There I was again, By Mark Morford

[madokie]

Ever get the feeling you just saw the person you could've been?


It happened almost exactly like this:

I'm out at the agreeably grimy auto parts store picking up a few quarts of oil for the Audi and a couple of cans of Fix-a-Flat for my besieged tires, given how the city is lined like a Christmas parade with nails and splinters and broken love, and of course the place smells exactly like every similar joint the world over -- a deliciously acrid, metallic, petrochemical perfume emanating from 10,000 toxic substances that grease the engines of the world but which you don't really want to think too much about lest you get completely depressed.

Upstairs/upramp from the store, in this scabby, wind-blown, bare-bones parking garage covered in 20 years of residual oil, skanky rainwater and Geary street traffic grime, there are maybe a dozen other cars of every make and degradation parked all asunder; it's the perfect place to take your recent purchases, open the hood and mess with your vehicle's innards, as you gaze around and wonder how many murders and drug deals and odd epiphanies have taken place in this magical, concrete wasteland. A hundred? A thousand? Is that blood on the floor? Hmm.

I get my 5W-30, I go back upstairs and I do as the natives do: I pop my hood and check the levels, and I'm pouring in a fresh quart of Satan's blood when suddenly I feel some eyes on me. I glance around and sure enough, just over there, in the far corner, I see this car. ...

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(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/05/08/notes050809.DTL&nl=fix)

[Berry Cool]

1. Good column. He's just an interesting writer, period.

He asks:

Aren't we all merely a collection of assorted, slapdash decisions disguised as thoughtfulness? Aren't we made up of various projections and patterns and expectations, a toss of the DNA dice onto the cosmic craps table run by drunken angels? I'm going with "yes."

Well, to the extent that we're completely out of control as to which one of those sperm racing at the egg manages to be the one to break through and hence shut it completely off to all the jillions of others that could have brought THEIR chromosomes to the party instead, yes indeed. And that doesn't even count how out of control we are about stuff such as how our parents even managed to meet, or when our mothers got pregnant with us.

The mystics, the quantum theorists posit that for every decision you make and every pathway you actively choose in this tangible funkhole of a reality, millions of unchosen options continue on anyway, veer off and unfurl in other realms, other dimensions, other versions of you.

Which means that in any given hairsbreadth of timespace there are 10 billion yous laughing and screwing and lurching through the multidimensions, following radically different lives and modalities and haircuts and cosmic lesson plans, each unaware of all the others but every one somehow informing the whole across the dimensions. Hey, it's a theory. Sure as hell beats harps and virgins and guilt.

Damn. Thinking of ONE alternative Choose-Your-Own-Adventure alternative life is complex enough--especially in the movies and novels. 10 billion?

[malaise]

2. Lovely article n/t

[moggie]

3. It probably doesn't pay to think of this too much!

It can be a source of comfort. When you're low, you can imagine all those versions of you, just the thickness of a thought away, who made the right choices or had the right kind of luck: you won that job, got the girl, kept your health, lived happy and contented ever after. But don't get too complacent about that, because right alongside the lucky ones are countless versions of you that you'd rather not think about: the ones dying in agony, the serial-killer ones, the ones who vote Republican. You're better off trying to make the best of this version of you, while you can. It's all you've got.

[I Have A Dream]

4. Love it! Thanks for posting it. nt