The Spider's Sestina

The blank, white orb was at rest in the window, a moonbeam drop;

The spider had marooned it in her web, alone, stranded.

She stared intensely waiting for the movement when it struggled;

Her web was held taut by slender digits, which burned

With anticipation for that tiny quiver that sent her mind reeling in fear;

It was barely even a tickle.

She had loved the orb, her greatest work of sculpture and weaving, until that first tickling

Wriggling movement, that made the sac, which had been clutched so closely, drop

To the floor as she backed away, always watching it, fearfully.

It had inched its way behind her, towed by a silk strand

While her head raged with frustration and terror; she felt her affection burn

And shrivel like paper for the milky ball and its insidious struggling.

Suddenly it began again, a persistent clambering struggle,

And a faint memory began to nudge her mind and tickle

Her thoughts until a sickening feeling slid around her gut, and her hard skin burned.

She began to conspire with herself, as she glared ruefully at the lustrous drop

That strained and pulled against the tensed strands,

And drove her mad with nervous fear.

A hateful noise ran through her mind, provoked by the slithering fear

Which had metastasized from gut to head, and protested the infernal struggling

That had possessed her beloved ball of silken strand.

A thread of thoughts entirely new tickled

And tantalized her palps; her fangs unfolded bearing glistening drops

Of venom that seared and burned.

She lunged out of her nest, in the crevice between windows, and bit down with burning 

Poison, condensed fury, and tore at the papery skin of the orb which trembled with fear.

Her young, little milky spiders fell out into the web, squirming droplets

That squealed and cried as she stamped and bit at them as they struggled.

She caught them all; some crawling up her legs, betrayed by their tickling

Feet and others that were desperately scrambling away on invisible strands.

She cleaned her web, grinding up the bodies of her young, picking them off sticky strands.

A weary relief had settled in her head when suddenly a memory burning

Like lightning jumped through her mind, and a sickening tickle

Filled her gut. It was the recollection that had spawned her fears

Of first waking up, and of munching and crunching food for the first time while her prey struggled

In futility. Screams of pain were drowned by her siblings’ gleeful cries and venom drops.

She had hatched with her siblings, a stumbling, clambering, struggling mass of pearl droplets,

And found their decrepit mother tangled in her own strands, where they fell upon her with tickling

Legs and burning poison as she wailed and screamed in mortal fear.

Cynicism and the feeling that every romantic comedy is just trying to sell me "Love"

Almost a week ago I tried to explain to my mother what a cliche really is. Putting aside the fact that "trying to explain what something really is" is a cliche itself, what I tried to explain is how a cliche feels and all the things they remind me of : corporate jingles, the live air advertisements on reruns of I Love Lucy for Carnation Condensed milk, and the canned grocery store ads the seem to be running longer and longer every time I walk in Kroger/WalMart/Giant Eagle and slowly replacing the soft rock, smooth jazz and the sporadic and ever cliched "clean up on aisle #" of the last decade. I'm not sure what my mother said to bring up the subject (though I'm sure it was something about summer Sunday School) but I told her that whatever she had said was a little of a cliche. She didn't understand because she couldn't remember hearing anyone else saying it before, which is exactly where my explanation of the essence of cliches becomes important. The reason that I associate cliches with on air ads and store special announcements is because when I hear them it sounds like someone is trying to sell me something. I don't think my mother understood, which is one of the many reasons my mother is such an amazing person (not a cliche or attempt to earn brownie points, FYI). I also tried to explain to her my perpetual fear and second guessing of my own motives that spring from my constant analyzing and interrogating of myself and she didn't understand why I did that either. But I believe that she can actually live with these things I think are awful cliches and work in a job that I think is full of them without giving a moment's thought to the idea that maybe all these phrases have been engineered to be catchy and still 100%, obviously, blatantly true in all situations. (Which is what makes cliches spread and more importantly sell their ideas.) So my mother can live life without every really being sold to or swindled because she never really gives a thought to the marketing.

Exactly how terribly awful and cynical is it for me to feel that my mother is trying to sell me something every time she utters a cliche, even if I know she never really thinks of them that way?

