Basement Chronicles

You Know That Road

"We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all."

I have a favorite scene in The Matrix. The first one.

Its when Neo wakes up for the second time. The first awakening was from his life in the Matrix. The second was from his death in the Matrix. Where despite a chest full of lead he wakes up. He begins to believe. He effortlessly kicks the ever-loving poo out of Agent Smith. He becomes his destiny. He lives the life he has to lead.

But I guess the important part is that he wakes up.

Since I've been down here I've been doing almost the opposite. Its something that I think a lot of people do, whether they realize it or not. Its when we settle into our routines, working all day and coming home to spend our evenings watching played out sitcoms. Its going to school and getting your best thinking done on the walk through the parking lot. Its getting into bed every night by hitting Start > Shut Down.

Then flicker blue.Windows XP Default Blue. Red 0, Green 102, Blue 153. Then black as the kernel stops writing to the video memory, as it sends the termination signal to each of its processes, and then the final halt signal to the bus controller.

And then the red stare of the Intellimouse connected to the docking station. The green LEDs of the USB hub, the laptop charger, and the alarm clock light the rest of the room. You roll away from the lights so you can sleep.

You blink, its morning, you crawl out of bed, and you live your life all over again.

Its being unhappy. Its being bored. Its being content. Its being able to tell you exactly what time I woke up this morning (6:35am). I’m not even making it up. Its having four essays to write in a week's time, and knowing that the first thing you'll do when you come home is to check your email. All three accounts. Then idkfa. Then Slashdot. Then twenty-six webcomics, six of which update on Fridays, four of which you've seen because its already midnight on the east coast.

Its being passive to a life that's passing you by.

Its been raining here for the last few days. Rainy days in Arizona. Almost unheard of, particularly in such quantities we've been getting this year. Since the soil is about as absorbent as styrofoam the roads and sidewalks are full of puddles, sometimes flooding the entire street where old creek beds used to lie. Luckily I was out of school by the time the rains started again so all I had to do was battle the ombrophobic Arizonan drivers.

Ombrophobia is the fear of rain, or being rained upon.

Driving home tonight I was listening to AFI, "Sing the Sorrow," a CD I've probably heard ten times. Somewhere in "The Leaving Song" I started to think about how I could probably close my eyes and drive home. The automaticity was astonishing. Here I was, piloting a half-ton vehicle upon a low-friction surface at nigh-deadly speeds. Dangerous to myself and those around me. The windshield wipers snap back and forth. I'd determined that the setting two clicks up from "off," which I designated as "2," was probably the most efficient setting for the speed I was going in the current conditions. I can still hear the quiet dampened hum the CD changer puts across the FM modulation in its attempt to zero out the ambient radio waves. I wonder if it'll go away if I put it to 89.9 instead of 88.1?

"The Leaving Song" ended. Silence. Except for the hum.

It was then that I hit an overpass. That highway speed split second where the rain stops and you pass underneath unscathed. That awkward point where the conversation in the room stops and everybody looks at each other. The quiet, furious tension after somebody storms off and slams a door, leaving the light fixtures shaking slightly.

Those times when it seems like time stops. Or lasts forever. Or doesn't last long enough. But not necessarily in that order.

Its in those scant few moments that you realize a lot of things. I realize I downed a potato wedge before they said prayer at Young Life. This morning I forgot to drink my orange juice and now my throat is sore, probably a head cold coming on. I realize that I've just downed about shake-and-a-half of Oreo blizzard, and I'm about to have a terrible, terrible evening.

That was two days ago.

Friday I drove down to Tucson, Arizona’s second largest city. I ate lunch at an Olive Garden and made Quinn miss her biology class. I went to see Atreyu, Unearth, and Scars of Tomorrow, and then drove back late last night.

Today I brought a desktop back from its grisly death caused by a fried power supply. Then I spent four and a half hours mastering C/C++ pointers. Now I can declare, initialize, increment, reference, dereference, and pass pointers as parameters like nobody’s business. (*(p++))++ makes sense now.

Now I feel exhausted. Like I need to take a nap, even though I’ve already taken one today.

But I guess what’s important is that I woke up, even just for a little bit. Maybe I started something this weekend. Maybe I can wake up tomorrow and do great things.

Or maybe it’ll still be raining. I hope not. Its strange its taken me a year and a half to notice how seldom it rains here in the desert. How every day is damn near perfect, and tomorrow will be exactly the same.

Maybe I should look out the window more often.