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diff --git a/desert-story.txt b/desert-story.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b1ad3af --- /dev/null +++ b/desert-story.txt @@ -0,0 +1,201 @@ +Claire woke up in a sleeping bag. The familiar shimmer of nylon against her skin. The smell of creosote and dampness. Already the darkness was lifting off the desert in front of her. She rolled over on the chaise lounge and groped the ground until she found her headlamp. + +The little tuna can stove was back against the wall of the house. She stretched until she could hook it with a fingertip. She filled it with alcohol and lit it with a match. As the stove heated up she poured the water and grounds into the moka pot. + +She sat up, still in the sleeping bag, and sipped the inky black coffee. She thought of something an ex had once said to her, "Claire, normal people want to be liked and accepted. You don't seem to give a shit. All you seem to care about is your coffee in the morning and your drinks in the evening". More or less. She took another sip. But not really. + +Little bubbles of the past had been welling up and bursting on the surface like that ever since the plane touched down yesterday evening. Every time she heard that horrid kitty litter crunch of someone walking on the endless gravel of Tucson, some bit of her younger self broke loose inside. + +She was facing west, but could tell that the sun had not cleared the horizon. Two Cardinals flitted in the Mesquite tree at the edge of the patio. Flashes of red amongst the blacks and greens. She listened to them talking, the thin chip of their song muted by the morning stillness. + +The desert began to sketch itself in the morning light, watercolor hues of sand and rock that surged together over the rolling canvas until everything was a million rioting shades of pink sandstone that held the river plain like a cradle, the dark green Palo Verde and Mesquite groves nestled like some dark scars in the blushing sand. It seemed to extend forever, spreading out to the west until it climbed up and disappeared into the green, juniper and pine cloaked world of the Catalina mountains. + +It was wet. The rain she had dreamed was not just a dream. Everything beyond the few feet of solid patio cover where she had slept was dripping. The foot of her sleeping bag was wet. She slid out into the cool of the morning, gravel gouging at her heels, and hung the sleeping bag to dry from a hook on the patio cover. + +She cupped her hand to the window and looked inside the house. Her grandfather was passed out in the recliner, fully reclined, just the way she had left him six or seven hours ago, when his eyelids had finally slid shut over the constellations of grief she had watched drift quietly across those dark expanses. The TV still flickered. Ever since she was a girl, the only way he had ever slept. + +-- + +The late evening sun was just starting to temper its edge, take a little something off finally, maybe give a little respite from this goddamn heat, Ambrose was thinking when the entirety of the gravel station lot just outside the window was swallowed by a giant dust cloud that might, he realized, have somewhere in it a car, a customer, perhaps even customers, something he had not otherwise seen since much earlier in the day, back when it was hotter than Ambrose's repertoire of swear words could convey. + +He'd been wondering for some time if he'd need to expand that repertoire for the jungle. The Army was unclear on many things, especially to Guardsmen like Ambrose, not the least of which was how many words he might need to describe the heat of Panama. + +He was still standing in the shadows of the garage wiping his tanned forehead with a greasy rag, trying to imagine humidity, or at least the idea of water, when he heard the door slam and the inevitable gravel crunch of footsteps coming his way. Squinting against the glare of the setting sun he was just stepping out of the shadows when a woman's voice startled him. + +"Sorry about the dust." + +"That's all right ma'am." + +"We need some petrol and a place to stay." + +"Okay. Well I'll fill it up for you. You can stay down to street at the Vida Court. I'm sure there's some rooms." + +"I see." + +Ambrose followed her back to the truck where two small boys and a teenage girl sat atop a pile of trundles and suitcases in the bed. He nodded to the boys and tipped his hat to girl who met his gaze directly, without flinching in the slightest, which brought a warm heat to his cheeks before he could stop it. + +Ambrose turned his head away and busied himself with the gas pump. + +"Heat brings the color to your cheeks." The woman was beside him again. + +"Yes ma'am." Ambrose stared at the ground. "Been a hell of summer, if you'll pardon me." + +"It's not always this hot?" + +"It's always this hot, but not for so long." The woman said nothing, Ambrose glanced up at her. "Ma'am?" + +"I was thinking, I was wondering if my grandchildren will have to endure this place." + +"Ma'am?" + +"We're here for my husband. They said that the dry air would be good for his tuberculosis." + +"Mmmhmm. They say that." Ambrose studied his feet. + +"I don't expect I will get to leave." She was staring off in the distance. "But I'd like to think my daughter might." + +He waited a moment, but she did not say anything more. She paid him in coins and climbed back in the truck. The engine coughed back to life after a few sputters that Ambrose attributed to grungy spark plugs. Most people didn't know to soak them in gasoline, it was rare that they need to be replaced. He decided he liked the woman, she was maybe a bit odd, but the heat did funny things to you if you weren't used to it. He imagined she would endure, something about her seemed incapable of not enduring. At the very least he didn't feel like she should need to buy new spark plugs just yet. He would tell her as much tonight, after he went home to the Vida Court. + +He watched the truck crawl out onto Prince road. He followed it out, kicking a rock out the driveway into the road. He saw the brake lights at the end of the street. The truck lurched into the Vida Court. He thrust his hands in his pockets and walked back toward the office. + + +-- + +If she really didn't give a shit Claire reasoned, then she would not have come. People who don't give a shit don't abandon their lives half way around the world, book very expensive last minute plane tickets and come back to this godforsaken fucking desert. + +Although, in truth, now that she was here, she missed this desert in some deranged way that made her half understand why people stayed in abusive relationships. Hate is just a perversion of love, but rage, rage is another thing altogether. + +She had left the desert in a kind of rage, a dull rage of unfairness wrapped up in punk rock and politics, and being born at the wrong time in the wrong place to the wrong people. The people who didn't stick around. + +Claire found her aunt's cigarettes tucked in the side of her purse, which she had left next to the impossibly long telephone cord that connected the old push button land line her grandfather insisted on keeping around. She took two and ducked out the back door for walk in the desert. She wanted to get away from her aunts. + +Her mother's sisters both thought she didn't give a shit. They always had. All because Claire hadn't cried at her own parents' funeral. As if a six year old is aware of social decorums. + +They still hated her for it. Or, if not hated, at least thought she was strange, most likely a little dangerous and best studied in silence. That she insisted on sleeping outside, like animal she had heard her aunt say last night, only reaffirmed this belief. But outside was the only place the rage dissipated. Outside there was only the heat and the stillness and the relative cool of the evening and mornings. Coffee and cocktails were not so far off after all perhaps. + +There was also the rather insulting move of leaving the desert. Claire did what no one else in the family had dared to do since her grandmother stepped off the beat up flatbed into the cactus-strewn world of kitty litter. Leave. We are here