THE SECOND ROOM
It’s 11 p.m. somewhere; do you know where your magnetic poles are?

Creative inertia, artificial pressure. One is being sucked out of me, day-in day-out, most of which by elements that rank in negative numbers on a scale of 1-10 in importance.* The other one is something I’ve had a long habit of creating too much of for myself – it’s suppose to help but it only hinders. I’ve felt much better since I gave it up.

[* List not complete, but anything at all to do with Japanese TV; celebrities; 99% of “art,” art exhibitions or artists; motorcycles, cars or motor sports; high society happenings; fine dining; or any music or commercial musician not related to Trance. I’m forgetting something, I’m sure.]

The thing is, there was a time not so long ago that I had enough left in the tank after my day job to let me come home and start typing and clicking way into the night – writing, editing video, remixing music, keeping up with e-mail, whatever. But not anymore. Not for more than a year.

Nowadays I get just about this far into whatever it is I should be doing … and the sparkplugs stop firing. Sputter, sputter, dull pop, groaning stall. I can’t explain all of what’s causing the crisis. Actually I could, but it would take too damn long. And there are so many players that you’d need a scorecard to follow it. Part of it is my fault, for not always getting stuff guaranteed in writing and trusting people even though my gut tells me otherwise.

Certainly it has resulted from a combination of things but seems to have begun when my iMac supplanted my PC. More accurately, it was when my comfortable Microsoft Natural Keyboard was replaced by the lifeless aluminum nemesis that came in the iMac box. You know, at first it looks all thin and cool, but trying to do any kind of writing on it – including e-mail -- is laborious.

Well, was laborious: My Darling Hanako and I exchanged early yearend presents today and tonight my fingers are joyously dancing on a sinfully black Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. The difference is amazing: The keys are a delight to hit; the wrist-bar is softer and warmer; the special function keys are easier to find; oh yeah, there’s a cool zoom button in the middle that’s gonna save me hundreds of mouse clicks a month. (Thanks, Honey!)

Not that this has anything at all to do with magnetic poles, and why would I bring that up? It’s unfortunate that such a sharp question will not yield any academically accepted answer, but let’s look at what we know about them.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The locations of Earth’s magnetic poles wander as much as 15 km every year; The two poles wander independently of each other and are not at directly opposite positions on the globe; Currently the magnetic south pole is farther from the geographic south pole than the magnetic north pole is from the geographic north pole; Based upon the study of lava flows of basalt throughout the world, it has been proposed that the Earth's magnetic field reverses at intervals, ranging from tens of thousands to many millions of years, with an average interval of approximately 250,000 years; The last pole reversal is theorized to have occurred some 780,000 years ago; Scientific opinion is divided on what causes geomagnetic reversals.

So, the poles do move around, our planet does not spin all perfect like a globe and it looks like we are overdue for a reversal or some kind of significant shift. The causes are irrelevant: It’s not like we puny humans could do anything to prevent it from happening and there’s no evidence to prove that any grand deity has ever stepped in to stop one before. There’s also no uncontested evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any biological extinctions.

Now that we’re over the “if,” consider how fragile our place in the world will be when it finally does swing around again and you’ll understand how easy it was to give up artificial pressures. When reality slaps faith hard enough in the face, it’s a reminder that blind hope is a waste of electrical impulses. It's like looking up at the night sky (in Tokyo, at least), seeing how nicely that the Three Kings of Orion's Belt are falling into alignment with Sirius (the brightest star in the East), and realizing that you are looking at our world's oldest story.