.  “They do exist?” He asked, unable to mention what they really were.

“Yes” came the typically short answer.  John looked up at his partner in crime.  The look on Mark’s face said he needed more than that.  “Think of them like aliens. Most people can deal with it better in those terms.”

“Aliens?  I don’t think so.  They’re too…” Mark searched for the right words as the events of their recent, close encounter ran through his mind.  His hands reached up to massage his scalp as his words stumbled over his memory.  “They’re just, it’s just that, well, they’re not alien enough.”

The old beggar stopped sorting through the items they had pilfered and looked Mark strait in the eyes.  There was another pause before John looked away, almost as an act of mercy, and pretended the rags he was wearing needed adjustment. “I think you might mean that they’re too alien.”

Mark started to object but closed his mouth quickly.  I think this is the most he’s spoken since this whole thing began he thought, and he could tell that there was more to come.

“Think about the aliens you’re used to seeing on the tely in the theater.  What does everyone say they are like?”

“Well, that’s not exactly a real question.”  Mark’s subconscious was grateful to be focusing on anything but what had just occurred.  “It’s all just speculation, after all, but they’re nothing like us.  And they’re definitely not…”

“Do they have colour?”

“Well, yes, of course they do. Everything has colour.”

Already he starts to forget. “Do they have bodies?”

“Of course an alien would have a body, but it wouldn’t be like ours.  It would…”

“What did they make you think?” John was starting to get a little impatient as Mark’s memory faded.

“What kind of question”

“Think of what you just saw!”

The verbal slap in the face brought Mark’s mind back to the alley where it had happened.  Time stretched out as the part of him that strived to answer every question forced its way past his refusal to accept the very thing it sought.  Colour?  The thought almost made him cry.  Body? His hands were trembling.  I, he tried to breathe. I am, only short breaths were manageable.

John saw the moment for what it was.  “They are innocent.”

Mark’s body began to convulse.  For fifteen minutes John held the weeping Mark.  Had anyone seen them they would have wondered at a young professional being comforted by a dirty homeless man with an obvious odor issue. They would have pondered the missing footwear from either of the men.  They likely would have even called the police, especially if they noticed either of the men’s wounds.  But this was not a place where anyone went.  Not anyone respectable, in any case.  Not here, and especially not now.

When Mark did, finally, look up he did not care about his surroundings in the least.  Well, not right away.  He was looking, instead, to John who had resumed his fussiness over the stolen goods.  “What do you mean by innocent?” His hand wiped his eyes clear.

Stillness.  Mark knew now to wait.

“Do you have any children?” John asked.

“Yeah, Sarah.  She’s just a year old now.” Mark couldn’t help but smile at the thought.

“When you saw her for the first time, what did the sight of her make you think?”

A slightly puzzled look crossed Mark’s face.  “Well, to be honest one of my first thoughts was that I was going to have to cut back on all the overtime I’ve been putting in.  You know, so I could spend more time to be with my family.”

“So seeing her, in all her innocence, made you want to be a better husband and father?  Be a better person?”

“Yes.  That’s exactly it.”

“Why would you want to be a better person, if not that you were already failing at being the person you thought you should be?”  Again there was silence.  “You see, this is what innocence does to us humans.  It reveals our faults, our failings. If another human can invoke such feelings, how much more a creature of pure innocence?”

Mark was at a loss for words.  He had never thought of such things before.  Finally, he asked “what do they do?  I mean, why were they there?”

“They have their orders.”

“Orders?”

“Yes.  Just like your child will obey you, until such a time as she thinks she knows better anyway, so too they obey their father.  It’s the nature of innocence.”

Mark thought about all that had just happened.  As John finished packing what they would need, Mark looked around.  “Wait.  Where are we?”

That’s right, they are all a foot. All the changes are. Not just this post.

Speaking of which, we now have many baby-footprints on our truck’s windshield. How you ask? It’s easy, just follow these simple baby-steps:

1. Make a fist.
2. Identify the “bottom” of your fist as being the side furthest from your thumb.
3. Press the bottom of your fist against a window, mirror, or other piece of glass. (But not a shard of glass.)
4. Use the tip of your forefinger to add toes to the footprint.

Simple, but of course I actually meant that the blog is changing. For all three of my regular readers, don’t worry, I will keep blogging. The changes are just for convenience’s sake since I have all but abandoned my “other” website. I am adding pages and sections for other thoughts besides those that stem from my brain (pun intended). Some of them stem from other peoples brains, after all.

