Some things are afoot (while other things ahand) in the F-Vac camp, so I won’t be posting for a bit. I have some things in the works that will make your RSS reader implode from the mere mention of it. So, you might need to reinstall it if you’re reading this.
If you visit here with any regularity, you’d know I don’t go link crazy with other writer’s blogs. Not because I’m an egomaniac (I am, but that’s not involved), but because I’d rather spend my time actually writing than “networking” or “collaborating” with other writers online and seeking their approval. Writers are intolerably self-absorbed creatures and their praise is just a outward recognition of similarity, not always an appraisal of good craftsmanship. Usually.
So in the interest of paradox I’d like to direct your attention to my friend Matt’s new chapbook. I got it in the mail yesterday along with some lovely trading cards. I suggest you consider going to his site, then spending $5 on the book. You’d probably spend that money on something stupid like cigarettes or Top Ramen for a starving child. Matt makes coffee for a living, so it’s like providing sustenance to the needy anyways.
Of less consequence is a new design for my portfolio site. Once again, Internet Explorer 6 causes my eyes to itch and fall into my stomach from having to write hacks for the simplest of code.
Sans documentation, the vengeful designer arranged the player so that it could only be paused only by using any two or more prehensiles of domesticated animals.
I’ve written three entries for our “Best of the Decade” list, for last decade’s music releases. We had our readership give us ideas, we voted ourselves, did some weighing here and there, and came up with our overall top ten.
If this kind of legislative process was found in a form of government, I’m not sure which one it would be. That’s your homework for the night.
Best of the Decade, Number Eight: Frodus – And We Washed Our Weapons in the Sea
Best of the Decade, Number Five: Further Seems Forever – The Moon Is Down
Best of the Decade, Number Two: At the Drive-in – Relationship of Command
She buzzed across 84, then to up onto 290 — in the early morning in the warm, lemony subcompact. The tape player vacillated between working to cassette-consuming to completely inoperable, so in its lieu the graces of AM radio were the soundtrack for the travel home. She had a running joke, which very few of her friends found humorous, that it would be fixed at the turn of the millennium, while digital devices would see their own demise. So far, none of that was the case.
There were almost no other travelers on the highways tonight. They were all either still at their festivities, or drunk, or sleeping it off, or just sleeping. The station, as a commercial-free gift for their loyal listenership, exhaled a steady stream of broadcast news bits from since artificial, human radio signals existed, each section of relevant bits book-ended by a sonic flourish, lasting barely a second, created by an overzealous post-prod technician. The agglomeration of world news scenes flashed in and out, and formed a disjointed, schizophrenic narrative of worldwide catastrophes and unprecedented events.
Her attention drifted back to the conversations that had happened throughout the night, with her friends and acquaintances: the task of the musician to keep the listener’s immersion into the art, proper and regrettable concepts for tattoos, the most effective method of scaring girls outside their windows, and armchair theological musings on the impact of the Parousia occurring directly at midnight (in her time zone, naturally). The conversations were as similar as the current radio broadcast in their disorder and meaning, but it was the complete, unedited patchwork of dialogues that would make the entire night a memory for years to come.
So as she sped through the city of dozens of colleges at least ten miles over the speed limit — ready for sleep, through the frigid northeastern winter air, on a virtually barren major highway — the sounds of the world behind the new millennium met her ears and was a hopeful suggestion of the new years that lie in wait.
The tires of vehicles, spun by overly cautious drivers braving the unplowed streets, had cut striations into the hardened snow on the road. He used the grooves as a suggestion for his routing, and as he ran he imagined what the revenge would look like on his reversal, at the places where his footprints exacted justice upon the crisscrossing sets of lines for cutting their parallel audacities into nature’s flat sheet of white flaky toss-downs.
The dense suburban sprawl rolled with medium families in miniature houses and small hills and sidewalk-parking. The houses glowed and bubbled with light and gatherings from the inside, while their outsides blinked with lines of candy-colored illuminations strung expertly along gutters, bushes, and thresholds: just as the tire-tracks, another mark of men.
He turned around at a cul-de-sac, thus creating the midpoint. In the spaces between songs in his ears, the only sound to be heard was his breathing and the only motions to be seen outside of the endless stream of houses were his gloved hands and the warm steam of his exhalations. Like a bundled pink dragon he threatened to breathe fire with each striding rhythm, and turn to water each new territory of imperfect frost that appeared in front of him on the yuletide journey home.
She waited for him outside his home. Her nerves jittered to the tips of her fingers like cascading pebbles; the leftover shake and rumble of emotions from the recent birth of her cousin’s child, to which she attended, coupled with the imminent distress she forecast would occur when he came home. She tried to assuage the simmering anxiety and conceal the tremble of her voice when making idle conversation with a pair of passersby she picked out of the streaming crowd of people, with whom she was acquainted and had not seen in quite some time. It helped little. Their weary eyes were alighted with curiosity by her unannounced presence, but were of no comfort to her and no assistance to her plans.
He came sauntering home right as the passing crowds on the dusty road began to thin — his form swelled as he approached, silhouetted against the flooding light from the setting sun. When it appeared to her that he noticed her, his gait became more abrupt. She smiled at him as best she could to mask the reluctance of her words in abeyance at the tip of her tongue.
He kissed her chastely on the forehead and stepped inside, where he relieved himself of the sack of tools that he carried in front of him, marsupial-like, to and from the worksite. He was visibly bone tired from an extended day of labor, but she knew it was those kinds of days that brought him the greatest joy: to mold and build by his own hand and energies; to create and enjoy claim to that creation.
They talked of mundane matters and he offered her some fruit and water after she told him about her hasty departure to see him. She accepted but only gave the water interest. When she parted her lips to give a vague, noncommittal description of her brief travel across the town to his home, by automation she told him everything, all at once, in a terrifying river of hasty words — all about the visitation of glory and beauty and the irresistible message and the singular child she now carried…a child that she knew would become both a blessing and curse upon her earthly life.
He said nothing in response; an unfavorable sign as it was his idiosyncratic reaction when encountering something unfavorable. Standing bolt upright and gripping the wooden edge of the table, she waited for him to speak, knowing it to ultimately be in vain. Instead, he turned away and tended to the tools in his sack. He never spoke when he was angry and she was near, instead choosing to channel his emotion inwardly or as a slow, leaking, creative release that involved his own person and whatever inanimate object happened to be within reach at the time.
Quietly she slipped outside of his small home, defeated. It was now well into dusk and she remained outside in the cooling, quiet air, with her back against the wall right next to the entrance. She wanted to hear a small sign of life coming from inside — anything to reassure her that, though her future life with him was all but over, he was still there and would be there in seasons to come, living and finding a way to extract a fulfilled life in the work of his hands, however imperfect this surrogate happiness might become.
There was a loud crash and clinking of pottery being thrown against the wall and its pieces falling to bits onto the floor. She slapped a palm over her mouth to throttle a sob from escaping, but the sentiment trickled out the corners of her closed eyes. It would now take another miracle, she was sure, to restore to full life what was now dead and buried between them.
“If events ever come beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which the events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the law’s proviso. ‘If A, then B:’ it says, “But this time instead of A, A2,’ and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies ‘Then B2′ and naturalises the immigrant, as she well knows how. She is an accomplished hostess.”
-C.S. Lewis, Miracles