Paradise Found

Ok. I want to acclimate to writing somewhere other than on a personal laptop, as it is going to die soon. Plus, I set up this site. Might as well use it.

On the topic of death. Oh yes, we are just going to dive right in, head first. What a topic. It appears to be a popular subject tonight. Earlier in the evening I called my little brother Peter, which isn’t something I typically do on a Friday night (real deviant from the usual Netflix or news on the couch) but I felt compelled to share with him this crazy realistic dream I had the night before.

We were all in a big house my parents had bought with the intention of flipping in a few years. It was newly renovated and quite modern. As such, it had a huge pool, and since we wanted to take advantage of the house while we had it, we had invited friends and family over for a huge water polo game.

Teams were split into two, the Neons and the Normals. This was in reference to the color swimsuit everyone was wearing – really clever, I can only credit dream-me for that level of originality. Everybody in neon-colored swimsuits was on one side, and everyone else in a regular-colored suit on the other. I guess the teams were roughly even.

I was on the Normals (ironically), playing against my younger sister and brother – both of whom, I might add, are stronger, taller, and way more athletic than I. And you might not know me, but I’m a fairly active person. In fact, if I don’t run or do some kind of core exercise for more than a couple of days, I am like one of those wind-up toys – ready to release the pent-up energy on the nearest unfortunate subject. I need to move – it’s not a want, it’s a need.

With this context in mind, my sister and brother can kick my ass, easily, in most sports with the exception of running, which isn’t a sport so much as sheer determination, the one thing I do have in spades. I have zero hand-eye coordination to speak of, but I can suffer longer than you can, I’m willing to bet.

Anyhow, in this water polo game against my tougher and stronger family members, I was struggling to hold my own. My sister was all over me – she’d been assigned to stop me from scoring – and she was doing a bang-up job of it.

But finally – finally! I scored a goal. It barely hit the mark, but hit it did, and I was elated. Hurray! We were tied up with the Neons.

It was then when my brother sauntered over to my side of the pool allegedly to congratulate me on my goal, but the high fives quickly took an unusual turn.

“Oh, nice goal, but you know it doesn’t really count, right? Because, the seaweed rule.”

I stared at him, blankly.

“Oh yeah, you know the seaweed rule. If the ball goes in the goal below the line where seaweed could feasibly grow, if seaweed could grow in a pool that is”

“It can’t.”

“Of course, it can’t, but if it could grow, up to that line, and you score a goal below that line, it doesn’t count. The seaweed rule.”

“What.”

“You did a really good job getting it in! But yeah, no dice, seaweed rule.”

And it was just such a classic Peter thing to say, in my dream, I had to call him and tell him about it. Because of course, dream Peter would invent an arbitrary rule that made absolutely no sense, and be nice and friendly about it all while defending its absurdity to the death. But people tend to believe him.

My brother has a superpower – people believe anything he says, no matter how outlandish, because he puts so much passion and conviction behind his words, you simply can’t help but buy them. To be clear, he’s not a liar – if my brother is making a case for something, he genuinely believes in what he’s saying 110% and will demonstrate 50+ reasons why he’s right and this is the way, the only way, the Peter way.

It makes no difference the subject. He could relay offhand that aliens landed in his backyard and took a dip in the jacuzzi, and he’d describe the encounter in such depth, with such aplomb (not to mention, at such ferocious speed you couldn’t get a word in edgewise if you tried), you’d barely blink an eye. Afterward, you wouldn’t merely believe in the distant possibility of aliens – you’d expect to see them in your backyard, tomorrow night, playing croquet.

At this point, you might (justifiably) be wondering what this dream – or any of this, really – has to do with the price of tea in China. Perhaps you’re also wondering why I just chose to use an antiquated idiom. The reason behind both is the same – I’m not completely sure. To be honest, I am still figuring out this blog’s purpose. The simplest explanation is that I’m accustomed to writing, often, in a vacuum, and I thought I’d try a different approach for a change. Switch it up.

Anyway, what I’d meant to be a five-minute conversation about an uncanny dream turned into an hour-long, wide-ranging conversation with my brother exploring topics such as religion, death, the afterlife, quantum physics, parallel universes, the nature of existence, UFO’s (hence the UFO comment above, although details are embellished. Slightly.), and pinball machines, as he was building one at the time of our call. Just a casual Friday evening.

Suffice to say, we covered some ground.

In this moment, I am still unpacking the conversation – there’s probably enough material for a post per topic, if I’m feeling motivated – so more to come, if you’re along for the ride.

However, the abbreviated moral to the story is this. I feel lucky to have close enough relationships with my siblings to pick up the phone and chat for an hour on the fly about the meaning of life and nature of existence. I found myself pacing my apartment contemplating what happens after we die, something I certainly did not expect to be doing Friday at 7pm, and something I likely haven’t given a single thought to since pulling all nighters in college, stumbling around campus at 3am having philosophical conversations over black coffee with my nerdy friends.

I think it’s nice to have a place to bounce ideas around with people who care. So if nothing else, that’s what we’ll be doing here.