Feel free to browse them, but don’t worry if they are gibberish to you. Somewhere, someone thinks they mean something.

Oh, and I will be adding a new category called “Hovercraft” because I intend to get over to the mainland once a month to work on it and thought it would make a good thing to blog about.  So, keep tuned for Hovercraft updates.

A wise man once told me that he did not think that everyone saw the same thing. At the time he was referring to colours. When I tell you that I see the balloon as red, and you agree with me, how are we to know if we are both actually seeing the same colour, or if we are just calling two different colours by the same name? If I see red as green, but I always call it red, how would anyone know?

I was on the bus on my way to work recently and I saw a submarine. (It’s a bit different then the above example, true, but it’s still just a matter of perspective.) The fact that everyone else who was with me called it a bus changed nothing. Our surrounding atmosphere was water (a bit more spaced out then the water that exists under the water’s surface, granted) and we were piloting through the water while all staying completely dry. Well, mostly. There was a leak in one of the windows, but it wasn’t a life-or-death kind of thing. We were all on a submarine.

Oh man. Now I have that stupid song stuck in my head.

Every once in a while I get an energy boost to my mind. While it does result in extra physical energy, as often indicate by excessive rubbing of hands, it’s mostly mental. My brain just seems to go into some sort of hyper-thinking mode where I can’t focus on anything, and I get these odd feelings. I can’t describe them very well except to say that they are “yearnings” to either do or think about something, but I can never figure out what it is that I need to think or do to satisfy this craving.

It sounds very weird, I know. The term “energy boost” is actually quite accurate as far as how it feels in my head. In fact, it’s taking a lot of effort to focus on just trying to word this entry. After a little while it will fade away. Usually I just try to find some old, abandonware computer game that will “scratch the itch”, but occasionally even computer games won’t suffice. I have no idea what this is, but I’ve “had it” my whole life, only to just recently realize that it’s not normal.

Maybe I should just start exercising again.

I was recently pondering the question “what would I do if I ever won a million dollars?” It’s one of those questions that, I think, everyone ponders at least once in their life, even those of us who don’t play the lottery. In working out this question, I came to a startling realization, but I will get into that later.

What would you do if you won (or were given) a million dollars (after taxes)? As I pondered this I slowly started to work it out. First, I feel that as much as I believe that I should tithe 10% of my income, a million dollars is a lot of money. I am of the opinion that the more money you have the more important tithing becomes. Also, I would not want to inadvertently separate myself from my family due to wealth, so I feel I would need to give away a large portion of the money. The end result of my meanderings was as follows:

• 10% to All Saints
• 10% to St. Herman’s
• 10% to various charities
• 10% to student loans, debts, and some other purchases I have in mind
• 10% towards helping fund ABA therapy for families
• 5% would go into a travel fund that would only be used for the purpose of travelling
• 10% for a down payment on a house
• 7.5% to an RRSP for retirement
• 7.5% to an RESP for our children’s education fund
• 20% would get divided up between our parents and our brothers and sisters

Why would I give so much of it away? Well, partly because I am actually enjoying the struggle that comes with living. This is mostly due, I believe, to how much I am enjoying working through all of life’s issue with Stella. I like where we are at in life, apart from our debt, and I don’t really have any desire to change the way we live.

As a side note, I do actually want to change the way I live, but this has more to do with personal discipline then it does our lifestyle, and money just doesn’t help with that.

Having thought about this, my thoughts then turned to the question “what would I do if I won $10 million dollars?” $10 million dollars is a lot more then one million. And here is where that startling revelation I had came into play. With $10 million, I think I might actually change my lifestyle. This came as a bit of a shock to me. As I write this blog entry, I haven’t actually worked out what I would do, so I am thinking I will do that now.

Why would I change my lifestyle? Well, first of all there is the temptation to just put $2 million in a high interest savings account and live off of the interest while volunteering my time to various projects and organizations. Secondly, I could actually buy a large property and build a communal living setting to attract my friends Phil and Biss to come live near us. Thirdly, there are many projects that I would want to finish like the hovercraft. The list goes on and on.

