The Outliner

The entirety of natural and human history can be represented in two words: change and control. Nature is change. No matter on earth is static; even rocks are made of moving parts, and exert an equal and opposite reaction to the people who trip over them. And what of people, then? The introduction of human consciousness into entropy results in the second fundamental element of life: control. War, technology, religion, consumerism are all humanity’s attempts to spin the potter’s wheel of cause and shape our own effect. But there is one piece left over that doesn’t fit the mold: love.

I love this song. The sliding notes and bouncing pulses shake deep inside my abdomen, somewhere left of the spleen, build tension into a boiling core then burst, droplets shimmer brightly as they effervesce, tiny sound molecules hang onto delicate tendrils of oxygen, bubble up through veins, hit the neural cortex simultaneously with a bang, a staggering flash of transcendence that makes me feel, feel for just one minute like I could maybe someday maybe make art like this. And then the last tone dissipates and the iPod skips and it’s back to reality because the next song sucks.

I bought a toaster today. When I went to the appliance store, there were eight types of toaster to choose from. Some of them had flashing lights and enough slots to toast the whole bag. Intimidating.

Did you know that in Sweden they call toast ‘roasted bread’? They don’t even bother with a whole different word. We shouldn’t either. It’s just toast.

I bought the simplest one, a Toast Master. It says that, right on the box. The name pleases me. I figure, if its only occupation is the preparation of toast, it damn well better be good at it.

Returning home after travel, I cross the threshold of my apartment and blink twice as I look around the hall, like a cave explorer ambushed by an unexpected ray of sun. The familiar walls seem eerily strange, as if, in my absence, someone removed everything within — the time-worn desk, the haphazard pile of shoes, the clock over the kitchen sink — and painstakingly replaced the lot with identical items in identical arrangements. A thought races paranoid-wild through the central corridor of my jetlagged brain saying “Burglar! Something is missing! Something is different!” And then I realize — it’s me.

I am a part of the wave of the future. Real-time connected, cross-platform integrated and socially aggregated into the murky blue gestalt, I am content to be carried forth by the momentum of the moment.

Until the unthinkable happens, and I become separated from the swirling masses, stranded on the deck of a sailboat or holding on for dear life to a diver’s upper lip, crying out, wait for a second! I just lost my phone!

Alone I am a droplet… and left behind, I disappear.

On a holiday, even the biggest city might as well be a ghost town. Shuttered cafes and newsstands hint at an overabundance of supply looking for demand. Vacant parking spots, flashing streetlights, empty train cars, stationary escalators; boom and bust.

But then there’s the chewing gum on the pavement, the cigarette butt in the urinal, the palm smudge on the window. The masses who aren’t there, somehow, still are.

People often dramatically proclaim how alone they can feel, even in a crowd, but I have the opposite sensation.

I found a quarter sitting on a trashcan outside the downtown subway entrance. It was positioned in the bulls-eye center of the lid, as if the person who left it there were making a statement about how money is worthless. But it isn’t, so I took the quarter.

I found a man playing a broken violin just inside the downtown subway entrance. He was scratch-a-scratching with the passion of a virtuoso, and if he were 22 and an art student he could be making a statement about how art is meaningless. But it isn’t, so I gave him the quarter.