Longing for an immersive distraction from his troubles, Joseph took up metalworking as a hobby. He spent days in the shop and brought home miniature metal horses, houses, people, dogs. They outlasted Joseph’s finances, his ties to his family, and even Joseph himself, and were impervious to corrosion in the landfill.
February 21, 2010 – 12:49 pm
J.L.B.’s Response to K.
Dear K.,
I was disappointed most by the silence of those who might know “where things would fall.” While I realize that their existence is not strictly guaranteed, you would think they would have the courtesy to lend you a hand if they did.
Regarding your trackless desert: I have been reading Fingarette’s book on Confucius. He writes about the Confucius’ metaphorical use of roads, and in particular the one Road that is the Way (Tao). The interesting thing about Confucius’ road as opposed to the one metaphorically walked by Westerners is that his road has no crossroads. There is no such thing as an individual’s legitimate choice between two options, there is no responsibility or guilt. There is only the possibility of traveling the (one) road, or else “walking crookedly,” getting lost, wandering in wilderness.
Unhelpful, surely. “I don’t need philosophy, I need a tent!” I can hear you shout back to me. And perhaps it was desert wandering–that cherished hobby of so many Judeo-Christian innovators–that inspired the story of the individual, of choice, responsibility. But it is just a trick of geometry to translate a linear road into a desert expanse. Once that mathematical operation is performed, the only difference is this: the road is easier to walk on.
Platitudinously: if the horizon just contains more desert, then the only important questions have to do with travel conditions. Are you thirsty? Are your sandals holding up? Is there good company? And if north, south, east, and west are promising both nothing and only the fulfillment of dreams (what good are they?) then maybe you could try Up. (Or Down.)
Good luck. Sorry to be so didactic; you know it’s only because I cannot help but look at things as puzzles to be solved.
Sincerely,
J.L.B.
February 19, 2010 – 12:20 am
Poseidon Remarks On Life
Light from the sun has not touched the ocean’s floor since the beginning of time, and yet it cradles ten times more species than the land and sky combined. I admire the adaptability of those animals that have survived the tumult wreaked upon them by weather demigods. But their souls are brittle compared to those that thrive under water’s weight. Titans craft the creatures here in their own image out of the fleecy organic compounds and hot sulfur of the hydrothermal vents.
One sea slug extracts dissolved iron particles from the eruptions of the murky underworld. It then secretes them layer by layer into armor: a steely shell spirals from its shoulders, impenetrable and grand. It clads its own slimy feet with hooves. Its undulations transform into a trampling stride.
Elsewhere, a species of translucent crustaceans feel themselves so well equipped by their glassy exoskeletons that they bare all heart, nerves, abdominal organs, and ligaments to the sightless eyes of those around them. Each pulse and electric choice seeks–so often in vain–an unembarrassed witness.
A solitary animal with a wide plume like a fern sits along on the end of a stony outcrop. It is still. It is breathless at its own beauty, with how its form complements the geometry of its rock. A year will pass like this. An inquisitive worm approaches it and discovers the tips of the softly glowing leafage hardening into talons that immediately seize and shred. Its carcass provides nutrition for the predator for the following year.
A certain jellyfish exists in a perpetual state of anxious panic, aware at all times of its smallness. It darts and grasps at scraps with diligent rapidity, at every moment fearing the day when it is discovered and devoured. It is unaware that it is unchallenged not because its vulnerability has been undiscovered but because others are hiding from it. Its ravenousness has made it mountainous.
A flamboyant cuttlefish sings in a crystal cave where through mastery of its own voice and understanding of the crystal’s resonances it is able to recreate the sound of an entire backing orchestra.
There is a tribe of worms that see each other as identical, equal, and united in the fact that each is a mouth whose purpose is to gorge for eternity on an immense blubbery carcass that has fallen from their milky heaven. Others insist on constructing their meals and offspring from chemicals spat from their hell.
All these creatures and the titans that create them lack of any concept of authority. This is the great irony of the game of chance my brothers played: one does not, can not, rule the seas as one rules the sky or the dead. Each being here is its own god of its own sea. The others look upon my coral and gemstone palace correctly: not as a seat of power, but as a shell like their own. They are perplexed only at why the doors are so often open.
