No, alas — not here to report anything like the conclusion of Seems to Fit. Just sharing a tidbit from the irrepressible xkcd webcomic. The first three panels of today’s contribution to the collective wisdom are above; click the image to see the final panel.
Enchanté
From whiskey river’s commonplace book:
The whale moves in a sea of sound:
shrimps snap, plankton seethes,
fish croak, gulp, drum their air-bladders,
and are scrutinized by echo-location,
a light massage of sound touching the skin.
The small, toothed whales use high frequencies:
Finely tuned and focused sound-beams,
intense salvoes of bouncing
clicks, a thousand a second,
with which a hair, as thin as
half a millimeter, can be detected;
penetrating probes,
with which they can scan
the contents of a colleague’s stomach,
follow the flow of their blood
take the full measure of
an approaching brain.
From two cerebral cavities
in their melon-shaped heads,
they can transmit two sonic probes,
as if talking in stereo,
and send them in any direction
at the same time:
One ahead, one behind, one above, one below…
lengthening the sound-waves,
shortening them, heightening them,
until their acoustic switchboard
receives the intelligence required.
Spoken to in English,
the smallest cetacean, the dolphin,
will rise to the surface,
alter its vocal frequencies
to suit the measures of human speech,
pitch its voice to the same level
as that of human sounds
when traveling through air —
an unfamiliar medium —
adjust the elastic lips of its blow-hole,
and then, after courteously waiting
for silence,
produce a vibrato imitation
of human language:
Words, phrases, sentences…
(Heathcote Williams, Whale Nation)
…and:
The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot’s turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm’s blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its [absurd] worst… it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then — and only then — it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s.
(Annie Dillard, from The Writing Life [source])
Blurring Around the Edges
[Note to regular readers: You may have noticed a change in my online tempo in the last week — I sure have: my visits to your blogs are a little more erratic, my postings here a little less… I don’t know… “focused,” maybe?
Partly, true, my spotty attendance is because the pace of my 9-to-5 workdays has gone up. But mostly, it’s because the parts of my mind shared between the online world and the fictional are starting, once again, to be given over to early-morning and (on Saturdays) all-morning writing sessions. I’ve been so distracted by other stuff since November, in short, that I haven’t worked much on the novel. That’s changing — for good, I hope, at least until this draft is done.
In the meantime, you’ll probably continue to find me fading into and out of view.]
The prospect of having a stroke has always terrified me, even more than the prospect of Alzheimer’s; at least to my way of thinking, the gradual dissolution of the self in the latter case is a kindness (surely the only one) compared to the sudden wham! of the former: the blow to some faculties while leaving others intact.
And because I’m someone who lives with words so much, not surprisingly, the most terrifying of all faculties to lose would be verbal ones. What (I wonder) would I do if I could never talk again — and knew it? What if I not only couldn’t talk, but couldn’t even within my own head any longer form a particular word when I needed it? How would I cope with losses like these? Could I cope with them?
Such questions drove the opening of the excerpt, below, from the current chapter-in-progress. This chapter takes place (if anywhere) inside the head of a main character. By this point in the story, the reader, like some of Al’s friends, has seen Al topple suddenly to his driveway on a Sunday morning, and has seen him in the hospital, alive but inert.
All the usual disclaimers about first-draft work apply. :)
The Sky Calls to Us
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
The landscape opens its eyes and sits up,
sets out walking followed by its shadow,
it is a stela of dark murmurs
that are the languages of fallen matter,
the wind stops and hears the clamor of the elements,
sand and water talking in low voices,
the howl of pilings as they battle the salt,
the rash confidence of fire,
the soliloquy of ashes,
the interminable conversation of the universe.
Talking with the things and with ourselves
the universe talks to itself:
we are its tongue and ears, its words and silences.
The wind hears what the universe says
and we hear what the wind says,
rustling the submarine foliage of language,
the secret vegetation of the underworld and the undersky:
man dreams the dream of things,
time thinks the dream of men.
(Octavio Paz [source])
…and (italicized portion):
If you had never been to the world and never known what dawn was, you couldn’t possibly imagine how the darkness breaks, how the mystery and color of a new day arrive. Light is incredibly generous, but also gentle. When you attend to the way the dawn comes, you learn how light can coax the dark. The first fingers of light appear on the horizon, and ever so deftly and gradually, they pull the mantle of darkness away from the world.
(John O’Donohue [source])
Perfect Moments: The Boy, the Wintry Day, the Film, the Flash of Panic
On a recent wintry day, The Boy (Who Was No Longer a Boy) and The Missus decided to go to a movie.
Now, because the day was in fact wintry, and because “wintry” seldom applied to weather conditions where The Boy and The Missus lived, they needed to undertake certain careful preparations in advance. Warm clothing needed to be retrieved from dusty closet recesses. Human bodies needed to be tanked up with caffeine and/or cocoa.
And then there was the matter of The Boy’s hands.
Especially in chilly, dry conditions, the skin of The Boy’s hands — more precisely, his fingers — tended to dry and chap and split rather painfully. Depending on his mood and energy level and the available time, he might choose to ignore the problem; to “lotion up”; or to go the whole hog — applying ointment and BandAid(s) to the affected digit(s). On the afternoon in question, The Boy decided to go the whole hog. Indeed, not only did he swath his index finger in two BandAids, he actually sealed the edges and the fingertip with waterproof tape: the finger wasn’t merely bandaged, it was sheathed in what the Crayola people used to call (in benighted non-PC days of yore) “flesh-colored” plastic.
