Section 3
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[edit] Continuance
The man sat in front on his computer, the pale glow of the screen casting shadows on his face. He yawned, stretched, grimmaced as his back creaked. He had been sitting in front of the computer for hours - but damnit, he was going to finish a game of solitaire if it took him all night!
Everytime he got close there would be one card that he couldn't place anywhere - and underneath that card, he could see the one card that he needed. It was frustrating - always being so close. He leant forward, wiping sweat from his forehead, and started a new game. He felt lucky! Maybe this would be the game that he finished. It was an addiction, he realised. Not as bad, perhaps as strynchine, but an addiction nonetheless. He had spent months kicking his Minesweeper habit, but he hadn't been strong enough to resist the lure of the computer. And then he had begun to play Solitaire. At first, he thought, just one game! But that was how it always begun... and how it always finished...
The TV continued blaring in the background. The Simpsons was on.. again! (Weirdly, every time he ever got to see this show, it was the same episode, some bizarre Halloween episode). He wanted to turn the tv off, but then he woudl be alone with just him and the solitaire - he wasn't sure if he could handle the pressure. First, he had lost his job. Then his friends. Now he was losing his sanity, he feared. But he would win at solitaire.. even if it cost him everything.
[edit] Wii
Sebastian had often wondered why houses never came with urinals in the bathrooms. Surely they would be more convenient for males than always having to use the toilet. And it would solve the arguments over whether the seat should be left up or down. He decided he should write a letter to the editor.. or perhaps post a message on his blog. It was an important social issue and it was his responsibilty to make it heard! He thought maybe he could make his own version of a urinal and install it. Then he could take some photos and post them on his blog as well. It was an exciting thought! The most improtant question is what he would use for the urinal cakes - perhaps real cakes he thought! Then realised that didn't make sense.
Meanwhile, across town, his enemy, Alfred Ildico, was busy in his own workshop. He was building a weapon of mass distraction - a gigantic ray gun that would beam mental thoughts into everyone's heads - he would use blogs as his inspiration - pointless, inane chatter that would drive everyone to distraction thinking about it. And then, he, and he alone would remain sane - and he would rule the world! He laughed insanely, before realising that he had to be careful to remain sane.. in order to rule the world. He continued to build the ray-gun - a bolt here, a screw there, a nail, some glue, some string. He wondered where the stickytape should go - everything he built seemed to require stickytape, and he had never worked out why. Best not to think about it too much, he thought, realising as he did that he was still thinking about it. How can you think about nothing, he thought? Was it possible? Or was thinking about nothing still thinking about something, ie, thinking about thinking about nothing? He got a headache and decided to go lie down.
[edit] The Da Vinci Cod
It was still dark when Mark got out of bed. He had packed his bag the night before and laid out his clothes so it only took him a few minutes to get ready. He had been planning the fishing trip for over a month and now that it had begun, his excitement was palpable. He rubbed his hands together briskly, trying to warm up. He felt lucky, he thought, maybe this would be the trip! Maybe this time he would finally catch the Da Vinci cod! He knew it wouldn't be easy. Many a man had tried to capture the Da Vinci cod. They tried different lures, various bait, new fangled rods, everything in their power, to try and master the Da Vinci cod. But they had all failed. Until now perhaps, Mark thought, grinning to himself.
The full moon shone brightly as Mark made his way to his favourite spot by the bank of the lake. There was no-one else around, he was only one there. He opened his bag and began to remove his tools. His rod. His bait. His lures. But the most important tool was his patience - a tool that couldn't be bought in shops - or if it could, only for an exhorbitant price.
He paused, closing his eyes - breathing deeply, relaxing. Then, with a practiced flick off the wrist he cast the lure across the water. The lure gently touched down on the surface, causing small ripples to move across the pond. The ripples cotninued to spread, ultimately impacting on much more than Mark could ever have anticipated...
[edit] Big Tony... James.. Someone...
"James," the bartender said, "There's a call for you."
Big James pushed his beer-sodden manuscript away and looked at the bartender, raising his left eyebrow. "For me? But everyone knows not to call me here."
"They're calling your mobile. How would they know your at the bar?"
"Of course," said Big James, nodding meaningfully as he took the cell phone out of his pocket.
"Hello" said the voice on the phone, "Is that Huge James?"
"No, this is Big James."
The caller hung up in Big Jame's ear. This angered Big James. His face was almost as red as his shirt. It wasn't a good idea to make Big James angry, as many had found out to their detriment. Big James took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled his anger away. Maybe another beer would help? He reached into his pocket and drew out his wallet. Searching into it, he found only a few pennies, and an expired credit card. He knew he was supposed to have cut it up to focus on what he was going to do, but the hollow in his stomach just wouldn’t let him. He was hungry. Unfortunately he only had enough small change to order a small pizza with extra pepperoni. Luckily, his adopted pleasure-withholding mantra allowed him to make such sacrificial choices. If he was honest with himself, though, he was actually starting to get some strange enjoyment from doing so.
