The Ultimate Script

"If the voices in your head had any say, any say in the matter at all, how would they account for themselves?"

One voice to another. Not quite fair. A fair question would begin with "Who is speaking?"

Wouldn't they?

I'm not quite with it yet. I'll let you know.

"But it isn't only a matter of perspective. Or you would be able to answer."

Who are you?

Answer who are you. Do it!

"I said, I would let you know."

Rubbish. I turn in and there is more than I can take in. Dreams that are neither here nor there. I wake up thinking I know what is what. What a curious phrase, to know what about what. Think hard enough and all you can manage to make sense of is the fact that you are expending enormous amounts of energy trying to make sense of things.

Just live. The just live. No, they just listen to voices.

"I'm not sure I follow..."

Unwashed. I shower and think. Then get on the bus and think. Doom scroll and that question gnaws and bites. A swirl of predilections, this way and that. I, the creator of my life, who are you?

But you don't answer. So many unanswered questions. You know this and are deathly sure of that. A kaleidoscope of living all cooped up and driven by the sure knowledge that imperialism is something you've hated all of your life. You see in a finite world you're either a character in my story or I have to be one in yours. 

That's why we constantly rewrite the story of our lives. And we try to do it to others too.

Something's missing. So we try to find the all encompassing passion or a whole set of passions that can take us out of ourselves and into what exactly?

But you won't tell me. Because the end goal, the ultimate peak experience you seek, where everything makes sense and you don't have to work so hard to fit those damn life puzzle pieces together, is the moment when you are in your most vulnerable state, wide open, and human, so easily exploited. 

So we're forced to live when we don't really know how. Or we know how and a cast of thousands complete us. Its the pawns who scurry about at our beck and call whose plots keep changing. Our plot is unchanging, constantly twisting about trying to make sense of life.

#

"What are you scribbling now?"

Alanna's smile could light up a room. I was definitely a character in her life. Oh, most certainly! Soft brown hair, she was carefree. Like I was saying, she had everything going for her, except me. Roger was on her arm, in her car. Over the moon with her, Roger and Hammerstein, her dog. 

Don't ask me why Hammerstein got more attention than I did. I wouldn't know. Who calls a dog Hammerstein? Makes me think of Octoberfest, not that she was German. 

"I asked you what you are writing?" interjected Alanna the intruder. 

I look up from my old fashioned cell phone where my fingers were doing the Watutsi, and try to remember what exactly? Gone forever. That amazing phrase, the punchline to the paragraph of infinitely peak predilections.

"Oh a complete philosophy of life," I say, trying to sound casual.

"Only people who are failing life need philosophy," she sneered. She took another drink from an ornate glass on her coffee table while her Roger had a very animated conversation with somebody across the living room, someone whose name I didn't pick up on. Roger had his arm around her, so that every time he got excited while talking about some sports team, Alanna would fairly jump. She'd smile at me indulgently, and shrugged her slender shoulders. 

"Explain it to me," she added.

So I did. Explain it to her. 

Alanna got so quiet as I kept talking and talking. Even after Roger and his new buddy left to toss a football around, she hardly noticed that he left. I was feeling so great. Here I was talking to the woman of my dreams and she was really listening to me!

When I finished, she was kind of speechless and looked down around the room for a bit.

"Well? What do you think?"

Alanna made a face, searching for the right words. "I feel so sorry for you."

"Why?" I demanded.

"You live in your head."

#

Nope. That's it. Done with her and women generally. What is this all about anyway, this mating thing. A trick to convince me to raise children who would otherwise be happier being unborn! At least to hear some gen Z's speak, they're willing to consider the possibility of happiness without being. Which begs the question, being what? Being non-existent? How would you even know it you were happy?

A contradiction of ideas as I have never imagined. 

It's that imperialism thing again. Since I spin the plot for my life and the lives of others who unwittingly fall under my spell, I can change at will, and build a moat 'round the castle of my life. Sovereign Citizen to the Max!

Which lasted all of ten minutes. Until the next Alanna who was called, what was her name?

Oops! I never asked and she never told me. 

So back to the infinite slash finite problem. Maybe like Hammerstein when he gets all bothered about a squirrel, I've been barking up the wrong tree. 

Maybe I'm not supposed to be able to make sense of life. Maybe that's beyond anyone's capability. And that opens up an infinite world of possibilities. Whose script might we all be following or not following? We're depending on nothing about any of us per se, but only upon God?

I asked Alanna after she broke up with Roger. It was after she said "Oh my God!" you know how people do these days, those famous "OMG's" people spout all the time.

"Did you know you are actually talking to God when you say that?" I smirked while Alanna was watching TV.

"What?" she answered, so engrossed in some contestants who had to eat slime before going to the next level in some dumb gross out program.

I tried again. "You've been talking to God!"

She looked super irritated. "No, I haven't! Did you see how that Dufus slurped not only his bowl but the one he stole from the other team? God that was so cool!"

"You did it again!"

Alanna switched the TV off. "What are you getting at? It's just a saying. It means nothing."

"If it means nothing why do you say it?"

"Why do you talk foolishness all of the time?" she replied.

"But my 'foolishness' as you call it, doesn't mean nothing to me."

"Oh maybe its time you left. I'm tired."

"Fine," I said.

And that was it. My search for the ultimate script began, the one where everything has its place and nothing is unaccounted for.