Complex Numbers

Musing

PROMPT September 25th

Another prompt from bobturn!

What manner of creature is your Muse and how do you feed it? Where does it live and does it ever escape your control?

I don't personify what little creativity I have. Sometimes I'm inspired, sometimes I'm not, but usually once I start writing I can keep writing. There's nothing in my head but me.

I do enjoy drinking, from time to time. It gives me different ideas, different perspectives. Sometimes I can work with these perspectives after I sober up; sometimes it's not worth it.

Last night, whilst drunk, I found out that my favorite bar is closing forever. This plunged me into a deep despair. Nothing matters. It's all for nought in the end. I'm not even going to get a chance to visit it one more time to say goodbye; it's just gone. I'm still working through the classic stages of grief, here - which I don't even remember what they are. Denial, bargaining, anger... whatever.

There's no one I can talk to who can relate to this. It's a supremely personal thing, something that has hammered home to me the knowledge that, no matter who reads my stuff, no matter who I can find to talk to on occasion, in the long run, I am completely alone. As I said, nothing in my head but me. That's liberating and terrifying all at the same time. No gods, no monsters, no muse, no whispering agents, no angels, no devils. And then there's the school of "thought" that insists that there is no Self, that even consciousness is an illusion.

With this loss, I'm inclined to accept that. Nothing is everything. Everything is nothing. A swirling accretion disk around a naked singularity, temporary and eternal.

The place where we humans can live is a tiny sliver of atmosphere, proportionally thinner than an eggshell. Anywhere outside that veil, anywhere at all, and you're dead in three minutes or less - usually less. I've been told by well-meaning spiritual folk that the universe loves us and wants us to live and thrive, but this is demonstrably untrue. Pick a random spot, anywhere in the observable universe. Pick another. And another. Pick hundreds of spots. Millions. Billions. Trillions. Pick a googol of spots: 10 raised to the power of 100. Hell, pick a googolplex number of random spots: that's an enormous number, one with a googol number of zeroes after it.

The chance of any one of those spots wanting to keep you alive is nonexistent.

Hell.

There are other bars, I know.

But this? This hurts. On the one hand, at least I feel an emotion. On the other hand, why does it have to be this emotion?

As always, Leonard can say it better than I ever can.

And I lift my glass to the awful truth
Which you can't reveal to the ears of youth
Except to say it isn't worth a dime