Category: Fiction

Deaf and afraid

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”
– Isaiah 1:2-3

“When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the
whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first
begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realised
that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It
made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then,
when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,”
as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it
wasn’t singing and never had been singing — only roaring as any lion
might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can’t really have been
singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my
nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the
longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew
tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.
Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really
are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did
hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard
anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion
spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard
only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only
barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. And when they laughed
— well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than
anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of
hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life.”
– The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis

Excerpt #1

The powers that be in the Corps thought that the Ceres mineral may have potential for an Alcubierre drive that could let man expand to the stars. Corps miners had extracted some and found negative energy density (a mass lower than that of the vacuum, negative mass)–a type of exotic matter never before found. Now a folded manifold of space-time around the ship could, theoretically, bring two points together. The ship jumps from the first point to the second, faster than light.

Insight and adulthood

My grandmother told me a funny anecdote. One day I pointed to her belly and said “Grandma, you’re fat.” She then made an effort to lose weight.

As you know, children can have peculiar insight and speak the truth they know. They are both perceptive and imaginative. We see in part and a child’s view can be illuminating. But children ask questions we may forget to ask. It’s not epiphany, but something residing inside the young that pierces the fog of adulthood with freshness and undeterred vision.

However, childhood also used to be the road to adulthood. Today’s childhood is a created state. It’s not a recent one, but instead of poetry and classics, we have created the other worlds of Star Wars, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Disney, all the way back to the fairy tales. That Disney was brilliant is just a statement of his realization that childhood was ripe for his creations and seizing that opportunity. However, these worlds do attempt to have moral teachings.

Things like child workers in the West were things best left behind and we are best left trying to train them up through better fiction. I don’t think we can fully return to the denser stories of yesterday, i.e. Milton’s Paradise Lost is too dense for children’s minds. Maybe the quality of school curriculum is too far gone.

I’m not pessimistic, but toy stores don’t give the appearance of teaching children valuable stories, i.e. only an unsettled identity. Archetypes should teach knowing the good and not just “knowing yourself,” which today means escapism focused on dissolution of self.

Shouldn’t the old moral be in fiction now imparted to our children?

Developing…

Physical abundance v information abundance

Remembering the old work by Negroponte, bits versus atoms. In the digital economy we learn, organize, and tell stories that are ephemeral.

Electrons versus photons is a close thing to atoms versus bits. It seems that the abundance economy is not physical, but light you’re looking at right here. A simple handshake can move mountains, e.g. a digital transaction with physical tether.

Every object contains its corresponding bits, like an atom with its ghost.

Concealment

The world of concealment, dark figures, breathing deep. One dimensional creatures slip out into two dimensions briefly, ever so briefly. Into three dimensions. Eternal destiny is three to two to one dimensions, out of sight. They still hide in shade.
Imagination can make the creatures slip into three.
We are no mere mortals, but “gods.”

Every argument is eternal. We don’t think what each means. Words take flight and move mountains.

(working…)

Extant

On my trip to Rome, I encountered ruins that offer escape. Back to the emanations of strength and high culture deteriorating. Marble remembrances, rocks you never thought could die. How did things so majestic become dust?

How did centuries pass so quickly, yet rock rot?

The great Colosseum, its floors and walls dead.

There is no memory of its builders. Those men who designed it are not even in history.

The things we hold great become dust. The positions we value, the accomplishments, beneficent action. Laurels are made of fragile leaves.