by Megan Boyle
feels weird to know that he could be reading this, or that anyone could, and the possibility of it influencing anything. but also good, like. why not? this is the closest thing to telepathy i can think of. i kind of wish the world functioned on telepathy. this is as much of me i can transport into a document at the speed of typing. i am limited to how fast i can type (and the availability of typing-reading situations). i think much faster than i type.
‘thinking speed’ ratio to ‘typing speed’ ratio: jesus. didn’t factor in autonomous body shit things like breathing, which. jesus.
SOME THINKING RATIOS:
• existential speed to thought speed: 100,000 : 1
• thinking speed to typing speed: 16.6 : 1
• thinking speed to talking speed: 60 : 1
• thoughts that seem interesting enough to become language vs. other thoughts: 3 : 500
• thoughts that seem interesting enough to become language vs. thoughts that become liveblog: 5 : 1
• thoughts that seem interesting enough to become language vs. thoughts that become talking: 15 : 1
• thoughts i’m aware of vs. autonomous/unconscious thoughts: 100 : [no idea]
WHAT DO I MEAN BY ‘EXISTENTIAL SPEED:’
including autonomous/unconscious things, i feel like my thoughts move at probably around 800-1000mph, except when i’m sleeping. i type maybe 60 words per minute (unsure of this, 60 seems easy for this example), so that’s 3600 words per hour, 60 miles per hour. wait, like one of my tiny motions between key presses is moving at 60mph? that seems high. i don’t know. it also feels really fast. i just tensed my arm muscles and thought ‘go as fast as you can go’ and like, vibrated. it was definitely faster than how fast i type.
60mph feels like nothing in a car, but if i’m standing on the side of the road, a car passing at 60mph would look fast. consider that cars usually only move 60mph in one direction (forwards). imagine a car going forwards 6” at 60mph then immediately reversing 6” at 60mph. okay, now think about your fingers when you type. 6” is a generous estimate for the distance they travel between keys. that’s, like, if you’re a really bad typer. this seems wrong though. seems possible that my fingers type something comparable to 60mph, scaled-down. 800-1000mph is how fast thinking feels in my head—no way to measure for sure, just ‘suspend disbelief’ for this one. so:
• 1000mph (maximum thinking speed) / 60mph (maximum typing speed) = 16.6
• 16.6 thoughts per 1 second
• light travels 186,282 miles per second
• 60 seconds in 1 minute * 186,282 miles travelled in 1 second = 11,176,920 miles traveled per minute
• 11,176,920 miles per minute * 60 minutes in 1 hour = 670,615,200 miles per hour
• damn, so is the speed of light…um. why is shit always ‘60.’ this is hard. this is hard. this is hard. this is hard. i’m laughing.
• light travels at 670,615,200 miles per hour (in a vacuum)
• 16.6 thoughts per second * 60 seconds per minute = 996 thoughts per minute * 60 minutes in an hour = 59,760 thoughts per hour
• 670,615,200 (miles traveled by light per hour) / 59,760 (thoughts per hour) = 11,221.8 (rounding that shit up)
• 11,222 : 1
what does that…
i think that would be the ratio of how many miles per hour a unit of light travels versus how many miles per hour one of my thoughts travels
so the light surrounding me in this room is actually moving. it’s moving at a rate of 11,222 (whatever) times as fast as the speed of one of my thoughts
light slows down when it travels through transparent objects (glass, air, water)
you can’t see through people because light stops being able to pass through them
they should invent a thing…oh, x-rays, haha. i guess that’s what’s going on, with x-rays
forgot where i was going with this, feel like i’m getting there though
11:42PM: dad appeared in doorway, wielding a paper bag containing a sandwich and chips, or so i am told. we will see later. the sandwich was made by nuns who…i guess my dad rents an office to a priest who…somehow the nuns assemble sandwiches and other things into paper bags and sometimes my dad receives a bag. o! a sandwich has been bestowed onto me this blessed night, and for this i thank ye lord. for real though i am happy about this. friendly interactions with dad. he tripped on a fan in the hallway and there was a big crash. then from somewhere in the living room he said ‘is it ‘sherry’ or ‘shirley?” i said ‘shirley.’ he said ‘what?’ i said ‘shirley, like certainly.’ he said ‘is this shirley?’ i said ‘yeah, that’s shirley. shirley, like surely, like ‘surely that’s the cat.” thought ‘trout: that’s the fish.’ i missed jeopardy tonight.
