Copper Beech (Credit: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT)

For a month or two, I’ve pondered writing about a series of ideas according to some great master plan. Everyone with a blog these days seems to have a master plan. I, however, am a kite in the wind, blasted by a blustery fall storm.Autumn pain has me circling here and there. Crippling pain — nauseating pain — muscle pain and joint pain. Typing this out, I sort of feel like Forrest Gump describing all the different sorts of rain in Nam…

Forrest Gump: Then it started rainin’.

Politics, philosophy and futurism are the topics I want to cover, but — I reach too far. The posts turn into essays with aims of a Kushnerian level. Its taken time to get the reality check. A much better post would be grounded in a particularly fascinating particular, maybe a reflection on the book I’m now reaching about transhumanists. (If you have time, check out To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell, it’s truly a fascinating read.) It’s mind-boggling: The idea of taking one’s mind, putting it in a computer, and perhaps even harnessing the sun to boost your computational power… it’s sort of sci-fi but also a rough blueprint for the future, if humanity can stop bickering and work for rational, common goals. (Crazy, right?)

Of course the idea of trading one’s physical body away is particularly appealing to one whose chassis rattles in disrepair. It’s been impossible to sleep — often I’m awakened in the middle of the night by back pain. The mana pool is about as low as it can go — whenever I need to get up and out, I have to run on vapors, putting on a poker face in the outside world.

How do you cope with this? What do you do? There are plenty of platitudes about adversity out there. That is great — but I’ve been doing much of that for years, and the chronic pain has continued for weeks, months, and years — realistically, how do you resist an uncontrolled wildfire within? How do you persevere every day in such a state? How do you resist despair? This isn’t a neat and tidy question. We can’t all go out and get our minds uploaded to Google! This is a philosophical question — we humans are inevitably altered through injury, illness or simple aging. I want to hash it out and put the answer on loudspeakers.

Pain drives one down towards a pit of darkness and, in time, depression. This has especially tore at my heart this past week after hearing my grandfather had passed away. It was a bittersweet relief as his end had drawn out. He and I weren’t that close anymore and literally lived across the country from each other. But I have many cherished memories from childhood when my family & I would visit. Mostly it hurts me that my dad hurts, and I feel for my cousins, aunts, uncles... Goodbyes are a tough but inevitable part of life.

I’m a sucker for the Chinese classics, especially the works of poets Li Bai and Du Fu. One poem stood out as particularly poignant in light of all this:

Autumn Air by Li Bai

The autumn air is clear,
The autumn moon is bright.
Fallen leaves gather and scatter,
The jackdaw perches and starts anew.
We think of each other- when will we meet?
This hour, this night, my feelings are hard.

What do you do with these feelings? Wallow? Mourn? Probably. We might renounce this whole world and run from it. Most of all, we humans rely on each other — we lean on our loved ones. This is the string to my kite. My girlfriend, my parents, my small but quality circle of friends — this modest tribe is what grounds me. We are social creatures after all. When the wind knocks me down, they help me get back up and start anew. This is all I know for sure. 

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