to go she had said with the smirk and she disappeared over the horizon, traveling halfway around the world to do god knows what. Claire imagined how much they must enjoy talking about her when she wasn't around. Sometimes she thought she should sit them down and just tell them everything, but they had over the years made it pretty clear that they actually liked her better as an object of fascination than a person. Who was she to deny them such pleasure? + +It was April, the edge of searing heat, more of a baking heat right now. The dry heat of spring in a place where somehow flowers still contrived to not just exist, but explode out of the seemingly dead soil. Claire looked down at the cigarette between her fingers. She'd quit years before, but somehow it seemed like something Emma would do. Now though, standing in the middle of a flame red cluster of Ocotillo flowers she realized Emma would never have lit the cigarette. Would never have even taken it. Would never have even come at all. She was never part of the desert the way Claire was, she had floated above it like a cloud. + +Claire watched a tiny dust devil gathering in the wash down the hill. The desert was where the earth's dust came from. Bits of the Sahara coat the Amazon every year. There is no escaping the desert. Even if you travel half way around the world your desert past will find you, grain by grain, dust to dust. Everything ends up back here in the dry desert plain where it settles and bakes in the heat until it's all as hollow as a corn husk. A little wind and it would all be off again, headed south down to the Mexican coast and out to sea. + +-- + +Emma had developed a peculiar fascination with chewing sand. It came to her mouth as a dry film licked off her lips. From western Oklahoma onward she had been chewing at the nothingness of sand. Now, after jumping down from the truck bed, she violently spat the contents of her mouth on a cactus and resolved to never chew sand again. + +Except that it kept settling on her lips. And she kept licking them, out of habit. Perhaps, she thought, the whole West is just one thin dusty film settling over the world. Certainly the room at the Vida Court was saturated with fine grit. + +Mother had laid Father out on the bed and was giving him a glass of water and some saltines. They were talking in low voices that Emma could not make out. She went outside to get her bag and have a look around. + +The Vida Court was, Emma reasoned, better than sitting atop trundles in the back of the flatbed wedged between sweaty siblings and a mucus and blood-spewing father. And that was about all that could be said of it. + +It was not, for instance, a ten-room farmhouse with three floors and a tornado cellar. Nor was it surrounded by endless acres of imported genuine Kentucky bluegrass with a semicircle of drooping cottonwood trees growing around the pond. There were no ponds for miles. Just a small, rusted copper tub full of sun-warmed water. + +It was only after she removed her stockings that she realized how thoroughly the sand had saturated her. Or perhaps, she thought, perhaps my thighs have tanned through these skirts. She climbed into the water and watched as the brown of her legs faded back to milky white, the dusty film of Oklahoma and New Mexico drifting across the water like great orange clouds moving from one end of the tub to the other. + +She could see the young man from the gas station through the chalky pink haze of the bathroom window, but only as a still, dark frame in a chair on the porch. It wasn't long before Emma found herself standing in the bathtub, dripping water, watching the shadowy porch for signs of movement. + +She put on a clean dress and evacuated the bungalow as fast as she could without raising undue suspicion. The sun was already gone, but the air still held the heat like a treasure of the day. She walked around the cacti and was tempted to touch the thorns. She reached out her hand and ran it from the center out and down the edge, careful to keep her hand moving with the hooked direction of the needles. + +"So y'all sold your farm, bought the truck and hauled your dad out here for some fresh air huh?" + +His voice startled her enough that she almost leaned on the cactus for support. + +"Sorry?" + +"You sold the farm, bought the truck and here you are, TB and all." + +"Something like that." + +"We get quite a few passing through these days..." + +"Oh we're staying I believe." + +"I'm Ambrose" + +He extended his hand and she stepped out of the cacti and took it in her own. + +"Emma." + +"You know, Emma," he took another sip of the beer for courage, "that truck you're family is drivin... you need to pull the plugs and soak them in some gasoline. I can do it if you like." + +-- + +The funeral was over by four. Claire sat on the patio with her Grandfather, eating leftover Fancy Franks. + +"These were her favorite," he said staring down at the last one in his hand. + +"No they weren't, she hated little cocktail crap like this." + +He laughed and pitched the last one out into the desert. "You're right, she did." + +She watched a Brown Thrasher study the frank from a low branch of a Palo Verde tree. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" + +"Have I ever not been okay?" + +"You wife just died Papa..." + +"She died three years ago Claire, her body stopped working recently is all. I'm old, she was old. People die. It's what we do Claire. Next time you come around here it'll be for me." + +"Don't take this the wrong way Papa, but I'm not coming back for you." + +"I know." + +"How do you know that?" + +"Because when I'm gone there's no one to come back to." + +Claire smiled. "True, plus I'd hate to disappoint all of them. Everyone thinks I don't give a shit. If I show up here after you... well, that would seem like I gave a shit wouldn't it?" + +"Who thinks you don't give a shit? Give a shit about what? They don't think that." + +"About anything. And they do. Like everyone else has these complicated situations and feelings and worries and all this shit and I just float away on a bunch of merry red little balloons." + +Ambrose chuckled. "Who thinks this?" + +Claire gestured around her, "I dunno, everyone..." + +"Mmmhmm. Claire, you know better than most that there is no everyone." + + +-- + + +The rock sounded like a bomb against the window. She was a foot clear of her bed before she had even made sense of the noise. Then she heard his hissing whisper, "Emma..." + +She pulled the window up and crawled out, tumbling down into his arms. "Stop with the rocks, you scared the life out of me". + +They crept through the sandy yard and down the banks of Palo Verde snarls to the edge of the river. He stopped suddenly and she crashed into his body. He started to say something, but she smothered his mouth with a kiss. + +Later they lay on their backs listening to the river. Ambrose told her the names of the stars that he could remember, making up the rest on the spot. + +She asked about the stars in Panama and then suddenly, "you aren't going to get Malaria are you?" +Despite all the words he had conjured for Panama this was one he had not thought of. The Army had not mentioned it either. "Do they have malaria in Panama?" + +"Of course. And snakes and worms and all sorts of nastiness. It's a jungle you know." + +"I know. It'll be beautiful, no desert, no dry cracking horridness." + +Emma smiled. "You've never felt humidity have you?" + +"No, but I already know I love it." + +Emma laughed. "You might be the only person I've met who's happy to be going to war." + +"I'm not happy to be going to war, but I'm happy to get out of here. I've been trying to get out of here for years." + +She laughed again ans stroked his cheek. "You can always leave anywhere Ambrose, you just go. You just have to make sure you understand what you're leaving." She slid out of his arms and walked down to the water's edge. He watched as she crouched down at the river’s edge and skipped rocks out toward the middle. + + +-- + + +The patio had a fan. It spun too slow to move the air much. It had always reminded Claire of a tape reel or a movie projector, except that it was broken and only spun backward. A tape