Anyways, moving past how cool my mom is, the interesting thing about cliches is that one person can just think of cliches as true and always say them like they were fact and another person can see them as complete scams, a marketing ploy fabricated just to sell you an idea you could have had on your own. In other words a cliche is fact and fraudulent simultaneously and what anyone sees in it is really only a part of its nature as a whole.

The day after I talked to my mom about cliches I had another thought (it was a very thought provoking weekend) though it was a bit different and requires a bit of storytelling before I can get to the point. The week before last I was drawn in to thinking about my past more than I normally do because of my neighbor. She keeps asking me questions about my past to help clarify some worries she has been having. But the whole thing led to a pretty lengthy internal dialogue that went through my head on the day in question

Mental dialogues with a person I have already been talking to are one of my stranger habits but they usually allow me to think with a level head about the things that have been bothering me.

The most relevant part of my mental discussion to the rest of this post was the part where I was describing myself as being conflicted, meaning that my head is in constant turmoil (my thoughts might be a little dramatic). I even went on to say that I was conflicted morally and spiritually and often conflicted even with love... but maybe that was a good thing because it made my love more honest and less about just finding someone to get married to and have kids with. That was where the more sensible part of my brain caught up to the rest of my train of thought and pulled the brakes.

During this entire imagined interchange I had been sitting outside with a bowl of calico beans (which were extremely delicious and were loaded with bacon and ground beef -- YUM!) and watching bees of all sizes pollinate flowers that were a safe distance away from me. As I approached the climax of what had become a long winded thought I started watching a tiny wasp that had flown in to the bunch of flowers. The wasp wasn't very big compared to its company hovering over the queen anne's lace however it stuck out because even if only seeing it for a moment I think most people would notice that it had a needle sticking out from behind it that was longer than the whole insect would be. It was a beautiful shiny black all over and would hover lightly in place before it would reach out and cling to a cluster of flowers but its abdomen stuck out at an unnatural angle and just made the needle at its bottom even more visible. From years of biology I knew that the needle was actually a thin tube called an ovipositor and is used for laying eggs, and this one was so long because it's used to lay eggs inside of things, inside trees and other insects. The weird thing is that I finished recalling my biology lesson the same moment my speech stopped.

I was trying my hardest to figure out exactly what I meant by "a love more honest and less about just finding someone to get married to and have kids with." And then I asked myself if I was saying that the love everyone else feels is the same as this wasp's ovipositor? Just some adaption that humans have to encourage our propagation? And was I really saying that my love is different and better just because I think spend more time fretting about who I like than every other person I know?

My imagined dialogues are really just self-centered; dramatic is a euphemism that keeps me from worrying about it. Really though, who's imagined dialogues wouldn't be all about them? 

At this point, rather than telling myself that my whole speech was a really stupid thing to think and then going over all of my neighbors outraged reactions at being so heinously marginalized by my comment, my thoughts continued with the questions. "If love really is just an adaptation, what would that mean for religion and philosophies of love? Would love really mean anything then?" Then I got to the probably the most cynical question that I have ever asked in my life "What if the philosophies of love were all lies? Isn't it convenient that every major religion and philosophy of ethics has love at its heart which is coincidentally the exact same thought that brings together most couples that have children and continue the species? What if religion and philosophy all say that love is the most important thing in your life because they were all designed to keep us going as a species or even as a religion (I always like the Simpsons episode where Homer shows Marge a Catholic pamphlet titled Plop Till You Drop, discouraging contraceptives). Or maybe as humans we are hardwired to say that love is the answer to our problems and it's just instinct to crave it." Maybe this is all b.s. and all of my thoughts about it are either conspiracy theories or are hardly scientifically plausible but they worry me. What bothers me the most about them is that when I think about church or U2charists and the repetition of love is what matters, love is the answer, Peace/Love/and Saving the Planet, like a Buddhist mantra it seems like the whole idea has gotten old but the priests and rock stars keep pushing it relentlessly, pleading with us to love others and to love God almost like they're trying to sell us on it, like after 2000-some years it's a cliche.

I know there are a lot of you who don't feel this way, and I don't want to argue with you, that's why I'm writing this as a blog rather than telling it to you face to face, but I have to think that you're like my mother, you don't feel the selling, you only feel the truth in the statement.

