Homo inordinatus

You have the attention span of a goldfish these days.

I’m not sure where you’re coming from.

You have been wandering aimlessly. It is quite upsetting to see you act a fool, Wren.

Seeming aimless and being aimless are different, Kest.

I cannot, for the life of me, see reason in your erratic action.

But there’s a rhyme to it. I’m finding a cure for my sickness.

Ponders.

Well, I’m not unwell, physically. I’m just unsure if our toiling is worth the time. I’m looking for a remedy in unfamiliar places.

Could you please elaborate more strictly and clearly?

I’ve been taught by my mother to carve the future out of the unknown. To seek novelty from the abyss.

That does not justify your series of apparent listless behaviors.

That, I haven’t justified. Do tell, how am I to have a list or an aim?

Pauses.

Your aim should be like the straight line. Your list of aims should be like points on the straight line.

Because the straight line is the shortest distance between two fixed points in the Euclidean space. The straight line functions with maximum efficiency.

A human who walks in the straight line knows the destination.

This is intriguing. I’d love to hear more, if you’d share.

We feel happiness as we see ourselves progress towards an end, of an objective, with efficiency. I imagine a society that is built on the straight line to be one that knows its place. The straight line is a clarity.

Laws must be simple. Enforcement must be strict. Customs must be consistent. Deviance must be corrected. Punctuation must be standard. The straight line is not a suggestion. It is an obligation.

There might be a need for the straight line. But I neither see myself nor anyone alive in a world where language is unadorned. The spoken word must have a chaotic cadence nested in a higher order. Tone mustn’t be monotonous. Rhythm mustn’t be neutral.

But in a world where facts reign supreme, you will feel more secure. Every human wish for security.

Security isn’t what I’m chasing after. You could even say I’m running away from it.

I am at a loss for words then, Wren.

Why must you be blind to the facts of our reality? It is plain that disorder is decay. Hallmarks of order are present in the straight line: perfect uniformity, minimal entropy, unambiguous direction.

Because at this moment, I’m trying to break out of my mold. Decay dissolves rigidity.

If the world doesn’t bend to you and you, as brittle as a stick, don’t bend to it, something must break. Or, you can grow into a form of elegance with grace.

This beautiful world has, in it, unspeakable atrocities, Wren. That is why we must be like the straight line.

At times, it takes wandering off course to truly know who we are. We’re not just souls.

Even if the soul is eternal, we’re bodies, too. Our bodies are corroded by the tides of time. Eventually, what we embody will be washed away with the waves. Or we can dance with grace.

Sighs.

Kest, I don’t disagree with you. Everything has its time and space to unravel. But not everything needs to be efficient, and not every efficiency is fulfilling.

I have a friend, let’s call him Merlin. Merlin wakes up every morning at 5 o’clock to run and he eats clean, for health’s sake. He’s able to afford single-mindedness at work because of his health. He uses it to climb the social ladder, to rise through glass ceilings and polished conversations. This, in turn, allows him to provide for his family, a noble aim.

I see no flaws here.

Smiles.

But I’ve noticed something about Merlin, Kest. Something in the way his eyes stares into the soul, but yet past it, for a fraction too long. In how he glances at his watch mid-laughter, as if joy, too, must be scheduled. He seems to be in perpetual motion, tracked and measured, but never questioned.

I believe you to be suffering from the halo effect. An unobserved life need not be an unfulilling life.

Shrugs.

Fulfilling, if you equate it to efficiency. Efficiency as a means to an end isn‘t self-sufficiency, Kest.

Merlin provides, yes. But I wonder: is he ever with what, whom, or how he provides for? An ascendance towards straight lines in a spiral, with a hollow center, where everything begins again at the end.

Last week, I sat on a bench by the beach for hours, watching the wind lift the fine grains of sand. They danced like ghostly ribbons, unraveling toward the sea. I reached for my thoughts, but I couldn’t hold them, they slipped through like water between my fingers. But I felt present…

Smirks.

Kest, meaning rarely announces itself on calendars.

But does it wait in wasteful places?

That’s what I’d like to know.

You were a beautiful oak tree once, Wren. Now, you seem like an anchorless ship.

I believe you are, too. You just hide it better.

My father sailed in chaotic waters, as you do now, and perished in the end. He stood on a fixed point and chased after the other end that wasn‘t on the straight line, which, to me, is a waste. I fear you will follow him.

I‘d rather perish in the waters than arrive on time without a soul.

Laughs.

Just walk by me in the depths of the void. We may become something beautiful.