Cut My Life Into Pieces

I go back and forth as to whether the human capacity for adaptation is a positive or a negative. On the one hand, we demonstrate an almost limitless capacity to persist in living--even thriving--in social or physical or emotional circumstances not conducive to such things. That's how we found our way through the dark days of the London blitz or, more recently, nu metal.

On the other hand, the darker forces of humanity rely on and stoke those reserves to draw out of people, trapped in circumstances not of their own making, their blood, their labor, their attention or their money. Somehow what we tend to get out of this are heartwarming narratives of individual perseverance and/or fortitude instead of a bloody condemnation in damnatio memoriae of the exploiters. If the exploiters achieve a high enough level of return on investment, their grand punishment is they get to go to space.

In truth, most circumstances lack drama in either direction. They're just things we have to do, day to day, usually with a sense of drudgery that may or may not be earned. The paradox of experience is the crushing, grinding slow-turn of tedium driving us to near-madness and the exact contemporaneous impulse to resist all changes to a status quo--event the awful statuses quo--at almost whatever cost, even our own safety or happiness. See above in re nu metal.

Every day I'm reminded that, despite whatever prosaic or quotidian setbacks I might have to endure, the slings and arrows are pretty blunt and launched with unimpressive speed. May you all also be blessed by enemies with unremarkable upper body strength. The struggle of the last four years has been one of transition and change, those things that simultaneously range between and fully embody both inconvenience and an existential threat.

I'll be honest, all of the above is a bit... much for what I'm barreling toward in the nearest near future. For the first time since 2004, I'm not preparing for the start of another public school year in early August. It's not that I want the expense or the jittery irritation of preparation or the morose slow-march to the death of summer or the silent-scream resentment of compulsory education poorly executed in a country expressly disinterested in the meaningful betterment of its youth. It's just the disruption of the constant (we're talking about a third of my life here) is a lot to navigate. It's not fear exactly, nor is it quite melancholy, it's just... a new way to be. One less thing standing between me facing down the looming day of total kid-free isolation where there's nowhere left to hide from a lengthening lists of personal reckonings I've been able to credibly put off since I became responsible for the lives of these other humans. Scary, sure. But it's not exactly enduring the London blitz, and it sure as fuck isn't the threat of a new Papa Roach album. Things could be worse.