The Periodic Label

The Escape Artist

In Vonnegut’s short story, “Unready to Wear” (from Welcome to the Monkey House), an old mathematician named Dr. Ellis Konigswasser mistakenly figures out how to leave his body to become “amphibious” (similar to how fish eventually left the sea - an imagined, inevitable next step of evolution).  He writes a book explaining the process, which eventually sells over two million copies spurring a huge population of the world to leave their bodies.  Since many amphibians still enjoy a stroll in a body every so often, there are storage centers where only young, beautiful, strong bodies are kept and utilized annually for a parade honoring Konigswasser.  As one of the first five thousand to become amphibious, the protagonist, an old business owner, describes the Pioneer’s Day Parade:

“I’m not crazy about the parade.  With all of us there, close together in bodies - well, it brings out the worst in us, no matter how good our psyches are.  Last year, for instance, Pioneer’s day was a scorcher.  People couldn’t help being out of sorts, stuck in sweltering, thirsty bodies for hours.”
---
After talking back to the Parade Marshal (an adonis who threatened him for stepping out of line), the Parade Marshal takes a swing at him:
---
“I ditched my body right there, and didn’t even stick around long enough to find out if he connected.  He had to haul my body back to the storage center himself.”

“I stopped being mad at him the minute I got out of the body.  I understood, you see.  Nobody but a saint could be really sympathetic or intelligent for more than a few minutes at a time in a body - or happy, either, except in short spurts.  I haven’t met an amphibian yet who wasn’t easy to get along with, and cheerful and interesting - as long as he was outside a body.  And I haven’t met one yet who didn’t turn a little sour when he got into one.”

“The minute you get in, chemistry takes over - glands making you excitable or ready to fight or hungry or mad or affectionate, or - well, you never know what’s going to happen next.”
---
I’ve reread this story five times since having an...altercation at a baseball game.  About three years ago, I was coming out of Yankee Stadium after a Red Sox/Yankees game wearing my Sox cap, of course.  The Sox lost (though they’d go on to win the world series that year).  Moments after my Yankees-fan friend, Alex, ran to the bathroom, a few drunken, aggressive Yankees fans started razzing me.  I had “a few” drinks myself, but mostly ignored them until they were right on my back screaming at me - they were definitely looking for a fight, and as it turns out, I was happy to oblige.  When I started jawing back like an idiot, one of them came nose to nose with me; I pushed him back instinctively, and he tripped into his friend, which was enough to push them both into attack mode - there was no mistaking it.

As they advanced, time slowed and I had a moment to figure out how to diffuse the situation.  The voice of my free will (a fading, sensible voice) was completely drowned out by adrenalin and alcohol.  I could almost feel it bathing my cells.  At that point, I sank into my primitive brain - not only did I NOT want to stop it, I absolutely wanted to pounce on these two - and this is from a guy that’s literally never been in a fight.

Since I wasn’t about to wait for the first punch, I threw two haymakers and landed them (which momentarily had me feeling pretty good), but before I knew it, I was on the bottom of a pile of assholes, one of which decided to literally gouge my eye.  No long-term damage fortunately, but I looked like a thug for a while there.

For weeks after that pointless fight, I felt ridiculous and stupid every time I looked in the mirror - my dark red eyeball staring back at me like a maraschino cherry housed in rotten, purple flesh.  In an odd way, I actually felt bad for having punched those guys despite the fact that one tried to take my eye out.  I guess fighting just doesn’t feel good to me (at least not for long)…

Looking back, I can’t tell if I chose to engage in the fight, or if the impulsive anger just took over, rendering my free-thinking capacity moot (it’s probably chickenshit to say the latter - I think I probably could have walked away instead of turning around and playing my part).

Either way, it seems clear there is no such thing as pure free will - to isolate that fleeting voice that’s making the choices above all the brain noise.  The only way to gain it is to escape completely from our bodies.  Vonnegut was the ultimate escape artist in a lot of his books - characters becoming unstuck in time, unstuck from their bodies - maybe a longing to achieve a kind of pure being.  It’s also probably a way to cope with the banality of linear life in this bag of bones, which can be an odd torture with all this time to think about it.  Personally, I don’t delude myself - no brain/body, no Gabe...but, like Vonnegut (I assume), I still wish I could leave mine for a while…

Back to all Mobius Strip Journal Entries