Blog Love Omega Glee: Wrestling With Antiquity (4 September 2012)

If it's Tuesday, we must be in Egypt. During the semester, Jake's History Of Civilization I class speeds through thousands upon thousands of years of human existence, gradually slowing down until it stops at the Enlightenment where History Of Civilization II picks up. Already, Jake's having trouble keeping up, wrestling with long-forgotten concepts and never known names, but fortunately he knows enough about the history of wrestling that he can sound reasonably astute when discussing antiquity, though his students are probably already starting to wonder why there's so little wrestling in their textbook and so much in their lectures and discussions.

After the last question by the last student after class (and not many stay to ask a question since most are exhausted from a long day of work followed by an evening class and in a hurry to get home or to the bar or to wherever it is they have or want to go), Jake packs up his books and looks around at the high school classroom he teaches in. There's a world map on the wall, amidst the flyers for the blood drive and homecoming dance. He might have been a student in this classroom once himself, but he can't remember for sure since all the classrooms without bunsen burners or other specialized equipment in a high school tend to blend together in memory into one uberclassroom. Jake looks at the world map and thinks that through all the years (not really that many, but to people as young as Jake, shorter distances appear longer) he's only managed to travel from sitting at one of the smaller desks to sitting at the larger desk in the same room. The rest of the world has, for the most part, been untouched by him.

But not by the rest of humanity. Jake looks at the smooshed, flattened globe on the wall and thinks about how the story of humanity can be viewed as one long wrestling match, of good and evil, of life and death, of scared little mammal and the rest of nature, of civilization and wilderness, and, of course, as is often the case, of human versus human.

Now were we at the main event or is this yet another undercard match in the long march of history?

In the beginning, wrestling matches were had for religious rituals, funeral processions, elections of a new chief, ritual combats, mating ceremonies, and, as always, just because people were bored and decided to take out their frustrations with the universe on one another.

Or take out their frustrations with one another on the universe.

The Egyptians built monuments that have lasted for millennia. But they're still dead, and even those monuments will eventually crumble into dust if humanity doesn't nuke them first in an evolutionary hissyfit.

But in some ways, the Egyptians and all the other early civilizations and protocivilizations are still alive through their descendants: Us.

So that's a victory. Humanity is the champion. A survivor (and given the way other species keep disappearing, perhaps eventually the only one) in the brutal no holds barred contest known as planetary existence.

But perhaps we get defeat out of victory and having triumphed over our environment, we discover that we need it to sustain us, but it's too late as we've overfished, overfucked, overdrilled, overate, overdrank, overshat, overshot, overheated, overcooled, overused, overran, and overovered it to death, and along with it us.

Jake sighs. Well, the good news is his part of the course ends with the Enlightenment so things end happily. He'll leave contemporary problems to whoever teaches History Of Civilization II.

Ernest Hemingway once said something to the effect that all stories, if told long enough, end in death. Jake imagines history works the same way, so he cuts his thoughts short and heads home, pretending that day will never come, as we always do.

And it always does.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.