reel forever rewinding. + +The rain had started again off in the distance, a low cloud hung over the mountains, a black mist trailing down from it, filling the canyons and ravines with drops that would become a raging wall of water by the time it passed by here tomorrow morning. + +Inside the house Ambrose tilted back the reclining chair with a long angry sounding trail of ratcheting clicks. She could hear her aunts talking in the kitchen, their words muffled by the faucet and clatter of dishes. She heard the TV come on. They would be running the ticker tape at the bottom of television again tonight: Flash flood warning in effect. + +Tomorrow the newspaper would want everyone to know that someone had died; that a new golf course is going to be built on the hillside above someone’s watery grave; that the threat of flood is the price we pay for sunshine; that the desert is a barren curse; that every place has its curse, that eventually all the curses will combine; that everything will be cursed; that the curse is not so bad; that loneliness is a curse; that loneliness is different than alone, that still, the coffee is quite good down at the.... + +Claire slid her legs into the sleeping bag, enjoying the dry slipperiness of nylon against her skin. It felt like slipping between worlds, cool dry worlds where she could float on red balloons forever. Darkness closed in, the world telescoped down into blackness. The foothills faded, the dark splotches of river slipped into black. Eventually there was only the lone saguaro still glowing in the soft blue light of the television flickering behind her. diff --git a/digitallosses.txt b/digitallosses.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d429e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/digitallosses.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +I first concieved of the iPod in spring1998. A friend had just purchased a mini disc player. We were looking at it, talking about the evolution on music formats -- 12 inch vinyl, three inch CD, two inch mini-disc. We decided that what would be really great is if all your music could fit on a single device, something about the size of a deck of cards. + +We had to wait a few years, but the iPod and it's immitators have more the fulfilled our basic request. We should I susppose by very happy about this development. It was what we wanted after all. + +But somewhere along the way, I lost touch with music and I blame, not the iPod exactly, but the move from tangible to ephemral which brought with it certain unconscious changes that we had not anticipated. + +I'm not a luddite. I like technology and while everything that follows are problems, real problems I believe, I'm not giving up my iPod, nor am I pining for the return of some archaic format like Vynal or CDs. No, I don't want to go backwards, but with so many other tangible objects in our lives heading toward the ephemral it seems worth taking stock of what exactly is different, because certainl;y, something *is* different. + +with services like Spotfiy or Pandora putting infinite amounts of music + +It is harder for music to have a kind of profound impact that it used to. The ritual has been removed, there is no more tuesday night trip to the music store, no unwrapping the package, no pouring over the cover art, no struggling with the annoying shrink wrap and those stupid stickers that cover to the top of Cd spines; no more fiddling with the six disk changer, waiting for the slow door to open, waiting for it to rotate around to the empty slot, stick in your Cd and finally, finally hit play. + +A lot of that process was cool; a lot of it sucked. But the one thing it was was tangible. Now I head to Amazon, search through a million albums, find one I want, click buy and Mp3's download. There might even be labum artwork I can flip through on the screen. But there will never be anything tangible about the experience. There will simply be a few extra lines in iTunes, a new playlist perhaps on my iPod. + +None of this really matters, or rather it matters, but it is far too late for music. Music is what it is now, the experinece is no longer tangible, the music has shrunk away into nothing. But for books the story is only now beginning to be written. The Kidle, for all it's charm, is essentially the stone wheel of electronic reading devices. It's round and we can all see the potnetial of the concept, but at the moment is does nothing to enhance the reading experience beyond what the ipod initially offered -- everything in a pint size package. + +Eventually readers like the Kindle may come out with something that takes reading far beyond where the book is, adds something to the reading experience that makes the book, not obsolete, but somthing entirely idifferent. The e-reader of the future, if we believe in bright rutures, will be something more than a bunch of books in a plastic shell.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/guestpostformatt.txt b/guestpostformatt.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6cb385a --- /dev/null +++ b/guestpostformatt.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +<p>"Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits." -- Pico Iyer</p> + +<p>If you think travel is something that only happens when you take overseas plane flights, long bus rides or cross-country train trips, you're missing out on a world of opportunity much closer to home.</p> + +<p>Of course you're forgiven for associating the idea of traveling exclusively with foreign lands, exotic food and curious dress habits, that is after all, the image handed down to us from the days of Marco Polo, David Livingston and other great explorers and perpetuated by the Travel Channel and countless glossy magazines.</p> + +<p>But the truth is, what most of us find compelling about travel is the novelty of it. Traveling propels us out of our daily habits and into some totally different mindset where everything, even laundry hanging out to dry, seems revelatory. </p> + +<p>As noted travel writer Pico Iyer points out in the quote at the top of this post, the physical aspect of travel is not nearly as important as the mental. It's nice to find yourself halfway around the world, immersed in the commotion of a Moroccan market or the sounds of Mass bells echoing through a cobblestone plaza, but it isn't the only way to travel.</p> + +<p>There is unquestionably a very amazing sense of freedom that comes from beholding a foreign scene. I distinctly remember spending an entire afternoon just staring out at the city of Udiapur India from the Monsoon Palace thinking how amazing it was to be there, to be anything at all.</p> + +<p>So it is possible to enter that remarkable travel-like mindset without ever leaving your hometown? That's a question I asked myself a lot last year since, for a variety of reasons, I was unable to take more than a couple of short, two-week trips.</p> + +<p>I'm happy to report that the answer is yes, there is a way to enter that travel mindset without really leaving your proverbial backyard, but it does take a bit more effort than just stepping off a plane somewhere new and letting the novelty wash over you.</p> + +<p>If travel to foreign lands is a sort of sledgehammer for knocking down mental walls, exploring your hometown is a bit more like digging out of prison with a spoon -- it takes more work, but with some perseverance you can still get past the walls of habit.</p> + +<p>The trick to entering the travel mindset at home is to get your mind out of the "I'm just at home" mentality. Too often we simply assume today will be much like yesterday, but there is really no reason to think that (sadly, it often takes some tragedy to remind us of that).</p> + +<p>I've found that one of the best ways to make your home town seem like a foreign place is to turn to the traveler's favorite tool -- the camera. </p> + +<p>Last year I tried to take a picture every day. I failed, giving up some time in May, but I did learn a lot from the experience -- chiefly that forcing myself to look closer at the world around me did in fact change the way I saw things.