I am reading a delightful book at the moment. Dhalgren. If you can find it, read it. It is ... different. Sometimes I have to go back and wonder if I missed a page or two, sometimes I have to reread a few pages because I have no idea what happened there, and it fits like a glove with the frame of mind I am in currently.
When we say that we want to do something different, something else, something new, we mean nothing of the sort. We just want exactly the same, with one or two constants that changed. Nothing more, otherwise it will be too much to take, and we will feel unable to handle it.
I panic when things change too much or too suddenly, when I lose my handle on the situation, when I no longer feel in control of my destiny. As proven countless times, if it is applicable in my case, it is applicable to everybody else as well. Just not always and/or to the same degree. People like stability, we like some things to stay constant, that is why we break time up in years and days and minutes and seconds and it is defined and something that stays the same, even though your perception of it may differ all the time.
Something new, to me, is something that will be part of my normal life within a month. Something that I will be able to fit around and make my own, even if it is only in my own mind, within one month. At the moment it is quite a wide field, because I am living in my own mind.
Have you ever spent time in your own mind? Just sat and waited till you got so still that you could watch words form and look at the immense disorganization in the background that provide that specific output? Have you ever silently slipped behind those sentences, tried to figure out how it works, what convoluted paths are followed by each thought/idea? How it decides what to carry with, what to dump, what to combine, how to present this mishmash in a way that makes sense?
Reading adds a lot of available ingredients to this presentation, and while there is a lot of praise for the use of non-fiction, it is fiction that broaden the mind the most. I think it is a way to get feedback from another person's imagination, input that change your outlook, your thought-processes, and it dares you to ignore limitations. It opens up your world to options you never even knew existed, and by this, makes the stuff you are comfortable with more open-ended.
Moving out of your comfort-zone is only done in your head. Your body is quite happy in any normal work environment, but moving your mind into a new environment can be quite horrific. You have to interact with new personalities, fit into new structures, add new data and incorporate it with the old data in one new format and style that is appropriate and accepted in the new environment.
Science-fiction and fantasy. I have thought a lot about my love for these genres, and I think I must mention one of the reasons why it stays a favorite of mine. You can change the way people interact by changing the setting. How will people greet each other when they cannot share the same environment, because they physically adapted to different environments? How will we interact with others when you can accessorize your body and have software do most of your thinking? What will our laws look like when we have digital copies of ourselves doing all our technological interfacing, with just the output reaching our physical bodies?
Aliens. Have we been changed as a species to distrust aliens? Are there aliens among us, monitoring the acceptance of aliens as intelligent life-forms, working hard to change the mindset of a whole species, or are they slowly replacing people, are all the conspiracy theories true?
Something new. Is there still something new to be discovered? Are we just starting to refine current ideas and combining them in different ways, or will we still discover or find the faster-than-light-drive, the transporter-beam, the aliens, the secret of life, if Elvis is still alive, ways to use re-usable energy on a personal level. Or will it only be something old, in new clothing?
Truth is, I am not sure what I would prefer. The one sounds great, but the other one is something I can cope with without too much trouble. If only I could time-travel to an end, but as long as we have to do it the hard way, I do not know if it will be heads or tails.
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