The PMX Subspace Communication Station
Reprint from 2003 pmx manifesto, complements of the author.
In January of 2002 prosolar mechanics' drummer Tom Bendel quit and we went into sudden, long free fall. We've yet to hit bottom. In January of 2003 my best friend from high school was killed in a freak accident and I wrote the words below. In August of 2004 my brother died without warning and I am again changed forever. For some reason I re-read this today and wanted to republish it here, to give those of you who mirculously are still interested a nod and a glimpse of where the mechanics are these days.
title 2003: things are happening now. i don't feel the way i once did about this place and i've finally decided to get going. much of my time here has been spent trying to reach understanding, trying to create understanding out of circumstances. i am not sure after all if the circumstances are not better left meaningless. it doesn't matter anymore, because i'm leaving it all behind. i am off today, and i do not plan to return.
if you've never read this series before and you don't understand what you are reading i will try to explain.
in the beginning i thought there were two types of space travel - the space outside of your body and the space inside of your head. i finally realized this week that i'd had it kind of wrong.
i think the space is all there is. your body is just biology that puts a boundary around some of it. we become so attached to that space taken by our bodies and our things. we never want to leave it and we do what we can to deny or put off thinking about that day, that split second we will vacate for good and become one again with all the rest that is.
i think we miss out. we are driven to avoidance, denial by our fears of disappearing. we are afraid to be human and perishable.
this month someone who was once very close to me died without warning or meaning or any reason that any human can know. and i became sickened, saddened and fearful. because i understood innately that i can die like that too, and so can you, and so can alex and mike and any number of people i love. and there doesn't have to be any meaning in it. it's just the nature of humanity - we all die.
and nobody, nobody knows what happens next. i don't care what anyone says. nobody knows. yet the absence of some concrete knowledge about what happens after death is so terrifying we tell ourselves anything and we believe it because we couldn't otherwise bear the loss and the grief and the fear of just being gone. we can't live with the questions. we create answers and meanings for events. i am so afraid we do that and then we can't see what simply is.
we need to find a way to help each other. to really help each other. not to tell each other what to think, or to pretend to have answers, or to even distract us from being afraid. we need to help each other just be afraid when life is scary and not cheat ourselves from experience or the insight it can bring.
and sometimes we do help each other, in ways we don't intend or at times we didn't think of. i was helped through this specific event by unlikely people in strange places. i was allowed to just be afraid and in agony and sad and all those things we normally try to skip over in life. and it wasn't pleasant but now i can sleep at night and focus on where i've got to go next in life.
and although i haven't picked the specific destination, i know i won't stay here. there's too much out there i've got to go and check out while i'm on this planet.
***
My brother Richard, 1978
posted by Amy Jacob
10/17/2004 06:50:00 PM Got something to say about it?Go on then.