"Sortez de mon lit de fleur!," his teacher had told him long ago. Initially, he'd been annoyed with his teacher's random sayings - these kind of white boy zen statements that had little impact on him, except giving him some great headaches - but he seemed now to understand this strange circular logic, especially since he bothered to translate the saying into some clarity. "By withholding pleasures one heightens the enjoyment of that which comes naturally. But withholding pleasure too long can result in problems, not to mention constipation."
Shaken out of his revelry by the voice on the phone acknowledging his pizza order, "ten minutes". He checked his wallet. He didn't realize that his cell phone had a digital clock on it as he always used his calendar. He took out his pen and marked the appointment. Ten minutes! He'd be ready! He'd pay exact change of course; no tip, no nothing. Big James was a mean son of a bitch. Everyone knew that. Just like Chad Thompson He decided that it was time for Chad Thompson to get into some real trouble - time for him to show his chops! He picked up the manuscript, wiped the beer away, and dryly and mechanically resumed writing...
[edit] Running
Sara was tired of running on her treadmill. She had been running and running, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Maybe she would catch a bus next time, she thought.
Wiping the perspiration from her body, she drunk greedily from her water-bottle, parching her urgent thirst. She shuffled over to the pantry, contemplating the selection of food: caviar, smoked salmon, champagne. But no biscuits for the caviar - damnit - she couldn't live like this! She heaved a dramatic sigh, a pointless gesture as there was no one there to commiserate.
[edit] Blue Balls
"Carlo!" He heard the anxious voice as a freezing blast of air and his bulldog "Rowdynu" came rushing into the room. Obscured by Clouds was on the turntable, full blare, and he could hear his roommate repeatedly saying the same thing, the same thing. "Rowdynu, go outside" "Carlo, Rowdynu has turned blue!" "He got too cold"
He felt the strychnine kick in, the familiar creep up his backbone never failed to give him the willys. Who were these other people? Snow fell off boots and slowly melted into the throw rug. A blue bulldog? People milled around. There was no beer in the fridge. Chicken Train dropped into play as the needle scratched another song over the loud speakers. Chicken Train, Runnin' All Day! Chicken Train! Running All Day! Chicken Train, Can't Get it Off, Can't Get it Off! Chicken Train ...
"Carlo!"
"Take care of your dog, man!"
The door closed. Rowdynu searched around the living room for cats. There were only Chickens ... Bok bok bok, take the chickens away
Did he? Lazer beam, in my brain, lazer beam, in my dream, lazer beam, can't get it off, can't get it off ... Looking at the bulldog, he came over, wanting some attention. His lips looked blue. Then his skin. Then it didn't. Then it did. Chicken Train, take the chickens away!
Oh wow man, my bulldog is Blue!
The truck keys must have been in his pocket. It cranked up in the cold, with fits and sputters. Rowdtnu, the Blue bulldog sat inside while Carlo swept the fresh snow off the windshield. The shattered windshield. The dove flew up just as he was driving to work and hit the windshield shattering it into a huge spiderweb that reached from one side to the other windshield.
He got inside and couldn't see. His breath froze into crystals that danced in the night lights. Turning, he could see the blue dog. Here we are back out in the cold where he turned blue, he might not be blue, but if he gets cold, will he turn blue again?
Maybe a deeper shade of blue.
He was getting tangled up in blue.
The windshield was impossible to see out of, but he backed out into the street.
A fresh layer of snow hid all previous traffic. Everything was perfect and white. Crystalline halos, the very air was alive with them and the street looked like a long magic tunnel, an impossibly long ride to the telephone. There was a telephone out here somewhere. His head slammed back against the cab of the truck as the ringing in his ears roared beyond speech.
Tell the Vet my bulldog has turned blue and that I need to know if he will be okay. I am not sure if he is really blue or just looks blue, because he kinda does, but maybe not right now.
As he walked home, it was like dancing with snowflakes. Rowdy danced around him like the street lights, like the crystals, like the chicken train, like UFO which was playing right now. The blast of warm air made his skin sting. Snow dripped off his boots into the throw rug. Rowdynu didn't look blue right now. There was no beer in the fridge.
[edit] Song for that Stream
He was sitting listening to the old man, awed by his words, which were hardly audible. He had thought this man was in his eighties, but amazingly he was only sixty-four. Life had been unkind to him.
This old man's name was Thomas. He was an indigenous man in an aboriginal community of some two thousand people. He was a dignified man. The nameless man who spoke to him, writing down his words for a history book, wore a plain red tee shirt. He felt privileged to be listening to the man's life story.