</p> + +<p>Everyone is different, but here are a few of the things I tried, along with some thoughts on what worked and what didn't:</p> + +<ul> +<li>Plan excursions -- just about every town, no matter how small has at least one museum, historical landmark or other point of interest that you're probably not familiar with. Find a few and visit them one by one in a series of weekend trips. If nothing else you'll likely learn a bit about the history of where you live.</li> +<li>Talk to one new person every day -- I'm a freelance writer and I frequently work at coffee shops, but with my headphones on and usually deeply concentrated on something. I've started forcing myself to take breaks and introduce myself to strangers on those breaks. At first it's weird, but along with seeing foreign things, meeting people on the road is one of travel's highlights. I won't lie to you, I've had some awkward moments with strangers at home, but I've also made some new friends. It's challenging, but worth it. Obviously if you work in an office this is somewhat harder, but give it a try on the weekends.</li> +<li>Take walks -- you might think you've seen everything there is to see in your home town, but changing your perspective, such as shifting from a driving commute to a long walk often opens up whole new worlds. </li> +<li>Check out guidebooks to your hometown -- You'll learn one of two things from this: in the best scenario you might find some stuff you didn't know about. On the other hand this might primarily demonstrate just how wildly inaccurate and, er, misguided, guidebooks are. All those mistakes and bad tips for people heading your home town? Yup, you're following the same sort of bad recommendations when you travel. </li> +<li>Check out Flickr -- Use Flickr's places feature to explore the area around where you live. The results here can be quite startling, showing you a vision of your city that you've never seen before, as well as some locations you may not be aware of. I was lucky in that I found two professional photographers that live very close by and post stunning photos. Of course your results may vary.</li> +<li>Start a blog -- while not necessary, I've found that writing a blog about your travels is good motivator to go out and find new things, which in turn makes you more of a traveler. Write up a short post on your trip to the local brewery or park. Sure, probably no one will ever read it, but that's not the point, this is primarily for you, not the audience.</li> +<li>Volunteer -- I haven't actually done this, though it's on my list of things to try this year. My idea was that part of the reason home is predictable and habitual was because we tend to spend most of our time around our peers. When traveling, on the other hand, we meet people from all walks of life, all ages, all races, all socio-economic backgrounds. I've been considering volunteering at places like homeless shelters or nursing homes as a way to get outside my unconsciously created comfort bubble (and of course help out in the community at the same time, it's a two-for-one special).</li> +</ul> + +<p>One thing I should point out: with the economy in the dumps worldwide and people everywhere feeling the financial squeeze there's been a fair number of posts on how to make it seem like you're traveling without spending any money. Most them use a horrible term I refuse to repeat and advocate things like trips to a local campground. That's all good and well, but considerably different that what I'm after.</p> + +<p>Personally I think that not having the money to go elsewhere is probably the worst motivator for exploring where you live. You'll constantly be comparing your hometown to your last "real" trip and wishing you were on a new trip instead of spending your Sunday poking around under the flickering florescent lights of the local museum's biggest ball of dryer lint exhibit.</p> + +<p>I hit upon the notion of exploring my hometown as a way to hold on to that incredible feeling of freedom I had on my last extended trip. It's definitely not as easy, but it has been rewarding and while that free feeling may be more fleeting at home, it can still be found.</p> + +<p>I'd also like to hear from anyone else who's tried to chase that travel feeling at home -- have any good ideas to share?</p> diff --git a/killing-trolls.txt b/killing-trolls.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13d1835 --- /dev/null +++ b/killing-trolls.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +What is this place? +Uh. Eris noob, you don't get out much do you? +I've been coming in since I was 2, I'm not a noob. +You've been coming in since you were 2 and yet you haven't figured out the most basic things about the system, like time is meaningless here. I bet your grandmother lived to be 109 and never left the township she was born in. Both Noobs. Ho lee shit. No way. Okay Noob, you want to know what it's like, today is your lucky day. +Kane stood up fast, her chair went flying across the room behind her and in a single swift motion she shot forward and arced out a band of light that preceeded her by a meter and wrapped itself around a figure cloaked in darkness who had been slinking along the wall. It happened so fast Claire could barely tell what had happened. It wasn't until later, when she was watching the replay that she understood what had happened. In real time it just looked like a flash of light exploded out of Kane and encirled the figure. + +Claire stood up and slowly walked over to the figure. It barely registered that every other char in the room had vanished. + +Come here Noob. I want you to see something. + +Claire came closer and saw that the man was covered, head to toe in some kind of patterned heirogylphs. She thought she recognized an angular shape, but couldn't recall what it meant or what era it belonged to. + +This is weev. One of the most notorious trolls in here. And I am going to slay him. Kane pulled out a large elongated metal tube with a handle hanging off the back of it. +Claire saw the man's eyes widen in what she instictively knew was horror, though she did not immediately know why. He started to protest, she heard him say something about fundamental rights and he couldn't be stopped and then there was a tremdously loud noice and the man had no head anymore. A fine red mist began to float through the air. She looked over and saw Kane smiling. Kane stuck out her tongue and let the red droplets fall on it. She looked over at Claire's wide eyes. Relax noob, there's not really a program that let's you taste human blood. Unless I write one for myself. She snaped her teeth and arched an eye brow at Claire. What? + +You killed him? Just like that? No trial? No, no, I don't know... + +No nothing. Kane nodded. Don't you know your mythology Noob, trolls get slayed. That's just how it is. They invented the term for themselves, they get to live by it. Or in this case, die by it. + +So you just completely ruined his char? He can never come back? + +Pretty nice piece of JavaScript huh? Kane patted the gun. And technically he can come back. Or at least most can, but he can't. + +Why? + +Well, to get past the bio sensors you need to either, get a new pair of eyes, which neonazis living in dumpsters behind deserted strip malls in some fuckall flyover police state can not afford to do, or have no eyes at all, which our friend Weev there already did not poccess. He was already on he second life you could say. + +He got through with a handcap license? + +Exactly. + +So, he was blind? + +Technically no. Someone gouged his eyes out. + +I thought I saw eyes. + +Not in here. Out there. For real. + +Claire gasped. Eris. Why would they... + +Kane shrugged. He was a troll. Actions have consequesnece you know? + +Still. I can't believe you did that. That's that's so wrong. + +He was a piece of shit. If it were legal I'd do it out there too. + +What gives you the right to... because you're the one in power now, you're Illum... + +Ugh. Please, enough with the patriarchial bullshit noob. We're just thirteen people. We change all the time. We're not illuminati, we don't run anything, we serve. + +You serve? + +I don't have time for this bullshit.Claire watched as a hole in the wall opened up and Kane stepped through it. She started to follow, but the hole, and kane were gone. + +Shit. She went back to tk and started searching. She found Kane quickly, she obviously wasn't trying to hide from Claire, so Claire put in the coorridnates, checked her coinage balance and set off for the new space. diff --git a/light.txt b/light.