Oracle 2 - Message 3

(Beep. Music fades in)

Sometimes, I feel like I’ve been set up to fail, you know. Now that isn’t a sweeping critique of you, though there’s plenty of reason to offer one of those up, let me tell you. I mean, personally. I don’t understand the rules of the game you’ve set up for us. I somewhat understand the end goal or the thing that you labeled as the end goal at one time or another. Hey, to give you what credit you’re owed, you mapped everything out. You put in all that effort. I just don’t think you fully understand what that map does. And to me, in cartography especially, intention and meaning are fairly important components. But they don’t always line up.

But hey, what do I know, right? I might have a plethora of random information in my head but that doesn’t mean I understand cartography. Well, I want to see my brain as something vaguely akin to a Room of Requirement, so there. I mean I have seen one, I think. My residence hall in college maybe, kind of, sort of had one. It had a storage closet that we called the Room of Requirement for good reason but that was more of an accident of fate. It had become somewhat of a hall tradition to throw all the random odds and ends you didn’t want or need but still worked in there for someone else to find, one day. Like, as an example, did you buy a pair of pliers to fix a lamp that was knocked over at a birthday party? One of those old-school metal ones that did not so much break as bend. So now you have these pliers, but it was one use and done, so you could toss them into that room, so the next person doesn’t have to spend their money on one. 

We meant well, but we weren’t well organized. 

(Music fades out)

Right, the point. Sorry. 

(New music fades in)

Or not so much. You’re right in that I don’t know too much about cartography. I do know to respect it. Making a map is an art and science that is at equal times hearty and delicate. It is established. There are processes and tools that are set in stone as correct and true, but at the same time, it’s a delicate dance to take something that exists in three dimensions and flatten it out to two. When doing that, something is always going to get lost. No matter how hard you try. That’s such a great reduction of space that at some point, it’s just pragmatic to let things fall away. Maybe there is a way to avoid it, but knowing human nature, I doubt that it’s been discovered yet. Or it’s not well known, at least. That’s the sort of trade secret I could see someone carrying to the grave.

But here you are: trying to repackage a reality into a container that is just not the same shape, and things will have to be cut away. And in the course of that trimming, the connection to reality is one of the first that has to be severed simply as part of the process. 

Maps of the world are great examples of this. Many of them distort the size of one or all of the continents, and there are different reasons for each of the swells and shrinkages. But all the same, it’s inaccurate. Accuracy is set aside at least for the task but maybe for the task and a belief or two. However faulty.

Back to us, you’ve laid out a map for us. And now, I have to make sense of the distortion. Of pieces that are larger or smaller that they should appear. You’ve translated reality into this picture, and I have to undo that translate despite not being fluent in this language. 

So there’s this end point. This goal of all this, of going after me, of criticizing me and my actions, but there’s a distortion. I think your desire for objectivity and simplicity has twisted what the end of this road is. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

You know, in your first message to me, I was hardly in it. Did you notice that? I was there. As an object you could interact with, mostly. Replace me with a lamp and what would really change? 

“Why can’t you shine brighter, Lamp? Why are you taking up so much energy? Why are you sitting on that table and not the desk in the corner?” 

You hear the absurdity, right? That lamp can’t change anything. It’s just a lamp. And sometimes I feel like I am also an object in your world. And look, I’m not offended. Sometimes, I feel like an object. Not even a disembodied mouth which is what podcast narrators can sometimes feel like. I’m not that exactly. I’m a microphone and something else or someone else is stepping up to speak. You wanted to step up and speak, but I don’t know if you fully understand what you are saying. Or what you want to say.

It’s the same sort of message. Microphone and map, they’re both tools for you to get to a point. It’s just not the point you’re aware of. And I don’t think you want to be so aware of it. There’s a cost there that you just don’t want to pay. It’s not a major one, objectively. But that standard of comparison doesn’t matter. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in) 

For you. It’s steep. 

You don’t want to be vulnerable. It’s something you learned not to be.

And that’s a song I know way too well. It’s one I have on repeat to this day. Even after understanding the virtues of vulnerability, I still hesitate to fully embrace it. But with the way everything is packaged in my life, if I’m not upfront with my girlfriend, I’ll lose her in some way. Maybe she won’t leave me outright, but the hurt will change her. I don’t want that. I want her to feel free to grow into herself and as herself, but that’s not what hurt does. So I have to tell her things I’m not inclined to tell her. I have to expose aspects of myself that I am inclined to keep hidden. I have to bring her into myself in order to protect her. Figuratively speaking, of course. 

But when life has taught you to be defensive and that self-defense is the ultimate virtue, that doesn’t come easily. It goes against everything you know, and you know those things from experience, the most high stakes classroom there is. You want to put up shields because you know the cost of not doing so. You have to go against your most persuasive impulses to do what you need to do right now, and that is hard.

And yeah, I would say ‘need’ is the appropriate word right now. Sure, some people don’t need their partners in that way. Some people do fine without that, with a more independent sort of relationship. Everyone has a different style and preference for love, but realistic with me here.

(Music fades out and new music fades in) 

Where does your partner stand on that line? How is it that they need you to love them? Why did I get messages from both of you? Why did she ask the things of me that she did in hers? Or did you not even ask what was in her original message to me? 

Of course you didn’t. I knew that this whole time, and I wanted you to figure this out for yourself. But it wasn’t a vision that told me that, that told me you hadn’t asked. It was her. 

Let’s go back to the metaphor that I am needlessly proud of. I shouldn’t like it, but I do, so there. You’re both trying to map out a course to the same destination: her peace of mind relative to this so-called gift. You’ve just taken very different styles in the course of doing so. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

For you, this isn’t about morality or ethics. This isn’t about objectivity.  You want her to be okay. That’s all you want. That’s all you ever wanted. And you think I’m the right sacrifice. You think my condemnation is a step to get there. But you don’t fully understand what’s going on. You aren’t even like us. You don’t get these dreams. You have very different sorts of nightmares, but you fake it well. And I mean, very well, to your credit, of course.

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?