Did you know there are over 43 quintillion permutations of 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube? That’s 43 followed by eighteen zeroes. 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 to be more precise. For most of us, that’s a number we can’t even comprehend, so let me put some perspective on it. If you had one of these at the Big Bang (13 billion years ago) and were able to make one turn per second you wouldn’t have seen every possibility by now. You’d have to turn that sucker at the same rate for 1.4 trillion years to do that.
But this is beside the point.
A friend once told me that Tool’s song “Schism” was about aliens. I laughed at him mildly and said, “It’s about learning to communicate with people you care about.” I couldn’t imagine why he’d think it was about aliens. At least until I saw the video. Maybe that’s why he thought that? Dunno.
I always thought the most important lyrics in the song were “I know the pieces fit”. It seemed especially poignant when Maynard sings them with more and more intensity as the song progresses. I wanted to scream in rage too that I knew my broken marriage—I don’t mean my marriage to Lara. I’m a twice-divorced widower. I’m clearly not great at keeping wives.—could be mended. After all, I watched it crumble away.
But as time progressed I found more profound lyrics within the song: “Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion between supposed lovers.” That is to say that once I finally gave in and stopped trying to win back the love she was not going to share again indifference started to set in. I didn’t like the feeling of atrophying compassion.
It was then that I understood the enormity of our situation. For her, there would be no going back. She’d resigned herself—and her feelings—long ago. The compassion was minimal and passion nonexistent.
It was also then that I thought of my friend. I still don’t think the song is about aliens. Unless it’s metaphorical. But I feel there was also inadvertent truth to his suggestion. My wife and I had become aliens to each other because our communication was abysmal. We were each in our own, separate galaxies. Perhaps that’s what she meant by “I feel like I’m a guest in my own house” or “I look over at you and it’s like I’m looking at a stranger.” She wasn’t accusing me of having changed. She was just pointing out to me how distant she suddenly felt she’d become. And once she grew distant…well, so did I.
I’m over this now. I went through my suffering, and it’s water under the bridge. I’ve learned that, like solving a Rubik’s Cube, effective communication takes practice and diligence. The more you practice, the better you get at it. The better you are at something, the easier it seems. I hesitate to call it easy, though because it’s always nuanced and complex. You could spend over a trillion years getting it wrong despite steady effort.