And if you don't agree with me ask yourself this: priests and novelists, rockstars and daytime TV show hosts all push love and caring out to their audiences like they need to defend it, like it is being attacked when clearly it's not. Why? There is no one around threatening to crush the life out of it, no one pushing any other idea to replace it. What I see is a lot of people who don't see enough love in the world and are trying to sell more people on it through sermons, songs, and tales that seem a little farfetched and they are not really defending it, they are trying to compete for our attention, they are advertising.

I don't think love is bad and I think it's like many other things that people are trying to sell, it's good and healthy like organic foods (which is another thing they sell at my church these days). But then I get back to my original fear of cliches; that there is truth in them but the idea is somehow changed by the marketing of it. It's not any less true but it's somehow less pure.

Maybe I am just kidding myself though and I'm just clinging to some unrealistic fantasy of true love that I got out of a fairy tale/Disney movie or maybe I'm thinking that somehow the thought of love is spoiled when it is spoken and that no one could do it justice. I don't think either of those are true though because then no sensible person would spend time trying to talk about it.

Maybe it just seems to me that their passion for love is misplaced, and maybe that's just because talking about it is so damn hard that most people end up talking about how great it is and how it changed their life, just like the people on Proactiv infomercials have had their lives changed and "Your life could be changed too! Just call ..." Maybe the big problem with people talking about love is that they haven't yet figured out how to talk about it without making it sound like an ad. I think it's hard for me to talk about anything really important while still sounding sincere.

To throw in a cliche of my own, the whole thing is just the difference between sugar and corn syrup, in your soft drinks one make them pure and refreshing and the other tastes the same at first but after drinking it too many times it leaves a crappy taste in your mouth that is impervious to toothpaste and mouthwash. =) (It's hard for me not to think that if ever I give a defense of love in this post it's going to be a cliche as well)

I really want to believe that I am a good person, that there is more to me than just a cynical person who has a knack for honing in on delicate subjects that are handled poorly. I really would like to believe that I care about love and talking about it because some part of who I am really needs to sort this out and that it's not just the cynical and false parts of me that are fueling this entire thought. That part, if it's there is what wants something more real than advertised love. And if that part of me is there searching for something real in love, then isn't that a reason to actually give a crap about other people and actually trying to love them? (At least that would give it a chance to find that reality.)

More importantly if some part of me like that exists, isn't that a clue that there actually might be something out there that satisfies it? And wouldn't it be great to have something that couldn't be torn down by that calculating cynical part of me as just an advertisement or a downright lie that I believe in just to keep the cynicism at bay?

Even if it's not there, there is always something about love or at least good relationships that makes a difference when cynicism is concerned. When I'm with my girlfriend, or my family, or a really good friend, pretty much whenever I don't feel so alone; I don't spend time thinking about how people can make love feel fake and spun in the same way supermarket ads can be. Essentially when I actually feel some kind of love, the cynicism disappears and I have a chance to see how fragile it really is.

}            //That means "the end" in C++

*I thought I would experiment with the quote tool today rather than banish all my interesting thoughts to footnotes way at the bottom of the page or fill up my paragraphs with parenthetical text

A story remembered and written while driving down long dark roads.

The thrust here is that Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that's really important. He wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it all without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being-- that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of  just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.

Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky         ---David Foster Wallace

