caveat emptor

Let's Be Legends

New legends spring up. It has to happen. I don't mean urban legends, missing kidneys in the ice bathtub and all that. I mean epics, legends, new god stories. They are always, I suspect, built up by swaddling lies around some kernel of truth, some real personality that becomes exaggerated beyond rational belief. These are the things people believe with other kinds of belief, not irrational but meta-rational, orthogonal to reason or logic.

I dreamed that we, you and I, will be legends. Some silly thing you do, some action of mine misinterpreted or misunderstood, will turn the head of some particularly creative liar, some spinner of tales. Stories will be told and retold, always getter bigger, never smaller. Our names will be larger than life. We'll be heroes or villains, or maybe one of each. They will hate us or love us or fear us or worship us. They'll use us to teach their children or to warn them. Forever objectified, we'll never die. The demise of our bodies will only set our legend free from the burden of veracity and scrutiny. We will live for all times, two happy lies, two tall tales, kept alive by the telling. We'll be debunked and defended, praised and forsaken, disproved and reaffirmed. This is what I dreamed.

Come away with me, my friend, to the place where legends live. We'll occupy ourselves with harmless deception, bringing the joy of story to the world. We'll forsake these smaller duties and take on the lazy, easy tasks of heroes and gods. Stay hidden and let the legend live, that's all anyone asks.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - My little drawing, "bird of legend: the chicken of the gods" cracks me up every time I look at it. I threw it together in about five minutes this morning to add some color to this silly post. It's so regal in its ridiculousness. Thanks for stopping by.

Words. Just Words.

I am the kind of person who has always struggled to be the person I naturally am. If I'm not careful and deliberate, my abundance of pliability coerces me into being whatever the forces around me need me to be. It takes will and effort, a dedication of proactivity that is not my typical inclination, to force myself into the shape I take naturally. One would expect that being yourself would be the path of least resistance, but this doesn't work out for me. It's a demanding chore, but well worth it. I like the natural me much more than I like the me that I become if I stop trying.

Have you ever asked yourself how human nature, which desires so much, still leaves so much to be desired? No? Well, maybe that's good. Desire is, like many things, created rather than consumed by its application. It's completely unlike syrup in this sense. Syrup is consumed by its application and is soon gone, much like money. Desire is one of the few things you have as soon as you want it. This is not true of fulfillment. Fulfillment is always absent when you want it. As soon as you have it, you don't need it any more, and you want it only in the abstract, passive sense once it's there.

Perhaps it's a question of means and ends. Then ends criticize the means, I think, whether justifying them or not. Desire is linked to the means. Fulfillment is the end, as is this.

Hello, friends. What do you think?

Later. Love.

Roads: Driving Me Crazy

The roads are simply painted on with giant brushes, tracing over all the paths where people like to drive. This happens mostly at night, when no one is looking. "How deep is the dirt on a dirt road, Dad?" a kid might ask. "Pretty deep," Dad could reply. "Why aren't all the roads straight? If all the roads were straight, would we still need steering wheels? Could they build a tunnel so you could drive straight through the middle of the earth? Does the car move over the surface, or do the wheels turn the planet?" Of the asking of questions and crafting of answers there is no end. "Keep your hands on the wheel," I told my son. "Which wheel?" he asked. "Turn left at the signal," I said to Rick. "Okay," he replied. "What's the signal?" he added surreptitiously, glancing sleuthlikedly through the corners of his eyes. Side roads, by which I mean the access roads to freeways, are usually one-way. You can enter the ramp for the freeway or you can continue on in the same direction, but you cannot go back. For me, this makes them seem pushy and stubborn. "It's my way or the highway," they seem to say. Hello, friends. How are you today? Later. Love.

Flautist

When the trumpet was played in that certain way – "with mouth" she called it – she thought it was the most erotic of all the instruments in the band. In her opinion it was more sultry even than the saxophone. "You know," she said. "that breathy sound, where you can tell there's a mouth working it, where you can feel the person and not just the metal." She said all of this without looking away from the flute she was cleaning.

"I think I know what you mean," I said, thinking I knew what she meant. "So what's next? The sax?"

"The cello," she replied. "A cello tells you, if you listen, how passionately it's being embraced, how firmly it's being grasped, how smoothly it's being stroked."

"Cello?" I wondered aloud, surprised. "I guess I haven't listened so much to the cello."

