there are helicopters twice a day overhead. i assume the noise sends a message. every time, a single neuron is diverted into ensuring the blades of fascism recede into the distance. twice now, i have envisioned an alternative, which quickly requires active thought aversion.
Discussion
Replies:
0
the laughter of children, to me, is nothing like a bell—each exclamation forms birdsong, yet already their calls are enriched beyond avian repetition. one wonders if birds are assigned their song, or if each one chooses its own in a coming of age ceremony. one wonders if birds feel trapped by voice boxes tuned for pattern recognition. one wonders if a bell could ever sing the song of a brain. one wonders if every single brain is a divine object.
silent spring—our exclamations form the song of the summer. silence is a ceasing of motion. noise tells us that we yet live, that we vibrate in unison, in harmony, and all the discords between and beyond.
a metallic spring is an alien structure we have perfected to achieve humanlike motion. basquiat drew springs erupting from hands, shoulders, legs, wings—we are not "mere" muscle and sinew. we remain beyond scientific characterization. we know biological pathways like so many star charts—some are thousands of years old. do we rely less on star charts now?
- the stars will never reveal your location to your enemy, but they do read all your fan mail.
- the stars are independently wealthy but they get their teller to launder them some small bills. it's a joke between them. the stars aren't kidding. she isn't either. they fall in love while robbing the bank together at the same time by accident. it wasn't an accident. their friends set them up
- access to the stars is not limited to US military personnel.
- the stars cannot be jammed—oh, but i bet they're fun at parties!
there is a moment of transition in air-filled spaces, the split second that separates an adjacent chord from the sound that signals a resonant frequency. the sound is precisely how i imagine a god would sound, lowercase g, a pagan deity who goes unnamed because it is indistinguishable from the world around it.
it is not an "alternate" universe that calls to me. there is no other reality. there is no timeline but this one. you have been freed of the pain of regret that pervades the thrill of an alternative. your animal brain perpetually seeks the higher ground. you use better analogies. you realize your brain exhibits pretty robust behavior at several scales. you are surprised. every individual human brain is divine, you conclude. or magic.
classical physics (a term i invoke ironically to refer to "modern-day physics, with the same derogatory tone of revulsion that modern-day physicists use to refer to euclid")—i forgot what i was talking about. euclid and archimedes should have a tag team tank mech with water blasters and a screwdriver heavy melee weapon
i think archimedes would lead the gundam project, euler would do integrative software systems and multi-body simulation, srinivasa ramanujan would be the gundam pilot, cynthia dwork would invent minovsky radiation, isis lovecruft is the same isis lovecruft and pilots the core fighter, gauss is comic relief, david hilbert is gihren zabi. i think char aznable plays himself. oh and einstein is lalah
reminds me again to avenge albert einstein and unify a theory of gravity. in this distance between the world and its imagined deity (more a window of time than space) is where the variables have been hiding. "you'll be safe soon", i whisper. "i have been building a theory strong enough to protect them", i scribble.
[several months later. explosions, screams, trees cracking]
"teach kal-el to read", i wrote, handwriting as neatly as possible under the circumstances, for the first and last time understanding that fear of criticism caused me to avoid being seen with my writing. the mind is at once infinite and infinitesimal. surely it breaks some sort of physical causality that you can influence your brain from within your brain?
what about the brains of others? but this one i know the answer to. oh albert. i did my best. when they wake up our little variable theory won't have to hide like we did
i don't believe in life after death, but that doesn't stop me from communicating with him. i was given peyote by a friend who had lived here for millennia. we designed the time capsule for kal-el together. i tried to put the whole power of oral history to pen and paper. i was unsuccessful in my attempt to flawlessly replicate a cultural technology developed across millennia in a different medium. jed suggested keeping the attempts. "we can only ever attempt to do great things."
his eyes sparkled. he could not have known that this would change me. i remain unsure that english can express this feeling—epiphany first, relief, caution, awe. as we awaited our demise, eyes sparkling with starshine—
no, i concluded. if given the choice, i will always choose to live!
[PSA: stop bad things from happening earlier!! reject nihilism! protect people! build things that give life!]
