The Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape

It's looking less and less like reason and consciousness and language are the things that actually separate us from the animals. Of course the argument can and has been made that we, like every other animal, have a genus and a species and a phylum(?) and a... superdome and... uh... hive and... you know, evolutionary biology was probably the wrong road for me to try to amble down without a map. Maybe I don't know all the classifying wossnames, but in fairness to me, I'm also terrible at chess. I'm not sure how that's clarifying in any way, but I felt like it was time to just get some of my weaknesses out there. I'm feeling vulnerable.

What I'm saying is we're animals too. With a weird developmental overemphasis on gross folds in our brains at the expense of durable hides or non-embarrassing upper body strength. You know, something useful if you got attacked by a jackal or some shit. What does all your processing power do for you when a jackal takes a chunk out of your thigh, then makes off with a couple of your chickens, laughing the whole time?* Hooray, you get the opportunity to go home and dwell on that shit for, like, months all the while contending with the forced realization of how close to death you just were. Hey, enjoy your bipedal locomotion and the ability to use complex tools. Here also is your side of existential dread and PTSD.

Ooh, but hey, know what? Maybe that isn't even unique to us anymore. The more science seems to poke and prod at the bearskin rug we use to separate ourselves from the rest of the fauna, the more we realize, holy fuck, it's an actual live bear, run! Our inability to locate ourselves in the context of the natural world will probably be the thing that eventually kills us all. That or self-driving cars.

The last thing I can think of that's uniquely ours--and even this we'll eventually find out is a mistake of perception rooted in human exceptionalist denial--is narrative. And I don't mean just movies and books and operas and prog rock. I'm not sure we know of another species that uses narrative to contextualize the raw sensory data it takes in, to order and structure the white noise of the objective outside into something approaching a hummable tune.

I've had a pretty good week, with some life-affirming interactions with a couple of people with whom I have in the recent past been romantically involved with. Both were unsolicited and totally platonic, but the takeaway was that our time together had been, though imperfect, in some way beneficial to them. Generally I'd say I responded to each instance with some combination of surprise, humility, gratitude and, if I'm honest, relief. Relief because in those moments I also thought about the ones out there whose recollection of a relationship with me might be decidedly (and deservedly) less charitable, and it was a nice break in the drumbeat of self-doubt to know the condemnation isn't universal. The circumstances of course differ wildly from relationship to relationship, but I make an effort to present myself consistently, allowing of course that a) sometimes I fail and b) after enough time (varying from person to person, ranging so far between INSTANTANEOUS and about fourteen years), Consistent Me really isn't for everyone.

Ask us separately, though, and the details of the narrative--the same set of objective facts and instances--will differ. Because every story has a subject. And every relationship is a negotiation, active and passive, between two competing narratives. Ideally you're both telling largely the same story, though you've each obviously come in at different parts of the others'.** The best case scenario is you're both co-stars in the simultaneous stories as they're woven. Nothing sounds the death-knell of a relationship faster than when you realize your partner has slipped into the B-plot.

I say this all as I continue to exist in a personal/romantic liminality, an indecisive becoming resisting a full eruption into Being by... well, a whole raft of really boring and not particularly exclusive-to-me shit. The plot beats of a story like that tend to crowd out other threads, no matter how illuminating or affirming they may actually be.

And that's where I find myself, in a shuffle between states, in a story I'm telling myself using a pretentious, overly complicated and ultimately self-defeating structure experimenting with vocabulary and linearity, clarity and time.

Let's see a dolphin try that. Go jump through another hoop in exchange for a cut-up bit of mackerel, stupid fish-mammal.

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*Yes, I know it's the hyenas who are associated with laughing. Lesser know is the laugh of the jackal, who are only moved to do so in cases of acute derision.

**The only exception to this I can think of would be dating your twin. Please don't date your twin.