fiction(al), science

You can't build a car that violates the laws of physics.  Same goes for a time machine.  You can't go just anywhere, only to places it will let you go.  You can only go to places that you will let yourself go.

I don't miss him anymore.  Most of the time, anyway.  I want to.  I wish I could but unfortunately, it's true: time does heal.  It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.  If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge.  Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience.  Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language.  The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state.  It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter. 

Everyone has a time machine.  Everyone is a time machine.  It's just that most people's machines are broken.  The strangest and hardest kind of time travel is the unaided kind.  People get stuck, people get looped.  People get trapped.  But we are all time machines.  We are all perfectly engineered time machines, technologically equipped to allow the inside user, the traveler riding inside each of us, to experience time travel, and loss, and understanding.  We are universal time machines manufactured to the most exacting specifications possible.  Every single one of us.

cy twombly, 4/25/28 - 7/5/11

cape point

"Do you come here often?"

"Yes, and I enjoy it every time."

jennifer egan

Ted stepped toward the relief. He felt as if he'd walked inside it, so completely did it enclose and affect him. It was the moment before Eurydice must descend to the underworld a second time, when she and Orpheus are saying good-bye. What moved Ted, mashed some delicate glassware in his chest, was the quiet of their interaction, the absence of drama or tears as they gazed at each other, touching gently. He sensed between them an understanding too deep to articulate: the unspeakable knowledge that everything is lost.

"The pause makes you think the song will end.  

And then the song isn't really over, 

so you're relieved.  But then 

the song does actually end, because 

every song ends, obviously, and 

THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL."

The whole book is worth it, but if you're pressed for time, 176-251.  It's the first time a PowerPoint made me feel so many different things. 

As we drove up the N2, Linda pointed out the different shades of green that made up the landscape. I said mmhmm and nodded in acknowledgment, continuing to stare out the window. I had been enjoying the neon and pine and jade and moss as well.

Matthias sped up and the colors began to blur. My mind drifted to David and how his brows always furrowed when he was in the thick of one of his drawings. He would hold two or three crayons in one hand, and furiously color with the other. The craggy lines of a sailboat, the different blues used for swirling waves, an invasion of lightning bolts in an otherwise empty sky - these were the details that made his pictures alive, different, full of emotion, entirely his.

I last saw David four years ago, so he is now eleven. He would have drawn everything I've seen here and since last December so beautifully. I picture him insisting that we stop the car, running out looking around crouching down touching this and that - examining the big and small things with awe and curiosity.

Jim Carroll

Little kids shoot marbles
where the branches break the sun
into graceful shafts of light
I just want to be pure

I went to the SA National Gallery today and fell in love with their current exhibit: The Indian in DRUM Magazine. The photographs, taken from the archives of DRUM, depict Indian golfers, political activists, daredevils, pinup girls, and gangsters (to name a few) in underworlds, shantytowns, soccer fields, and bohemian jazz clubs. The purpose is to confront stereotypes of the Indian community in South Africa, who arrived as indentured laborers in the 1860s, by showing them to be more than just rich minority shopkeepers.

No pictures were allowed and they weren't selling any prints, so I had to scrounge up a couple from the Internet. These aren't my favorites (Amaranee Naidoo, The Flower Seller, and Indian Women Take to Booze! were), but they'll have to suffice for now.

Sonny Pillay author of Shadow People, Pumpy's Jazz/Goodwill Lounge, Crimson League/Salot Gang fighting for taxi kingship, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, Amaranee Naidoo and Tommy Chetty riding the Wall of Death, Sewsunker "Papwa" Sewgolum the two-time winner of the Natal Open and three-time winner of the Dutch open who took tea in his car because only whites were allowed in the tournament clubhouse, Links Padayachee and Juggie Naidoo, Benny Singh with his "black" boxing, Mother India, Runya Naidoo and Violet La Tange who conquered ballroom dancing, and both flower sellers - I'll remember.

linda

karnival aquarium, kyung jeon

norwegian wood

i began re-reading this the other day, to remember. apparently they are turning it into a movie. should be interesting - hopefully not in a totally botched up way.

There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand -- ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time it appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. 'Wake up,' it says. 'I'm still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I'm still here.' The kicking never hurts me. There's no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. At the Hamburg airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

almost two months ago i wrote this: it's interesting how some memories are so clear, while you have difficulty recollecting the smell, taste, and touch of others. i found the draft as i started to write this post. at the time i abandoned it because i didn't have the energy to dig deep enough to put everything into words, to make the connections. i've since forgotten what triggered me to write.

i don't want the memory to come back -- for it to kick me. but it inevitably will, likely because i didn't write it down.