Read Online Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles Yu
years. There are really two schools of thought on great-uncles. One school says that great-uncles are almost too tenuously connected to be of any relevance to you, being no more than a sibling of someone two generations removed. The other says that they love you very, very much. Both are correct.
Paternal Grandfather
Remember the simple rule: you are to your father as your father is to your grandfather.
Therefore, if you are male and terrified of your father, you should be exponentially more terrified of your grandfather.
There are other issues related to your Earthling grandfather that are beyond the scope of this volume.
Cousins Part Three
If you have a great number of cousins, you may find it of interest to note the Mendelian ratios and allele distributions of certain physical characteristics among them. A chart can be helpful.
Note how dominant and recessive traits have distributed themselves among the second-generation offspring of your Earthling grandparents. Sometimes you will recognize that very similar subsets of the pool of genetic elements that make up your Earthling body can be recombined in subtly varying proportions to disastrous effect in your cousins. Or, you may find the opposite to be true. If either is the case, it may be hard to properly utilize your cousins.
Cousins often care about you more than you will ever know, or could ever possibly guess. It is not at all uncommon to realize this very late in life. To avoid the possibility of wasting potential affection, admiration, and shared sorrow, check to see if any of your cousins look up to you as an older-brother figure or someone whom they pattern their lives after, especially any only-children cousins you may have.
There are other issues related to cousins that are beyond the scope of this volume.
Inventory
Every morning I find myself in a different universe.
There doesn’t seem to be any order to the days.
One day I might wake up floating in the middle of a seething red ocean.
The next day I’m in a desert of frozen silver sand.
Most mornings, when I wake up, the rules have all changed.
Once in a while, though, I wake up in a place that feels comforting. The atmospheric pressure. The way gravity bends light, I can feel it: something familiar, something in my muscles, in my cells, my atoms.
First thing I do is tell myself who I am. This is right after I wake up, before I open my eyes. Who am I? Do I remember? Can I do it? Can I be honest? This isn’t touchy-feely. If I’m not honest with myself in an empty, soundless universe, then who will be?
Second thing I do is I check for gravity. It’s no fun crumpling to the floor or floating away.
I suppose the idea is this: I’m not real. I am some sort of alternate version of an actual person living somewhere in the actual world.
I have a Self. I’m his hypothetical. His guinea pig. His proxy, his personal test subject. I’m a lab rat in his thought experiments. A day player. The stunt double for his philosophical train tracks. A crash test dummy in a collision-testing facility for metaphysical safety.
It’s not a comfortable realization, i.e., that I am, in fact, not a realization at all. But it makes sense. It explains a lot. Why I don’t have feelings of my own. Why I always feel like I know what I was supposed to be feeling, but I can never just feel that feeling without being conscious of it, being aware of it.
Also, this feeling I’ve had, for as long as I can remember. A derivative feeling. I am not Charles Yu. I suppose that could be my name, too, but it has never sounded quite right to me anyway. Charlie, maybe. A secondhand version of the name. For a secondhand person.
The real me is out there, somewhere, sleeping soundly in his bed. Every morning, he wakes up the same person.
Every morning, I wake up some weird version of him.
Here is what I know about this Charles Yu person:
(1) He is a man.
(2) He works on the seventeenth floor of a downtown office building.
(3)
Paternal Grandfather
Remember the simple rule: you are to your father as your father is to your grandfather.
Therefore, if you are male and terrified of your father, you should be exponentially more terrified of your grandfather.
There are other issues related to your Earthling grandfather that are beyond the scope of this volume.
Cousins Part Three
If you have a great number of cousins, you may find it of interest to note the Mendelian ratios and allele distributions of certain physical characteristics among them. A chart can be helpful.
Note how dominant and recessive traits have distributed themselves among the second-generation offspring of your Earthling grandparents. Sometimes you will recognize that very similar subsets of the pool of genetic elements that make up your Earthling body can be recombined in subtly varying proportions to disastrous effect in your cousins. Or, you may find the opposite to be true. If either is the case, it may be hard to properly utilize your cousins.
Cousins often care about you more than you will ever know, or could ever possibly guess. It is not at all uncommon to realize this very late in life. To avoid the possibility of wasting potential affection, admiration, and shared sorrow, check to see if any of your cousins look up to you as an older-brother figure or someone whom they pattern their lives after, especially any only-children cousins you may have.
There are other issues related to cousins that are beyond the scope of this volume.
Inventory
Every morning I find myself in a different universe.
There doesn’t seem to be any order to the days.
One day I might wake up floating in the middle of a seething red ocean.
The next day I’m in a desert of frozen silver sand.
Most mornings, when I wake up, the rules have all changed.
Once in a while, though, I wake up in a place that feels comforting. The atmospheric pressure. The way gravity bends light, I can feel it: something familiar, something in my muscles, in my cells, my atoms.
First thing I do is tell myself who I am. This is right after I wake up, before I open my eyes. Who am I? Do I remember? Can I do it? Can I be honest? This isn’t touchy-feely. If I’m not honest with myself in an empty, soundless universe, then who will be?
Second thing I do is I check for gravity. It’s no fun crumpling to the floor or floating away.
I suppose the idea is this: I’m not real. I am some sort of alternate version of an actual person living somewhere in the actual world.
I have a Self. I’m his hypothetical. His guinea pig. His proxy, his personal test subject. I’m a lab rat in his thought experiments. A day player. The stunt double for his philosophical train tracks. A crash test dummy in a collision-testing facility for metaphysical safety.
It’s not a comfortable realization, i.e., that I am, in fact, not a realization at all. But it makes sense. It explains a lot. Why I don’t have feelings of my own. Why I always feel like I know what I was supposed to be feeling, but I can never just feel that feeling without being conscious of it, being aware of it.
Also, this feeling I’ve had, for as long as I can remember. A derivative feeling. I am not Charles Yu. I suppose that could be my name, too, but it has never sounded quite right to me anyway. Charlie, maybe. A secondhand version of the name. For a secondhand person.
The real me is out there, somewhere, sleeping soundly in his bed. Every morning, he wakes up the same person.
Every morning, I wake up some weird version of him.
Here is what I know about this Charles Yu person:
(1) He is a man.
(2) He works on the seventeenth floor of a downtown office building.
(3)
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