other people

I saw a girl in the library who was in my English class last semester. She had gotten a hair cut. Nothing dramatic, just tidying up the ends... but I was at once happy and sad at the encounter. Happy that people exist and have lives, sad that I'm not in them. Not that I was ever in her life to begin with; but, when she was in my class, she was mine. I covet these proofs of every day-ness, the same way that when I write about trees I really just want to be the tree. I know that if I ever became the girl in my English class from last semester then I would no longer have the luxury of beholding her from afar as part of a reassuring fabric of life. What I had wanted would be gone and on the tips of someone else's hair.

human nature

Tonight, I pulled my car into the outpatient surgery center's parking lot. This outpatient center and lot is beside the apartment complex where I live and is going out of business. Before the attendants of my complex knew this, we did not park in the lot for fear that we, not belonging, would get towed. We'd take our cars and go all the way around the back of the apartment building, the least choicest spots. But now, with the news of retreat from our neighbors, cars have begun to creep like bold kudzu vines into this new space. First three, then six, now eighteen dot the more convenient lot-- the ecology of parking.

Christine preferred reading over writing. In the same way, she felt much more comfortable as a pallet of awe for more dynamic personalities-- eating them like books, then trying to discern what thier qualities did as a literary parts. Her life was a paper; the people in it, excerpts from prose fiction novels. If it ever made her jealous that some people so effortlessly, so hugely lived, she did not show it often.

Schopenhauer had something to say about music. I'm not sure what that was. All I know is that when I listen to music the only feeling I get is that something is missing. This may be the whole notion of "the soundtrack"... where music is paired with moving image. I've been exposed to this so throughoughly that now if I simply hear music, especially classical music, it just sounds like it is narrating something that I cannot see. This sort of response would not be valuable on a test about Schopenhauer.

Advice for a Young Woman Who Suddenly Finds Herself as a Mermaid without a Man, Or, Between Us Girls

They say the whole world is carried

on one turtle's back. This weight might be kinder

And lighter than Teresea's guilt

which fills me-- in this case, I'm the vase

her eyelight looks out my eyeholes until

I can't see the horizan or even

the fire breathing atmosphere.

What I am trying to tell you is that its dark

out there. Don't mistake the yellow shoreline for

any species of salvation, it's a place where whales go to die.

the fountain head for this blog

Philip K Dick's Time out of Joint has fourteen chapters. Our assignment, long ago, was to write a fifteenth.

Aboard the ship, Ragle ran his hand down the polished, perfect surfaces. Everything along the entry way was lit with a clean light. He at once was struck with a sense of awe followed by quiet recognition. Of course, this had been his life, Ragle thought to himself, it seems so obvious now.

"Would you like to take a look in the Captain's den?" Walter reappeared behind him after securing and locking the boarding door. The young man had a dazzling smile.

As they set off within the capsule, Walter hailed and introduced various uniformed men and women.

"Captain Hilgaurd! Come say hello to Ragle Gumm!"

" Its a honor to see you sir. Its amazing to have you back." Captain Hilgaurd had a sharp face about him with tidy blue eyes. Ragle liked him immediately and wondered briefly, after the shy smile that Hilgaurd flashed him, if he hadn't in fact liked him before.

"Where are the windows in this joint?" Ragle's question caught even himself off guard. He realized then that the lack of this feature struck him as odd.

"Fuelling inefficiency." Walter said. "For deep space probing like this, windows are a weakness to the conditions out there. A risk we don't like to take just for the view, you see. And besides that, we're going where there is practically nil out there to look at anyway!"

"Oh yes, I remember now," Ragle murmured to himself, the comfortable feeling of recognition once again rising inside him.

"Of coarse, we have one small exception," Walter continued, "If you really want a peep out there, and I mean 'peep'!" Walter led Ragle to a panel in the wall. The surface was smooth all over except for a small puncture in the center, the shape of a key hole. The key hole had been outlined in red paint and a non-assuming plaque beside it read in bold capital letters:

OBSERVATION WINDOW

Ragle stooped slightly to fit his eye in line with the small hole. Dim shapes seemed to dominate the terrain on the other side. Shades of grey and murk.

"Oh its lovely," said Ragle.

Down one long corridor, two lefts, a right, and shimmering dissolving door later, they arrived in the den. The room was octagonal in shape. Ragle noticed the fine craftsmanship of each arching cubicle and appreciated the efficient modes of technology present. Maroon and silver pillows dotted the place in the notches of the wall, indicating chairs. Even a rug with an intricate braiding design was cast on the floor. This already feels like home, he thought to himself, and there are the radar screens so we know how to steer in place of those windows.

"This bunk is for you," said Walter. He raised his hand. A transparent bed gained solid property before his eyes.

After Walter left him alone in the den, assuring him he need do no more on the trip but rest, Ragel settled in to his bunk to do just that. His last thought as he drifted off to sleep was how happy he was to finally find solid comfort and contentment.


------------------------------------

"Dammit he's stuck in this simulation now. I thought he was supposed to be a genius!"

"Give him credit, Rick. The man has just shattered through his reality. Its a miracle that in doing so he didn't shatter himself in the process. He has time to travel through our next stage."

"You mean jump through our next hoop."

The two men watched on through their shiny looking devices as Ragle's star ship navigated the filmy sky. Simultaneously very fast and very slow.

I take things personally becuase I am a person.