A few days ago I got this call. The man’s voice on the other side said two words: “Time’s up.”

Then he hung up.

It could’ve been a random pranker, or a mistake number, or a crossed wire, or anything… but it was the way he said it, the inflection he used, it meant he was saying it at me, I know it.

And then he was gone.

I think there’s this idea among humans that strangeness come back. Like getting hit with out of the blue isn’t enough– it’s gonna boomerang back again somehow, reveal its true nature. Like this guy who called. It was such a setup. I felt like I was standing on the pinnacle of some cliff, like I might be thrown over into another world at any moment, and whoever that guy was would come back and reveal himself in some mystical fashion that would make everything clear and obvious.

But it doesn’t really happen that way. Not really. I’ve got this whole life of muffled mysteries and one-liners that come popping up with seeming importance–just surging with meaning– and that’s it. They’re gone, receded into the ocean of past, never to return again.

I would like–I would just like–for one time to have that movie character pop up. The one that can explain away all the mysteries in a jiffy with obvious statements that whitewash the whole experience with clarity. I would like that. Not cause I need clarity or understanding, but just to have that experience you know. It would make such a great story to tell people, bring it all together so nicely, concisely, not like these actual rambling tales in my life that always fall flat at then end, cause they don’t have that perfect loop. That punchline or moral that makes a story stick. They don’t have a bow.

Like today, I was in Rona, and this guy comes up to me, just rushing up to me, and all excited he beams “You look exactly like him!”

“Like who?” I say.

“This friend of mine! He died years ago now, but I tell ya, you look exactly like him! I mean, you do up close, but especially from far away, you’re like identical!”

“Oh, well… good.” I say

And that was that. See ya later.

But it seemed so important! He was so excited! But it doesn’t mean anything. It won’t come back. It won’t reveal some later meaning that washes the whole scene clear and shows its true purpose. It’s just some silly occurrence that will never have any relevance on my life again.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell we’re doing here. I mean, not philosophically, not our reason for existence. Nothing like that. I just mean what are we doing with all these rules and ideas about how the nature of life works? Why do we make up and lay out all these pathways that the universe supposedly walks, these rules it follows, when in the meantime it just keeps going on its merry way doing whatever the hell it wants to, and we sit here scratching our heads like “That wasn’t expected!”

So what’s the goddam point?

We’re like monkeys on the beach trying to stop waves by writing in the sand. It doesn’t make a lick of difference. The waves keep coming, the monkeys keep writing, and all the ideas keep getting obliterated by the very thing they’re trying to control.

Of course, those words were outdated anyway, not at all like our current pursuits.

I’ve never been very good at metaphors. I guess it’s cause I always just go for the first thing that comes to mind.” As time goes on though, the things that come first get stranger and strangerly-doo.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. Like there was a time—and not too long ago—when everything was whole and made sense. Stuff worked like it should. Then, on some unknown Tuesday, some lowly thread or another fell away and the whole thing collapsed in on itself. And here I am, trudging through the rubble of my life, trying to make sense of it all, while I kick aside the broken pieces of the only thing that claimed it made sense in the first place.

Is this what it’s like to be on drugs? I’ve never been deep in, but it’s the sort of thing some lunatic with a beard would be shouting in the park on a windy day.

Look, I don’t mean to offend or be brutal, I know I’m sounding really negative about everything and I don’t want that. I guess I’m just disappointed. I had such high expectations growing up. Like all of this was leading somewhere. Like some big pinnacle was just around the corner where all the little bits in my life would come together like the end of a movie or a play and I’d find purpose. Or happiness or …something.

But it’s not like that. Life doesn’t follow these rules that saturate the stories we constantly tell each other, as if there’s some golden inherent truth that we’re divulging. It’s not like that at all. Real life is boring.

No, not boring, it just doesn’t line up with these fantastical sensibilities we constantly teach to each other, while reality is floating by in the other direction. So, 30 rolls around, the massive booms of youth have passed, but there’s no pay-off. No prize. No “Here’s that golden egg of prophecy we’ve been guiding you towards your whole life.” There’s just nothing. The same old, but you’re less energetic, and it’s only downhill…

So what’s the point? What are we doing? Why are we wasting all this time and energy building institutions and religions and beliefs that all point towards this grand revelation when there isn’t one? It’s just the end of the line, and all those little hints littered throughout your life that seemed so meaningful are gone, lost in the waves. You just stand there with your hands in your pockets, looking down the straight line that leads to death.

And it’s not like it’s some trick, some authoritative conspiracy to dupe us into running a maniacal machine. It’s us. We’re the ones doing it. We’re teaching each other all the time, leading each other towards these same conclusions, even if we’ve been there and we know they don’t add up. We still do it. We tell friends, family, children, everyone— that they should walk the same path we did.

