Tom the BoyDecember 9, 2006

Tom the Boy

To See All But SeeingDecember 6, 2006

Andrew looked at Kate as if she were new. He had never noticed the tiny freckles of light grey in her hazel eyes, but now this seemed to be the only attractive thing about her. The pores of her nose and cheeks were bigger than usual, oil issued freely from them. The hairs of her eyebrows was uncombed and dandruff flakes hid beneath. Her nostrils moved more than usual, they snorted at him.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said. “You’re just going to dump me? Just like that?” The whites of her eyes were etched with sprawling red lines. Andrew did not answer her. She spun, her hair lashed his face, and she trotted away. She got smaller, but he saw her with constant clarity. At first he thought it was his memory, the possiblility that he would never see her again, that retained her image in his eyes. He squinted. He could see the tangled split ends of her long hair as clearly as if they were inches from his face, although she was now blocks away.

Andrew heard the voices of people on the street around him, but they were muffled, and faded in and out, as if through a thick cloud of white noise. His hearing, his smelling, all of his senses were dull, except his vision.

That night, after heavy drinking, he went to his front lawn. He lied down in the grass, hands behind his head, and looked at the stars. He found Jupiter. It was a slolid yellow color and did not twinkle. He relaxed and stared for a while until he could see the moons around the planet. He saw Jupiter’s big red spot, saw the clouds around the surface stirring like water. He looked closer, he could see the droplets that formed the clouds. They spun like maniacs.

It was like he was zooming in and there was no limit to his lens. Except unlike a camera, though he knew every droplet in the clouds of Jupiter, the rest of the night sky was not forced out of the shot. Each star of a thousand galaxies penetrated his eyes with their crackling fiery cores.

He imagined himself, his eyes, pupils growing wider and wider, empty black fading lightly out of them until they began to glow.

The Aleph

An Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe. For instance: a silvery spiderweb at the center of a black pyramid, a broken labyrinth (London), endless eyes, all very close, studying themselves in you as though in a mirror, all the mirrors on the planet (and none of them reflecting yourself). An Aleph allows you to see everything, from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion. If found, it is advised that one avoids an Aleph.

On an unrelated note, here is a Salvador Dali painting to attempt an illustration of the everything-ness of an Aleph.

Living Still Life

The Vivid and Continuous DreamDecember 3, 2006

First of all, I’ve always had my reservations with blogging. My initial thoughts are: who’s going to care? and what do I have to say? It’s like when someone demands that you tell a joke, a funny joke, immediately. And it seems just a little narcisistic, doesn’t it? Am I as ficticious as a literary hero? Perhaps, but unfortunately not as heroic or truthful. How does one adequately represent him/her self via the internet? Do I have a responsibility to do so? I don’t imagine that anyone will read this who is not already my friend, so I’m not even going to bother with information about myself. I’m also not going to talk about politics, religion, or my feelings. I am currently working on writing a book of short stories, a novel, a screenplay, a stageplay, another novel, I’m helping to develop an encyclopedia of all things robot, and am studying under John Updike, Jorge Louise Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, and Shakespere. They are all pretty cool dudes, Kafka can be a downer sometimes.

I have plans to visit Europa, the third Galilean moon of Jupiter, next summer to harvest the rarest and most delicious of all galactic delicacies: space ketchup. And that makes me happy.

That’s me, the robot. This is my sleeping position. You should see my poses when I’m awake. Of course, because I am a computer my batteries are fueled by rock action.