The Nerd Molecule

I was at a party the other night with a few friends, listening to music and getting bitten by mosquitoes, but mostly just wondering what I'm really doing with my whole life. Parties, and the sense of displacement they create, tend to put me in a philosophical mood. It must have been the combination of the vodka cooler and the slightly rancid tofu dogs I was ingesting, coupled with thick smoke from a hookah that an Egyptian-Canadian fellow was drawing on all night long, but I think I managed to isolate that part of my brain that is constantly nattering away to itself, coming up with a thousand million phantasms the likes of which make this blog seem like the sanest bit of verbiage you have ever stumbled across.

You see, my brain just never shuts off or up. I lie in bed at night thinking things that don't matter, worrying about crap that will never come to pass, pondering questions that have no answer whatsoever. It's like a game of hide-and-seek, with my mind hiding out from Reality and Silence as if contact with these realms would lead to its instant annihilation...and maybe it would. This whole blog habit is just some absurd bulwark against The Void, the inescapable wisdom of which is manifest everywhere, in everything that happens and comes to pass, including these aimless words. But still I won't shut up. And I think about this and that, and what could have been or possibly should have been, and what is and isn't: it goes on and on. But last night I felt as though I might have located the source of all this empty banter deep within the folds of grey matter that insulate my inner head. Somewhere burried in there is a tiny grain of whoknowswhat, like the piece of grit at the heart of a pearl, and this insignificant spec, this gnat of naught, this pip that never fails to squeak, is the irregularity in my soul that sends up all the gaseous bubbles of irrelevant speculation and articulation.

I have dubbed this blip in the fabric of reality, "The Nerd Molecule" since it is almost certainly responsible for the gangly awkwardness with which I navigate through life. If I could just let it all go, if I cloud just chill, relax, ease into it, then I would likely be much better off; but I can't. That little piece of damnation was planted for a reason by the Great Demiurge, the Grand Artificer, the All-Knowing Architect of my soul, and there must be some reason for its percolations, even if they keep me up at night when I should be touring dreamland.

So if God made me a nerd, then I'll just stay that way. I'll just ride it out, wherever it goes, in all glory. What else can one do? In fact, it's kind of nice being a nerd. Some people could try their whole lives and never get down what comes naturally to me. And maybe someday I'll be relaxed and graceful, and full of fun and humour. Maybe someday soon even. And I'll get up on that stage with some jokes about football or marriage and bring down the house with tears and laughter. It will be a flawless performance in the annals of stand-up, but at the last moment I'll let it all drop with some awkward, unnecessary footnote, some auxiliary gesture that instantly lets everyone know they are dealing with one of God's renegade mutants, and they won't even know what to make of it as they go back to their homes and lawnmowers and refrigerators. They will try to forget the whole thing, but something will remain--some little grain of sand, pecking away at their inner cranium, itching for expression, but somehow daftly inarticulate at the same time, and then they'll know that they too have been infected with The Nerd Molecule.