"You're so innocent," she said, smiling but still not looking up. "You've never really even listened to the music all around you."

I looked down, hiding my damned blushing. "I'm not that innocent," I said. "I've heard more than you think." Even as I said it I knew she was right. I fell silent and tried to listen to the jazz coming softly from the stereo beside her bed. I closed my eyes and searched for all the hidden depths. It was pointless. It was a complete mystery to me, a language I couldn't speak. I glanced over at her, so intent on her instrument, every motion deft, confident and sure.

I never went to visit her again. We spoke a few more times, but I wouldn't let myself get close to her. I've always feared that feeling, that awe and abandon. I could disappear into the gravity well of her charm never to be seen again, a blissful worshipper forever collapsed into her world, unable to escape, unable to matter. Instead I pretended that she didn't exist and, pretty soon, she didn't.

Except in my dreams.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Fickleness and Tired Puns

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their list of friends on MySpace. It's like an instant snapshot of their soul. We may have little in common, but we all have Tom. And Breakfast at Tiffany's. A thing that cracks me up about MySpace is how intentionally fickle it is. On every screen where you can interact with a friend – read a comment, read a post, read a message – there is a button that says "Delete From Friends." Vicious and cruel. As for me, I'm pretty particular about whom I friend. (That's right, I used friend as a verb. Deal with it.) Most friend requests get marked as Spam. If you make it through, however, then once I friend you it's for life. (Unless, of course, I find out that you're just friending me to promote your porno website. Where business is concerned I'm fairly cutthroat. I never friend the competition. Some people try to tell me that this blog is not really porno. Those people obviously don't understand me.)

On another note: My tires have pattern baldness, so I'm going to have them replaced. (How's that for fickle?) Let's be honest. Where the rubber meets the road, baldness matters. If I get new tires, it's because there was a traction there that just isn't there any more. My car has almost one-hundred-thousand miles on it (that's like five or seven million kilometers, if memory serves,) so it's time I retired it. It was inevitable. Being Japanese, my car wears a little rubber. It's okay, though. The motion is smooth.

See?

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

I'm Not an Addict (Seriously)

In a comment at Karindira's yesterday, Mike from Unremitting Failure reminded me of an oft-expressed idea. The particular instance of the idea he referenced was from the song Sweet Loaf by the Butthole Surfers, a euonym if ever there were one. Their version says:

It's better to regret something you have done,
Than to regret something you haven't done.

This is a very common idea, and most people agree with it these days. If I had to guess, I'd guess that the percentage of people who agree with this sentiment has increased steadily and dramatically since the 1950s, when the percentage was probably fairly low. I do not disagree with this notion, but, unlike my generation, I don't feel it. I am not this way at all. I don't do things out of sheer curiosity. I'm very cautious and careful. Although many people may think this is a sad admission, I suspect it has made my life peaceful and easy. Peaceful and easy is really what I'm going for, so that's cool with me. I'm not Hunter S. Thompson or Abbie Hoffman. I'm more like Mister Rogers, I guess. Mister Rogers with Doobie Brothers hair.

What about you?

Later. Love.

Secrets: Principles of Transcendence

You get more out of the administrative assistants by acting dumb and bewildered than you do by acting intelligent and capable. You have to make it convincing, however. You have to hit that sweet spot, the kind of dumb that smart people often possess, that absent-minded cluelessness, like a lost puppy with a 200 IQ. They're suckers for that. We all have that thing, that certain susceptibility to charm that enchants us. Find it, and we'll do whatever you ask. We're all suckers for that. The sky today is hazier than the barracks on the first day of boot camp, hazier than Delta Mu Upsilon during its annual Pledge Purge. It's going to be hot. Hotter than my wife's gypsy eyes. Sometimes I can't see the metaphorest for the trees. Hello, friends. How are you today? Later. Love.

Transcendental Stupiditation

Doesn't this song rock? I mean, I know you can't hear it, but it's really groovy. Isn't it? Seriously. Were I less self-conscious and less socially insecure and less – well, just less – I would get up and dance around to this song. It swings, Daddio (or Mommio.) Don't you agree?