APRIL 5, 2013
1:24AM: ate 20mg adderall. dad helped with ratio math. alvie seems particularly insatiable tonight. he doesn’t seem to want to knead me or be pet. he’s been walking hesitantly and meowing with big eyes, sometimes with with his tail up like he’s happy. he is batting at my slipper and acting startled. now he is trying other shoes. smelling, not touching. now the carpet. smelling and very light batting, more like ‘pawing.’ earlier he looked at me and meowed. when i stood he started trotting confidently, like he had wanted me to follow him. he led me to the middle of the kitchen, where he sat and looked me in the eye and meowed. what could it mean. pictured woody allen going on an alvie rant, finishing with ‘and that’s just like how it was with [woman]. women: [something about women]. i never figured it out.’ which is funny, i forgot i named alvie after woody allen’s character in ‘annie hall.’
now alvie is sniffing between the air mattress and the corner. he is trying to go between them, head-first. jesus. really getting to the bottom of it. investigative journalism. alvie’s after the nitty gritty mattress details.
now it’s a little later, he got stuck and struggled. pulled him out.
1:53AM: mattress seemed to be reducing in height. felt corner where alvie got stuck doing his investigative journalism. felt/heard air leaking from a few holes too small to see. i did a duct tape treatment on the holes. say what you will about alvie’s crazed, fearful disposition—he knows how to expose an air mattress for what it really is. he will spare no expense. relentless, insatiable, hard-hitting: alvie. recipient of the 2014 pulitzer prize for investigative journalism.
2:00AM: i’m always writing ‘2:00AM,’ i feel. always. paranoid mattress is deflating again. moving this shit to the kitchen. or living room, why not? haven’t tried that one yet. alvie and me bringing you the highest quality investigative journalism from the frontline of dad’s apartment. the freshest sources. the timeliest updates.
2:04AM: debated moving piles of things on a desk and setting up ‘workstation’ there but couldn’t find an outlet. just going to sit on couch until battery dies. then i’ll move somewhere else. ‘dad’s apartment: the place you only thought you hadn’t left since sometime last night. more at 11.’ ‘dad’s apartment: a rapidly developing hot-spot for barely moving, but to what expense? more at 11.’
5:05AM: i’ve been typing the ‘existential speed’ part of the math thing. refilled water glass once and ate 15mg adderall. you are getting behind the scenes shit with this info. i feel like weird al. like weird al’s voice is making me continue typing the math thing, pushing me onward, ‘baying.’ weird al baying at me in a voice faster than i can understand. tried to picture weird al and pictured matthew broderick on his horse at the end of ‘glory.’ forever picturing that one scene in ‘glory:’ the megan boyle story.
5:31AM: starting to hear birds.
5:45AM: staring…
6:09AM: would be crazy to read this as a 16th century italian farmer.
6:12AM: noticed i haven’t been making myself laugh as much as i was in the beginning.
6:28AM: plugged in computer charger in bedroom. tried to discern source of air loss in mattress. felt around for leaks and duct taped most of a corner. as i was doing it i thought about writing about
it in a more detailed way, like, going into a lydia davis thing. like the story about the hurricane that’s actually about her writing the story about the hurricane but sometimes it’s hard to tell. wish it had been easier to tell. felt averse to doing the lydia davis thing, and kind of averse to all fiction.
6:37AM: responded to zachary gchat from 10PM. dad is making a wide variety of loud snoring sounds. the variety is astounding. he just went ‘phew, shhhhphew!’ alvie meowing again. frightfest.
6:42AM: one of alvie’s traveling bouts of sorrow ended in bedroom doorway. coaxed him onto mattress, where he seems tentatively/shamefully obsessed with smelling the corner where his head got stuck. pictured alvie watching my back re-tape the mattress a few minutes ago. seems lynchian, from his perspective.
