Don't Feed the Animals

Look but don't touch.

Human beings have always fascinated me. The way they interact, the individual ways that they talk and gesture, and the hidden meanings of all of these unique, individual manners of communication. I watched a cartoon last night--Batman: The Brave and the Bold--in which a character, Red Tornado, who happens to be a robot created a son for himself whom he modeled on humans. The son couldn't handle the emotions that come along with humanity, however, and so father had to destroy son. Touching. In the end, Batman, hand on Red Tornado's shoulder, told Red Tornado that in defending what it is to be human, he had found his own humanity.

Red Tornado removed Batman's hand. "Incorrect," he said, and I'm paraphrasing. "I merely mimic things I have seen and draw logical conclusions based on my observations." The robot couldn't understand humanity. And so with me.

I observe people. I went for breakfast today and sat next to two old women. I listened to the imperfect way they spoke, and to the cliche's and expressions that had become a part of their individual language, and which are a part of the language, to a large degree, of a certain demographic--the aging female subculture of New England. Writing lie: write dialogue like you/other people really talk. (This will never work. Emily Bronte tried it in Wuthering Heights with Joseph to an arguable degree of success [I found it barbarous]. Yorkshirian as experts say it was, Bronte didn't capture the essence of speech. She didn't capture the glances and the gestures and the hidden intentions of his personal language. Impossible to do so.) At the restaurant, I took in the clothes the old women wore and the way they wore their dyed hair and the wrinkles on their forearms and the skin that hung from their bones. I will write about them some day, though I'll never understand them.

I'm taking a trip back to my roots. I'm returning to Derrida, Plato, Rousseau, Hawking, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard. War and Peace (which I'm still reading--mother of God, is it long!) is a wonderful novel, as is anything written by Hemingway and, for the most part, McCarthy. I could go on about brilliant novelists, but lately I've felt a calling to return to my own love: confusing myself. I need to go back to the people whom I feel understand me. Those who stepped outside of humanity and reality itself, and out of what it is to be a human and to exist in our universe, and observed and wrote about it. I'll call you when I return to earth.

My superpower of the day is flying.