Boats Against the Current

The Great Gatsby ends with this line about how we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, yada yada yada, which sounds really nice, well written, but man what a bummer. I mean, why end a book like that? What’s the point? I think all stories should be happy stories, forward-looking hopeful stories — which is to say, they should be lies. I think we should spend our lives lying to ourselves about our mortality, our prospects, and The Point Of It All. The most popular way to do this, of course, is to take up with some religion (or, in the parlance of the saved, Find God), but there are other options: immerse yourself in your worthless job, watch a lot of TV, or find a Worthy Cause. Each of these pursuits will wear out eventually, get stale, lose their appeal, and you’ll have to find another False Purpose, but that’s fine. There’s plenty of them out there.

The point is to keep moving, don’t look back, only look forward as far as necessary to avoid injury. In my headlong flight towards death, I’ve just turned left off of The Avenue of Failing Youth (against my will, the street just ended god damn it, how can streets just end, who planned this crappy city) and am now hurtling towards The Boulevard of Middle Age as quickly as my creaking joints and atrophied muscles will allow. I pass empty storefronts on the way, crunch through seas of broken glass, soldier on head-bowed through sudden squalls and occasional periods of Scorching Heat.

Every section of town I pass through has little Allegory Markers posted near the street signs. Euphoria Way’s says “A moment of illusory joy”. The street is done up in bright colors and filled with happy people who really like me, I can tell, and flanked by rows of little shops selling Tinctures of Good Feeling and Scrolls of Extreme Self-Confidence. I pause here, slow down a little, this seems like a nice place, why am I running anyway? I go up to one of the people who admires me, a handsome fellow about my height with gleaming teeth. But he doesn’t respond when I ask him how he is, and he doesn’t chuckle or even smile when I tell him my little vapid Start of Conversation joke. Finally I plant the heel of my palm on his forehead and push and he tilts slowly backward, motionless as a life-sized movie placard of himself, and falls, lying in the same position, hand outstretched, smiling his convincing smile. I go through Euphoria Way and do the same to all my new friends, and all of them topple without complaint, lifeless frozen automatons. I run up to one of the flanking buildings and try to open the door but it turns out to be an ingeniously executed fake, just two-dimensional painted clapboard. I push it over too, and when it collapses (like a movie facade) I see blackness behind, filled with blinking red eyes. No good. I keep running. I’ve passed through several of these areas before, should have recognized this for what it is, maybe I did on some level, but damn it what if one day it’s the real deal and I just keep running, that would be Heartbreaking and Ironic.

Memory Avenue’s marker says: “The regurgitation of old events, largely altered by the effects of time and wishful thinking” There’s a billboard of me at five, full of potential, sitting at a table with a coke in my hand and a devlishly intelligent gleam in my eye, here’s a boy that’s going places, here’s a guy that’s going to change the world. I stop at an electronics store and watch tv through the window, it’s a show about a small family escaping from Certain Death on a big grey ship, speeding through the open sea. The commentator is speaking French and the subtitles are in ancient Aramaic but I can understand both, they’re saying that the boy is escaping not just from actual physical peril but also from the mindset of the Besieged carrying along with him Lessons about life and the preciousness of life and the atemporal nature of Love that he will never forget as long as he lives, and that he will always be grateful for the Second Chance that he has been granted and that this gratitude and this secret knowledge born of adversity will spur him on towards Great Things. But then I see a dark little shop situated in the basement of a dingy looking building, down twelve steps and through a heavy wooden door that creaks when I open it and into a claustrophobic little space. The man behind the counter doesn’t look up from whatever he’s reading. He says: “You sure you want to be here?” and I say “I think so” and he says “Suit yourself” and I shrug and look through the magazines on the shelf they have no titles and no pictures on the cover and each article is an episode in my life but not the way I remember it; and reading the first paragraph of each one I realize that they are unadorned accounts of The Way It Really was, all of the Bad Decisions and Poor Judgement and Cowardly Evasions and Failures of Will unfiltered unchanged unsanitized. I put the magazine down and back out of the shop. Stupid shop. What’s the point of shops like that anyway.

Stasis Court’s marker says “The end of your quest for Corporate Dronehood”. It’s a sudden cul-de-sac hemmed in by large gleaming buildings with the names of various companies emblazoned above their doorways. This sounds good. It’s not a quest that I was aware I was on, but the end of any quest, even unintentional ones, has got to be worth something, doesn’t it? I mean come on. I look down at myself. I’m wearing slacks and a nice shirt, a little rumpled but not bad for no ironing, pulled it out of the drier as soon as it stopped spinning. I’m wearing nice barely scuffed shoes. I go up to one of the buildings and look at myself in the mirrored facade, but all I see are the clothes, no head rising above the collar, no hands peeking out of the cuffs.

Well that’s no good either. Time to move on. But when I turn around the street I came in on is gone, there’s nothing but a solid wall of buildings all around, there’s no way out, how long have I been here anyway? I look up. The sky is dark, clouds gathering, but it’s the only escape. I need wings, is what I need. I check for wings. No wings. I sit down and wait. Waiting for things you want to happen to happen is the best way to make them happen. I’m sure it is.