pigeon

I have it on approval.

If my brother’s friend hadn’t said the coat was dorky, I might have come around to appreciate it. Probably not, though. It did look dorky. Kind of a desaturated puce color, felty texture but sort of stiff, with a big flappy collar. Probably had overly large buttons, too, that’s how I’m finishing the picture in my mind right now but who really knows.

I wore it reluctantly in the winter of ninth grade, until the day he said that, confirming my misgivings, and then never again, until maybe a month or so later my mom wanted to know why.

“I — don’t know, I just don’t really like it.”

She was exasperated, and rightly so, because when she had given it to me, she very clearly said, “I have it on approval.” I asked what that meant and she told me to try it out, and if I didn’t like it she could take it back to the store. We had real clothing stores back then, remember?

Why the hell hadn't I just told her I didn’t like it? Would it have hurt her feelings irreparably that we didn’t have the same taste in coats? Would she have pouted, resented me for being a kid, for lacking her sophisticated adult taste? Would she have experienced it as some kind of betrayal?

Now it was too late. We were stuck with an expensive coat I didn’t like. Maybe she gave it to someone, or maybe she talked the guy at the clothing store into taking it back anyway — it’s a sign of my juvenile obliviousness at the time that I don’t remember the ultimate disposition of it.

It was a nice, well made, tasteful, high quality coat but you woulda thought it was made of spun puke the way I recoiled from it, because it was nothing like anything any kid at school would wear.

I was already “weird” enough; I guess I didn’t have the balls to defiantly put on an extra layer of weirdness and say fuck you to conformity. That stage came later, and involves other pigeons, and yes I kind of even knew at the time that saying fuck you to conformity can be a form of conformity, but none of this matters. This is such a trivial thing. We get it, kids are dumb. I was spoiled. What’s the point? White lies are annoying and expensive?

I don’t know why this one stuck with me. Maybe it’s a precursor to when my mom said “I worry that if you lie to me, you will lie to all women,” and it came true. But that too is a different pigeon.

Maybe I can’t figure out what the “deeper” meaning of this one is because I don’t want to, because it’s not flattering or a humblebrag or celebratory or redemptive or spectacularly self deprecating. It’s just garden variety adolescent assholery. There is still a part of me that panics at the notion of being a plain old human being. What if people find out!? Mediocrity is my most preciously guarded secret after all, deep in my fire-singed lair where anyone can see it. But why? OK, neurosis, inner conflicts, sure. Makes sense. (Good book btw, highly recommended.)

But there’s another why that I’ve been asking myself lately, tentatively though, because before I really go whole hog on asking it with gusto, I want to re-read Susan Blackmore’s Waking from the Meme Dream, more slowly this time. If genes use our bodies to survive in our environment and replicate, and likewise memes use our brains to survive and replicate by “catching on,” spreading from one consciousness to another, forming agglomerates (beliefs, for example) for strength, then “who I am” becomes less dire, fraught with failure and disappointment (mediocrity!!), and more of a — well, just whatever it is. I’m just the locus of matter-energy that the story — good, bad, or indifferent — is using as a host, moving through, animating temporarily. That’s, as Blackmore observes, weird, and awesome! and makes me inclined to forgive myself for being whatever I am, lacking whatever I lack; it doesn’t matter how smart or dumb I am because the values attached to those perceptions are merely part of the memetic energy too; it’s all just bits of information in a certain combination according to rules I cannot be expected to understand or control, but —

But why?

Blackmore says, “All you need for natural selection to get started is a replicator in an appropriate environment.” But where’d the environment come from, and why did the replicator appear in the first place?

But that’s not even my biggest why right now, maybe because it’s SO big I can’t hardly even —

Here’s the why that’s teasing me, taunting me, inviting me, cajoling me, here’s the will-o-the-wisp I want to wander after next: Why the fuck are the stories (aka memes) using us this way? Where did they come from? Why do they strive to survive? Why do they care? Why do they want or need to exist, why do they exist? Why are they making 2% of my body’s mass use up 20% of its energy?

OK, so I’m anthropomorphizing. Maybe they don’t “care,” maybe they just exist, and survive when environmental inputs match the requirements. And maybe “caring” is merely one of the combinations of bits of information anyway. But either way —

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Before I read the article, while I was on vacation, I wrote this in my lil’ journal:

How to let go of things?
Why? Is there a “goal”? Is it just a lumbering, lingering sense that I’d rather not be a bloated sack of misery, chugging thru this world like a gob of garbage clogging up what used to be a playful river?
- First it was smoking. - Well, you could argue that first it was my horrible marriage (not sure if that counts because it felt as though I literally had no choice, but ig that doesn’t matter) - Then it was mindless overeating (still definitely working on that one — well, still working on all of them, but that one’s still hard because it can’t be binary; I do have to eat something sometimes) - Then it was alcohol and THC - What’s next? - sugar? - digital information toxicity? - perfectionism? - spending money?

It feels as though this is a series of apparitions shed by the mind virus, the body double, sent out like flying monkeys to kill me, kill my spirit. So I’m really fighting a common enemy, just different facets of it each time. Is there a way to fight the boss directly? Or are these levels necessary? If not necessary, are they sufficient? Is this a workable strategy?

There was more rambling, and then I concluded with this:

When it gets to zero [the layers are all stripped away], are you finally you?
OR IS THERE NOTHING AT ALL REMAINING?
Or does the whole thing start again, on another platform, for another generation?

I find that enticingly resonant with Blackmore’s concluding sentences:

“And who lets the meme-unzipper go its way? Who wakes up when the meme-dream is all dismantled? Ah, there’s a question.”

Here’s another question: Who buys a formal overcoat for a kid “on approval?” Who even knew that was a thing? It was the 1980s for cryin’ out loud, not the 1890s! Ah, mom, I love ya! :)