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1e84573 --- /dev/null +++ b/light.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +There was nothing in our lungs then. Nothing in our noses. We had never touched our viens with anything other than our fingers, feeling at the blood that pulse when we ran. It was night, there were clouds. No stars, only the lights of the oil derricks offshore. We sat on the wooden box where the hotel stored the chaise cushions in the winter. We watched the flashlights bobbing on the shorelines as tourists dug for clams, the soft sand running through their hand like we sugar that never dissolved. + +Caroline would never get up with Pete and Jessica and I. It was not because she was too short as she said, laughing, backing up against the edge of the white box, propping her arms back behind her and trying to lift her body up. It was not because she was too short, she was nearly as tall as me. It was because we were young and she knew no other way to flirt. He long legs were still ungainly, though Pete and I both had some inkling that they represented something of great value, something we would want more than anything later, in high school. + +But that night we still did not quite know it yet, it hung on the edge of my consciousness like a gnat you can never quite see, let alone swat. We three huddled close, Pete put his arm around Jessica, playing at a notion of romance we had only seen in the films of Hollywood. + +Caroline kept to her self below. She chewed gum, her mouth moved in darkness. The waves rolled up, a roar and thud on the sand, then a hiss and then another. I sat cross legged, looking down at Caroline. I wanted her to jump up. I wanted her to sit next to me, but she just smiled and traced half circles in the sand. I had my first sense of what it meant to be alone. The air, the stars, the wood beneath me, the sand around me. None of it cared whether she got up or stayed down. + +She never did. Not that night, nor several dozen more that summer when we would get off work at the hotel where Pete and I cleaned the pool, painted the railings, hosed the sidewalks and tried to look busy so Pete's aunt would give us our envelopes of cash, provided we found her before she passed out in the afternoon sun beside the pool. + +Caroline's parents owned a house up the beach. We were only invited over once, we watched Fast Times at Richmond High and then Caroline's mother, in a proper british accent rarely heard within the state lines of California wished us a good night and quickly ushered us out the massive arched entrance way. + +Pete and I, chagrinned, could think of nothing else to do but dive in the ocean, the warm salt water, the waves, the silence of floating. The stars. Later, walking up the beach we watched the tourists on their balconies, some sat talking, one couple had sex, the woman, her arms tight on the railing looked as if she were in pain. + +Caroling ended up working for my mother, a teachers aide in her classroom. I had long since lost interest, her long legs, her awkward flirting only dim memories by then. I had other friends. Other lovers. I smoked, I had no need for anyone to jump up anywhere any more. I bumped into her once, coming out the bathroom in crowded club, white powder still on my wrist. She frowned and I laughed. I laughed hysterically because I could think of nothing else to do. You never got up I said. What she said. I laughed some more and lurched forward, brushing her shoulder roughly, finding my way back into the darkness of the crowd.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/signalandnoise-edit.txt b/signalandnoise-edit.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1dbd7b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/signalandnoise-edit.txt @@ -0,0 +1,125 @@ +Morning smells of the smoky charcoal burning beneath his window. The city is long awake. Martin Ives lies in bed staring at the swollen blisters of plaster ceiling, waiting for them to burst. He has been awake for some time, listening to the city come to life. He scratches his belly through the thin, yellowed fabric of his undershirt. The alarm clock begins to buzz. + +He pauses in the doorway downstairs, overwhelmed by the glare and heat. The sun glints off the distant high rises. The city rings around him, moto horns, tuk-tuk bugles, bicycle bells. Two children laugh as they roll a pair of tire rims clanging down down the street, flicking them along with thin bamboo poles as they running alongside. + +Martin walks around the corner and places his order at the cart. The thin strips of meat hiss on the grill. The heat from the smoldering coals brings beads of sweat to his forehead and sends them down his cheeks. Her face shows no trace of sweat. She pours the sauces together in a plastic bag, dunks his pork and hands it to him. + +He buys a bag of pineapple on the dock and munches on it, watching the muddy brown river undulate past. It flows like a restless sleeper thrashing at the sheets. Longtail motors churn and chop and the longer rolling wakes of ferry boats. The water burps bunches of soggy earth clinging to roots of water plants. Martin hears the calmer water behind him begin to bubble and roil. He turns and watches as hundreds of the fish surface in the impossibly small area between docks, their sliver bellies streaking in the morning light. They wriggle and squirm like eels, fighting their way to the little pelts of food thrown by bored commuters. + +People begin to stand as the ferry approaches from upstream; it's already crowded. He wads up the rest of the pineapple, shoves it in his pocket and climbs aboard the ferry. The boatman yells something in Thai and pilot guns the engine, pulling out into the river. + +He stands near the bow, watching the banks pass by, Wat Rakhang, Memorial Bridge, Wat Arun. The river smells of fish and rotted vegetables. Women wash clothing in the river water, children leap from pylons into it. The boat surges upward, over the wake of a cross river ferry, and the water splashes up in in a high arc that moves in slow motion, a solid body separating, breaking apart and regrouping. He watches as it splatters down around him, darkening his sleeves and the front of his coat. + +At Saphan Taksin Martin exits with the rest of the crowd and makes his way up the stairs to the sky train. At one stop he spies a group of Red Shirts gathered around a soup stall, hunched over tables. The brazenness surprises him. The train accelerates off again. + +Martin is midway through sorting two new piles of refugee immigration information when Jerry descends on him. Martin keeps his head down, give no sign of acknowledgement. He stares at the words on the page. It's easy to loose yourself in the words. The Hmong have no real concept of surnames, no patronymic or matronymic system that anyone knows of and they often change their names several times in the course of their lives. It makes Martin's job very nearly impossible, though he suspects the Thai authorities simply throw away the forms Martin processes anyway. His boss Michele, and presumably her bosses somewhere back in Geneva, likely feel different. + +He is aware that Jerry is speaking, he can hear his voice, but the words have not reached him yet, they move slowly toward him, if he looks up he thinks he might see them, floating down like the little plastic rings Martin used to play with at the community pool when he was a boy. + +"They're sending us out in the field." + +"What?" Martin glances up to see Jerry pulling the last of some mysterious ball of meat off a long skewer with his teeth. Jerry licks his finger tips and smacks his lips. "You and I, Martin. We get to go out," he waves his hand to the north, "there... somewhere. Chang Mai I believe." + +Martin stares blankly at Jerry, remembering the one and only time he had agreed to go with Jerry for