We’re in the middle of a massive site launch at work. Crazy things happen when a bunch of nerds are really busy. The Failure Monster (pictured above) is one such crazy thing.
But we do not fear it. We laugh at its paper fangs.
Dear [Congressman],
I urge you to vote no on PIPA. As a developing artist who relies upon the freedom and creativity of the Internet to prosper, I cannot emphasize enough the damaging effect this bill would have upon myself and others of my profession.
We have to believe that censorship and unilateralism is not the best that America can do in fighting Internet piracy. If silencing the freedom of speech is truly the only way to protect industry, then haven’t we lost something integral to who we are as a nation?
This is a country of dreamers who make their visions concrete. Please vote no on S.968, in hopes that we, united, can find another way to protect the interests of businesspeople; one which does not sacrifice the liberties of those whose creative work serves as the inspiration to continue striving higher.
Sincerely,
David Somerville
I’m reading the very thought-provoking Ishmael at the moment. This kind of book always makes me want to invent/define terms. Here are four that are fun to play with.
Personally, I’m a narrative exocentrist.
Sarah Margot Bannister was convinced that if she could just manage to stand perfectly still in the middle of a really violent earthquake, she would learn the trick of flying. It made perfect sense to her. Humanity’s attempts to fly had always involved trying to get away from the ground, and they never worked because — as Sarah saw it — the ground always demanded their return. It was like her relationship with her perennial boyfriend, Ben: no matter how many times she walked out on him, he would always call her, and she would always come back around again to touch down on the airstrip of his saintly forgiveness.
But, she thought, if Ben were to leave her, that would be different. Then she would have the power of choice. And so it must be with flight. If she could stand her ground during an earthquake, remaining upright and aloof as the earth pitched away from her, then when the ground apologetically reached upwards towards her feet, dangling independently in midair, she would have the perfect right to pull them away and say, “No, thank you. I’m really better off without you.”
Her friends, to whom she explained this concept, agreed wholeheartedly that she was onto something — she really should get Ben to leave her, then she’d be better off, stronger, independent at last. “No, no,” she said, “you’ve got it backwards. Ben’s just a metaphor. I’m talking about flying.”
It was with this view in mind that Sarah moved from Baltimore to San Francisco. Ben followed her, which was a disappointment to her friends, but tangential to Sarah, who now dismissively referred to him as, “my little metaphor.” This did not sit well with Ben, who objected strenuously and tried to have serious talks about their relationship. “Yes, Metaphor,” Sarah would reply absently to his incisive questions, while searching Google for information on which tall buildings would sway the most in a really good earthquake.
The really good earthquake Sarah was waiting for arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, which just goes to show. She was walking home from the grocery store, carrying in both arms heavy shopping bags containing oranges, potato salad, and cans of soup. She had just reached the top of a hill, and paused to catch her breath and admire the city spreading out below her. It was a cool day, so she was surprised to see what she at first took to be heat shimmers by the bay, as she squinted across at the Golden Gate. Then the heat shimmers got larger and closer and louder, moving up the slopes of the city towards her, and she realized elatedly that here, at last, was her really good earthquake.
She took a deep breath, straightened her back, and thought of Cleopatra. She often thought of Cleopatra when trying to remain collected, because no other woman in history, to her knowledge, had ever been as profoundly cool. She was wearing a pair of yellow, sequined ballet flats, and slipped them off, wanting to give the ground no excuses for calling her back again. The pavement felt clammy and rough under her bare feet, and the oranges smelled good in the grocery bags.
Then the earth pitched and rolled violently. The ground heaved up with a tremendous rumbling. The hill shrugged and strained against the sky like a giant having a nightmare under his titanic quilt. Sarah’s hair flew up around her face, and still she remained upright, like a surfer, like an ancient and deeply cool Egyptian queen, like a saltshaker. And she no longer felt the ground beneath her bare feet.
She looked down. The rumbling was passing away, the city settling down again. Sirens wailed traditionally in the background, and neighbors called to one another. And Sarah’s bare feet swayed a comfortable nine inches off the ground in the breezy San Francisco air.
She wiggled her toes. She looked down at her shadow, which seemed to be embarrassed by her sudden disassociation with it. Sarah realized that she still held the bags of oranges, potato salad, and soup, and leaned over to set them down, careful not to touch the cool pavement with her warm feet. It was a little like swimming, but more like sitting on a barstool, fully supported but swinging your legs in midair.
The ground and her shadow lay there, quiet in the hubbub of a city which had just suffered an earthquake, looking up at her as if to say, “Well … aren’t you coming back down?” She had done it. She had stood during the earthquake, and the power to return to earth or not was in her hands. She laughed, and ran straight upwards into the clouds.
The Minnie Driver!
Waaaahahahaha hah ahaahah haha ha…
..ha…
Yeah, I made that one up myself. Feel free to use it yourself, though. I know you won’t be able to resist, it’s so good.
[Sometimes I write the beginnings of stories, without really planning to end them. This is that kind of a beginning.]
—
There are people who are born at a place and time which rubs up against another place and time in the unseen folds of the universe. If you have ever felt a strong nostalgic yearning for an era in which you weren’t born, that is because you are a time traveler, but you don’t know it.
Only a few people do know it, and even fewer of them can really travel back in any meaningful way. When you hear TV personalities talk about past lives, it’s this phenomenon to which they’re referring, although they are most likely unaware of it themselves. They talk about a “deep spiritual connection” to Joan of Arc — but in fact, it’s a simple matter of physics. The specific hospital and date and time of day at which they entered this world happened to lie on a crease in space and time abutting the crease in space and time we call the 30th of May in the beautiful fifteenth-century town of Rouen.
If you’ve ever lain on your bed in the afternoon and felt a rush of blood pounding through your fingertips as you almost feel the leather of reins, or hear the ping of submarine sonar, or smell the scent of some long-extinct tree burning around a primeval campfire, it’s not magic and it’s not imagination; it’s the awareness of time lying like a discarded shirt on the floor. If you’ve ever felt you were born in the wrong decade, or century, or millennium, you weren’t. You’re just conscious of the existence of another decade, century, or millennium, and almost — but not quite — know how to get through to that other one, like a button through its particular hole.
A few people know how to get through. Leo French was not one of those people, not at first. He didn’t start to be one until he met Cara, who smelled like Babylon.
Your move. (If you’re just joining us, catch up, then join in by voting for what Basil and the old lady should do next in the comments.)
What was that flying menace’s second wish? (And if you have no idea what this is about, catch up, then join in by leaving your vote in the comments!)
