Listen to Notes On The Spectrum about this chapter: Turn Around, Don’t Go
Time often does not heal all wounds. Impulsive or angry responses rarely elicit the desired result. I am not firing in the heat of my frustration. This morning we had a pleasant breakfast at a nearby diner, Jim’s. Lot’s of gun talk. He does have a lot of information about weapons of war. Kinda like an encyclopedic index of Pokémon cards. Same usefulness. Unless he’s joining the military, ICE, or becoming a private mercenary.
It was a pleasant outing. A dream of what lies ahead. He agreed to the no loaded weapons in the house, without protest. He has plans, has moved his working desk from the car to his bedroom. Progress.
I’ll let the sleeping drug dog lie. Aware. Vigilent. Firm in my boundaries.
It’s my daughter now that has gone off map. She’s not responded to me since she returned from a Mexico birthday vacation with her mom. She’s also going with her mom to DC for Thanksgiving. There’s no reason for her to ghost me. Unless something has happened. Unless she’s ashamed of dropping me during my requests to celebrate her birthday. I found out from my son that she went to Mexico. Why the sudden change in behavior?
Again, it’s something on her side, not mine. I cannot make her be different. Where the warm daughter doing well went, I don’t know.
Once again, the universe says, “focus the fuck on yourself.”
Today, the job starts at 10 am. Two more hours of freedom. What is the best use of my time? Job apps. Get a different job.
For now, the forecasted flooding storm has passed Austin. I might even get to play tennis with my FNT group at 7 pm. And again with a different group tomorrow night at 6.
I have an uneasy feeling in my gut. Something is out of sync. Did my ex-wife alert her new best bud to my son’s dangerous thrashing? Again, my guess is she’s ashamed of ditching me completely. And, again, it’s not my business to try and figure it out. Let it go, as the song from Frozen goes.
Okay, so massive U-turn for the moment. Gratitude is easy. Thank goodness for my happy morning with my son. Thank goodness my cousins value blood over money, inviting me to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m looking forward to that.
Life, I’ve learned, is a lot like having things to look forward to. I used to have a lot of anxiety. It caused me to retreat, isolate, and definitely not plan things in advance. I’m learning that a trip, or a concert, or a family dinner is a nice emotional sail pulling me along the lake, in choppy or smooth waters. Family is important.
Even when they are acting out, even when they are ghosting or handling guns more than guitars. Fam fam fam. Something I have a lot less of since jettisoning my girlfriend and losing my brother and sister.
I can feel my energy warming. I’m not escaping, I’m standing my emotional ground. Even as my ex-wife reverts to stupid ambivalence. She’s busy. Even if my daughter goes silent for no known reason. She’s busy. Even if my son is an arms dealer. He’s busy.
In some ways, he’s happy.
Like me, he’s struggling to gain footing in his adult life. I’m striving to gain more meaningful work in my “easy” years. I want a lifestyle that won’t allow me to live in an apartment, not take vacations from time to time, and not be able to afford to buy the entire group’s meal.
I want enough money. To spend more time resting, writing, and loving someone. Someone will arrive when I’ve stabilized in the next moment. Until then, do my best, work hard, play less, and cultivate my craft.
Read good books. Write more. Watch movies and media that support beauty, genius, and human expression of emotions. AI can’t ever get there. AI, in its critique of this novel, tries to sound knowledgeable. Trys to assume human qualities.
“You know, parenting is hard work, and we can’t predict or demand the right actions of our kids.”
What does AI know about parenting? About a son or daughter? It’s cute that they take the bluff in some digital personification of human emotion, thought, and relationship experience. The only relationship experience AI has with my story of being a parent in a difficult situation is … Zip.
What does a robot know about love? Death? Loss? How about the color blue, or a song by Brian Eno? The human world is not math. It’s not digital. The human mind is spiritual and analog. Perhaps tethered to a collective unconscious. An AI, as good as they may sound, will never comprehend being human.
There is no LLM big enough, no quantum computer of the future that will bring Rachael from Blade Runner any closer to being human. She seems to feel things. She’s beautiful. A functional pleasure model robot. She’s misguided by synthetic memories used to give her a backstory.
AI has no backstory. AI has all the digital data in the world, yet no eyes to see. No ears to hear beyond the 1s and 0s of digital audio. I am not digital. I am an instrument tuned to the human frequency.
I might be influenced by Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, a seemingly endless loop of digitally recorded sounds. The timing, the spirit, the performance is 100% human. Digitally created music, EDM, country, pop, rock, has no soul. I can hear the lack. I can hear the vocoder quality of the synthesized vocals.
There are no vocals in Music for Airports; the words and images appear in my human mind anyway. No dreams for robots. No human connections. No back story. Just data. Data is not alive.
God is human.
Robot is math and magic-sounding reswizzling, appearing to indicate “intelligence.” There’s nothing behind the curtain. Math only. Human minds can contain math, can contain digital inputs as memories. The reverse doesn’t happen. Memories are human, chemical, spiritual.
Maybe Eno at the moment is warping my thoughts into a more blissed vibration. Maybe I’m releasing anxiety and preparing for a nap before work. Maybe my human mind has ideas of it’s own. Maybe I am listen for god in all things.
No contact from my daughter or ex-wife. I’m no longer waiting for their human input. I am not waiting. I am returning to myself. A turnaround can be helpful. We’ll see how the next days go leading up to my 63rd birthday. I think a solo trip to Big Bend would be more analog and spiritual than an offered ski trip for me and my daughter. I can be quiet and distant too.
I don’t want to be quiet. I don’t want to withdraw. What I want is unimportant, beyond my immediate agency and focus. That is enough for now.
link to the soundtrack of this chapter: Music for Airports, Brian Eno
