halfway
Three pigs came to town on a warm summer’s day.
A man wields a snow shovel, sweat beading down his neck as he mechanically thrusts into untouched layers of white powder. The motion belies its conclusion — the congregated flakes immune to the actuated movements. The man plants the shovel into soft resistance and breathes in the cold, vacant air. He gazes upon the fruits of his labour — an eerily perfect nothing. No sounds, no smells, none of the customary trills and chirps one might expect to find so deep in nature.
A caretaker saunters towards him from a small wooden cabin, hands comfortably clasped behind his back.
The others came and went, but here you still are.
Maybe I’m scared?
But you’re not.
Why do people choose it… the ones that stay?
Everyone is caught in some form of loop or the other.
This is just easier, I guess.
Why though — why choose a prison cell?
You know, there’s something that never quite sat right with me.
I think people have interpreted the whole Sisyphus thing all wrong.
He’s lucky. The gods blessed him with a stupid, honest job to do for the rest of eternity.
He doesn’t have to think about what he needs to do next — it’s all scripted out for him.
The man’s pupils narrowed. He gave out a resigned sigh before continuing the rehearsed movement. The other continued:
Some men die multiple times before they reach their biological end —
and some choose not to get back up.
There’s a third prototype of man:
the one who has more on offer,
but chooses to shovel snow instead.
There’s a comfort in it — not having to risk living again.
Anyway, looks like our time for today is up.
He could hear the distant chime of a bell,
and slowly all faded to black.
Ring!
He thatched and he thatched till he couldn’t thatch any more.
Have you ever considered that we’ve got it the wrong way round —
that the universe is observing, modelling us?
I think a part of you, the part that matters, dies the moment it’s completed its task.
Yeah, I don’t know about that.
Aren’t we all just agents of entropy?
Heat death! There’s your answer to life.
Heat.
Death.
Ring!
He huffed and he puffed and he blew the house in.
I wrote a little ditty, wanna hear it?
Arms and heart
And dreams and soul
Must at times break
To yield a whole
It’s called gestalt.
Ring!
Then, early one evening, came a knock on the door.
Recursion is a rather incredible feature —
it leads to interesting dynamics.
Non-linearities, emergent properties…
You know, trauma is a bit like that.
How do you mean?
Well, you internalise the thing,
and you recreate it in your head,
on and on,
and by the end of it, you’ve created something entirely different from what it was in the first place.
If only we could break the geometry sometimes.
Sleep is somewhat like that —
you wake up with a clean slate
until you quickly remember that niggling thought that assaulted you before you fell asleep.
Ring!
Little pig, little pig, won’t you let me come in?
Hey, wanna hear a joke?
What do you call a man who goes around in circles
just to end up in the same place?
Computationally inefficient.
Ring!
No, no, no, Mr. Wolf, I will not let you in.
Another day goes by, the man adeptly shepherding invisible snow. Years of the same thing have conditioned him to acquire a sense for the day’s forced termination.
He pauses for a second and grins to himself.
Hey, I got one for you —
how do you call an old caretaker who keeps telling the same bad jokes?
You don’t.
There’s no reaction.
He looks behind him, but no one’s there.
He takes a step towards the cabin.
He looks down at the snow.
It was no longer a clean slate —
his footprints, there they were.