Two Irritations of the Morning and an Emergency

Yes, I'm really trying to get back in the posting groove... and I will take my own survey at some point... but right now I want to share two things that I noticed this morning and mentally responded with frustration and annoyance.

Thing #1: I have come to the conclusion that there is a deadly plague or perhaps a toe-eating monster hiding in the back half of every Septa bus. Yet again this morning, about 500 people were literally squashed against the front door while, exactly at the back door, others held their positions as though defending an international border. What is the problem?? Can't you see that NO ONE ELSE CAN FIT ON THE BUS? You are literally depriving people of transportation because you won't climb two little steps, grab onto a pole, and stand there instead of two feet away. Sometimes you are depriving people of transportation because you would rather stand in a crowd than sit in a perfectly lovely seat in the back half of the bus. It is utterly, completely baffling to me that this seems to be a universal phenomenon. I actually said something today. I was like, "We have to move back more; there are people squashed against the door." And this one woman did.... all the way to the back door! Please, someone, let me in on the secret. What is back there? I've sat there. I've stood there. It seemed just fine to me. There are signs all over the bus with arrows telling people to please move back. The bus driver sometimes says, "Please move back if you can." And yet.... at the back door they stand, indifferent and intractable. I feel that this phenomenon is somehow revelatory of a basic, fundamental flaw in human nature.

Thing #2: Why would you take the time to write a song that is 100%, unadulteratedly about how there is absolutely no point in anything ever and the whole world is worthless and really we all might as well just give up now. I mean, you have to spend time on this. You have to craft it, and listen to it, and practice it, and fix things that don't work, and deal with lyrics AND music, and then you have to record it, assuming you are someone I am listening to on the radio or something, and play it again and again, and presumably you are enjoying this on some level... and what's more, you are working on it, you are creating it and shaping it and all of this stuff... but the whole point is that there is no point. I think what irks me is that you make this astonishing pattern, this music, and I don't think you can do that without caring about it... but you do it to say there is no meaning, let's all just kill ourselves. Which is not to say that I think despair should not be expressed artistically, I just... I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say. Except there's something about most of these songs that just rings false and irritates me, instead of moving me with the plight of the musician/people in general. How does this fit in with the fact that one of the things I love about writing is that I can take the strange, ugly, painful things in my life and transmute them somehow? Or with the bizarre and disturbing story I just finished writing? I don't know. But it does seem different to me.

Wow, on an unrelated note, we just had a fire alarm, and Maria and I were the only ones who left... it had gone off once before and stopped, and people said it was a false alarm. They were probably laughing at us up here... but I'm always worried that I'll hesitate too long, and then it will be a real emergency.

Which makes me think about how we relate to emergency and normal life. There's obviously a shift, where you go from normality to definite abnormality, a shift in perception as well as action. But there also seems to be this limbo, where something has interrupted normality, but you are not ready to commit to it being an emergency and act accordingly. I guess that wouldn't be limbo, it would be purgatory. Or perhaps a pre-hell, since purgatory leads to something better... anyway. It's not comfortable, this inbetweenness. I think maybe it's less comfortable than either normality or the emergency itself, which are definite states of mind that you know how to navigate. Maybe that's arrogant, since I have not truly experienced a life and death emergency. But I've experienced what I've thought at the time were life and death emergencies. But I know it's the inbetween state that I find truly uncomfortable and scary, because I don't want to go off the deep end and totally overreact, but at the same time I am afraid that I will wait around deciding if it's real danger just long enough to prevent escape.

And how does this relate to the desire we all have for the interruption of normal life? Don't you? Do you ever have disaster fantasies, escape fantasies, what would I do if fantasies? I do. I definitely do. I always escape with my life, at least when I'm awake. Though sometimes I get to a dead end and have to go back and find another way out, and presumably the fantasy me that got stuck for ideas doesn't escape. And I also have had specific death fantasies when the whole kidnapping/decapitation spree in Iraq was at its height (please don't take that flippantly... I don't mean it that way.) Those happened because of my irrational terror of decapitation. Not that it's irrational to fear that, but it's just not a viable threat in my life, and yet it fills me with a much more visceral fear than other forms of death.

Wow, now that I'm thoroughly discomfited... why do we both fear and crave emergenies? Why do we like disaster movies and roller coasters (though, with exceptions, I don't really like either. In fact, disaster movies could go on a "things that annoy me" list)? But I have been struck, in the midst of negative emotions, fear, doubt, anger, sorrow about horrible things happening in the world, about the war, etc.... by a certain hidden seed of excitement. That "something is happening" excitement, that "I have something to fight against, to care about, to absorb my interest" excitement.

What's it all about, Alfie?

Damn, it's 11:20, and I really have not done much work. I should. But please, if you have any ideas or insights on these matters, I would like to hear them.