Ad Infinitum

Time could not care less about me in the in-between. There is no correlation between happiness and anything conceived on this supposed Eden we were born on, both form or matter, whether socially deemed important or no matter. In truth, we do as we say of our elders, we stray from it time to time, and then we realize how correct they all were about the horrors of age only when it is too late. Those that try to listen go no further than those who do not. None the more am I so disillusioned with the cycle of growing that I am ready to find new ways of preparing myself for a saving means of escape. But there is no salvation in manual death as I know many have tried, and there is no salvation in living on normally. I know this because I narcissistically know myself to be wiser than others. But I am intelligent enough to call my own bluff. So, in this twisted realm of the living, some try to ascend themselves on some pilgrimage to a foreign land and call it travel, while others follow their souls off the deep end by abusing things that transcend them out of this world. Others, like me, are close to doing both and neither, and are still in the in-between. But all of us want a way out, and it creeps subliminally into our subconscious whether we like it or not for the period that is our lives, and in some form or another, every action we take is part of this goal to find this way out.

I am at a coffee shop, sipping the dark liquid in a corner as the rain washes the side of the glass wall I am staring out at. I am walking a nature trail, overlooking a hilariously boring view of a forest as I feel each of my individual breaths, the light drizzle of the sky lightly tapping my raincoat. I am alone in my bed with the love of my life, but whose mind is so uncaught in thoughts that she is a stranger in another world to me in the moment, as I stare at the ceiling of our dark room, a ceiling which I can see because I prefer to sleep with a lamp’s light on. All of this while listening to the heavy taps of a thunderstorm through the window to outside. As I said, most of us are in this in-between. I like to think I am caught in it more than others, and I am closer to realizing some sociopathic tendencies than others as a result. But I know my sanity is still intact because there is still no world I can think of where I do become some reject of society, unable to cope with the realities and burdens of inequity and inequality in the world.

Why are the places I am at always full of rain? Make no mistake, these are not the places of my thoughts, I truthfully was at the coffee shop two days ago, on a hiking trail yesterday, and in a bed with my wife right now. It is not my fault that the rain has been continuing for three days now, perhaps four. But this is no coincidence when I assess the current state of my mind.

My son comes home tomorrow. Clara is ecstatic--we rarely see him ever since he went off to university far from town. One era perhaps this would be an impossibility. I imagine myself as a farmer and fisherman making his own ends meet with my bamboo hat, harvesting rice and tea and wheat for my village. My son, who has made a name for himself as a talented pig breeder, known by name to everyone in the village, will never leave it. He will be born in the hut my wife and I conceived him in, will be raised with his brothers and sisters in the same hut, will venture no further than the border of our village log walls, will respect the wide range of his aunts and uncles and grandaunts and granduncles with kisses, will marry and have children with a sweet girl in the village, and will move into a hut next to me and his mother. All on not his accord, but on the collective’s. This will happen for generations and generations ad infinitum.

All we do will be to harvest our crops and cattle. This will be our work, day after day. This will be what we dedicate our lives to by no choice, except by the choices of our stomachs. In the opinion of mine, peaceful, but in the opinion of others, a hellish burden. So, to take away this choice for the modern man would be to reverse centuries of efficiency in gaining our food, but in return, to sacrifice the relationship we have with this farming process itself. Now my son has nothing better to do but study and learn about the world. He has nothing better to do than find a woman who also has nothing better to do but study and learn about the world. They both have nothing better to do but find friends who have nothing better to do but abuse substances and procreate and go to places with loud music because we built a world too easy for them to live in. Am I a pessimist? I am not. Am I egotistical? I am not. Am I simply caught in the in-between? You can say so.

#

Hey Dad, look at me! Are you proud of me? I caught this fish by the river with my net, all on my own. Mom said we can eat it for dinner, but I think the fish is too small. I think she’s trying to make fun of me, don’t you? Anyway, Dad, some kid was mean to me at school. He pushed me into the muddy grass hill in the recess yard while everyone watched. Half of them laughed, and I know they didn’t mean to. The other half pretended not to care. I don’t think anyone pretended to care, though.