Why do all these politicians keep talking about wanting to be president? I mean, okay, we get it. You want to be president. Duly noted. When the time comes, if your name is on the list and if I like you, I'll vote for you. Until then, don't you have something useful to do? I mean, if you've got nothing more important to do than talk about being president, I'm not sure you're qualified to be president. It's getting ridiculous. Even George W. Bush, the current president, was commenting on it recently. He said something like, "Whys am this people doin' jabber for makin' them nucular pickup truck. When me be from Texas I's pickin' this banjo to fool me once. Stayin' the course is what I's sayin'. Behoovery and whop not, fixin' to barbecue up some hot dogs. Yep." Biting commentary, as usual. It bites.

For some reason, people are often asking me, "What have you been drinking?" In response I've attached photo evidence. I have a problem, I know. Admitting it is the first small step toward recovery. Photographing it is a giant step backwards. I need help.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

On Symbolism

The human capacity for symbolism is like another sense, a sense that informs a different awareness. Writers and composers who know how to construct symbols with words and chords trigger this sense, more than hearing and sight, and wake this awareness. Like pronouns without antecedents, they produce longings and mournings disconnected from experience, clambering for some synaptic connection with which to relate. Sometimes I am brought to tears by music or words in spite of the contentment and happiness of my life. Sometimes I am energized or elated in spite of trials. These bend perception, a welcome escape from the five senses, the cognitive mind. Take care, of course. The prudent will see the risk and ride the edge, rarely loosing sight of the shore. Some cast themselves adrift, throwing caution to the wind. Of these, some eventually find their way back. Others are lost at sea, bells rung for them like warnings for us all from the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral. Hello, friends. How are you today? Later. Love.

Meta-Roy

The old Monte Carlo with the primer-colored door and the lawn mower protruding from the open trunk, the decklid secured with a hooked bungee cord, gave me a story. The unemployed protagonist is a slacker by most accounts, though some see life otherwise. The subtle difference between laziness and his inability to see the benefit of and, therefore, engage with any particular occupation is lost on most people, but a recognition of this distinction will ease the confusion of the reader in certain situations when our protagonist, Roy, is willing to sweat and toil tirelessly in awful work. Should the story progress, keep this in mind.

The activity of lawn mowing in Texas varies greatly, as it surely must elsewhere. There are better and worse sets of equipment and better and worse times of day. Mowing in the early morning or late evening, though bothersome for the neighbors, can be pleasant if you're working with the right sorts of lawn and have proper equipment. Roy, however, has an old mower that only starts with argument and, ultimately, physical violence. I say that he has it only because it is, at this point, protruding from the trunk of his car. In truth, the mower (like the car) belongs to his mother. Adding to his difficulty is the fact the Roy is too asleep in the early morning and too buzzed in the late evening to mow, so he must mow in the afternoon. Mowing in the afternoon is hell, especially if, like Roy, you lack the appearance of respectability required to get access to the better lawns. Instead Roy will mow yellow lawns with bare patches of dry dirt and baked blades of Johnson grass. Roy will mow the sorts of lawns that do not expect to be edged or trimmed, just cut. Roy will mow the kinds of lawns that throw dry, brittle clippings and dust into the air. He will end the job with a thin layer of mud from sweat, dirt and itchy, vegetable dust over his body and grit in his teeth. He will have bruises on his shin from flung rocks, sticks or matchbox cars that were hidden in the overgrowth. He will, however, have enough cash to eat and, more importantly, drink for one more day.

My fear is that, having presented Roy in this way, I will have caused some of you to dislike him. Take my word for it, Roy is a good guy. You can't judge a guy like Roy like you would judge other sorts of people, by appearance or utility. Like an oyster, Roy's real value is a pearl hidden in his slimy depths. Bear with Roy. He will deserve it, eventually.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - Sorry about my absence last week. I was in Chicago at the College of American Pathologists learning about SNOMED. (If you don't know what that is you probably don't need to know and don't want to know.) It was fascinating and sufficiently complicated to warrant my fleeting fascination. I'm back now. I hope you're all well. Thanks for stopping by.

