No Country…

I’ve got to bring you up to date without boring you. One way to do that is to start with a major story turn to arouse curiosity, then work backwards. I’ll give that a try, see how it goes.

Yesterday I had a classic ‘movie moment,’ by which I mean a moment in real life that is strikingly and personally reminiscent of a powerful/meaningful scene in a movie. No Country for Old Men is the movie, a humdinger of a Coen Brothers effort, no?

The scene is the coin toss one. Although there are several in the film, I’m thinking of the one with the gas station owner, when Anton Chigurh forces the attendant to call heads or tails, with the viewer by now aware that a ‘missed’ call will mean death.

That’s the scene. A great scene, IMO, for many reasons, but what comes to mind is the role ‘luck’ or ‘fate’ or whatever plays in all our lives, writ large and insane in this brilliant, brief movie moment.

Okay, yesterday I was at a truck repair shop, where I’d brought my rig. The ‘Check Engine’ light had begun flashing. If you look up what you should do when this happens you’ll find advice like, ‘Pull over immediately and call a tow truck,’ no matter how the engine itself seems to be running. I didn’t do this – I pulled over briefly but only to look up a repair shop, which was about 30 miles away. I got there without incident.

Addendum: The boat’s gone, as is most of my money, but that (admittedly vital) detail is for an upcoming post.

So I’m at the garage talking to the fellow behind the desk, who had just done a reading from the OBD (on board diagnostics) device, which communicates with the vehicle’s mainframe computer. I wrote down the code so I could check it myself, having gotten used to auto repair thieves and liars. As it turns out, everything he told me was true, more or less. (As with most people, he did not understand how ‘chance’ actually works, which I’ll explain in a bit.)

Addendum: That all vehicles from about the mid 1990s on are under the ‘control’ of an onboard computer is a subject that should be of great interest to any thinking person. When you have a moment, look into how journalist Michael Hastings died. Also, another Carrington Event would likely permanently disable every vehicle…. ahh, never mind for now.

‘It could be a lot of things,’ the fellow tells me. ‘Could be a loose wire. Could be you need a new engine.’ He lets that sink in, then assures me that they’ll get to the bottom of it, and suggests I go to the customer lounge, watch TV and relax.’

At this point we have to do a flashback: It’s 20 years ago and I’m taking care of my dying mom, meanwhile writing In Search of Captain Zero. My father had died a few months before, of a stroke.

Toward the end of Mom’s life, being with her and watching the process of her dying of cancer, I made up my mind that this would never happen to me. I’d figure out a way to check out before I lost control of my movements and mental processes; I also did not want to experience that sort of physical pain.

I remember exactly when I made this decision: it was the night before Mom passed away. I was using an eyedropper to put morphine on her tongue; I’d been giving her double doses, but did not have it in me to try to end her apparent suffering with a blatant overdose. (For the last week she was mostly unconscious, so I could not tell if she was in actual physical pain.)

This was one of those decisions that you know you will follow through on. There was, and is, no doubt that should the time come, I’ll exit this world by my own hand, rather than go through ‘the process’ Mom experienced.

All sorts of things have happened since Mom died; if you’ve read my last two books, you know about some of it. I’ve led a fairly crazy life, mostly due to my own decisions, but also due to ‘luck,’ ‘fate,’ whatever the Anton Chigurh character is referring to in his coin toss moments: ‘This coin got here the same way you did,’ and so forth.

‘What are the odds?’ I ask the garage guy, referring to his ‘loose wire’ or ‘you need a new engine’ diagnosis. (As I said in a previous post, HTWRW, how the world really works, can be broken down to Chance & Necessity. But let me come back to that.)

‘At this point, it’s a coin toss.’ In terms of actuarial probability it actually wasn’t a ‘coin toss’ (50-50), but the effect of his words – given my fear/distrust of devices with more than two moving parts — were such that it might as well have been.