drinks after work, how Jerry had brought along his Thai girlfriend, how much Martin desperately wanted to punch the man in his sweaty red cornfed Ohio face every time he pawed at the woman's ass on the Skytrain. But he had not. Martin simply squirmed in discomfort and tried to step away from the couple, ignoring the ugly stares of the other people on the train. + +"Relax old boy, it'll be fun, get you out of the city, dip your wick even." He smiled. "Oh shit, Here comes Michelle now. Back to work." Jerry scurried off back to his cubicle at the other end of the room. + +Martin watches as Michelle made her way across the office toward Martin's cubicle. + +"He told you didn't he?" + +"Chang Mai?" + +"He's such a worthless piece of crap." + +Martin arches an eyebrow. "Can't you fire him?" + +"And replace him with whom exactly? He's an asshole, but he shows up." + +Martin ponders taking on Jerry's workload simply to never have to see him again, but decides it isn't worth it. "So, Chang Mai?" + +"Chang Mai." + +----------------------------- + +They took a night bus. Martin hated buses. Hated to cars too. He never slept on anything that moved. Jerry gave him two Ambien before he crawled in his own berth and began to snore. The night dragged on, most passengers fell asleep. Martin put on his headphones and listened to Daniel Carter. In front of him, down the aisle he could watch the stripes in the road through the massive windshield. The stripes came like arrows shot out of the asphalt, rushing toward him and then disappeared under the bus. + +He remembered the desert night, the small arc of headlights carving out. The white lines blinking on, as if sent from infinity. Martin was in the back seat, leaning forward, his head resting on the cool leather of the bench seat in front of him. His father was driving, his windows down, his arm resting on the door. Martin could see him smiling in the side mirror, white Cheshire cat teeth hanging in the darkness of his black beard. His mother slept, leaning against the passenger door. The wind rushed in his fathers window, dragging the smell of creosote and sage into the back seat. Martin watched kangaroo rats and rabbits bouncing in the sand, leaping out of the arc of lights that chased them back into the desert beyond the road. He felt the wind playing through the blond hair on his arm, battering at it until the skin went numb. He lay down in the back seat and listen to the sound of the air and night wrap itself around him. + +He woke up in the hospital. His legs were broken. Every movement sent searing shocks of pain through his body. After a while he began to see them coming, like white lines rushing out of the darkness toward him. He stopped crying so much. He became quiet. He became still. The doctors said it was good. The nurses smiled, left contraband candy in his hands when they changed the bedpan. Feelings swelled inside him like enormous balloons of light, threatening to burst out of him if he did not lay incredibly still. He lay still and dreamed of his parents. He dreamed of the wind pulling at the hair of his arm. He cried. + +The bus pulls off at a Caltex station. Martin sits up and wipes his eyes. He jams the memory back down in the floorboards of his mind, where it belongs, where it stays, asleep and unknown, save for rare nights when he he was awake late enough to hear it get up and rummage about in the refrigerator, looking for something to feed it. + +The driver steps outside and lights a cigarette. Martin follows him. He blinked in the harsh glare of florescent lights and nodded at the driver before walking away, toward the well lit insides of the Caltex mini mart. In the bathroom he washed his face and threw the Ambien in the toilet. + +He bummed a cigarette from the driver. A gradient of light fell across the parking lot, fading into darkness around the white lines of parking spaces. There was no else around. The driver grunted behind him. They climbed back into the bus. + +-------------------- + + +Here is the form. Here is the woman to fill out. The woman can't write. The woman can't speak English. Martin can't speak much Hmong. A young boy acts as interpreter. The young boy spells out the names, Martin fills in the boxes on the form. The days roll away. Men, women, children; Martin writes for them. Then Jerry types it up and sends it back to Bangkok. Sometimes papers come back. The men and women and children are grateful, some clutch his hand, others cry. And then there are gone. + +The camp is twenty miles north of Chang Mai, in the low foothills that lead up to the Burmese border some five miles northwest of the camp. Martin and Jerry stay in temporary trailers that have been erected by the Army. He glances up from his desk at the tent city beyond the window. It starts as tents, with orderly, if muddy streets running between them. Some two thousand people camped in a sea of mud. At the edge of the tents begin the less fortunate, the late arrivals, the tents give way to a squatters village, scraps of metal sheeting braces against bamboo poles, car doors held up with baling wire, tires stacked to form a wall, cardboard tables, stones piled for a fire pit, scraps of heavy cloth torn from the military trucks that bring food draped over doorways. + +In the evenings an old woman with only a couple of teeth left walks by his tent shaking a clutch of dried, smoldering plants that give a thick, but not unpleasant gray smoke that drifts in the mosquito netting and settles on his sheet. The smell is something Martin knows, but can't place. + +It takes Martin seven days to figure out how to get rid of Jerry. It's Jerry's day off when Martin happens to actually dump a large black scorpion out of his boots in the morning when he ritually turns over his boots to make sure nothing has sneaked in them overnight. He's been doing it religiously for four years now, but this is the first time something actually drops out. After the initial shock wears off his impressed with how quickly his brain decides to carefully coax the equally alarmed creature into Jerry's boot. Jerry, regrettably, never developed a similar precaution and Martin is free of him forever a day later when the transfer comes through. + +There are a dozen other westerners in the camp. Most are volunteers, college students saving the world. They drive down to Chang Mai on the weekends and come back with cases of beer. They keep to themselves and Martin makes no effort to join in. He isn't sure what to say to the young anymore. The world can't be saved? The world can be saved? There is no world to save? There is nothing but world and it doesn't need saving. + +The summer heat is just starting. There is no air conditioning. Martin lies awake at night sweating, tossing in his cot, wondering what saving means. The first night he dreamed of Havasupi, plunging from the cliffs into the cold, clear water. He dreamed of the Everstons, his step sister Emily and her boyfriend Tom. The took him hiking, up behind the waterfall over slippery smooth rocks until they reached the top. The sky was endless, long sweeps of thin cloud written from one end to the other. Contrails of airplanes. Tom jumped in the water and disappeared over the falls. Emily went next. Martin waited. Afraid. He sat down in the water, but did not push off. He wakes up drenched in sweat. + +He gets up and wanders the camp. The Medicines Sans Frontiers doctor, Chambers, is sitting up in the mess tent, drinking Mekong whiskey by the light of a small candle. He invites Martin to join him, pours him a paper cup of whiskey. + +"Terrible stuff." + +Weeks pass. Newspapers bake yellow in the sun. Government trucks haul people away, off to life in the city, some small town, somewhere else. But always more come. Martin begins to suspect that the only way he will ever escape this place is to jump on one of the trucks, quit his job and just disappear. He drinks late into the night, sitting with Chambers. They rarely speak, just listen to the night, watch the mosquitoes zigzag through the candlelight. + +Once Chambers asked, "how did you end up here Ives?" + +"Got transferred." + +"Not here. I mean, here at all, in Thailand." + +Martin shrugged