6:44AM: alvie is kneading blankets close to my side.
6:46AM: alvie stopped kneading abruptly to smell the corner-area, paw at an area on the mattress which startled him, then jump off the bed.
6:52AM: dreaded sounds of a waking dad. i don’t like talking to recently-awake people unless i’m one of them.
6:54AM: dad walked to bathroom, said ‘you’re still awake, how’s it going,’ i said ‘good,’ he said ‘you like what you’re doing,’ i said ‘yup,’ he used bath room, he went to kitchen, passed my room, waved, said ‘see you in a while,’ i waved and said ‘see you in a while.’
7:04AM: dad has elaborated on his waking sounds. at least he elaborated. also he didn’t ever say he was going to elaborate, he just did it. smells like coffee. he stood in doorway and said there were some guys coming at 8 to fix a leaky pipe. i asked if he would be here and he said yes. i said ‘oh that’s fine, i don’t care, i mean. whoever, you know, i don’t care.’ looked up from screen, to his face displaying an expression of ‘ancient, grim, deeply-felt concern.’
7:10AM: keep thinking ‘i need glasses.’ also i don’t like that this is called ‘liveblog’ and that i keep having to say ‘liveblog.’ i want to call it ‘thing.’ or ‘something.’ or ‘thing i feel equally pressured to refer to as ‘thing’ and ‘liveblog’ and to a lesser degree, ‘something.” or ‘jebadoh.’ or ‘jebadoh’s complaint.’ does anyone remember ‘jebadoh?’ mom’s asswiper thing? those were the days. anyone still reading? embarrassed, a little. gotta keep going though. keeping going forever. i will not be able to do this forever. maybe. maybe calling it ‘i will not be able to do this forever’ would reverse-motivate me to do it forever. oh my god. the amount of times i think/try things like this. the ‘what neurotic thing can i do to motivate myself’ things. didn’t realize it happened so often. seems like so often.
7:35AM: pasted liveblog text into a google document so now there can be this one and another one and i can put their faces up to each other and make them go ‘kiss kiss kiss.’
7:43AM: today i have to shower. if nothing else. i have to eat and sleep also. maybe do some light exercise and chill the fuck out.
7:53AM: brushed teeth and washed face.
‘the girl who could never get it together despite her relatively consistent commitment to hygiene.’
‘the girl who sat on the air mattress at 8AM and almost graduated college’
‘the girl who was asked some version of ‘do you have a CVS card’ exactly 76 times: a cautionary tale’
a trilogy, by stieg larsson
8:16AM: opened safari browser to dad’s default homepage, aol.com. watched video called ‘stranded sea lion won’t leave man’s car.’ a man saw a sea lion on the side of the road and when pulled over to investigate, the sea lion jumped in his car. the man’s voice said something about a 20-minute wait at sea world, over shots of the sea lion in a white net, kind of wagging its tail. the anchor sounded wryly cheerful as she said this has been happening a lot lately—sea lion puppies ending up in weird places, ‘due to their mothers leaving too early, but no one knows for sure.’
9:55AM: ate 30mg adderall, 60mg noopept, banana. poured coffee. colin texted that my application was received and they want me to send a copy. i don’t have a copy. if they have the original, wouldn’t it be easier if they made a copy? colin said if i didn’t have a copy, he’d ‘have to email me one.’
11:33AM: ‘it was scarily almost noon.’ that’s probably somewhere in ‘ulysses’ right? a good thing to do for a book like that would be to insert one sentence everyone will glaze over and forget. it has to be the same sentence for everyone, all must forget this sentence. when someone glazes over it means you can hack into their brains to find their passwords or whatever. even when you’re dead. that’s why you wanted to do this, see.
