Bubble Baths

There are equal parts of beauty and frustration wafting in through my office window right now. The jasmine is blooming; it has a thick and luscious perfume. My computer is acting up and I mashed on the “i” key so violently a moment ago that a mysterious window I have never seen before popped up from nowhere. It is difficult to concentrate on the beauty when the blood is boiling and coursing through one's veins.

All of the computers around me have turned slow. I don't know what it is. I don't know if the process of repetitive application has just made them seem slow, or if they have really bogged down under the weight of additional bookmarks, add-ons, and viruses. Regardless; they've all gone slow and this adds to my frustration. At points my life has been fluid, flowing, and radiant. Now it is bloated and pale. Last night I dreamed that I was fighting random groups of people, then running away from them. My legs felt as though they were asleep, or encased in clay; I could barely lift them off the ground. Still I plodded on, desperate, away. Then I would turn around, certain that my lame pace would leave me vulnerable and captive, almost looking forward to finally being caught, but there was no one in sight. I ended up face-down in mud and woke up screaming into my pillow: “I am so lonely! I am so lonely! I am so lonely!” The dog is barking at the top of his lungs and the dinner I prepared has sent us all running for the toilet, the check I deposited in the bank yesterday was gone before it landed, and I spend 8 hours a day locked in a small room listening to the radio.

I have been listening to a science program on the radio called “Radio Lab.” Actually I listen to it on the internet. Does anyone listen to live radio anymore? I do, in fact. KZFR is in the midst of their annual pledge-drive. I like KZFR because of the live DJ's. It is nice to know that, if you are really desperately lonely, you can pick up the phone and ask a live DJ to play a song they've never heard of, or if they have, that they wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. I saw the other day that Jeremey V is taking requests on the Point – but I know longer have access to a proper radio tuner. It's live on the internet or canned these days.

Radio Lab features a bunch of scientific vignettes. One scientist relates better to bugs than he does to people. He tells about how he often dreams of being an insect. In fact he says in one dream he was an insect telling the other insects how he sometimes dreams of being a human. Another scientist talks about how he relates to the element of Xenon because it is reluctant to combine with other elements. This particular scientist recalls being profoundly happy when he learned that a chemist had managed to combine Xenon with Fluoride – apparently one of the sluttier, or rather the most social, of all elements. That bitch will go ahead and combine with anything.

Today I listened to radio programs about phantom limbs, deadly mis-diagnoses, the Quaker idea of the perfect penitentiary, and the anthropological nature of morality. I listened to a disturbing, but nevertheless moving, examination of telling silences in the Bible. The narrator placed me in the point of view of the animals who were left off of Noah's Ark during the great flood; who were left to starve and drown while Noah herded their compatriots onto that square vessel two by two. When he raised up the gang-plank they could only watch and maybe wonder why this God who became infuriated with the humans he had created still found it okay to let the blameless animals also suffer for their sins. Noah would endure the flood only to become a grower of grapes, a distiller of spirits, and finally a mean-spirited drunkard. So much for happy endings. I don't understand the way people interpret the Bible. Certainly it can be twisted in such a way as to reflect God's love and purpose. But it can just as easily be manipulated to reflect God's cruelty and indifference. Ecclesiastes is seemingly devoted to this interpretation. Eat, drink, and be merry, for it matters not to God.

For my money the whole book is a ruse, an ironic joke, an ode to the chaos and whimsy of one of many universes expanding into space that never existed before it was created. A bubble bath is what the radio program said – we are all just floating on these ever-expanding bubbles in this ever-expanding bubble-bath. Call it what you will.

madbob@madbob.com