February 2, 2010 – 11:47 pm
Explore/Cohere
He was starving and overflowing when he first found it. His fingers, stubbier then, pulled at it with affection. His hands instinctually expressed love by manipulating every lever and caressing each crevice. The new discovery, pulsing and multifaceted, promised infinite amusement.
It returned his grip and pulled him into its gelatinous folds with a crystalline pincer.
And so the two friends wandered the planets:
- One, an enormous spherical mechanism of gears and tubes and nanoprobes, engaged in perpetual computation and absorbing new components as it encountered them. It drifted slowly towards lights.
- The Other, a swift, crooked-backed humanoid with enormous spectacles that zig-zagged to dark corners, dismantling anything he found and setting beacons.
February 2, 2010 – 11:05 pm
Poseidon Remarks
The way the sun beats and the choppy way sound travels make me wonder sometimes why anyone would choose terrestrial life. Though I was disappointed at first when I drew the middle straw that determined my destiny, the more I exhaust myself in journeys to the land the more I miss and even take pride in the anemone blossoms (far too trite an example, let me try again) the whale songs as they echo through the coral palace. Crickets and rainfall are charming, but they are staccato. Nothing endures up there. And nothing penetrates. Fragile ant hills persist only because they haven’t yet been stepped on, and the human beings are not much better.
Here, we thrive despite extreme barometric pressure. Currents, not winds, storm.
Some men dream of flying up there. They imagine themselves simultaneously weightless and in control. They would move by deflecting themselves effortlessly off of phantoms. That is freedom to them.
Here, we know a more potent freedom. We may move anywhere we wish if we will ourselves there. We need only stretch ourselves, push, and we arrive where we have displaced.
February 2, 2010 – 10:33 pm
An experiment that’s worked
One experiment that has worked so far on this site is the project of writing up parts of a story here (in the “Blog” part of the site) and then later compiling them into a story (in the “Writing” section). I think I’m going to try to do some more of that because it is so much easier to write when you can complete something in one sitting.
December 3, 2009 – 10:13 pm
Obligation
“Obligation sits on me like a lead cape,” she said.
“Obligation is the breath that stokes my inner flames,” he said. “You must be talking about sleep.”
“What sleep?”
November 3, 2009 – 9:30 pm
Argentina
The gauchos who staff the Argentinian club in Williamsburg were frustrated by the young people who only pretended to tango and who giggled that the animal lying dead in the middle of the dance floor was a chupacabra, when it was clear to anyone with an education that it was a velociraptor. It molted short, broad feathers; they stuck to the beer spills on the floor. I chose that moment to hit on the girlfriend of Francisco Real.
October 20, 2009 – 11:29 am
New Superhero
for Jeff Hammel
They decided that he would have a super-human capacity for masking despair with ironic incomprehension. Rejected then abandoned by those he loves, cut off irrevocably from the society that gave his life meaning, he resists any recognition of the cause of his woes. As consequence, he is shrouded from their import. Even his death lacks finality because of his subconsciously willed disorientation. He is, in a sense, immortal. If he does not save the world, per se, he rescues a inexorably degraded world–his own–from the damnation of consciousness.
It was a commercial catastrophe, especially in America.
Later, they would say, “I knew we should have left his superpower as the ability to turn into a bug.”
October 2, 2009 – 2:07 pm
Diplomatic immunity
After I gave the man directions, he explained to me that he was unfamiliar with the subway system because he was a foreigner. From Canada, so you wouldn’t know. A diplomat in fact.
“Oh really? Do you have diplomatic immunity then?”
He was in his late twenties and wore thick-rimmed glasses. Except for his suit, he could have been anyone from Williamsburg. He was grinning now.
“Of course.”
“Well, what do you do with it?
He glanced furtively to one side, hesitating. I thought his answer would have to do with the illicit contents of his diplomatic pouch, which could not be searched at the border.
“I talk to cute girls on the subway.” I must have looked quizzical. “I sit next to them, and I ask them what they are reading. I chat with them until I reach my stop; sometimes I mention that I’m a diplomat. Then, just before I leave, I tell them that I think they are beautiful.”
“Just like that?” I asked, astonished.
“Just like that. They can’t stop me. I have immunity.”
He looked relieved. The subway doors opened; he darted out without a goodbye.