So, with all that in mind, what would I do with $10 million dollars? Well, if my belief regarding tithing is to hold up, I should probably bump up how much is given away. So, here are the numbers that I have just worked out now:

• 20% to All Saints
• 20% to St. Herman’s
• 10% to various charities
• 1% to student loans, debts, and some other purchases I have in mind
• 10% towards helping fund ABA therapy for families
• 8% to buy property and build a house
• 10% to a high interest savings account (at 5% yearly interest this gives us $50 thousand a year)
• 3% to an RESP for our children’s education fund
• 18% would get divided up between our parents and our brothers and sisters

These numbers are fairly different from my one million landfall scenario, and here’s why. My thinking is that a $50 thousand dollar a year ‘extra’ income can fund both our traveling and several ‘pet projects’. We would still work and would be living off of that income, but we’d be able to do more with this boost to our budget. With that in mind I ran out of ideas for where to place the wealth so I just kept bumping up the amount we gave away. I do think it is interesting that with “only” a million dollars I was thinking of using 40% personally, and with $10 million I was thinking of keeping 22%. Huh.

What would you do with a million dollars? How about $10 million?

As a side note, I am currently 33 years old. If I wanted to retire at 65 with a million dollars, had a savings account that gave me 4% annual return, and my income tax rate was 20%, I would need to save $1,432.34 per month between now and then. Huh.

So, Stella and I live in a place that is surrounded by parks and protected areas. We like to go for walks in these areas. Some of them are a little “overgrown”. It was one such area that we were walking through just the other day.

As I walk, I like to grab a piece of grass that is hanging over the path and take the top of it and use it as a flag, as a pointer to indicate what I’m talking about, or just to poke Stella with. (he he he) So, that’s exactly what I did; I went to grab a piece of grass and pull on it as I walked. Except, in this case, the grass fought back. I stayed right were it was and I yanked on it with quite a bit of force.

So much force, in fact, that I injured my pinkie finger. Bringing my hand back to me I gave it a good shake because of the momentary pain.

Blood splattered everywhere.

And by everywhere, I mean all over both Stella and myself. It’s amazing how much blood there was, but the cut from what I later found out was called “Sword Grass”, was very deep. I debated whether to continue our walk, or to head back home. In the end, I thought it best to head back.

Now, when I take the band-aid off, I can spread the cut apart slightly and look at my pinkie muscles. Cool.

Stella is away at a work conference and I am finding myself at a loss without her. So the other night I decided to go for a walk. The place where we live is surrounded by nice little trails that wind their way through sometimes very dense forested areas. It was one such area that I found myself in, late at night, when I heard some rustling in the bushes.

I stopped. I was thinking that perhaps there might be a large snake or small critter that lived in the river and was up for, whatever they get out of the river for, and I could get a glimpse. I was very still. I heard the rustling again. I still couldn’t see anything so I shuffled the rocks on the path a bit to see if I could get it to move some more. That was when I saw it.

Looking hard into the shrubbery I caught a glimpse of an eye; a glowing eye like that of a cat. Flashbacks of a friend’s encounter with a cougar flashed through my mind and I backed away. I thought I could make out a small dark head, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Keeping my body faced towards where the noise had come from (cougars usually only attack their prey from behind) I slowly made my way to the nearby road.

I continued my walk for a bit and pondered what had just happened. Eventually I headed back home. On the way back I passed the path and glanced down it to see if I could see anything. Nothing. However, there was a house nearby that bordered on the ominous park. As I passed the house I glanced in the yard…and there it was.

A black, fluffy bunny.

Hey, don’t laugh. Haven’t you ever seen Montey Python’s “Quest for the Holy Grail?”

(Forgive me, I feel poetic.)

I pace because I feel trapped. Sometimes it’s conscious, other times it’s not. I pace mostly when I am deep in thought, or deeply involved in a conversation. I feel trapped.

I thought I should move out on my own. For a while I had a sense of freedom, but that was all it was, just a sense. I ended up pacing in an unfurnished living room.

I decided I should leave my hometown and I moved. The hot-tub was nice, and the full night sky. I got a job as a janitor to provide myself spending money. In the end I just paced the halls of the school, still trapped.

A phone call gave me the idea to leave the country. I did. I saw many different places and many different people. Everywhere I went I paced.

Eventually my mind turned to science and I thought of how it must feel to leave the boundaries of this world. I thought of the feeling of weightlessness and of seeing the infiniteness of space. I paced as I thought and I wondered how one would be able to pace in a space shuttle. I know I would find a way.

The thing is that I’ve been looking in the wrong direction. I was looking out when I should have been looking in. I feel trapped because I am a trap for myself. My passions weigh heavily on my conscience.

I pace when I think because I am trying to go beyond who I am. My mind is attempting an escape. I pace when I am on the phone because I am trying to escape myself to become the one I am talking to.

We were not meant to only be able to comprehend what we experience. We were not meant to be able to only feel this minute range of feelings. We were not meant to be slaves to our passions. Why can I almost taste this?

One day.