in the dark, "I needed a change." + +"Originally?" + +"Arizona." "You?" + +"Berkley." + +Martin nods. Chambers seems to have no more interest in subject, it is merely a means of classifying. Everything here can be reduced to location. Really there is only here now, Martin thinks. There was there, but Martin is no longer sure that he was really there when he was there. Here was still here when I was there, still waiting for me, but now I am here and there is everywhere. But there is something I can remember, I think. But when I was there was I really there? + +Chambers swirls his whiskey around the bottom of the paper cup. An old woman walks by the tent, waving a smoking bunch of plants, whispering something in Hmong. She stops to watch the men. Chambers smiles, waves, calls out good evening in Hmong. + +"How long are you here?" + +"Hear?" + +"Here..." Martin gestures around the camp. + +Chambers says nothing, glances at his whiskey. "Here, there, which one are we?" he mumbles, then smiles, "I'll be here until I hear otherwise." Chambers swirls his whiskey around the bottom of the paper cup. + +The shape of a woman drifts by the tent. It is the incense woman as Martin has come to think of her. She stops to watch the men. Chambers smiles, waves, calls out what Martin has learned equates to good evening in Hmong. + +He turns to Martin, "have you met Ma-Lee?" + +It's dark, Martin can barely make out the womans face. Martin doesn't want to admit it, but Hmong names have all blurred together for him now, a long mashed together string of nearly unpronounceable syllables that simply stands for everyone, names everyone. Everyone all at once. The name of god Martin thinks. He shakes his head in the dark. + +"She wouldn't have come into the office, she's got no plans to stay here." Chambers waves her in, pulls a chair up to the table and pours her a small cup of whiskey. She smiles and takes a seat, holding the plant bundle behind her. Chambers says something in Hmong that's too complex for Martin to follow, though he does smile at when he hears his name. + +"I told her to take you up the river tomorrow" + +"What?" + +"It's your day off right?" + +"Yes". + +"Good, you can see the orchids." + + + + + diff --git a/signalandnoise-notes.txt b/signalandnoise-notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9e6fa5 --- /dev/null +++ b/signalandnoise-notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +He gets to the Burmese refugee camp, it's chaos. He meets an old woman who was deported and who walks every day to the gate, begging to get back end. He forms a friendship with her in halting Thai. He takes her fishing. She bolts acorss the river, back into Burma. diff --git a/signalandnoise.txt b/signalandnoise.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e942c13 --- /dev/null +++ b/signalandnoise.txt @@ -0,0 +1,105 @@ +Morning smells of the smoky charcoal burning beneath his window. The city is long awake. Martin Ives lies in bed staring at the swollen blisters of plaster ceiling, waiting for them to burst. He has been awake for some time, listening to the city come to life. He scratches his belly through the thin, yellowed fabric of his undershirt. The alarm clock begins to buzz. + +He pauses in the doorway downstairs, overwhelmed by the glare and heat. The sun glints off the distant high rises. The city rings around him, moto horns, tuk-tuk bugles, bicycle bells. Two children laugh as they roll a pair of tire rims clanging down down the street, flicking them along with thin bamboo poles as they running alongside. + +Martin walks around the corner and places his order at the cart. The thin strips of meat hiss on the grill. The heat from the smoldering coals brings beads of sweat to his forehead and sends them down his cheeks. Her face shows no trace of sweat. She pours the sauces together in a plastic bag, dunks his pork and hands it to him. + +He buys a bag of pineapple on the dock and munches on it, watching the muddy brown river undulate past. It flows like a restless sleeper thrashing at the sheets. Longtail motors churn and chop and the longer rolling wakes of ferry boats. The water burps bunches of soggy earth clinging to roots of water plants. Martin hears the calmer water behind him begin to bubble and roil. He turns and watches as hundreds of the fish surface in the impossibly small area between docks, their sliver bellies streaking in the morning light. They wriggle and squirm like eels, fighting their way to the little pelts of food thrown by bored commuters. + +People begin to stand as the ferry approaches from upstream; it's already crowded. He wads up the rest of the pineapple, shoves it in his pocket and climbs aboard the ferry. The boatman yells something in Thai and pilot guns the engine, pulling out into the river. + +He stands near the bow, watching the banks pass by, Wat Rakhang, Memorial Bridge, Wat Arun. The river smells of fish and rotted vegetables. Women wash clothing in the river water, children leap from pylons into it. The boat surges upward, over the wake of a cross river ferry, and the water splashes up in in a high arc that moves in slow motion, a solid body separating, breaking apart and regrouping. He watches as it splatters down around him, darkening his sleeves and the front of his coat. + +At Saphan Taksin Martin exits with the rest of the crowd and makes his way up the stairs to the sky train. At one stop he spies a group of Red Shirts gathered around a soup stall, hunched over tables. The brazenness surprises him. The train accelerates off again. + +Martin is midway through sorting two new piles of refugee immigration information when Jerry descends on him. Martin keeps his head down, give no sign of acknowledgement. He stares at the words on the page. It's easy to loose yourself in the words. The Hmong have no real concept of surnames, no patronymic or matronymic system that anyone knows of and they often change their names several times in the course of their lives. It makes Martin's job very nearly impossible, though he suspects the Thai authorities simply throw away the forms Martin processes anyway. His boss Michele, and presumably her bosses somewhere back in Geneva, likely feel different. + +He is aware that Jerry is speaking, he can hear his voice, but the words have not reached him yet, they move slowly toward him, if he looks up he thinks he might see them, floating down like the little plastic rings Martin used to play with at the community pool when he was a boy. + +"They're sending us out in the field." + +"What?" Martin glances up to see Jerry pulling the last of some mysterious ball of meat off a long skewer with his teeth. Jerry licks his finger tips and smacks his lips. "You and I, Martin. We get to go out," he waves his hand to the north, "there... somewhere. Chang Mai I believe." + +Martin stares blankly at Jerry, remembering the one and only time he had agreed to go with Jerry for drinks after work, how Jerry had brought along his Thai girlfriend, how much Martin desperately wanted to punch the man in his sweaty red cornfed Ohio face every time he pawed at the woman's ass on the Skytrain. But he had not. Martin simply squirmed in discomfort and tried to step away from the couple, ignoring the ugly stares of the other people on the train. + +"Relax old boy, it'll be fun, get you out of the city, dip your wick even." He smiled. "Oh shit, Here comes Michelle now. Back to work." Jerry scurried off back to his cubicle at the other end of the room. + +Martin watches as Michelle made her way across the office toward Martin's cubicle. + +"He told you didn't he?" + +"Chang Mai?" + +"He's such a worthless piece of crap." + +Martin arches an eyebrow. "Can't you fire him?" + +"And replace him with whom exactly? He's an asshole, but he shows up." + +Martin ponders taking on Jerry's workload simply to never have to see him again, but decides it isn't worth it. "So, Chang Mai?" + +"Chang Mai." + +----------------------------- + +They took a night bus. Martin hated buses. Hated to cars too. He never slept on anything that moved. Jerry gave him two Ambien before he crawled in his own berth and began to snore. Martin sat up, talked to a Japanese salaryman