I was seven years old and I had a dream of frightening implications; it wasn't a nightmare though, it was a documentary, but not the generic PBS special. It was kin to the films showing the slaughter of dolphins by fishermen, missing limbs and burns covering the bodies of children in war zones and violent murder reenactments of crime television. The whole situation was fairly unique compared to my other dreams which were mostly about fighting off a giant T-Rex from the rooftops of thriving metropolis and other fantasies. This dream had a narrator and as he began his monologue a dramatic reenactment was performed on the back of my eyelids. The narrator began with this. "On a moonless night in ancient Egypt as fires burnt down to embers and people took to their rest an old man staggered across the sand and stumbled into the camp of a caravan. Two guards woke with alarm upon hearing the intrusion but found only a fragile, famished old man at the edge of camp. They carried him on their shoulders into camp and gave him sips of water and sat with him in the late night. Before long uneasiness was eating at them. They were not supposed to trust anyone outside of the caravan and this man should not have been an exception despite his obvious need of help. They mustered up the courage to turn him out of the camp but the old man who had been silent until now pleaded with them and asked the guards to trust a stranger for all his life was worth. The old man had a mesmerizing voice that held their attention hypnotically and soon they acquiesced, leaving him in the center of camp by the remains of the fire. The old man grinned with sharp teeth and pretended to sleep until the guards went back to sleep at their posts." The narrator stopped and let the camera pan around the camp showing the sleeping guards and merchants and then back to the center of the camp which was silent and deserted. The camera followed craters that are all that can really be seen of footsteps in the parched sand all the way to where the guards lay motionless and lifeless. The camera moved quickly to the nearest tent and outside you could hear the faintest noise. The camera moved inside right over the body of an anemic looking merchant and right into the face of the old man who face was repulsively contorted as he leaned over to dispatch the man sleeping at his feet. He viciously bit down and restrained the man who struggled for a moment before dying a quick and Hollywood-esque death. The old man finished his horrific meal and gave a quick glace into the camera with complete indifference to the corpses at his feet. The narrator now explained the graphic seen I had just watched. The old man was in fact old but rather than a man he was the subject of our film, an Egyptian Vampire.

The title of the documentary in my dreams flashed across my mind faster than I could comprehend and the film picked up where it had left off. "Egyptian vampires" said the narrator "are deceitful, repulsive spiders. They appear to us as hideous old men, weak and frail wearing nothing but rags and they come to us when there is no one else around. When I say they are spiders I mean that is how they act; Egyptian vampires have nothing to draw us to them, they look diseased and vile and with the figure of old men they cannot chase us down. Rather Egyptian vampires trap their prey with their assuring and magnetic voice. They hold onto your thoughts and imaginations and tell you to see only what they want you to perceive, that is their trick which is a snare that almost no one escapes. Once you are drawn in they wait until you are alone or until you are trapped or simply unaware and then they drink you up. These vampires live at night and bury themselves during the day to hide from the overbearing sun and the race they prey upon. They also have the unfathomable ability to endure the centuries through which mankind has lived and died. There are still Egyptian vampires today for this very reason and tonight we are going to follow one with our camera crew!" The pyramids at Giza appeared and the sky was very dark with only a few stars piercing the night. The camera focused on a group of tourists who were trying to get a good photo of the pyramid's lit face. An old man who was much shorter than any of the three tourists pushed his way in front of the group and started telling them the forgotten history of the pyramids. The tourists were obviously enraptured after a few minutes and the old man asked them if they would like to venture inside the pyramid. They all said no very quickly and my narrator commented that their decision was wise into the camera, but the old man was steadily convincing them of their absolute safety and that they were not in fact breaking any laws at all. Soon the entire party was moving closer and our narrator and crew were following behind with a night-vision camera. The old man was leading them on with the sound of his voice, one that put me in mind of the Pied Piper of Hamlen's flute, or a sirens song. Finally they reached a small opening in the side of the pyramid and showed them in letting the tourists go first with a small hand-held flashlight that shone like a floodlight in the camera. The old man followed them in telling them to be careful of any cracks in the stone. As we followed them in we could only see the faces of the tourists and the slight shadow of the old man behind them. A man in front was holding a flashlight and a woman was right beside him, behind the two of them was another younger man who was looking curiously up at the high walls on either side of them. The old man suddenly grabbed the man in the rear around the neck and pulled him out of sight. The couple turned around and the flashlight blinded the camera for a moment before the man dropped it. In the reflected light from the flashlight which was rolling on the ground you could see a body on the floor and the second man wrestling with the vampire but losing quickly and the woman was on the ground but getting up and running towards the camera. A muffled yell came down the hall and the woman looked over her shoulder just as she reached the cameraman. She flew into the camera and knocked it backward but a frightened shriek was clearly audible. The cameraman flipped his equipment over and focused again on the woman who was now crying and pleading for mercy. Suddenly a hand reached around her neck and the vampires head appeared over her shoulder. With glittering teeth he looked into the camera, said "Thank you." and then pulled the woman off into the now dark hallway which filled with strangled cries of terror.

I woke up screaming and crying and ran out of the room my brother and I shared into my parent's room next door. I shook my dad awake and told him I had a bad dream and spent the rest of the night sleeping in-between them.

