Rain, Civil War

By now they were completely soaked through. The other mourners that bothered to make the trip here from the church had hurriedly scurried away as soon as the preacher's book snapped shut. Life would not yet go on for these two men, however. They were waiting for a glacier, cold and creeping, that would finally catch up to them after countless years.

"Well what are you waiting around here for?" Albert asked his brother. "She's in the ground. It's over. Go back to Vermont. Go home." He didn't look up as he spoke. He just said his part and waited.

"I'm waiting for you, Albert." Michael responded. "We can't just..." He looked around, looked up at the sky. Globes of water exploded on his glasses. "This is ridiculous. We can't leave it at this. I need..."

He stopped short and grimaced while Albert smoldered, gaze unwavering from the headstone. He studied his brother with swelling eyes one last time, as if something would be different, as if the glacier's course could be diverted at the last second. Finally, he succumbed. Finally, he had no choice but surrender. Finally, he let the words go...

"I need you to forgive me."
For a moment they simply stood; silent and still. The wind and the rain heralded the glacier's arrival with their swirling, swelling static. It crept into the world, filling it with a killing chill.
Ultimately, Albert broke the silence. The only way out was through. His hands became fists.

"How dare you!" he said through teeth clenched with rage. "It was all your fault! Everything was!"

Albatross

The boy stood on the cliffs of the Falklands. His whole life had been on the islands, and he knew the cliffs well.

As was usual for this time of year, the skies and seas were gray. A painter might focus on the emerald green of the grass, and the boy's red sweater. The boy focused on what would become slashes of white paint swooping across the cliff face. The albatross.

His grandpa had taught him about the majestic birds and their ability to fly great distances around the world. He held the same albatross feather his grandpa had given him long ago, a few days before he died. Before his grandpa left the islands.

Jackalope

Oh God please no! I can't anymore!

But, he has no power to stop it, and it can only be the result of God's twisted will anyway. As soon as his ears pricked at the dogs' barking his legs were pumping again. Flight is all he is. He is the jackalope.

"That's it!" shouts the dogs' master in idiot joy. "I swear I saw it! There it is! That's really it!"

The hunt is ending; the chase is on. The dogs would drop dead of exhaustion before it was over. But maybe, just maybe, that man will yet find a way... to catch him.

If his desire is as strong as mine. Oh God... I have no more.

And the jackalope runs. And the dogs chase. And it is the most thrilling moment of the doomed man's life.

Princess

Heaped upon her cushions, holding back sobbing torrents of rage and shame, the Princess silently watched her mother get dressed.

Mother finished preening her every minutia in the mirror and returned her gaze once more to the Princess. The Matriarch was still visibly angry, but not as terrible as before. Had Mother not spoken then, Princess would have suspected herself altogether forgotten.

"Will you be good?" asked Mother, rhetorically. She had no faith in communication at this point, but she underestimated just how well the Princess really did understand- how intensely her resentment and shame still lingered.

Mother hurriedly left.

It was still early morning.

Princess had all day to amuse herself in that woman's house.

Side Effects May Include (pt 1)

So what is consciousness? Self-awareness? Sapience? We sure as hell don’t have the scientific definition down for this/these things. Were’ not even in the neighborhood because we can’t even come up with a practical (practice) definition. One that just gets the gist of what it is that we’re trying to figure out.

“Self Awareness” might be about the best term to explore. After all it was the particularly cited fulcrum on which human history was turned by SkyNet on Aug 29th 1997.

Is self-awareness what separates us from animals, vegetables, and minerals? I’ve recently come across a couple hypotheses on this quintessential conundrum that really struck me as profoundly plausible.

The first comes from Steven Johnson in his short, enlightening, natural exploration Emergence.

One portion contemplates our pattern recognition and inductive abilities with regards to estimating the behavior of our fellow human creatures. We use our ability to read and interpret body language and facial expressions, the verbal language itself, and our own personal knowledge of the world to determine what other people are thinking, what they’re going to do about it, and what they will expect US to do about it. This is an amazingly helpful survival ability! And I’ve personally never experienced it being discussed much at all. It facilitates us engaging in productive behavior since it gives us more information about the situation and it especially facilitates both collaborative and competitive behavior with our fellows. Of course… Together Everyone Achieves More! We’re not the only animals that do this. Dogs and wolves do this famously and to great effect, apes and dolphins as well of course.