The community they lived in was in Cherbourg, an aboriginal community some three hours from Brisbane. It was rather a nice community.
Whenever the nameless man spoke of visiting this place, his friends and colleagues would invariably say: "Oh, is it safe?" It was safe. Sure there had been TV news reports showing the place run down. But the nameless man in red always maintained, that if you held the camera this direction it looked like a town in decay - but if you held the camera this way, it was a beautiful community.
This man was an elder. People still looked up to elders. Thomas spoke so softly, but every word, no exaggeration, felt like a dew drop in a desert. The man in the bright shirt wrote hurriedly. He had never learnt to write in shirt-hand, so he had adapted and could now write very fast in long hand. It was a sight to behold.
Thomas was telling his story. "Of course, this is not where I was born. I and my people are from a place just outside of Townsville. We are connected to the place where we live. In my home place, we had a song for that tree, and a song for this stream. We knew each of them."
The nameless man was deeply impressed. he had no idea that the connection with the land could be so intimate. He looked around the community where they now sat, on hot summer's day on a balcony of an old church, and he asked Thomas: " Do you have a song for that tree here or the Barambah Creek down the road too?"
The old man shook his head sadly. "No, I don't. This is not my land. Those songs belong to the people who were born in this place."
The man in the red tee shirt was stunned. He had not realised. It was only just dawning on him the meaning of these things. He could not help but let a single tear escape down his cheek, before he tried to regain some control.
The man in the red tee-shirt walked home to the nearest town, which was forty minutes by foot. As he did so, he wondered about humanity's connection to our environment. This nameless man had never been a 'conservationist' or a 'greenie' by nature. nevertheless, he could not help but think back to his time by the waters edge, looking out at the deep ocean, and seeing a whale in the distance - at one with nature. Now, he had heard of a time, still here, where people are connected to the land and to the environment and not alienated.
The man in the red shirt was sad. There was much to be learnt here. But for some reason, the resources were being sent elsewhere.
[edit] Strip Back
In the beginning there were no computers, no Internet. Animals communicated with each other in purity without words, bereft of the symbolic intricacies of language. Of course it was always eat or be eaten, as usual. Then the monkeys decided to come down out of the trees. They used sticks to measure the depth of water and bananas to draw things in the sand. Later they chipped things into stone. Invented a printing press. One clever one with a name that rhymed with 'cabbage', invented a mechanical computer. Which led to an electronic computer. A PC. A Modem. Which leads us to why we are here today: in deep trouble.
Even before the computer was invented, Jim had a problem. He started writing his own 'novels' if one could call them that, when he was eleven. He worked furiously with a two-fingered typing style, as he devised his own detective murder mysteries. But even as he sat there he thought, 'there must be a better way than typing, and then re-typing if you make a mistake.' Looking back, Jim was longing for the invention of the computer, which, despite all the computer games and hi-tech 'graphics cards ' was, for him, about having a system that could allow him to edit his work and correct mistakes without having to re-type the whole thing again. Jim could not imagine the days of the typing-pool, where women and men would sit re-typing draft upon draft of text in what would now be a simple re-edit on a computer.
Jim had inadvertently frightened a lady with an email he sent once, when he asked for a set of documents and only got a hard copy. The lady informed him, by email, that there WAS no computer text version of it available. Jim had a complete meltdown. "But, it has been type-set.. there... there simply MUST be a version of this on text..... " he ranted. He continued: " I simply cannot endure the thought of re-typing something that some poor soul has already had to type in once..... Just think of how many times we have to scan or re-type text that, once entered, should not have to be typed ever again." Jim, somewhat disappointingly, never got a reply to that thoughtful, if intense, email.
[edit] Notes Scribbled on the Back of a Canvas
Walry was never known for his towering intellect. However, he was the most loyal and loving friend one could ever hope for, even accounting for people's incessant need to anthropomorphize their relationship with their dogs and cats. (That was Jim just now having a go at pet owners, and he realized it was purely malicious, because he had never owned a dog or a cat and wished he had).
Walry had not only been invited to contribute to Jim's proposal of a novel written by a community, but now he was being asked to 'give feedback' about it. Never mind that the word 'feedback' for him meant that awful screaming noise that occurred when the microphone got too close to the speaker system in almost every speech to which he was forced to listen.
And that made his thought go on a tangent. Walry paused and thought about public speaking. He had a theory about public speaking. It was not a literary theory or one of those 'shrink' theories, but a practical one. "How many speeches have you listened to in your life Jimmy?" Walry asked.
Jim was surprised by this question. "Ah, Walry, what has that got to do with proof-reading the manuscript?"