And then he and The Missus embarked.
Earnout!
From my tech-writing agent, in an email message yesterday:
Did you want us to send you a check for the payment due, or did you want an electronic funds transfer to your bank acct?
It took 7½ years, but my last tech book finally brought in more for the publisher than the size of the advance.
(And no, I do not take this as a hint to return to tech writing. Heh.)
Woot!
P.S. To answer the obvious question: thirty-six dollars and change, after subtracting the agent’s commission. Of my five tech books (depending how you count), this is the only one to have crossed the magic threshold.
P.P.S. I’ll probably request payment by check; I have a feeling I’ll either want to frame it or (depending on circumstances at the time it arrives) maybe just frame a photocopy.
Your Dreams, and the Long Haul
[Image above: “The Long Haul,” by artist Robert W. McGregor]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Excerpt from
“Sabbaths 1998: VI”But won’t you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.The gift is balanced by
Its total loss, and yet,
And yet the light breaks in,
Heaven seizing its moments
That are at once its own
And yours. The day ends
And is unending where
The summer tanager,
Warbler, and vireo
Sing as they move among
Illuminated leaves.
(Wendell Berry [source])
…and:
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!
(Fyodor Dostoevsky [source])
There’s Got to Be a Morning After
Centuries after the Eastern Orthodox Church began celebrating the Epiphany, the Roman Catholic Church decided to start doing so too. But for some reason, the Western Church really latched on to this image of the Persian priests bringing gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold to the infant Jesus, guided from their homeland of Iran by a shining star. The Magi are mentioned only in Matthew’s Gospel and he never specified how many magi there were — just that there were three gifts. In 1857, the Reverend John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote some lyrics for a seminary Christmas pageant, a song that begins: “We three kings of Orient are / Bearing gifts we traverse afar / Field and fountain, moor and mountain / Following yonder star.”
(The Writer’s Almanac, January 6, 2010)
The scene: a roadside on the outskirts of a small town in the Middle East. It is morning, lots of years ago. Three travelers sit beside a fire, waiting for a pot to boil, warming their hands, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Their names are Balthasar, Melchior, and… uh… The Other Guy.
Balthasar: So… so that’s it, then?
The Watchful Mind
[A museum’s 3D representation of Wilder Penfield’s so-called “cortical homunculus” depicting the relative importance of various senses, as measured by the percentage of our brains devoted to them. Photo by Robep on Flickr; click for original.]
From whiskey river:
Burning the Old Year
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
(Naomi Shihab Nye [source])
…and:
Looking Around, Believing
How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind — white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We’re keeping busy —
This way, that way, we’re making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.
(Gary Soto [source])
…and (what the heck, the river was on a roll this week):
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
(Miranda July, from “The Shared Patio” [source])
Things Turned End-Over-End
[From this page, which includes a YouTube tour of the interior: “The Upside Down House is a project created by a Polish businessman and philanthropist named Daniel Czapiewski… The house is also meant to be a profound statement about the Communist era and the state of the world.”]
From whiskey river:
Remember That Things Go
According to Your Karma
Whether You Like It or NotOne day, my dear,
you stop and look around you,
find yourself stuffing needs into a sack of thoughts,
realize you have talked your life to pieces,
scratched your self to bits,
that neither hope nor doubt
can protect you,
that you are not mistaken,
that you haven’t lost your grip —
it is dissolving.
Now you can speak about everything silently.
(Terrance Keenan, St. Nadie in Winter: Zen Encounters with Loneliness [source])
…and:
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters)
Finally, not from whiskey river: Theo (the constable of Pine Cove, California) gets his first glimpse of someone who will prove to be the title character in a “Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror” from Christopher Moore:
Theo was doing fifty up Worchester Street when the blond man stepped from behind a tree into the street. The Volvo had just lurched over a patched strip in the asphalt, so the grille was pointed up and caught the blond man about hip-high, tossing him into the air ahead of the car. Theo stood on the brake, but even as the antilocks throbbed, the blond man hit the tarmac and the Volvo rolled over him, making sickening crunching and thumping noises as body parts ricocheted into wheel wells.
Theo checked the rearview as the car stopped and saw the blond man flopping to a stop in the red wash of the brake lights. Theo pulled the radio off his belt as he leaped from the car, and stood ready to call for help when the figure lying in the road started to get up.
Theo let the radio fall to his side. “Hey, buddy, just stay right there. Just stay calm. Help is on the way.” He started loping toward the injured man, then pulled up.
The blond guy was on his hands and knees now; Theo could also see that his head was twisted the wrong way and the long blond hair was cascading back to the ground. There was a crackling noise as the guy’s head turned around to face the ground. He stood up. He was wearing a long black coat with a rain flap…
The blond man held an arm out toward Theo, then noticed that the thumb on the outstretched hand was on the wrong side. He grabbed it with his other hand an snapped it back into place. “I’ll be okay,” the blond man said, monotone.
“You know, if that coat dry-cleans itself while I’m watching, I’ll nominate you for governor my own self,” Theo said, trying to buy some time while he thought of what he was going to say to the dispatcher when he keyed the button on the radio.
The blond man was now coming steadily toward him — the first few steps limping badly, but the limp getting better as he got closer. “Stop right there,” Theo said. “You are under arrest for a two-oh-seven-A.”
(Christopher Moore, The Stupidest Angel)
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