I know I can’t be perfect, and I’m sorry. I know you would have wanted me to fight back. I try hard to be like you because you’re my hero. I don’t know how you do it, Dad. I don’t know how you have it all together all the time, or at least seem to. There are so many things wrong with me, so many things wrong with people I meet in the world, and I’m sure your life is not different, but you always seem to be in control. I’m sorry I can’t be like you. I know there’s that one time I scratched that kid in the ear because he stole my toy, and you got really mad that I thought I would never love you again. I know there was a time I pushed a girl for having cooties and when the principal told you, you brought out a belt and made me fear for my life to teach me to respect women. At that time, I was angry because I had no control. But now I understand that you never once whipped me with that belt, and you never would in a million years.

Anyway, as an eight-year-old kid I can’t even begin to understand how you’re able to deal with me, my brother and sisters, and your job at the same time. I just let go of the fish I caught back in the water, and Mom went ahead to the car. Right now, I’m taking a bit more time to enjoy the scenery, though. I’m doing something on my own, for once. My old man has picked me up one too many times, right? One time you said you had to learn to be independent when you lived alone in another country for a job you took right out of university. I can’t rely on you forever to be there when I need someone to teach me an important lesson in life. I can’t rely on you to be there to remind me not to take the drugs offered to me by the kids in high school, because you are busy closing sales at the office and Mom is too busy marketing her new frozen chicken product to a board room full of greedy corporate businessmen with no souls.

Sometimes I wonder where I will end up too, right? I did say I wanted to be an astronaut, but then I heard my little brother say it too, and then all the other boys in my class, and then I realized it’s hopeless because if this many people wanted to be an astronaut just in my town then why are there not one hundred astronauts who go to the Moon, and only, like, three? So, I might just end up in a boring office job like you. But wait, why am I even thinking of all this right now? I’m too young to think about my future. I just laughed thinking about it. Mom is probably asking for me to hurry up, but I’m still taking my sweet time wandering around this trail, probably getting further away from the car.

I mean, there’s no hope of me becoming an astronaut. Right? I’ve stopped trying, although this is something you still don’t know. Dad, you always talk about how I should do good in school to be able to do whatever I want when I’m older, “Perhaps to be an astronaut,” like you said. But secretly I’ve changed my mind. No, don’t worry, I don’t want to become movie-star famous or an athlete like the other boys in my class. I still don’t know what I want to do yet. I’ve heard some kids never end up knowing. But wait, before you yell at me, I’ve heard some kids do! You’ve always said to be one of them, or to at least be something like them. I’m talking about the smart kids in class. They always talk about how their dad or mom is a scientist or engineer who makes a lot of money. But not enough to make them super rich so they get free cars on their birthdays in high school. No, but at least rich enough to give them a good life, and not rich enough so they wouldn’t have to work hard for their own lives, too. These kids seem to have it all worked out like you, Dad. Sometimes I relate to them when I get an A+ on my test, but sometimes I don’t when I see the friends I hang out with and how trashy they are sometimes. Hopefully these aren’t the same types of people I stick with throughout high school, but I always find them drawn to me, or worse, I find myself drawn to them.

Why am I even rambling about this? Mom is waiting for me in the car. But wait, please stay Dad, I’m not done talking to you! Remember when you said you really liked that movie we watched in the living room, about a bamboo farmer? I’ve thought about it a lot, and I realized that life like that wouldn’t be so bad, I think. Because there are no jobs, so you don’t have to grow up thinking about what you want to do in life. I think there’s serenity in that. I would have to till the soil and plant the seeds before I could have enough time to have any thoughts about what to do with my life. I would go with the flow and do the same things as everybody else. If I saw my brother getting married, I would too, even if I didn’t like the girls in the village and even if they really liked me. But what choice would I have? They were the only girls I knew. So I would be stuck with one of them and we would learn to really like each other as we spent time together. Wait, but then maybe I’d love her then. Dad, is that what you meant when you said love is built over time? I don’t know. What I do know is that a life in a village, as a farmer, would be really hard but at least we would have everything figured out. If someone died, we wouldn’t blame it on some abstract economy, it would be because they starved to death, or got eaten by a tiger. The dogs we’d have would not be on leashes, but they’d be free to roam the village and get pet by everyone and they would guard our livestock from wolves.