It’s not he blind, dumb (but effective) cooperation of an ant colony or a flock of starlings. It’s higher order and cognitive and arguably it’s what we’re best at. After all, we’ve taken it beyond simply family or pack dynamics and built whole cities and nations in a deliberate act of special collaboration.

We did it deliberately but did we necessarily do it consciously? Were we ourselves aware of what we were doing? Well we didn’t see all ends when we started but it’d say the answer’s still a definite “yes”. So why don’t dogs and apes have cities? The dogs might have the opposable thumb excuse but the apes don’t. So, oh yes, let’s do remember that there is still a difference between man and animal. We are self-aware. Is this come divine quantum leave of consciousness between the species? At first gland of course it seems so. But yet inspection of our powerful pattern recognition abilities and our great capability to create a working model of each other creature we meet in our own minds, it becomes easy (as Mr. Johnson, suggests) to view our own self-aware consciousness as a logical evolution of this highly developed skill.

I might as well be on the moon.

Vastness is cleansing. Desolation amplifies the vastness of a place. Not that where I am is really desolate, but it's a damn far cry from "cluttered". I'm presently sitting on the banks of a lake, actually. There's plenty of sage, just like every other unpaved square inch of Northern Nevada. Even some regular old grass down there in the plain. But it's desolate enough that there's absolutely nothing blocking my line of sight over miles and miles of water (in the middle of the desert).

"When you come down to take me home
Send my soul away
when you come round you make me whole
Send my soul away"

I can also see in every direction, however, exactly where the lake ends. It is bound by a giant's jagged crown of dirt and rock There are craggy clumps sparsely scattered around this lake and one even jutting right out of it, the nominal "pyramid". The particular crag that I'm sitting next to has already been claimed by Reed, Miles, Dean, Dee, Mike, Tina and many overlapping others. I'll keep off it for now. It's too cold to go poking around someone else's landmark. Besides, I'd really be pushing my luck; I think I'm supposed to have a permit to be here.

Pyramid Lake is part of an Indian Reservation. I'm not sure what all you need a permit to do here. The highway runs right through so it's not like you need one just to be here which is all I'm looking to do. Well... sitting, looking, writing... munching some trail mix. Bust me for picnicking, officer, but certainly no fishing, camping, or spelunking. I reckon "trespassing" on a reservation is pretty redundant anyway.

I just need to be here. I need the space to stretch me out. I went around Lake Tahoe months ago when I first came into exile. It's beautiful and epic and profound but I haven't been back since. Its intricate beauty was not the tonic to fill my proscription. I drove passed Pyramid last weekend and decided immediately to plan this very trip to come stay a while. Tahoe I needed to see. Here I need to be.

At work our office doesn't even have a window. I'm face to face with a computer screen all day that's counting on me to solve its puzzles. I go home then, and spend the rest of my waking hours in the cubby-hole of my room face to face with another computer screen. I'm counting on it, this time, to enrich me- but just distracting me will suffice if that's all it can manage. I pretend it's a portal through which I can download information about the real world and experience it at my leisure. Really though it's just a pod, which seals me in and soaks me in red suspension fluid and pipes sensation into me intravenously.

That's why I need to get out here into the utterly open for a while. Give this exile thing a proper go. Spend some time with just me, myself, and this giant body of water surrounded by nothing but dirt. It doesn't drain to the sea, this lake. The water comes from Tahoe and is sent directly back up into the sky by the sun's (usually) unhindered grasp. This lake doesn't go anywhere, it just is. It's massive and existential, and it doesn't give a warm fart about me being here... which is just right.

I suppose the kids who come out here on summer/fall/whenever nights to light a bonfire and drink and screw around in caves do all that because they're fed up with the vastness of their habitat. They make sure to paste their name on the rocks because they want to keep that precious notable irregular jutting up out of so much nothing. I'm happy to be here but I don't care to contemplate the horror of being permanently immersed in vast desolation. I guess those kids must escape, if even just for a Saturday night, over the hill into "The biggest little city in the world!" so they can finally taste some external stimulation. But it's the opposite I need and I'm finally getting a dose.

Exiled out here, finally with no escape from my thoughts, I am forced to produce. The only way out is through.

Law School Exam Time
Three Hour Kicks to the Head
Bend over the Bar

Exam This Morning
Gas Leak at School, No Problem
Fumes Bring Clarity