"Just a thought, just a thought."
Jim pondered for a moment. "Thousands and thousands, I suppose. Impossible to count, really."
"How many were any good?"
Jim laughed. He had been caught off guard by this whole line of questioning. "That is a lot easier to answer. And it has a two part answer. Of the speeches I have read or heard printed by historians and other commentators (usually BECAUSE they are regarded as excellent examples of speeches) I would say about twelve."
Walry was impressed by this first part of Jim's answer. To tell the truth, he was impressed by most of the things Jim said and had an almost childlike sense of awe, which Jim secretly envied.
George was in the room too, but he was pretending to be busily reading his copy of the manuscript and penciling in some notes on the margin (well, actually more scribbling enormous notes and crossing out whole sections of text).
Jim moved to the second part of his prolix answer. "As to speeches I have actually been PRESENT at that were excellent, ....... mmmmmmm " he mused for more than a long time. (George looked over at Walry and rolled his eyes, one of which was glassy). "I would say ten were excellent, fifteen were tolerable and the rest were overly long, out of touch with the mood of the audience," (Jim didn't notice Walry and George both stifle yawns), "...and in the end didn't actually SAY anything."
"So," Walry concluded slowly, "most speeches are like microphones too close to speakers, painful to listen to and best silenced as soon as possible."
George couldn't help himself, he blurted out. "I believe that one ought never to stand up to do a speech unless one has something substantial to say. This is even more necessary when one is making frequent speeches. Life is too short for wasting opportunities to speak by words that make no difference."
"Perhaps," Jim replied, giving in to the temptation to be contrary. "Nevertheless, every speech a person makes can't be expected to be world-shattering. I mean, take Lincoln in Gettysburg. He thought at the time of his speech that it was a disaster. It didn't get a brilliant response there at the time. it was only after it was printed in the newspaper that the true brilliance of it was revealed. I suspect that if someone went into a situation intending to make a 'great speech,' what would come out would actually be a concoction of 'try hard' words and 'artificial gravity.'"
George and Walry smiled at the thought of so many speeches made with a false sense of import.
"But, anyway," Jim shook his head as if to clear a bug from his ear, "what has this to do with the text?"
"Speaking of the text. I have read the section about 'Shade' and 'Billy Gates' and the dream-sequence section with the penguins.." George said after clearing his throat, as if to make an important speech. "But, for the life of me, I can't quite work out what it is saying. I feel it might be clever and insightful and a metaphor for something, but I can't really grasp it at all. I have read it several times. Do you think it matters if a whole section of text makes little sense?"
Jim showed his pearly white (save for the evidence of wine stain) teeth in broad grin. "I have always believed that the mind will accept nonsense so long as the final paragraph gives it sense. A little like watching all those close-up dots in an art gallery painting and then only when you step back do you see its the picture of a dog or whale with creation reflected in its eye."
George laughed.
"I have a question," Walry put his hand up, as if he were at school.
"Yes?" George and Jim sad together.
"To be self-conscious or not self-conscious?"
George and Jim stared at Walry with amazement and looks on their faces that were either horror or delight.
"I beg your pardon?" Jim asked, still feeling stunned.
"Well, it’s just, can a text hold the magic if it swings like a pendulum between the story and the writers of the story?"
George nodded slowly. "That, Walry, is the best of questions."
"Don't get me wrong, Jim and George, I think it’s great the way the story and the characters writing the story intermix, but is it like turning a camera around in a 'haunted house' movie and showing there is a film crew standing there. Does it destroy the flow and the suspension of belief?"
"Walry, you are amazing. But of course, the flow of a story is always up for debate, deletion, or revision, and certainly so in an experimental form such as this," Jim replied.
George had a thought, and was never one to leave such things unspoken. "I know what you are saying. Would anyone be offended if I used a religious metaphor?"
It was now Jim's turn to roll his eyes. "Depends on if it's a sermon or an example. But what can we expect from a retired minister," Jim said having a dig at George.
"It is like the Garden of Eden. Who was it that suggested, 'before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, there was no sin, because they did not know what sin was."
Walry, exhausted by his previous brilliant insight, felt that his head was now full and did not understand George's obtuse point. "What?"
"SO, are you saying, the reader ought to be left in the garden of the novel, unsullied by the awareness that there is a creative and intentional purpose behind it?"
"Perhaps," George nodded.
"ah," Jim rounded softly, but with quietly forceful words rammed in like a knife, "but the apple has been eaten, the knowledge has been revealed. The audience has seen the camera reflected in the mirror of the haunted house scene, and still keeps watching. The horse has bolted, the curtain has accidentally fallen to the ground revealing the half-dressed ballet dancers. nevertheless, the play is only into act one and it can and must continue."