Another flashback is necessary here. Saladita Mexico, around 2008, and I’m in the midst of making Water Time; Surf Travel Diary of a MadMan. I’m getting old, not like now (I’m really old now), and although I could not have complained about my circumstances at that time (living on the beach, surfing every day, and so forth), and although I felt that the film I was making was important, I also had a bad premonition about how my life would… well, end up. And not just in the sense of how Mom’s ended up.

If you’ve seen Water Time you might remember an interview I did with another surfer… shit, I’m blanking his name… on second thought, it’s unlikely you’ll remember this…

…come to think, it’s interesting that this moment made the final edit. It’s not related to the drift of the story and I was pretty merciless with cutting irrelevant stuff. For some reason I left this in. The other surfer mentions that a couple months previously I was ‘getting more waves than anybody (at the break)’ – which is surf-speak for surfing really well (maybe as well or better than the rest), but now I ‘seem bummed out’ – surf-speak for surfing poorly.

Point being, at about age 62 I was going downhill, at least in terms of timing and athletic panache. And it did happen that suddenly. Boom.

Although I finished the film and believe it is important, like my surfing, my thought processes are not what they once were. I try to make up for this using the rules of critical thinking that I’ve learned over the past decade, but fear rears whenever I lose my train of thought or can’t recall something (like the other surfer’s name).

Point being that back around then (2008), I added dementia to my reason for checking out by my own hand, before it becomes truly debilitating. (Yes, there is a catch-22 here, related to ‘knowing’ when you’re falling into dementia…)

Simultaneous with this decision, I added one other circumstance that would warrant an early check out: If I’m ever ‘on the street’ and unable to continue my research into HTWRW. See, by this time I was fully aware that virtually nothing… nothing important that people believe… is true. Nothing about history (short or long term), or even the sciences is what we’ve been told. Some of these untruths are a result of human ignorance, but the vast majority are outright, conscious lies on the part of the PTB. Most of you reading this already understand that this is the case.

Maybe you can see where this is going, and how the ‘movie moment’ figures in. A ‘loose wire’ would put me back on the road again, whereas a ‘new engine’ would put me on the streets, since I did not have the money for a new engine.

Sitting in the lounge, waiting for the verdict from the mechanic, I was considering my options. I have a (legal) firearm, which I bought for both protection and in case one of my (now three) ‘circumstances’ transpired. I also have some pills that would probably do it – or at least knock me out, in which case the rig’s propane system would finish the job. I was considering these options, and how I’d phrase emails I’d have to write to a couple friends — including Logan, who promised to take care of Gus ‘in the event of my death’ (gotta love that phraseology).

I wasn’t particularly upset, believe it or not, considering the sort of  ‘to do’ list I was mulling.

Addendum: Sitting in the lounge, the thought experiment referred to as Schrodinger’s Cat did not come to mind, although it could have, and how it relates to ‘Chance & Necessity.’ (If you’re not familiar with this, look it up.) See, in actuality, blind chance has little to do with anything.

In my case, ‘chance’ was only my ignorance of the state of my engine (loose wire or ruined block). Anton Chigurh’s coin tosses are much the same. The laws of physics (mostly Newton’s) will ‘decide’ heads or tails, and what we refer to as ‘fate’ is a concept based only on our ignorance of the state of the world, or an aspect of it. But I’m starting to ramble, aren’t I? (And anyway, Schrodinger’s Cat is a more complex issue…)

My decision or non-decision to do myself in had nothing to do with my being a ‘failure’ in life or whatever. ‘He fucked up his life and decided to end it,’ is not and will never be an issue with me. I’ve thought about this and come to the conclusion that I know more about HTWRW than… almost anyone else on the planet.

Now that is success. What more could anyone ask of himself?

My only real fear is that I will become unable to know more.

Allan

As you may have figured out, it was a ‘loose wire’. The rest of the reasons why I’m back on the road and not living on a boat will be dealt with in the next couple posts.