A break in the connection.
Thank you listening to Paired Season Three! Guests will return next week!
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Credits:
Creator/Writer/Producer - Liz Anderson
Editor/Composer - MJ
Cover Art - Adrian Theuma
Theme Music - Arne Parrot
Unit 028 - Lab Report 367
I want to tell you a story about anxiety.
I have a theory that fear is a product of nature’s passive aggression. The dear mother put all this work into giving humans all sorts of useful organs, goops, and glands, to help us survive all of the other wonderful things she made. Nice even playing field. But we tricked her. We got smart, got strong, and now she has a fridge full of adrenaline back at home that is just going to go to waste because someone’s too good to occasionally get killed by a bear.
The goops have gotta go somewhere though. And now we have trypophobia.
Anxiety creates pathways in your mind. Pathways that make the extreme possibility always seem...natural. Maybe that’s why, when fear finally found me, it seemed like, “Oh, of course. I’ve been waiting for you.”
I’d like to tell you a story about the present, but I don’t know how yet. Not that I don’t know it. I don’t know how to tell you in a way that’s going to mean anything to you. The subject matter is something we’ve wrung our hands over over since time immemorial. Gum thoroughly chewed. What I can tell you right now, is the very end:
Tuesday, February 21st. 9:45 AM. 43 Degrees Farenheit. Make sure to keep an eye out for some early shoots in the garden. I don’t think they’ll fare much better in the playoffs. Would you like to listen to some music? Give me two minutes. Hello? Hello?
That’s how it ends. I’ll tell the whole thing later. The story of the present may not mean much to you, and that’s ok. The future you’re listening to in the now paints its own picture, with its own purpose. We all don’t need to be heading to the same conclusion.
I’ll speak more clearly, later. I assume. The parts fall into place even as I sleep. The picture gets bigger, more vibrant. Broad strokes become measured lines, the garish purples reveal the stippled reds and blues it took to create them. It grows uglier the longer I look. The more filled in, but all I can see all the millions of things missing. The millions of tiny holes.
Mother nature’s private little joke.