At some point during the last few weeks, one of the scripts on my blog stopped working correctly, so many of the automatic features of this blog are now broken. I would have noticed this much sooner if I’d been more attentive to the site, but, as the post below details, I’ve not been.
Anyone who’s signed up to follow my latest posts will usually get an email when there’s something new to read. This post will have no such email. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to fix everything again, so if you’re here reading this between November 14th and, say, the end of 2021—thanks for stopping by unprompted. It’s been a strange time, hasn’t it?
I’ve wondered more than a few times at what it might be like to be other animals—canines and felines mostly, but sea dwellers and flying creatures are just as captivating. Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to be various plants, or even stones and rocks, puddles and lakes. What would it be like to be an entire pebble? Or an entire planet? Perhaps a star, or maybe a moon? There are literally so many things to be—so many beings.
What would it be like to be an airplane? I’ve recently spent a lot of time with airplanes, but only when they’re on the ground. They’re amazing creatures, but they’re completely out of their element when they’re not up in the air. They need so much careful attention to move around when they’re not flying—I feel a small sense of relief when I escort them to the taxiway and wave them off. Each craft’s home is up in the sky, and I know they’re headed back to where they get to be an airplane again.
Sometimes I wonder if an airplane would become confused at their own existence, aware of their abilities in the sky, yet bewildered at the number of entities contained within who give the impression they don’t want to be there—because now they’re out of their element…
What about an idea? What would it be like to be an idea? This is something I’ve never really thought about until lately—hilarious, I know. It’s weird: I’ve wondered so many times about what it would be like in the future, yet I’ve only now started to consider what it would be like to actually be the future. And, much like an airplane full of people, I wonder if being the future would be a confusing existence. In general, airplanes are admired for ending up where they’re supposed to and when they’re supposed to—that they’re able to fly at all is, at best, somewhat of a curious afterthought for most, or, for the rest, among the greatest or worst experiences imaginable. The same is true of the future: in general, it’s a journey duly endured by most—as long as there isn’t too much waiting or inconvenience along the way. Snacks, beverages, and entertainment are expected as well, and there will be complaints about any additional charges for headphones or extra baggage.
I’ve been in creativity hell for the last few months. I’ve not felt like working on any of my travel writing or photography. My music mixes, which I used happily spend days at a time on, have faded. I somehow knew this creative detachment would happen. There was a moment at my old apartment when I realized it (my daily life, my creative projects, and all my stuff) was all going to go away for a while. And then it all did. Now I’m in a middle of an ongoing adventure in Iqaluit—surly a creative writing slam dunk as far as content generation goes—but I don’t know what to say about any of it, other than everything is cargo.
Accompanying me in creativity hell is a constant awareness of how profoundly confusing the future’s personified existence would be, perhaps until they realized who they were. And even then, I don’t think it would get any less confusing for them. I imagine there would be an initial sense of immense relief: a lifetime of peculiarities within suddenly being tempered by context, like an airplane realizing there’s nothing wrong with who they are—it’s the passengers who don’t like to fly.
But I also imagine this sense of relief is fleeting: airplanes, commercial ones at least, rarely get to fly for free. The peculiarities of their own being will remain onboard as long as there are tickets to be sold. The life of a jetliner is a bittersweet and curated existence—one that’s meant to fly yet expected to follow.
The life of the future sometimes feels just as much so.