The devil in me

This was my very first thought the other morning just before the alarm went off:

If you spell devil backwards, it’s lived

Then the alarm went off and scared the devil right out of me like it always does. Why is it that it is always such a shock? I’m usually waiting for it.

Here’s the thing, though. I don’t believe in the devil. I don’t know that I even believe in evil as anything but a construct to explain particularly awful human behavior. Which there is plenty of. Clearly no one wants to think that we HUMANS are causing all of this misery and destruction. It must be someone else’s fault. Something else’s fault…what if there was a Big Bad who was responsible for all of it? That would be AWESOME. In a very bad way. STILL. A scapegoat for evil–what’s not to like?

So poof! Then there was a devil. Or devils, depending on your own particular spin on things.

And then the devil made me stay up late singing with Paddy, and chatting with the Doctor about online dating. So I couldn’t finish writing anything coherent about humans creating a devil and pinning the blame on it for everything that goes wrong.

Pity. It probably would have been interesting. It was a good idea.

Did the devil really make me do it? Nah. No such thing.

I just like singing with Paddy and chatting with Ky-ul.
No devils needed.

Reality

“We all live in a kind of continuous dream,” I told him. “When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality.”
–Jeff Vandermeer/Annihilation

The other morning I woke up to the sound of a doorbell. I looked at the clock, fuzzy-brained, and it was too early for it to be a friend to be at the door. I considered going to the door to see, but I knew that by the time I put clothes on and went out to see if anyone was there whoever it might have been would be gone. I snuggled back under the covers and wondered if I had dreamt it or if it was real.

Then I wondered what I had been dreaming.

Either way, it was real enough to have woken me up.

Reality is in the eye of the..what would you call it? The beholder? Considerer? Imaginer? Is anything that triggers your brain to hear it, smell it, taste it, see it real?

I’ve hallucinated demons. It felt like they were really there. My body responded as if they were real. I’ve had a telepathic conversation in French with a black Lab. That was very real to me, as real as his two owners who were standing there with him. I’ve heard leaves talking to me, and melted into a stair rail. I’ve had sex with angels and human beings which definitely felt real.

Real?

What is?

Are feelings real, or only things?

How do you really know if anything is real given how convincing a hallucination or dream can be?

I wonder if I watched one too many TED Talks about Neuroscience this weekend?

The turn of the century…Uh…what?

Something occurred to me just now: the last time I was dating, it was at the turn of the century. The turn of the century. Is there a phrase that is more likely to make a person feel 114? It gave me visions of the transition between horse and buggies and the Model T. Ice boxes to electric refrigerators. Suffragettes in bloomers. Women starting to show a little ankle.

So after I was done screaming internally, I wondered about it.
It’s just a way to describe the passing of time, really, and the passing of time doesn’t bother me. Really.

Still, for whatever reason, the phrase doesn’t seem to fit the occasion for this century. Maybe because it was a new millennium. Maybe just because it’s a phrase meant for history books and old timers looking back.

But.

If I think about how quickly I got from 1963 to 2015, and how much more quickly time seems to pass with every year, I realize that I will be one of those old timers very shortly. I’m closer to geezerdom than adolescence.

Which is weird to think about given how young I feel. Or rather how much I feel like I am the same person regardless.

And in a lot of ways, most ways, I am looking forward to it. Swilling cocktails with my friends. Being raunchy. Going places I’ve never been. Doing things I’ve never done. Reading everything I can get my hands on. Writing shit down. Buying too much lipstick and eyeliner. Eating noodles for breakfast. Wondering if I have coffee.

Wondering about everything.

Not much different than now.

Bring it on, Time.