“Nathaniel! Where are you?” said Mom. “Mommy’s waiting for you, hurry up! We don’t want to be late!”

Wait, Dad! I’m almost done! What was I saying? Oh yeah, the dogs--the dogs would be free but they would have a grand purpose of protecting us and our livestock. In this way, you would think they’d be happier with this kind of life compared to the dogs now, who are trapped in houses and leashes and serve no greater purpose than existing as themselves. But dog depression is not a real thing, is it now? I don’t know how the dogs do it either, Dad. They’re always happy, all the time, even in this type of life. They don’t have a job to do like herd our cattle, but they’re still content spending time with us, as if all they need in life are the little things. But my teacher in science class said the main goal of an organism is to make more organisms so they can make more organisms, so it could keep going forever, to infinity. So what I’m trying to say--and I took a long time to get here--is I may be just one kid in this cycle of generations, right? I mean, you talked so much about Grandpa, and Grandpa talked so much about Great-Grandpa, and I didn’t meet Great-Grandpa because he’s dead, but he probably talked a lot about his dad, and so on. And I’m afraid that my kid will talk a lot about me. What’s the point in it all, why do we talk like that about our dads? I mean, the goal is just to create another dad, right? Then that dad’s goal will be to create another dad. Just stop talking about it all.

#

The day after my father got a heart attack, my son Nathaniel overdosed on Xanax. Before you gain any preconceived notions about the type of father I am, or the type of child my son is, I must say that the world is no fairer about any of this than it will be to you. This is a threatless warning. I am simply trying to say that one generation or another will have a problem like this because time likes to laugh in our faces, while we try to delude ourselves in meaningful lives. The truth is, let me say we were the model minority of a Western immigrant family. My wife and I are a pinnacle example of love and we spread all of it for our children. It is a cycle, that is what it is, and I do not trick myself any further these days into thinking it is not. Prevention is possible, but so is historical repetition--and there is no difference between the two sometimes. What I mean is, a world war happened twice, a nuclear attack on Japan happened twice, a revolution that changed the world happened twice, and everything caught in the in-between will run twice or more as well. Was an attempt of prevention made at all of these? I am not naive enough to think my child is perfect enough to listen to the forefathers who went through life an infinite number of times before himself. I am not some fool who thinks my family is immune to the deceptions of flawless morality upheld by our Catholic religion, or the ancient cultures of our heritages, or by the communal thinking of society. I drown myself in these ideals to imagine myself in a fictional world where human nature is at a standard where I can love all men and women. In truth, I love my neighbours and hate everyone else I do not know, whether I would like them or not if I had met them.

One day I would like to meet a person who is at the level of experience in life that I am. But since I grow and change every single day, this is a variable too hard to control. Perhaps there is one out there on my spot in the roulette, but when twenty-four hours pass it spins again and our balls reach new locations, and a winning number is never achieved. Therefore, true love stays in the public perception as a miracle and a miracle only. What we perceive it to be when we find our wives and husbands is love built over time because we spend time with them to infinity. But this does not mean they are a winning number. It means we think they are.

To combat this, we have fiction and media. But I like to rid myself of that poison of ideals because once you settle comfortably into your own skin, you start to wonder if any of it will ever be real. You start to wonder if your son in the hospital room as you and your wife sit on rusting metal seats outside, waiting for news from the doctors, is real. Or are you caught in the in-between of a strip of film, flashing before the eyes of an audience holding their breath for the news just like you? It never makes sense, and it never will.

“Hey, will you be okay?” asked Clara.

