ReCycled - Michael Giltner (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📗

more mundane and a lot of the time, totally annoying. Lying around with wet or messy diapers does not provide the pleasure it once did. A friend once told me “You can’t eat chocolate ice cream all the time”. Of course this was on the night when he showed up at my college dorm after several months of marriage. A marriage that even he and his wife bragged was a total sex fest. They would sometimes skip class or meet for lunch and then fall into bed for the rest of the day. After several months, he said he needed a break and showed up late at night after spending a few hours at the local bar. We called her to tell her he was OK and that he was staying with us in the dorm that night. Sure, he was home the next day and back in the saddle immediately, but you could tell the bright shiny moment had lost some of its luster.

The same for little Robert Hale Ashton, Jr. Life was creeping into his baby world and starting to mess it up. Why couldn’t we just stay the course and enjoy our life. Little did he know that it was primarily downhill from this point onward. Sure, he would have great moments, but never again the pleasure levels of these past months. Not really sure how long it really lasted, but I knew it was coming to an end, and so did he. You could tell it in his temperament. He would cry more, and I think just to show his displeasure that things were changing versus anything really being wrong. I mean, he didn’t have anything else with which to compare as his world was very simple and now it was changing. He had never had to experience changes like this before – ok, sometimes he would go hungry for a while longer that he anticipated, or stay dirty a little longer or get cold or hot, minor things. But his world still revolved in a fairly limited orbit of eating, sleeping, eliminating, and cleaning. And each provided different levels of pleasure for him to experience. Now life and all its lessons were starting to set in and he learned to be frightened.

It is at this stage that I also began to learn how to control this baby universe environment. I mean I guess I love the kid, not sure if I really have much choice. I could hate him, but what would that accomplish? I don’t want to mess him up. I recalled the movie “3 Faces of Eve”. All these multiple personalities emerging and evolving; each impacting the others; some dominant, others subservient, always changing the living landscape of her life. You never knew who you were talking to or what they might do, nor would the real person really remember what you had told them. I really didn’t want to emerge, at least not yet. I didn’t want to be in control of a baby. Shoot, let the baby control itself. I began to learn to tune him out.

It happened gradually. I realized one day that I could not prevent him from crying. I could not hurt him, not that I wanted to, nor sooth him, at least not at the moment, nor do anything to influence him – so I tuned him out. It seemed just like a natural reflex, just like I used to tune out thing in the background as I concentrated on my work, or reading or any other object that I was working on. I eventually realized that I could do it with him also. I become a complacent passenger. I was totally along for the ride. Take me anywhere you want, just don’t bother me during the trip. It also gave me time to think. What was I going to do for the next X number of years? Would this kid have an average life span? Suffer from a childhood disease and die, be involved in a fatal accident? How long would I be confined in this wrapper? And, how was I going to cope with it myself? Could I go insane during the experience? Ah! The answer to Eve! The majority of the personalities were insane, being trapped in her body for so many years, especially since there was more than one conscious entity vying for control. Even the timid personalities sought to climb to the surface, to get a fresh breath of air before being buried beneath the towering persona of others. Were there others here with me? Others that had not emerged? Would they, could they emerge? How would I handle it? How would they handle it and me? Did they already know how to control little Robert? Would they drive him insane? Would they drive me insane, if I wasn’t already there? How would I tell? Who could I tell? Would it matter? Maybe this really is Hell and I just don’t realize it.


Let’s go back and re-examine this whole reincarnation theme again. First of all different religions have differing beliefs regarding one or more successive existences. It’s generally based around the essence of Karma. A holdover so to speak. What we do in this life will influence our following lives. That is, if we have them. Some believe we can return as any living “thing”. I don’t really thing so, unless it’s a level of punishment. Why else would someone return as a bug, a snake, a cow? Really? Especially if you don’t know what happened during your life as a dung beetle. Would pushing elephant turds around all day really improve your outlook on life? And did it prepare you to be a better person or thing in your next life when the elephant crushed the crap out of you? Hard to fathom. Maybe, but I think unlikely.

So, if it really happens, you would think that we do return as the same entity as previously. For humans, not sure if this means the same sex, same ethnic group, race, economic status, etc. It appears that I have returned as a child in an upper class white family. I would say it was slightly higher than the one I enjoyed. They have the newest 3-D laser projection video system, one of the newest transportation pods, and use a number of service professionals to maintain their lifestyle. I haven’t totally figured out what “Dad” does yet, but it appears to pay well. I have heard “Mom” talk about how glad she is that she doesn’t have to go back to her past position to maintain their lifestyle, so I guess we’re pretty well off. Speaking of “them”, I don’t or can’t really relate to them as my Mom and Dad. I had parents and I remember them. These people don’t know me. They know the baby. So, I’m just a tenant in this hunk of baby flesh.

I’m not sure how this present environment really relates to helping me obtaining a higher plane of consciousness. Is it training so I can move even higher next time or graduate to another level? How do I even know there will be a next time? This time, I guess, was a fluke or maybe I just flunked the graduation process. Somewhere in the process there was a malfunction, and I became aware! Don’t think that was supposed to happen, but who really knows? They say that there has only been one person who experienced death and returned to life. But he left again without revealing all the answers. Maybe Christ knew too much, remembered even more and was afraid it would scare us or make us want to jump out of this life too fast! So he kept most of it a secret. We were to find out all the answers once we reached Heaven. Unfortunately, we now find out the road has a number of roadblocks and detours and there are few, if any, direct routes. No interstates that lead directly to Heaven. At least I don’t have the roadmap and no GPS to point me in the right direction.

Why would there be multiple personalities in a body, besides the living one? Why not just one, me? Why am I here with baby Robert in the first place? If it truly is reincarnation, shouldn’t I be alone? And if I’m not alone, where are all these extra souls coming from. And, yes, I really did finally mention the word “souls”. It makes it easier to contend with now that I’ve opened the bag. If souls are recycled, we really couldn’t grow the human population too large or we would run out and we would have a large number of soulless people running around. Ok, I know, criminals, dictators, and lawyers are soulless people anyway as well as politicians. Sure. But look at China. Their population has grown by leaps and bounds even with population controls. Were there Chinese souls just waiting for distribution? Did they get a ticket when they died and waited their turn? If so, would current “residents” in the used soul lot be given some priority over unused souls? Is there a pecking order? Who maintains the master list of returning souls? Are previously unused or new souls only used for newborns? Maybe used souls are stored in insects and other living beings until they can be distributed. But what about extinctions? Did dinosaurs have souls? If so, where were they stored during the extinction period? Did they even exist then? Humans weren’t around, so who created the first human soul? Did they evolve as science tells us everything else did? When aliens had sex with the monkeys to create mankind, did they also inject us with the first souls as part of their cosmic plan? Did they also create the soul bank for storage and distribution? Do souls multiply? These are the things that I spent my time contemplating during the “vacant” phase with Robert, or as I like to refer to him; baby Bob.


Eureka!

Yes, it was one of those moments!

I’ve made a decision. I now know what I think will be the best way to interface with baby Bob. I’m not sure exactly when to begin, but I believe it will be soon. That little brain of his needs to gel a little more before I begin, but soon. I will be his “Jiminy Cricket”. His so called conscience. Maybe a little more vocal that most, maybe a little more insistent than most, but I think I can do a good job and at the same time not make him crazy. Be that internal voice that he can always go to. I realize I will need to give him some leeway in developing, but always there just in case. Sure, I’m along for the ride and most of the time I’ll just be on the cruise liner basking in nothingness, but I guess that’s not too bad. I could take a more invasive role, but I don’t think I have the right to