I have a friend who has this weird compulsion. Anything he does, he does in halves. What I mean is, well, let’s say you go out for pizza. The pizza comes, eight slices, you’re ready to eat it. What he’ll do is take four of the slices and eat them all in one go. Then he’ll take two slices and eat those, and then he’ll take one slice and eat that. Now you’re down to one slice. He’ll take that slice, cut it in half, and eat one of the halves. Then he’ll do it again. And again. And again. Eventually what’s left of that last slice is too small to be cut. That’s where he calls it quits, but he always does it with this real weird look in his eyes.
It’s not just food that he treats this way, though. Like I said, he does it with everything. He’ll read half a book in one sitting, then half the remainder in the next, then half the remainder of that, until finally he’s at the very last page. If it can’t be physically halved, he does it mentally. If he drives somewhere that’s ten minutes away, for example, he envisions the five-minute mark as the halfway point. Once he’s there, it’s the two and a half-minute mark that’s the halfway point, then the minute fifteen mark, and so on. Everything is neatly organized in his head.
I asked him why he did it once. Well, more than once. Usually he gives half-answers, but eventually I started to see the full picture. I think he wants to preserve that feeling you get during the first half of anything. You know, when you’re looking forward to what lies ahead. Once you reach the second half, of course, all you can think about is how close you are to the end. I get it. I did this study abroad program in Taiwan back in college, it was a summer thing so it was about two months long. During the first month I was all excited since I was meeting and hanging out with the other people in the program. Then it was the second month, and it was like a timer had popped up in my head to tick down the time that was left. Thirty days left, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven… Once that timer hit zero, I’d never see these people again, I’d never be in this place again, I’d never feel like this again… Sure, maybe I’d talk to them every once in a while or maybe I’d go on vacation someday, but it would never be the same. I guess that sounds kind of sappy but whatever. Point is, if I started seeing everything in halves maybe that sinking feeling you get in the second would never show up. Maybe I’d finally be able to enjoy life without worrying about the end.
I decided to be consistent, like my friend. If I only halved the good things, after all, the trick probably wouldn’t work since I’d be consciously switching in and out of that mindset. It was something I needed to fully commit to, and so that’s what I did. Each morning I woke up and ate breakfast in halves, then brushed my teeth and took a shower in halves. I dressed myself in halves and then I drove to work in halves. You get the idea. Sometimes it was hard for me to really conceptualize what doing something in halves actually entailed. One day we got a new recruit at work and I was supposed to get acquainted with them and show them the ropes. How do you become half-acquainted with someone? I guess stuff like that’s up to interpretation, so I tried my best. Talk to them, tell them about yourself, but don’t say too much. Where’s the halfway point? I’d get the hang of it eventually, is what I told myself.
And I did. It took a few months, sure, but eventually I could feel something shifting in my understanding of the world. When I would look at a pizza before, what I would see is something finite – eight slices, and then an ending. Things were different now. Half of a pizza becomes a quarter of a pizza becomes an eighth of a pizza becomes a sixteenth of a pizza. I could gaze at that pizza for hours, contemplating each half becoming smaller and smaller, forever. Then, things become too small and I can’t even comprehend it. Maybe there is a point where the pizza ends, on an atomic level. Thinking about the end of the pizza scares me now. So, let’s talk about something else.
The other day I felt that I’d really internalized the whole idea of dividing things into halves, so I decided to cut, well, the day itself into halves. I know that probably sounds like it would be a really easy thing to do, but I’m talking about doing it alongside all the other halving that’s going on. Think of it as like an extra layer on top of my regular routine. On a work day I wake up at six and go to bed at ten, meaning the first halfway point would be at two. I didn’t obsess over it too hard, after all if I did that would defeat the entire purpose of splitting things into halves. No, I kept it in the back of my mind, and as soon as the day was halfway over I shifted my perspective of things. No, the day was not halfway over. It would be halfway over in four hours, at six o’clock. In this way, the end of the day steadily grew closer. Well, if you viewed time like your average Joe would, maybe. To me, the day had just started. It wasn’t even halfway over. I had all the time in the world.
Then, something happened at 9:59. From my perspective, it had been 9:59 for a very long time. How many halfway points could I possibly fit into that single minute? It’s hard to say, really. Each half felt just as long to me as any of the other halves I’d experienced that day. Eight hours, four hours, fifteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds, these values meant nothing to me. They were halves, nothing more and nothing less. To the untrained mind, I suppose there’s a point where time can no longer be divided. Before you can even process it, the time that’s left has already passed. But I kept going.
Eventually, everything ground to a halt. Each interval, each half, was simply too short – in a physical sense – for anything to happen. All I could really do was lie in bed and think. I wasn’t really bothered, though, because I had plenty of time to think about the things I wanted to think about. All sound had slowed to a steady drone and to be honest I felt as though I was at total peace. If this was what eternity was, I thought, then maybe eternity wasn’t so bad.
At some point the world around me grew dark. I suppose there just wasn’t enough going on to keep my brain stimulated, like when you leave a computer idle for a long time and the screen shuts off. Something like that. To put it another way, maybe the gap between physical time and my mental time was just too large to fit the two together. I’m not like a scientist or anything, though, so don’t take my word for it. Anyway, the point is that everything had become totally still. There was no light, no sound, no feeling of anything. I existed, and that was it. So I thought.
Gradually I became aware of something, some movement in the darkness. Well, maybe “movement” isn’t the right way to put it. I could sense something else out there, all around me, something that existed between the seconds of the day. It was gazing at me, I was certain, in the very same way that I had gazed at all those pizzas. What would become of me if I was halved? Hard to say. Would there then be two of me? And what if I was halved again? What if I was halved over and over again, and then those halves were scattered to the winds? I’d exist everywhere at once, I suppose. I wasn’t really sure why I was thinking those thoughts. Maybe I wasn’t even doing it of my own volition. Whatever the case, I was suddenly aware of how badly I wanted the day to end.
And then I blinked and looked over at the clock and realized that it was ten o’ clock, even. So, I went to sleep, and the next day when I woke up I decided that I’d had enough of the whole cutting things in half dealio. Everything needs to come to an end eventually, after all. Telling yourself otherwise is just a coping mechanism. I don’t mean that as an attack on my friend, though, to be honest I pity the guy. I guess I understand it now, that look he always gets in his eyes. I think it’s something like fear. I think he’s seen the same thing I have, the thing that lies between the smallest possible halves. It’s hard to really go back to normal, knowing something like that’s out there. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to go back. I should probably ask him about it, but I know I won’t get a complete answer. Really, it’s better that I just leave it at that, get this shit off my chest so I don’t have to think about it anymore. So, that’s what I think I’m gonna do