“I will be,” I said, because that is what you are supposed to say, ad infinitum.

“What are you doing?”

“I… I don’t know. I was going to call my mother, but now I don’t feel like it. Then I decided I’d walk instead, until you asked me just now. Now I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay. We’ve never been in a situation like this, I don’t know what to do either.”

“Well, I feel like slamming a fist on a table and shouting at you.”

“What?”

“Because that’s what I’m supposed to do, aren’t I? Aren’t I supposed to yell that I should have been a better father?”

My wife did not know how to react to such an inner-seeking question. Perhaps she expected me to simply do what I said, like a normal person would, and not say I should have, as I just did. But like I said, I have been caught in the in-between longer than most and narcissistically think myself wiser than other people. So I decided that I would not be angry at our son, nor would I be angry at myself. Never would I be foolish enough to blame some sort of system either, or some idiosyncratic fact of modern livelihood, or some of God’s god-damned quota, or anything in between. There is no rest for me in this infinity and I am not going down, I am only turning around. There is this moth I remember when I am faded away into my dreams that circles around a lamp light that it thinks is the sun. It goes round and round and round, like it is always asking, “Tell me where I am. Help me find my way.” Of course, as a human one hundred times bigger than this moth watching a light, I can. But doing so is a question of my morality. I believe myself good enough to guide this little moth, but whether I actually do it or not is dependent on my desperation to be kind enough for insects. This is almost always zero. Going back into the storm of my memories, I remember one time when my daughter told me not to kill a spider in our bathroom because she said it was a common house spider just trying to live its life like the rest of us. I had my slipper in my hand, cocked back and ready. That was all before she melted my heart enough to let it go. As a result, this kindness for insects is never always zero. But in my dream, I never have my daughter to tell me to guide the moth, and so it has nothing to tether it to reality. It is left to its own biological instinct to circle the light until night ends, which to its small mind is infinite.

There is no one in my life to tell me how to stop circling my lamp light. Back and forth I go, around countless times, time not caring any less, no forefather to tell me a path away from it. I do try to listen to them. My ancestor number two hundred and seventy-three, or the man in the future cooking his pancakes with solar energy and getting to work in his flying car. The former is too busy shooting arrows at antelope to tell me how to get away from the lamp light, and the latter is too busy thinking about the future galactic expansion of humanity to even think about the problems of my era. So none of them can give me advice on how to cope with this endless cycle. I only have my own wits to trust. My own grandfather was of an era with a culture where nearly everything is now deemed wrong, and my father’s heart is too busy suffering from decades of fast food and cigarettes we only found to be unhealthy today. And I am supposed to be some shining example of my generation? It is nonsense to me, because one blink of an eye later and I am told that the moralities of my time were actually all evil, just like my ancestors. No, anarchy is the solution to capitalism. Civil liberties were too harsh on the oppressors, and now they deserve some compensation.

But what are the ramblings of a son’s old man worth when he is dying in the next room over? On an impulsive decision I push aside a doctor and get in the room.

“Hold on sir, you can’t--”

I hear the silence of beating myself ten times over for being the one to do this in this lifetime. I have turned myself into an island of emotion because this has happened a thousand times in the history of humanity, what is one more? My son was right when he talked about what he learned in biology class, where the goal is to create more life so that life can create more life. I should just keep my problems silent and give the world what it wants. What does it want? If I had to guess, I would say nothing. I do not mean to be cryptic, I mean it in the most literal way possible, because life is a stranger to the universe shown by its hostility toward us, and when fathers’ sons overdose on Xanax, it is more prepared to say goodbye to them than help them save them. So what is one more time? When my son’s son will fall deaf to the warnings of his father no matter the plannings we do, adding one to infinity keeps it infinity, a child could tell you that. Being myself is hurting you, son. I want you to be free next time, or this time, even.

