by Will Stantn » Fri Mar 01, 2024 10:38 am
"The problem is larger than two-fold, but sure, let's break it down into smaller chunks first.
Organization is a...bit of a tricky word. I've certainly been capable of it when called upon, but it's not a...natural state of being for me," she said, taking slow measured steps as the two walked. "I mean, I can do it -- you've seen how I've kept your schedule and everything, assuming there hasn't been a major screwup since I last checked in in the mirror -- but I've always been more about going where the moment flows rather than strictly planning things out A, B, C, D."
"Now, focus, I can do, and patience, and all of that good stuff. But organizing? That's a tough call. And that might be the problem with anything you design, no offense intended -- you're coming from a very structured point of view, from both nature and nurture. And while structure is important, it can't be more than a baseline. I can't hold that; I can't maintain it. The mirror frame that Miriam made sort of...forced a sense of structure on top of things, and let me focus on other parts of myself. That's a common theme throughout my life -- everyone from my wife to Melpomene has sought to impose some sort of structure on me, to usually positive results -- at least, from certain points of view.
I'm just not naturally good at generating that structure myself. And the freedom from having to generate that structure is liberating -- that's why the mirror allowed me to advance so far, so quickly. If something was needed of me, someone could pull out a version of me with the proper focus to help. And I could improvise between things, seek out experiences and worlds that I couldn't do before, if I had a responsibility to do Thing A at Time B. It's...living as jazz. Bop, to be precise.
I think that's the problem with your fractal analogy. A fractal is, after all, a pattern, right? At least in the way you're using the term here? It's recursion; zoom in and you see the same patterns repeating over and over. They're...self-similar, I think the term is. Whereas I'm more self-different.
Look around," she said, gesturing to the assembled Wills. "Just observe us for a moment. There's some of us in near constant motion -- look at her, squirming in the chair as they deal cards; she can't even sit still for a moment. She's uncomfortable even just sitting there. And why wouldn't she be? She came from the Queen's Head, where she's been moonlighting as one of the pinballs. Constantly in motion, bouncing off of things; that's the point. Or held in tight tension, waiting for that to be released by the spring of the plunger. You think she would last five minutes as one of those guys stacked up in the corner there? Look -- you can't even really tell they're breathing unless you get up close and personal. I can tell you, they had no plans to come back here on any sort of reasonable timescale; I think a few of them have never re-entered the mirror at all.
You could take a census of everyone here, and not find two that are alike. We're all here to celebrate something....some aspect of ourselves. Some desire or yearning to be. And the most frustrating part of being me is that I can't fulfill all these conflicting and contradictory wants. You can't be hot and cold, big and small, salty and sweet at the same time. That's what the mirror ultimately fixed -- I could honor different aspects of my being without surrendering anything. Doing thing A didn't mean I couldn't do thing B. BEING thing A didn't mean I couldn't be thing B.
Because that's life, right? Most people have to make choices -- you're a father or an actor, an X-Man or a homebody, the athlete, the brain, the princess and the criminal. Well, I beat that. I could be everything I wanted to be; I didn't have to pick and choose. I was choice. And that's a chaotic system, inherently -- it's infinite possibilities and infinite combinations, which, when you back up far enough reveal themselves to be one coherent thing all along. It's a mosaic, not a fractal.
And that's the contradictory part at the end of it, isn't it? Each Will in this room needs to be considered both a part and the whole itself. It's a difficult way of thinking that, frankly, most people are not capable of reaching. They can view me as the whole person or the specific role alternately, but not simultaneously. It's a level of doublethink; of not just acknowledging contradictory ideas, but embracing them."
The two had nearly completed a full lap of the room while they were talking; various Will had nodded or shook their heads, agreeing and disagreeing with this particular Will at various points as she went along her monologue. The path had led them to a table in the far corner, where the book was resting.
"You're no longer a computer, but you still think of things in that way," she continued, resting a hand on the book. "Protocols, and coherent wholes, and one thing logically leading into another. A throughline, with a delineated beginning, a middle and an end. What I am instead...what we are instead, is more of... a series of infinite loops, constantly calling and overwriting one another. The sane reaction is to try to force it to follow some sort of rules; to get things to a place where things made sense. But that's not, at the end of the day, my nature. It never has been -- but the mirror let me embrace that more than ever before."
"So, yes, that's the smaller chunk," she laughed.