on his way to procure rattan furniture in Chang Mai. Martin nodded patiently as the man talked of Thai girls and massage parlors, but was relieved when the man finally turned away and propped his pillow against the window before nodding out. + +Martin watched a pair of German backpackers play a card game until both lost interest. The night dragged on, most passengers fell asleep. Martin put on his headphones and listened to Daniel Carter. In front of him, down the aisle he could watch the stripes in the road through the massive windshield. The stripes came like arrows shot out of the asphalt, rushing toward him and then disappeared under the bus. + +He remembered the desert night, the small arc of headlights carving out. The white lines blinking on, as if sent from infinity. Martin was in the back seat, leaning forward, his head resting on the cool leather of the bench seat in front of him. His father was driving, his windows down, his arm resting on the door. Martin could see him smiling in the side mirror, white Cheshire cat teeth hanging in the darkness of his black beard. His mother slept, leaning against the passenger door. The wind rushed in his fathers window, dragging the smell of creosote and sage into the back seat. Martin watched kangaroo rats and rabbits bouncing in the sand, leaping out of the arc of lights that chased them back into the desert beyond the road. He felt the wind playing through the blond hair on his arm, battering at it until the skin went numb. He lay down in the back seat and listen to the sound of the air and night wrap itself around him. + +He woke up in the hospital. His legs were broken. Every movement sent searing shocks of pain through his body. After a while he began to see them coming, like white lines rushing out of the darkness toward him. He stopped crying so much. He became quiet. He became still. The doctors said it was good. The nurses smiled, left contraband candy in his hands when they changed the bedpan. Feelings swelled inside him like enormous balloons of light, threatening to burst out of him if he did not lay incredibly still. He lay still and dreamed of his parents. He dreamed of the wind pulling at the hair of his arm. He cried. + +The bus pulls off at a Caltex station. Martin sits up and wipes his eyes. He jams the memory back down in the floorboards of his mind, where it belongs, where it stays, asleep and unknown, save for rare nights when he he was awake late enough to hear it get up and rummage about in the refrigerator, looking for something to feed it. + +The driver steps outside and lights a cigarette. Martin follows him. He blinked in the harsh glare of florescent lights and nodded at the driver before walking away, toward the well lit insides of the Caltex mini mart. In the bathroom he washed his face and threw the Ambien in the toilet. + +He bummed a cigarette from the driver. A gradient of light fell across the parking lot, fading fading into darkness around the white lines of parking spaces. There was no else around. The driver grunted behind him. They climbed back into the bus. + +-------------------- + +Here is the form. Here is the woman to fill out. The woman can't write. The woman can't speak English. Martin can't speak much Hmong. A young boy acts as interpreter. The young boy spells out the names, Martin fills in the boxes on the form. The days roll away. Men, women, children; Martin writes for them. Then Jerry types it up and sends it back to Bangkok. Sometimes papers come back. The men and women and children are grateful, some clutch his hand, others cry. And then there are gone. + +The camp is twenty miles north of Chang Mai, in the low foothills that lead up to the Burmese border some five miles northwest of the camp. Martin and Jerry stay in temporary trailers that have been erected by the Army. He glances up from his desk at the tent city beyond the window. It starts as tents, with orderly, if muddy streets running between them. Some two thousand people camped in a sea of mud. At the edge of the tents begin the less fortunate, the late arrivals, the tents give way to a squatters village, scraps of metal sheeting braces against bamboo poles, car doors held up with baling wire, tires stacked to form a wall, cardboard tables, stones piled for a fire pit, scraps of heavy cloth torn from the military trucks that bring food draped over doorways. + +There are a dozen westerners in the camp. Most are volunteers, college students saving the world. They drive down to Chang Mai on the weekends and come back with cases of beer. They keep to themselves and Martin makes no effort to join in. He isn't sure what to say to the young anymore. The world can't be saved? The world can be saved? There is no world to save? There is nothing but world and it doesn't need saving. + +The summer heat is just starting. There is no air conditioning. Martin lies awake at night sweating, tossing in his cot, wondering what saving means. The first night he dreamed of Havasupi, plunging from the cliffs into the cold, clear water. He dreamed of the Everstons, his step sister Emily and her boyfriend Tom. The took him hiking, up behind the waterfall over slippery smooth rocks until they reached the top. The sky was endless, long sweeps of thin cloud written from one end to the other. Contrails of airplanes. Tom jumped in the water and disappeared over the falls. Emily went next. Martin waited. Afraid. He sat down in the water, but did not push off. He wakes up drenched in sweat. + +He gets up and wanders the camp. The Medicines Sans Frontiers doctor, Chambers, is sitting up in the mess tent, drinking Mekong whiskey by the light of a small candle. He invites Martin to join him, pours him a paper cup of whiskey. + +"Terrible stuff, rot your gut," he chuckles, "but it's all we got." + +Weeks pass. Little changes. Government trucks haul some away, off to life in the city, some small town, somewhere else. But always more come. Martin begins to suspect that the only way he will ever escape this place is to jump on one of the trucks, quit his job and just disappear. He drinks late into the night, enjoying the warm burn of Mekong firewater in his belly. And Chambers seems to enjoy the company, though they don't speak much. Mostly listen to the night, watch the mosquitoes zigzag through the candlelight. + +"How did you end up here Ives?" + +"Got transferred." + +"Not here. I mean, here at all, in Thailand." + +Martin shrugs in the dark, "I needed a change." + +"Originally?" + +"Arizona." You?" + +"Berkley." + +Martin nods. Chambers seems to have no more interest in subject, it is merely a means of classifying. Everything here can be reduced to location. Really there is only here now, Martin thinks. There was there, but Martin is no longer sure that he was really there when he was there. Here was still here when I was there, still waiting for me, but now I am here and there is everywhere. But there is something I can remember, I think. But when I was there was I really there? + +Chambers swirls his whiskey around the bottom of the paper cup. An old woman walks by the tent, waving a smoking bunch of plants, whispering something in Hmong. She stops to watch the men. Chambers smiles, waves, calls out good evening in Hmong. + +He turns to Martin, "have you met Ma-Lee?" + +It's dark, Martin can barely make out the womans face floating somewhere in the darkness beyond the candle lit table and mosquito netting of the tent. Martin doesn't want to say it, but Hmong names all blur together for him now, a long mashed together string of nearly unpronounceable syllables that simply stands for everyone, names everyone. Everyone all at once. The name of god Martin thinks. He shakes his head in the dark. + +"She wouldn't have come into the office, she's got no plans to stay here." Chambers waves her in, pulls a chair up to the table and pours her a small cup of whiskey. She smiles and takes a seat. + +Daw San Suu Ma-Lee looks to be in her eighties, though Martin has a hard time telling the age of Hmong or Thai or Cambodians, they seems to have only two ages, young children and then old men or women, where they exist in between these poles, Martin is not sure. + + + + + + |