Then, when they hit the same bumps,  the lurches, and that inevitable dead end– questioning “What the hell?” We tell them: “Oh that? That’s just normal, just the way things are.”

Normal is a very curious conjecture. We chalk a lot up to ‘normal’, use it to brush off a whole range of strangeness and absurdities. When truth is, every one of us has this highly intricate and unique fabric of reality stitched together with the threads of a billion experiences, unlike any other tapestry in existence; and yet, near every one of us refers to our own life as ‘normal’. “That’s just the impossibly specific quilt that life has immaculately threaded together for you in infinite definition my friend, nothing out of the ordinary at all. In fact, you should probably just copy what I do.”

And we do it. And there’s millions of us all copying each other, getting the same unfortunate results from repeated ambitions that were seemingly unwise from the beginning; leaving most of us scratching our heads thinking “What the hell? That was unexpected.”

Then there’s the strangeness, these hints, these odd occurrences that pepper the salad of bad metaphors.

Curiosities that seem so important, that seem to be leading somewhere.

Take this– A few years back, I had this idea.

Now this thing came out of nowhere, just washed over me, filled me with this conception—this obsession—that zero is an entirely misunderstood number. That it’s not the beginning of numbers as we often think of it, it’s the middle. In fact, numbers are an expression of the zero to which they relate; such as “That zero is being a total 3 right now.”

Because zeroes in this sense aren’t actually numbers, they’re things. Humans are zeroes, and human zeroes can be perceived in all sorts of positives and negatives. Hitler’s zero, as would have it, is perceived in very many negative numbers all the time.

More so, it’s human perception to see the numbers attached to zeroes. For example, a door is a zero. When that same door stubs my toe, it’s a negative five. If it then saves me from a raging hoard of zombies, it’s a plus fourteen. Of course it never ended being a zero, it was simply me projecting the number that I felt onto it.

And since any number of numbers can be projected onto any thing in any quantity, it leaves logic to formulate that zero, in this perspective, equals infinity.

Now this part in particular seemed very important to me at the time. Enough to forgo all then-current activities and focus almost entirely on this singular concept. I began plucking fruity examples of this notion out the branches of my mind so as to formulate some master equation for life that could quickly dismiss any misconception some hapless wanderer might have in their thorough lust for perpetual happiness in this infinitely intricate universe. Cue the crowd, my name in lights, life solved, game over.

I mean, that’s crazy, right? Like… that’s Crazy.

And this possessed me, just whooshed in like a ghost, full-on Exorcist style, puffed me up with this sense of import like “This is it! This is what everyone’s talking about! Holy shit, life was leading somewhere.” And so on…

And there’s this sense; this massive, looming sense that this changes everything. That this is the projection of my life in a single moment, the defining minute that shall be the zero of all things to come. It’s me stepping through that door and into the immaculate future~

And then it doesn’t.
And then I don’t.

And that was it… a one-off.

And as time goes by and that magical time gets further and further away—washed smooth by the waves of obscurity—suddenly plain old life seems a whole lot plainer.

And there’s this question. This question of Why?

What was the point of that awakening? What were you hinting towards? You’re as bad as the bloody humans!

Then 30 rolls around, and you get this idea of “What the hell? That was unexpected.” and everything stops.

And you stand there, looking down that line, that straight-and-narrow that leads to the end, with this massive chasm looming in behind you; and all you can stop to wonder is that same old repeating… Why?

Why is this here? What do I do with it? Can I throw it away? Is there another prize on offer? What do I tell the next guy to help him avoid this?

But then I get this notion…

Maybe this is zero.

Right now, where I’m standing.

This empty line stretching on forever before me.

This hollow chasm falling forever behind.

And me on this cusp, this crux of everything I am, tottering indefinitely in indecision, everywhere and nowhere at once.

And then I get this other idea: Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe that’s where I should be all along, tottering in this potential, but never falling one way or the next, just minding the pure mystery of anticipation.

And then this guy walks by—cause I haven’t left Rona yet—and I grab his arm. I look him dead in the eye and I tell him honest “You were in my dream last night.” And then I turn and walk slowly, smoothly away.

And I could feel him, tottering there on his own pinnacle, wondering “What the hell? That was unexpected.” And making a little note of his own.

And this gets me excited, in a way that only grows my delight for the mysterious.

And personally, I have little penchant for the over-dramatic, no sense of doom-and-looming feels right when I say it. Plus, it seems natural that things change as they go.

So I dial a random number, and when a young woman asks who it is, I tell her “You’re up.”

And then I end the call.