The Crew of Spaceship Earth

"I turn my back to the wind

To catch my breath

Before I start off again

Driven on without a moment to spend

To pass an evening with a drink and a friend"

-Rush, "Time Stands Still"

"I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands

the ones I love"

-Pearl Jam, "Just Breathe"

"I'll love whatever you become

And forget the reckless things we've done

I think our lives have just begun"

-Muse, "Falling Away with You"

(Yes, I realize that this is an excessive amount of song lyrics. I couldn't decide which one to quote, so I quoted all of them.)

To all of my friends, the people whom I love, the people who have helped me over the years, who care about me, and whom I care about, you are the crew of Spaceship Earth.

Everyone is having fun and I can't join them. I would love for my circadian rhythms to be offset in a way that made everything so damn convenient, but I have a mission, unfortunately. I get to see these people for about two weeks, three at the most, and I can't even capitalize on it because of some stupid dream.

I rang in the new year with some of my friends from back home at a friend's cabin. I was up there for about thirty-six hours. Almost everyone else is still up there, crackin open a box of fun. We were joking that fun is actually an anagram for "Fuck You Nate!" That was thirty-six hours out of the total number of hours that the universe has alloted me to spend with them, and I wonder how few of those hours actually remain. I will always be a degree removed from the people I love by, space, time, sleep, dreams, hours in a day, degrees of perception, convictions, the speed of light, the loss of a spaceship, fears, insecurities, doubts, and my own damn fallibility. I'm back here in my room which is not my room, thinking about a dream which is not yet reality. Making hard decisions has never come easy to me, and again I have to decide it everything I am doing (or not doing) is worth it.

I am no Quentin, I am no Mizner, and I am certainly no Denton. As everyone else needs sleep to stay sane, I need my stupid dream in order to stay sane. I'm scared of being normal, human, I'm scared of going further down the rabbit hole, and I certainly can't afford to straddle the middle. Then I remember that I am human, and I will bring Spaceship Earth, and all her crew, all of you, along with me, because what was once a spaceship of metal is now a spaceship of the mind, and unlike metal, the mind is not bound by the laws of physics.

I will carry the crew of Spaceship Earth wherever my adventures take me, because you, my crew, are what has shaped me, accepted who I am, will be manning a Spaceship that transcends these limitations.

On the way up to my friend's cabin, while taking a side road to avoid traffic, I drove by the mechanic's shop where I last saw Spaceship Earth before it was just a brain in a jar. I'm still carless, so I was borrowing my mom's car. The engine temperature gauge seemed to smile at me and say "hey, well, I still work!" Yes, but I don't like you, you are not a spaceship, just a car, and a non-sentient one at that. Everything I love falls apart.

This last year was the year I stopped being a robot. I knew something had changed, but I couldn't tell exactly. It wasn't that I learned to not care about things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to balance things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to take risks, break the routine, live like an organic system rather than some fleshy clockwork device.

It only recently occurred to me that before this last year, I couldn't really emotionally invest myself in people. Yes, I cared about people, and yes, I was capable of normal relationships, but I was never willing to put myself out there. Now that I have, my life may be a lot more complicated and sometimes less enjoyable, but I'm living now. And this was all set into motion because inside a spaceship disguised as a car, everything resonated just right and molecules vibrated just right that everything started to make sense.

In my moments of despair I want to wake up. There is a specific date, (Wednesday, December 13, 2006) after which I sometimes hope everything has been a very lucid dream. The chances of this happening are slim to nil. But I still want to. It used to be for stupid reasons, so I could avoid breaking my foot or not be depressed or maybe cut my hair two years before I actually did. Now I want to wake up because I realize that if this is a dream, then I have learned a lesson. Since I learned to invest in people then I can be a person, and I really wish that I didn't have to be so damn late in rehumanizing.

But dream or not, this reality shows no sign of stopping at any point. In my reality, having a car-shaped spaceship's brain in a jar sitting on your bookshelf is not out of the realm of possibility. You eat microwavable chicken treats for breakfast, martinis for lunch, and garlic bread ice cream for dinner. We need to be prepared for zombies, robots, and mole people. It is entirely possible that Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, and Tupac is coming back. The future may not be the brightest it's ever been, but we will never get bored as we resist the robotocracy, evacuate coastal areas due to the rising, sludgy ocean, and maybe, some day, cruise around the galaxy in a real spaceship.

Until then, I will be chipping away at my task, a task that I have learned is in no way absurd. It's everything else that's absurd.