11:39AM: can’t write a sentence without deleting some of it. including that sentence. i made a space between ‘in’ and ‘cluding’ which i deleted in previous sentence, this one was okay until i typed and deleted ‘btu’ after comma. bad bad bad. is jim croce the same thing as…is he associated with new orleans…creole…is he a crawdad..is leroy brown black…is jim croce black…is anyone alvie…alvie caught in the sick rapture of remembering his traumas…staring at me sitting on hind legs right now…less than a foot from my face…is he the one…is he a crawdad…
11:57AM: 16th century italian farmer on the top of a hill, holding liveblog, calling to his friend, saying ‘what is ‘formspring” in italian, staring at ‘formspring’ like the answer will come with staring, saying ‘foh-rums…preenk…’
12:00PM: exit music from ‘one flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ and ‘glory’ have been alternating in my head since making the video last night. so. not much to report here. good job. you’re still doing good.
12:03PM: the truth is i’m stalling because i’m nervous about posting this update because i’m not in the habit of doing it anymore and i feel like i went a little overboard with some things that are maybe embarrassing. man this is stupid. i just want to do normal shit. this feels fucked up to me now. this is a documentation of a time period where i barely talked or moved or slept. also, like. fuck. let me set the scene for you:
you are late for something you said you’d do every day
nobody cares as much as you, probably
you have an outstanding balance in a bank no one cares about as much as you
and that bank is capital one
capital one: the bank for today, for tomorrow, for you, for life. check out our low financing rates online at our website capitalonebank.com.
not trying to be whatever but i never noticed the way ‘alone’ is situated in ‘capital one’
here’s a writing exercise, try to make this the last sentence of your romance novel:
‘it would take her 27 years to notice the hidden word in ‘capital one;’ until then, there was nothing to do but wait.’
12:34PM: scrolling down the endless scroll of facebook, not looking at anything long enough to fully understand, thinking ‘oh my godddddddd…’ and ‘how is it real’ (not condescendingly, more like overwhelmed with…something…that doesn’t involve the things i’m barely looking at…)
12:38PM: here’s another example of something that gives me that feeling: my dad has a ‘people’ magazine and a ‘rolling stone’ magazine and some kind of hand-held game called ‘pass the pigs’ and three remotes and his folded pajamas and and three books and two cats and me on his bed.
12:41PM: maybe my dad thinks he’s going to die soon and has, like. started asking god for repentance, not telling anyone because he agreed with god to keep this secret, if it meant he could get into heaven. that’s the kind of thing i’m going to do someday, i bet. that’s what the things on the bed are about. feel like i’m the only person who will fully understand the ‘things on the bed’ thing. this might help you understand more, i left it out at first because it feels sad and innocent and tragic and endearing but people might see it as ‘making a character out of my dad,’ but i’m not doing that: there is a sweatshirt that says ‘number one dad’ folded at the end of the bed and my dad wears it to sleep. it’s like he doesn’t believe it. there’s nothing i can do to make him beli
eve it.
12:52PM: vision is doing weird depth perception/enlargening/‘swelling’ of areas and can see neon shadow-like inverse images of things when i move my eyes. they like, follow my eyes. hm. i stink to high hell.
i know i’m the ideal candidate for something. i have always felt like ‘you are the ideal candidate for something, you’re going to find out what it is someday.’ it’s probably like, ‘the ideal candidate for research about baking soda that will be cancelled before it starts.’ or ‘the ideal candidate for going to jail for missing jury duty due to receiving the jury duty notice months later.’ i’m halfway to one of those things already happening. maybe there’s still hope for me yet.
1:07PM: dark feeling very very dark dark dark maybe time to stop writing it’s making dark more apparent…how could you have written this much today dark dark dark dark…done this…that’s all…you…dark…jesus look at you, you’re not doing anything about it…you…need to do something…make another to-do list…shit that would make it worse…all those lists…there is something else you need…the thing you need is out there…it’s looking for you and it wants to help…the thing you need
4:23PM: that seemed like a good place to stop forever. missed opportunity to make that the ‘stopping forever’ point. could still do it but then i’d have to delete this, which feels dishonest now. sitting outside on a black wicker table, smoking cigarette i wanted at 6AM. it is sunny and warm and i’m wearing a jacket. what would i be doing if i wasn’t doing this. seems like i might be dead. not dead now, dead if. you know. have been sitting in bed reading most of what i’ve written since atlantic city. seems hellish, repetitive. hellish document. what is there to do.