Let's call him Charles

by Victor David Sandiego | Created: Oct 13, 2012

What if there was a guy sitting in a room somewhere drinking dog juice who decided if you lived or died? Let’s say that after your plane rolls a few times, spilling luggage and cocktails, you’re going straight down. You can see the city lights getting closer, turning into grids of streets. You’re thinking: This Is It, but this guy laughs in his room somewhere and twists a knob. “Let’s keep him around a while longer,” he says to nobody in particular. You swing back to the horizontal. The engines quit their screaming.

Objection! Too much good god for us to believe in. Can’t place our faith and fate in the hands of a guy with dark framed glasses at a blinking console of lights. Also – we live in an era of systematic rationality and laws of physics are not to be trifled with.

But what if this guy exists? He sits in a room inside your head, wraps wires around your plans and emotions. His bones are the same color as yours, the same color as God’s for that matter. Okay, he can’t change gravity into wine and usually, he’s circumspect, maybe even unremarkable.  But when your metaphorical plane is in a dive – maybe you’re under a lot of stress and think it’s never going to get better – it’s refreshing when this guy (let’s call him Charles) flips a few electrical breakers on the big board of your brain and your heart. Instead of spiraling into a block party of bodies, you get off at the next stop and go about your life – and not as if nothing had happened but exactly like something special had.

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