Rerun: On Work and Play, My Child

Too Busy. No time for anything new. Here's an old post from late 2006. I hope you like it (this time.) Fancy and whimsy are the luxury of the unoccupied mind, the dream of something less difficult, more wondrous, than scratching vegetable survival from the dirt or running down bloody survival in the hills or the woods. We now enjoy a season, my child, in which we, humanity, have pushed back necessity from certain hours and certain years and opened up a time for fancy and whimsy, a time for play. This is a gift we give to each other, a gift our mothers and fathers for hundreds of generations have given to us. I hope you love to play, my child, and I hope that you play every day exhausting all the strength of your body and your mind. Fantasy, the dream of other worlds and wonders unseen, has been the subject of human play for as long as we know. To imagine these things, to push our minds beyond our senses, is to be human. As long as you live, my child, use your times of play to explore the limits of human fantasy. Listen to the stories others have told, and tell stories of your own. Dream, as we always have, of a place where your mind breaks past the influence of your hands and the limits of your strength and exerts itself magically to accomplish everything your heart desires. Give yourself a place for magic in your mind, my child, and let it live there forever. But with that same mind, my child, see yourself and the world with clarity. Do not be sad when you hear that your time for unbounded play grows short. From forever ago until forever to come, being human, indeed being alive, means that you strive to survive. There is a joy in work, my child, and I would have you love that with all the energy you give to play. There is joy in craft and skill, and you've seen this even in your play. There is joy in starting something new and joy in finishing. There is joy in learning and there is joy in teaching. It will serve you well to remember these joys, my child, and to think of them whenever you can, because work is hard. Some days work will leave you drained. Some days you will use all the strength you have to finish the job. Some days work will be too much. Some days work will break your back and wound your soul. Someday you may claim responsibility for and entwine your fate with a job that will take your very life. Even so, my child, take joy in your work as in your play. And what joy is there, you might ask, for the dead? Do not forget, my child, your times of play or your dreams of magic. Even more, however, do not forget that they were bought for you with the sweat and, ultimately, the lives of millions of years of humans at work. Do not, in your play, become so distracted by the dream of another world, a fantasy, that you allow it to usurp the place in your heart that should belong to this, your world and to these, your people. Remember to love humanity, my child, to love this world with all your heart and strength. Remember to love those who worked for you. Remember to love those children to come and, loving them, to choose your work carefully, that it might buy for them a time to play. Love, my child, is the joy of work. Love is the joy of those who die having done, for humanity, their job.

Hello, friends. I hope you are happy, or at least hopeful, today. Later. Love.

Human Life

We are human life, all of us. We cannot escape ourselves. We can neither be better nor worse than humanity. I hear the human soul in the infectious groove of drums and the growl and wail of strings. The human hand builds up and destroys, kills and heals. The human heart races and falters, despairs and rejoices. We are more than our progress. We are less than the scars we leave. Humanity is united by her fierce independence, divided by his loyalties. We writhe and spread all over the surface of this planet, adapting and inflicting and invading and investing. Who Else wrestles with the notion of his own depravity? Who else criticizes her own successes, advertises her failures? We discipline ourselves and we resist, pushing and pulling, giving up and digging in. We train our children and bury our dead. We light up the night and burn down the woods. Who else plants them again?

Let your anger and outrage burn. Cast your dark scowl across the masses. Stoke the fires of your contempt and erupt, bravely riding the winds of your own righteousness down against the evils that men do. But as you crash like the angry sea into the stony walls of corrupt humanity, remember: This glorious catharsis of holy rage, this purging fire of furious redemption, this too is human life.

---

Hello, friends. My schedule's been crazy and I've been exhausted and uninspired for a few days now. Finally, this morning, I've tamed the world around me sufficiently to afford myself a time to relax and write. I hope all of you are well and I've missed the idea of your presence as I've been absent from this "place" for a few days.

Later. Love.

P. S. - For what it's worth, Saturday's post was the 500th on this incarnation of my blog (I had a LiveJournal blog before this one.) This one is #501. No big deal, just a bit of trivia. Thanks for stopping by.

Fourth

Bodies. Plural. Parts and bodies. Remains. In her career as a detective Kay had never worked a case with "Bodies." "Victims" she had worked with, recently killed and identifiable victims of violence. Domestic cases and gang cases, these she knew, but not bodies. She was no expert with cold, unidentified remains of anonymous people discovered in drawers and boxes and closets. The man in the tank, the man who was technically alive, the man Reni had decided to call "Squidboy," had been interesting and mysterious, exciting even. When the warrants had arrived and she and Reni had started to search the place, however, everything had gone bad quickly. Now she was walking through a nightmare and wondering if she could hold it together. Now there were parts and remains. Now there were bodies.

