In Consideration of Empathy

You attack and beat yourself up over your inability to see eye to eye with your brother.  Eye to eye about what?  Everything.  Not everything, just things now.  The formation and configuration of our immediate family.  Who funds what and why.  Who goes and does what and where.  Who can.  Why do you want to see eye to eye with him on that?  You just watched a video of yourself dancing and you thought it was awesome, but the truth is if bodies could have Tourette Syndrome, you would probably be the poster boy with Elaine Benes as the prom Queen.  Why do you want to see eye to eye with him at all?  You are two completely different human beings, down to sexual orientations and the arrangement of your individual eyelashes.  You are not supposed to agree.  You are about as different as they come between siblings.  You do realize this, I hope.  You are a stamped coin.  Do you get it now?  You are never going to see eye to eye about just about everything.  If you want to see the other side, you are probably going to have to bend time and space and, last I heard, that shits pretty difficult with a thousand acre facility so good luck trying to do it with a few cubic inches of fatty gray matter.

You don't have to see anything his way.  He doesn't have to see anything your way.  What is this weird aggression toward a shared emotional experience?  It's not there.  Stop looking.  I don't say that as a warning sign like marking something so damaging and toxic you will die immediately, if not soon after.   I say that as a time saver.  I say that as a wayfarer.  Stop looking.  There is nothing at the end of that ocean.  There is nothing on the other side of that desert.  The globe does not loop around.  It is infinite in the darkness beyond the stars.  Stop looking.  Occasionally whip your binoculars up to your face and take down the range, time, and windage and then duck back down into the reeds.  You do love him, but you do hate him too.  Not for any particular reason.  Just envy.  Change positions.  Skulls, skin, bones, you do know you wouldn't be able to change circuitry.  Can't I?  No.  Mightn't I?  No.  Impossible-r-y-ing I?  No, and that's definitely not a word or fragment.  What the hell is that?   I just stroked off for a minute.  What were you saying?

I was saying, we're never going to see eye to eye, so stop beating yourself up when you try and do not.  You're not a bad person.  You're not a flaming heap of garbage to be kept at arms length all of the time.  Sometimes you cannot control your volatility.  It's a fine problem to have.  You don't have to kill him and you don't have to fight him.  Just let him be himself and you be yourself and the chips will land where they please and are directed.  Your engagement with the world can never be his.  It can be emulated.  Where's the fun in tracing?  Where's the existence in tracing?  Do not get angry with yourself for being irrevocably, irreconcilably, different.  No, you are not stupid for trying.  Anyone in their right mind would see their closest genetic match and want to touch it like a mirror to make sure what they saw was not a reflection.  You are me?  No.  I am me and you are you, and never the two shall meet.




///Dan Deacon - "Feel the Lightning"  polishing the brass on warships that will and need never leave Earth.  Fear is healthy.  A degree of worry is healthy.  Don't take it too far.