#

Dad, today I tried to start a rock band with some other cool guys from music class. But they left me behind without telling me and started practicing and doing gigs without me. They didn’t say why, but I think it’s because I didn’t carry the same sense of style they did. They had these cool haircuts and black T-shirts and lots of girls falling for them, and I was just good at the drums. I was never meant to be one of that lifestyle, I’ll admit. Perhaps I wanted to fit in, if that really was it. I didn’t know my intentions, honestly. I still don’t.

Anyway, I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to choose, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Lately you’ve been a stranger to me and it’s not because of your work, or my angsty teenage feelings, but because time thinks keeping us together is irrelevant in the type of urban life we partake in. I mean, what is it supposed to mean when I’m supposed to spend more time with friends at this age than with you? No, nobody explicitly told me this, but it’s an answer I get when I ask the question from the world. Any trace of home we knew is lost. Finding myself has never been harder in this hellhole where strangers tell you to never give up.

Have I ever told you that if my choice was infinitely powerful, I would choose to be a bird? No, no bureaucracy or a life spent trying to impress others to provide for my family. I mean, a bird wouldn’t hurt anyone, right? I can run--no, fly--to any place I want. This place could be another planet even, if I was an extraterrestrial bird. Saying goodbye to you would be hard, but what’s one more goodbye in a sea of infinite goodbyes, when I have the ability to fly to Mars and Pluto and be an astronaut because of my biology? Don’t tell me I’m wrong, Dad. I hear goodbyes every day, my friends to their friends, Mom to me when she drops me off to school, Lisa to me, girls in the hall to their boyfriends, online friends logging off. Me to you would just be one more. You may not be able to handle one more, but the world can, right?

I’m not sure if losing you would be easy, but that’s because I’m just one of the forefathers lost in this cycle where I’m told I’m not supposed to find losing you to be easy. If I really wanted to break it, I could. I could buy the pills from David in the hall and try it, right? Would you be mad? You don’t say it, but I think you already are sorry for me. I can be sorry for myself enough, since I’m sorry for you, Dad. It’s not like I’m a burden on you or anything, but you should focus on what you want to do in your coming years, especially since Grandpa’s health is declining and Rachel is almost old enough to wipe her own bottom.

I realized all this today when Lisa invited me to a party everyone in my grade is going to. It’s a weird time to realize all that, but I don’t make things up. All of that came crashing to me once she invited me. It’s like I realized something was going to happen later at the party. This Rubik’s cube enigma that is succumbing to the pressure of your girlfriend trying to take away your innocence leaves one to believe that the weight of the world is too heavy on their shoulders. There are thousands of answers to this one simple question of deciding who I want to be as a person in my life, but there is only one when considering the intent of a community of farmers. I want to be a good man just like you Dad, but how can I be when the delinquents of my age of who I spend most of my time with are hellbent on opening the sky for me?

I know. I’m being silly, I’m being a little kid, because I’m cooped up in this box where I haven’t seen all the horizons of the world. At the same time, I’m so desperate to find out what’s outside, without a key. Come take the weight of the world off me, Dad. There’s this messed up feeling in my chest I feel every day because I feel like everybody around me is taking crazy pills and I’m not. I know there are others who don’t either, but I can’t find them because if I try to it’s the same as taking a crazy pill myself.

One day, outside in December, there were ten of us around a fire in a parking lot. Some kids were passing cigarettes and when it got to me, I remembered what you said about smoking, so I decided listening was for the better.

“Suit yourself,” said the girl who offered, as she stuck one in her mouth.

Then I wondered if her dad said the same to her, or if her dad didn’t. Or if she listened, or if she didn’t care. Or if her dad was dead, so she didn’t have one to tell her, or if she was the one dead, trying to bring herself back alive with cigarettes. Like I said, the world is too heavy for a high-schooler to think about these questions with thousands of answers, I suppose a kid like me knows no better than to stay with these types of people because they’re the only ones I can find.