The remains were all preserved, packed in transparent, rubber bags full of, it seemed, the same ooze in which Squidboy was floating. Forensics officers, a dozen of them, were crawling all over the place, photographing and cataloging everything.

"Got to be at least eight people here," said one big, broad, blonde officer, his sleeves rolled up and a clipboard in his hand. Kay had seen him before but didn't know his name. He sounded like he was from somewhere in the Deep South.

"Check again, chief," Reni called from across the room, his mouth full of sandwich. "I counted nine heads." It was almost ten o'clock at night and Reni was aggressively eating the biggest sub sandwich Kay had ever seen.

"I don't see how you can eat," she said, wrinkling her nose.

"If Derek didn't bring me this sandwich I was gonna have to grab a leg from one of the boxes." He smiled a huge salami and tomato smile in satisfaction at her obvious disgust. "I gotta eat or I get cranky."

Kay doubted that. She'd seen Reni happy, silly, gross, violently angry and, just once, sad, but she had never seen him cranky. "You're a pig," she teased.

"Hey!" he cried in mock outrage. "'Cop' I can stand but don't call me a pig!"

She rolled her eyes at him and walked over beside the big Southerner. He was standing bent over his clip board, filling out paperwork. "I'm Kay." she said.

"Yes, Detective," he replied, looking up and smiling. "I know who you are. I'm Danny," he held out his hand and she shook it quickly.

She thought it was funny that such a big guy would go by Danny and not Dan. "Ever seen anything like this?" she asked.

"Once," he answered, a frown passing briefly across his brow. "Looks like we got a real psycho here. We got him, right?"

"Yes," she said. "At least I hope it's him. I'd hate to think the psycho is still out there somewhere."

"Amen."

---

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Back

The light, bright but cold, was just like he remembered. This time, however, there was no soft hand waiting to take his. There was no soft voice to comfort and welcome him to his rest. This time the light snapped off suddenly like a door had slammed. He was trapped, entombed in tight darkness, strangeness pressing down on him, black pressure that would certainly squeeze away his life. In panic his mind raged and he tried to cry out, but he had no voice, not yet. Where was this place?

It started in his fingertips, the settling. Deep familiarity crawled up his forearms toward his shoulders. Then he felt it begin in his toes. He knew this place. He knew it better than anywhere. He knew this place like he knew himself. Himself. This was him. This was home, but not the way he left it.

Warmth spread up his stomach to his chest, and he felt his heart beating, his lungs drawing in and pushing out air. Up his neck, like a shiver, he settled into his brain, he connected with his mind. Something was different. Here were synaptic traces of memories he never knew. Here were scattered images of sights he'd never seen. Here were scars from ravages committed without his will. And here also were the echoes of a final, frenzied thought, left behind by the former tenant.

"Glory!" Joseph thought. A chill ran through him as he came down from another soul's high. Something amazing had happened here while he was away, something epic. Curious though he was, he did not linger. He had no time for another soul's glory. Joseph had concerns of his own. "Simon," he whispered weakly through dry lips, his again.

By the time the nurse came to see why the heart monitor alarm was whining, Joseph Mollel was gone.

---

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

This is the Worst Poem Evar

My idea was for an ensemble show like Friends. It was to be called Chums. There were four guys and two girls. They worked in the shark-bait industry. I thought it was a solid concept. Russ, Raylene, Philip, Mona, Chester and Joey. They turned me down cold. Go figure.

I felt like such an idiot yesterday when I found out I was wrong about something. I was with a couple of friends, real intellectuals, and we were discussing existentialism. At one point I ranted for like twenty minutes about some of the contradictory messages in the later writing of Sartre. I was just getting to my point, one I had been constructing in my mind for quite a while, when they both just started cracking up. I looked it up later on Wikipedia and they were right. I felt so stupid. I'm not sure where I got the idea that Sartre wrote the musical Grease, but he didn't. I could have sworn that I heard that somewhere. Man, do I feel stupid. (This so explains why the journal COGITO refused to publish my excellent treatise on Sartre's concept of "hopeless devotion.")

