Excess
Not long ago, I was sitting in the dentist’s chair, leaned back all the way, staring into a light that kind of resembled the light described in accounts of near-death experiences, and had the usual discomfort: gloved fingers jamming a sharp metallic instrument against my teeth and repeatedly nicking the upper edge of my gums, drawing out small amounts of blood, then the small plastic tube shooting torrents of water into my mouth, followed by the suction to absorb most of it.
And, during the entire ritual, the masked man peering down at me forced conversation as if it made sense for us to interact, even though the metal instrument and the water were obstructing the space in which the words would’ve been formed, so I couldn’t easily express my false cordiality. Instead, at the absolute peak of inconvenience, I had to sit there and feign interest in what he was saying by nodding my head each time his instrument was raised, and make myself voice a muffled “yeah” or “oh, hmm” every so often—no real substance, just garbled pleasantries—while the thin metal hook jabbed my gums and the water gushed into my mouth, the light above burning into my retinas the whole time; and, in this case, what I was responding to wasn’t even normal surface-level chat about something like the weather or weekend plans. No, instead, in a low, monotone voice, and with the most solemn and pompous demeanor, he was going way beyond small talk and expressing things that no one should say in a clinical setting or perhaps in any circumstance for that matter, going on about humanity’s confused place in the universe, about how we awoke one day excessively conscious with over-developed brains—burdensome despite their impressive power, similar to a now-extinct deer species’ impressive but destructive over-developed antlers—and about how the excess consciousness made us “the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.”
I actually had to listen to this crap while leaned way back in the chair, and, always the polite one, I engaged as well as I could with a partial smile on my face. Then, when I was finally able to speak, I said, “Yeah, sure, we suffer a great deal; it makes sense,” as he rummaged around my mouth with the metal probe and as the intense near-death light beat down on me, likely damaging my retinas as my eyes remained open. It was so ridiculous that I knew I’d never return, and I even considered making an excuse to get up and leave right then and there. But I didn’t.
“The identity of purpose and perishment is, for giant deer and man alike, the tragic paradox of life . . . the last Cervis Giganticus bore the badge of its lineage to its end. The human being saves itself and carries on. It performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less self-conscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness.”
Unbelievable.