“Let’s feel alive,” they said as they lit other things on fire, had their first kisses in the snow, and played rebellious music. All of this to enjoy the moment of their lives where this was the only time acceptable to do any of these things as age can be the one blamed when the law gets involved. But I was not one with these people, I was here because I was a good drummer. I was here because Lisa, who I didn’t even really like--but she was pretty--brought me here. Lisa is the type of girl I could never see myself marrying, but she doesn’t know that. We’re together because we’re kids and we don’t want to feel alone. It’s idiotic because we need this only to replace what would be family in the past. But parents work now and all I have to talk about life with is this girl who’s spent most of her life trying to get with other boys because her parents also work. In that sense, how can I ever feel special? How can she ever feel special, when I’ve loved other girls in the past? How can anyone of all time feel special, when most people who have ever lived probably loved more than one person in their lives? It makes me feel stupid to think that my first love should be my last, and that Lisa right now thinks I am going to be her last, and she doesn’t know I plan to leave her next week, and that the girl I’m going to find next plans to leave me in a future next week once I start thinking she’s going to be my last, and this cycle goes on ad infinitum.

“What’s wrong, Nathaniel? You look tired,” said Lisa.

Well, I know I can figure this out. One way or another. This losing game of expectations others have for me and who I truly am.

But time passes and I lose when she hands me the first pill.

#

When the doorbell rang, Clara yelled, “Go get the door! I’m baking something!” over the noise of the stand mixer. It was a shrilling screech, like that of some wild animal. It was dizzying to my ears as I waded through the front hallway to greet our son.

Sometimes it is easier to look back on your past self and how you used to be with your son. Sometimes it is easier to look at the pictures where he is smaller than a raccoon in his first game of soccer, or grilling his first smore over a fire like our forefathers. Sometimes it is easier to follow your soul into the water and not be okay, instead of following the light. Finally, sometimes it is easier to know better than to do any of that, to greet your son as he is, in his twenties, in his current loving state where he prioritizes you enough to come home, instead of yelling at the rain and getting yourself anything but wet.

I do not know what to tell you. I am no magician that can cleanse sorrows or guide moths away from lamp lights. I am a pessimistic, narcissistic, sociopathic, idiotic, old man who only tells my son not to do drugs and to respect others because I was told to do the same. It is the only thing keeping this ball of string that is humanity uncut, because the moment one generation fails, then we all live in chaos. There are no police to stop the crime of losing morals in a degenerating society; there is no government to rid the unwanted desires in our heart to seize control of our lives through any means necessary, even violent. There is no universe that cares about the way time has absolute influence over every decision we make in our lives. But we must dust ourselves off. Everyone comes from somewhere, and I know better than anyone that this somewhere is all we know. It may be what we know forever, and there may not be a true answer to this eternal misery, but if my ancestor was able to withstand one thousand nights of staring at a rain-filled window, and my descendant is able to exist because of what I do today, then I know better than to think of my son’s near-death scenario as part of some almighty statistic for the news to report. You too, live in an ever-changing present moment where death could be near, with an unoriginal goal of being part of a group of creatures that just want to survive long enough to live. I cannot in good will let some stupid story of me and my son influence the decisions you make in your life. But hear me out for once, that some father’s kid out there is dead because they were unlucky--the antithesis to me--and some girl is signed up to sing at their funeral.

This girl does not need to be told what this all means. This girl does not need to understand anything about how the father feels. She just needs to pack up her guitar, wear some nice black clothes, and make it to the funeral. Her friend is sad she cannot make it to her rugby game where her friend is the star player. But this girl has a job to do.

But she never leaves the door of her room for my son. My son is coming home from university, and my pride for him is greater than any father in the world. No matter who he is, he is one of many on this rollercoaster we all did not choose to ride, and he deserves someone to carry some weight off his shoulders, no matter how little. Someone to hold him tight as the scary curve bends, so he can be let off easy once he gets off. If no one in his life will be that person for him, it will be his father. So in the end, I have this duty to serve, much like if I was a farmer in a village who has to harvest for the community. But it is a simpler duty, one that I have known and one I always will; and as I open the door to embrace my son, it is a duty I have realized will always exist, ad infinitum.

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