Speaking of current events, what the hell is going on in the world? It seems like things used to happen and I would hear about them somehow. Now I never hear about anything. Is anything happening in the world? Are things really this quiet and uneventful? I'd hate to think there are things happening and I'm just really "out of the loop." Please, clue me in if you hear anything interesting.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Sweet Dark and Cold

Her soul is dark and complicated, like good coffee, like the sweet secrecy of night. Inside she is all shadows, like deep shade in blistering heat, like the thrilling gloom of blustery storms. Her heart is cold like water on the tongue, like chilly relief inviting you in through the front door and out of the hateful sun. She looks wrong, seems wrong, but she feels right, a laughing dirge of sad mirth, tears running down over smiling lips. When she decides to put her hands on you she pulls you in close. She doesn't hide at all. She is proud and ashamed and she lets you see both. Her love is not healthy, not completely. It is violent and afraid, but it is honest and fathomless. Fear and honor, you should feel both. When she leaves, whether in months, weeks, days or hours, you'll be glad to see her go. Your thoughts of her, your impractical desires and ridiculous longings, will be your sobering folly for the rest of your days, keeping you on the straight and narrow path. This is her awful grace, her broken gift to mankind.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Things About Me Numbers Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine

Remember my "100 Things About Me" project? Yeah, neither do I. Here's a couple more.

48. On Saturday night it was grilled Tilapia and three-cheese (Canadian White Cheddar, Muenster and Havarti) macaroni. On Sunday night it was smoky orange marmalade chicken with a Caesar salad. On Monday night it was a beef brisket roasted with red potatoes, carrots and onions. I've been cooking a lot lately. I've been enjoying it, though I still have to develop a proper rhythm and sense of proportion. That comes with time, I'm sure.

49. On Sunday Susan, River, Rayn and I hiked in the rock-climbing area of the nearby Mineral Wells State Park. (Robyn left on Friday [her 14th birthday] to spend the weekend in a cabin in Oklahoma with a friend's family.) The area where we hiked is great. It is hilly and dense with scrubby, North Texas trees. Long ago the river eroded the soil from under a thick limestone shelf and it fell in great chunks, littering the area with huge, jagged boulders. The trail was rocky and steep, weaving through vines and trees from the plateau above down to the shore below and back up again, about a mile and a half in all. I found the clambering much easier with a sturdy walking stick. River ran along ahead of us, scaling all the rocks along the way. I heaved and puffed, being out of shape, but I found the effort exhilarating. The sky was overcast and the weather was unseasonably cool. Thunder rumbling around overhead sparked a thrilling fuse of danger in the air. Just as we reached the top the clouds burst and cold raindrops began to fall gently, a welcome relief. We decided to hike back the mile to the car on the road rather than risking ankles on the wet rocks of the path, much to River's chagrin. On the walk back we crossed the path of a tarantula, creepy and fuzzy. At one point Rayn looked at me, my longish, wet hair stuck to my face and my walking stick in my hand, and told me I looked like Aragorn. Cool. Generous, but cool. When we got a few hundred yards from the car, River and Susan ran the remaining distance. What a perfect outing it was.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Chaoscillation: Love is in the Ripples

It's such a crazy game, trying to live together in separate worlds. We all carry our worlds around with us, after all. They spread out from us, from where we stand, roughly in the center, and swirl around us as we move. They are tangible and alive. Bring another person, their other world spinning all around them and reaching out as far as their mind has grasped, and the interplay between the two worlds becomes a factor. Where our worlds overlap and collide, especially where they don't line up well, waves ripple out. Sometimes our world, when we part, has been changed forever. This is the danger of bumping worlds with another person. Then two people. Then three people. Then a hundred people, a million, seven billion.

A casual touch, a word or a glance, can be contained. The damage, good or bad, can be minimized or localized. Our family, however, our close friends, with these we try to line up our worlds as far as we can. With these we like to pretend that we live in the same world, that we see the same things when we survey the land. Here there is greater opportunity to really catch a glimpse of another's world, but there are also great ripples and waves of interference. There is tension and the grating of square pegs and round holes. If you blur your eyes, you can almost make the edges line up. Don't look too closely. Close your eyes and listen or touch.

The writer makes a mistake, I think, when she has all of her characters live in one world, as though this has ever happened. Surely he knows that there has never been this flatness, this smoothness, this calm. Love is the interplay between two worlds, two people being alone together. Love is in the ripples, as is hate. The one world writer? She misses this, I think.

But then again, maybe that's the way it is in his world. Who can know?

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.