Interrogations

By Ophelia Benson

An eclectic, literary challenge to everyday thinking.

Number Seventeen: Mutability

It's all such a ramshackly arrangement, really. Who set this up? A little more imagination wouldn't have been a bad idea. Some bigger thinking. Quite a lot more generosity, scope, long-term planning wouldn't have come amiss. Following things through, realizing implications, seeing where all these pathetic contrivances were going to lead - you'd think that would be part of the job, quite frankly. To be brutally honest, one wonders if whoever did this even had an engineering degree. Degree, hell, one wonders if the poor bungler ever even took a single class. Maybe it was an eight o'clock, is that it? Sleep too attractive, so the result is we have to put up with these ridiculous bodies that break so easily, that get stiff and slow and then stop altogether, that ooze and drip all sorts of foul smelly liquids, that have to be fueled every few hours and turned completely off for nearly a third of every day, that get too cold or too hot, tired or sick, frightened or sad, angry or deranged? That come with throats that get sore, lungs that fill with fluid, guts that malfunction, teeth that rot and crack? And of course there's no warranty. In short, one or two design flaws, wouldn't you say? Rather obvious design flaws? I mean, what were they doing? Working with their eyes shut? Did they not test the product? Did they just slap something together and then ship without even checking it, or what? It's not as if these things are subtle, or hard to detect. It's not as if they don't show up right away, is it.

Oh, never mind. It's done now. Nobody knows. We have complained, of course. Boxes of documents have been trundled back and forth, witnesses have been deposed - but to very little purpose, in the absence of a judge. Nobody knows exactly who the responsible party is, or who is going to decide the case. There's a nasty suspicion that those two entities are one and the same, in which case of course we're screwed. Complain away, peasants. So we're stuck with it, and complaining is a bit pointless now.

But really. It is hard not to get exasperated. It's all so obvious. A child could have noticed. (Maybe it is a child?) It's not just the bodies, though they're bad enough, it's so many other things too. This place we're given to live, for instance -

I mean, it has such potential. Don't get me wrong. Of course I realize that, I'm not stupid, I'm not blind, I know about the good bits. I've stood and marveled at the oceans with the best of them. Sunsets, stars, mountains, waterfalls, flowers, fruit - all lovely, yes, I know. I admire it all as much as anyone. But so what? Does that mean the not-so-good parts are not a problem? Do we usually think about things that way? 'Well this shirt is a lovely colour so I really don't mind that it's full of holes. This car has excellent tires so it's okay that the brakes don't work.' No I don't think so, I think we want all the parts to work, thank you very much, not just some of them. Is that so much to ask?

There's the weather, for instance - well, obviously, I don't have to tell you that. So often it's either too hot or too cold - there are so few weeks in the year when it's exactly right, especially when it's exactly right all day long. So many days start out well enough, quite a pleasant balmy morning, but then by midday it's hot and by four it's a damn furnace. But then days when it's pleasant in the afternoon, why, then it's chilly in the morning and you have to wear a sweater which you then have to take off in the afternoon and drag around with you and probably forget and leave somewhere. Was that necessary? Why couldn't it have been comfortable twenty-four hours a day, all year long?

And that's just hot and cold. Never mind droughts and floods, hurricanes and blizzards, earthquakes and volcanoes. And then everything is so far away and difficult to get to. That's a bad arrangement. We should be able to get ourselves to Paris or Shanghai, Athens or Melbourne, in an hour or two. And everything is so overcrowded, so other people should be made to stay home. Yes I know those two things are incompatible, that's my point. It's bad design, you see.

And the universe is too big, isn't it. Other stars and planets are too far away. That's bad, they should be much closer so that we could explore them. And then everything is so unfair, so badly distributed. Only birds (and bats) get to fly - we should all be able to fly. Humans at least. And live underwater like fish and see as well as hawks, and so on.

But above all, of course...we shouldn't always have to lose everything. That's the really bad design flaw. We're afraid to love anything more fragile than a rock, because we know we no sooner do than something will happen to it. It will get run over by a car, or fall off a cliff, or step on a land mine, or get a horrible disease. Or else we will. Or both. Really, we'd put up with hot afternoons and toothache and lost sweaters, if only everyone weren't so fragile, and vulnerable, and temporary, and easily lost. We would put up with a lot, without a murmur, for that. Really we would.

Ophelia Benson is editor of Butterflies and Wheels - http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com.

She can be emailed here.

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Interrogations will next be updated early November 2003

Previous Interrogations

1. Self and Internet
2. Perfection Isn't
3. Homo Quaerens
4. Showtime
5. Thinking Makes It So
6. Who's In There?
7. Gustave and Dawn
8. Sense and Sentimentality
9. Mind the gap
10. Weave a Net to Catch the Wind
11. Done and Not Done
12. Mere
13. Influence
14. Other Minds
15. Mystery, Drama, Surprise
16. Work

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