life as a #RubeGoldberg

You do not have to be a certain age to know what a Rube Goldberg is, or to understand those two words as an eponymous adjective. But it helps. Rube Goldberg was an artist and a cartoonist who comically depicted circuitous (sometimes literally), not-quite-labyrinthine, intricate ways to accomplish a ridiculously simple thing or to get from A to B. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I have a memory of his illustrations, but can't put my finger on how, maybe the comics in a Sunday newspaper. I distinctly remember my father often saying, "What a Rube Goldberg," just as he would refer to our junk closet as "Collyer brothers," or "It's like Collyers' in here," though I did not know anything of their real-life story.

Speaking of real life, the other day I slipped on ice as I went to unlock and enter my car. I dropped a book by Francine Prose (perfect name for a writer, eh? Try her!), which landed at my feet. The book was not damaged; it did not splay open and get wet from the ice. Within the book, right after cover 1, as we call it in publishing, I had tucked in a $320 check to be deposited, from a free-lance job. I purposely put it in the book so it would not get wet or damaged from the light snow. I picked up the book, inspected it for damage, and opened it. No check. Where was it? I was positive I had placed it within the book for safekeeping. I was 100% positive. The most irritating thing about such life riddles is the thought I am losing my mind or my memory, either of which is possible at my advanced age. Still, it frustrates me and pisses me off. It can be a totally unimportant object, a cheap pen or a useless note I wrote to myself or a dime. It's bothersome. I had that in the back of my mind. Did I not put the check in the book? I did. Stop right there. Where did it go? I looked in front of me, to my right, my left, and in back of me. Did the wind sweep it up and away and down the block right before my eyes? Had I signed it? Oh boy. I looked and relooked. My theory has always been: look everywhere you have looked and then do it again but slowly. No luck. Down on my knees in the cold wet. Look under the car, at the undercarriage, beyond the perimeter of the chassis, around the tires. The tires! What is that leaning against the inside of the right-front tire? Could it be? Indeed. Yoikes. I scurry to the other side of the vehicle and gently extricate the fragilely leaning check, as gently as an artisan restoring a DaVinci fresco. 

What a Rube Goldberg. Not exactly. Much simpler than the known pattern of a Rube Goldberg. It was conceivable, though, that the lofted check could have gone from its cozy berth near the tire and somehow up and under the hood and somehow wedged between the radiator and the grill. Never to be found. 

Yes, I exaggerate. But things happen.

What about on a personal level? You know the bit. "She said to me, and then he said, but after that I told them, and before you know it they posted on Facebook, and I repeated, then she and he posted, and then they said, then they were not talking to me for the rest of my life."

That sort of thing.

A freaking Rube Goldberg of human proportions.
 

forwards and backwards and backwards and forwards and . . .

Palindromes. 

They are amusing, clever, and challenging. Spelled the same forwards and backwards, palindromes have a rich history. It is said that Ben Jonson coined the term in the 17th century. The two most famous examples that pop (there's a palindrome!) into my mind are: "Able was I ere I saw Elba" (referring to Napoleon's exile to an island in the Mediterranean) and "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama." Palindromes also refer to numerical sequences. Palindromelist.net is an extraordinary, active, live resource for this phenomenon. Stunningly, it presents a "longest palindrome" that takes up thousands of words! I would imagine that either a computer crafted it or some version of crowd sourcing collaborated to create it. 

Imagine a "Twilight Zone" or "Black Mirror" episode featuring characters who speak only in palindromes. What a challenge for the screenwriters! Just browsing through examples under "A" at Palindrome.net, one sees ratings-inducing, albeit inappropriate, bits of dialogue such as: "A car, a man, a maraca," "A slut nixes sex in Tulsa," "Ah, Satan sees Natasha!" and "Acrobats stab orca." (Don't get steamed at me; I didn't make these up; just quoting here.) Picture (aurally) the characters conversing palindromically, yet it takes a while for them to discover that is their only manner of discourse. And when they have to think about it, instead of letting it happen naturally, the characters find it impossible to speak fluently. Furthermore, viewers watching this episode are at first unaware of the palindrome dialogue. Would viewers using closed-caption subtitles catch on sooner?

In observing my mother, who is 100 + 1 years old, I see a painful-to-witness version of life's palindrome. Her regression to a simple, childlike state is not precisely a palindrome, but it has parallels. Life's video is spooling backwards, until it reaches the zero we begin with. Since the pattern is rougher and less formally precise than a palindrome, consider it a squinting palindrome, a parapalindrome. (This is not the least original on my part. It's another version of the Riddle of the Sphinx.)

Is the parapalindrome the organic sequence that humans typically experience?

In other words, is this what happens not only to our lives but also to our relationships, our jobs, our promises, our mind and body? 

Is progression-regression-progression-regression the "normal" march of time?

I think not.

That's too tidy a reckoning, not zigzag enough.

Agree?