The Unknown

Let me start by saying that the key to writing pulp fiction--and I learned this just last night in a three hour, ferocious pounding of keys--is to tie someone to a chair. Shit just has to go down when someone is tied to a chair. It makes beautiful things happen. *Ahem* On to something more important.

***

I have to keep asking myself what I'm afraid of. I don't often find myself afraid. The cold body convolutions and desperate, grasping thoughts of a true fear state are thankfully uncommon. I can be brusque or stoic in the face of most things people balk at. Snakes. Spiders. Heights. Presentational speaking. Thoughts of death.

But then, do we really define "fear" that narrowly? Is the true panic state of thoughtless action and haunted dreams the only kind of fear? Or do I need to consider missed opportunities, reluctance and inaction to be fear as well?

It's just a word. A negative label to nail down certain kinds of action. A bitter pill to force reevaluation. A powerful goad to instigate or enliven action. Fear is a reviled emotion, and with little wonder. The gripping claw of terror in the gut, the nervous sweat, the constant prodding of paranoia; actual fear is never pleasant. Above and beyond that, the widespread cultural approval of valor, courage and even recklessness around the globe is so strong that to be stymied from action for any cause is reason enough to engender shame.

And I get that. I try very hard to accept my action--or inaction--and get by the moralistic wavering that comes from trying to explain my actions to myself. This is the human condition, telling stories in the past tense. Assigning cause and effect to the things we see and do. This is the power of the witness.

And that power is what makes us say that we are all afraid of the unknown. Such a stupid concept. And yet, so brilliant. To say that a body is restrained by excessive caution or contentment. It fills us with a desire to expand horizons, to build on experience. Not to stay small.

They Might Be Giants summed it up perfectly, as they have many things, in the song "Where Your Eyes Don't Go." Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms/And does a parody of each unconscious thing you do. Thinking about it now, I can raise that primal, caveman tickle on the back of my neck. Because seeing is believing. Because we are driven by sight.

So what is all of that? Why do these thoughts ring for me right now? I can imagine I have an instinct, a crawling phantom of formative events telling me to buck stagnation and grab at the first passing train. Maybe a biological imperative, passed down to me and as unavoidable as a falling building. Like all things (like fear itself) it's a blessing and a curse. I chide myself for not talking to that girl, or for sitting here at this desk and sucking at the teat of the service industry. I use that language prod, sharpened by constant use over millennia, to get what I want out of life.

Then I have to get up. I have to reach and strain. Push, grasp, strike. Then, when whatever I want is here in the palm of my hand, I have to hold. Fight to keep it. The legacy of fear is determination. It's a man standing up in front of his peers and bellowing out in rich baritone at the end of a movie, "I will not sit idly by!" Fear and Guilt and Action, all bundled together in the cycle of human triumph.

I suppose it's also in my nature to take the mundane and grant it a pressing urgency, or a universal importance, but I'm not going to let anyone fault me for that.