The next morning I woke up and had to start packing. I was going to winter scout camp that night with my dad at Beaumont, a scout camp that was about an hour east of Willoughby. I spent most of the day avoiding packing at all but when my dad got home from work I was unwillingly forced to get all my clothes for the weekend into a bag, including lots of winter clothing in case it snowed though the weather had mostly been rain for the past week.

At about eight-o-clock my dad and I packed ourselves into his black Ford Ranger pick-up (I loved that truck) and started the hour long drive to the middle of nowhere,  Ashtabula County. It was very dark and raining and the radio was out of range of any interesting station so my dad and I drove in silence. I looked out the window into the passing darkness and a chilling thought came over me, what if the Egyptian vampires knew that I had seen them in my dreams, what if they were coming for me right now. I moved away from the window and a little closer to my dad for safety and watched the road through the windshield. As I watched  we slowly passed over a hill and as I could plainly see there was a monster waiting for us at the bottom. I was frightened and hoped that the truck would keep us safe and hidden in its dark cockpit. My dad edged closer to the monster which was keeping pace just ahead of us. The monster had huge red eyes that floated above the road and stared us down. As it reached the peak of a rise in the road we came up behind it and the angry glow from its eyes was bright enough for me to see my dad's face above me. There was smoke billowing and swirling around its high shoulders. It was cloaked in the vortex that poured off its body and reflected the fiery light blazing in its eyes and which trailed off into the air around our truck. My dad shifted over a lane and as we cam abreast with the monsters eyes I counted four wheels that supported it's boxy cargo. An eighteen wheeler was a little more familiar than a monster barreling down the road. Now that we had passed the semi-truck and its headlights were drowned out by the rain I relaxed a little and watched the splatter of rain on the windshield and the very long, very straight and totally empty road that stretched out ahead of us.

Whenever a car or semi would come down the other side of the highway I would watch as the light would be smeared over and over by the windshield wipers. For a moment the road would disappear because the rain was so thick on the glass then the wipers would flash through the world and leave streaks in the blackness and all the lights would turn into blurred, crude hummingbirds that flitted across the screen as the cars moved past. In a moment the rain would wash the hummingbirds and their streaky world out of existence but a moment later they would be back zipping from right to left and off into the darkness turning into little monsters with little red eyes of their own.

I let my mind go and stopped looking at the road because my eyes were sore and tired. Hummingbirds and monsters chased each other around in my head changing from one form to another with every flick of the windshield wiper. I was trying not to think about the dark figure that lurked in the shadowy parts of my head slowly creeping up on my unwary mind. A little tinge of fear gripped me and I wanted to tell my dad not to stop for any strangers while we were driving because it would be the vampire just waiting to drink me up. I didn't say anything though because I was superstitiously afraid that mentioning the ugly old man at all would summon him at once. I didn't look out the window anymore, the streaky, flooded darkness no longer had any hummingbirds or red-eyed monsters there was only a solitary vampire that thrived in the dark and that frightened me more than anything else I had thought up that night.

Suddenly the car decelerated and I slid forward in my seat belt. I looked up and had the terrifying experience of my nightmares coming true. As we slowed we passed a small hunched man who had been waving us over. I hadn't even seen his face yet but I felt the darkness close in on me and I knew it was the vampire who had beguiled my father into pulling our car over. I panicked and started to stutter to my dad to ask him what we were doing pulling over. "Karl we are just going to give this man a ride so he doesn't have to walk in the freezing rain; calm down." he said. "N-nn-no! We can't!" I objected but it was too late. The door was pulled open and I looked straight at a face I had seen before, grinning at the camera with glittering teeth. "Thank you!" he said in a thick accent. "It is absolutely freezing and I have been trying to get someone to stop for me for quite a long time but the road is so empty that I have not seen anyone for a few minutes." "I'm glad we could help." said my dad who was now pulling back out into the road. I looked at the vampire, who was sitting next to me in the bench seat of the truck, with an accusing glare for his comment about the emptiness of the road we were on. I knew he was just waiting for the road to be completely empty to start his deception. "Where can we take you?" asked my dad. "My car is on the side of the road a long way back and it's out of gas so I need a gas station to fill up my canister." The old man gestured to a large red can that smelled like a gas station at his feet. "And if you can spare the time I would be very grateful indeed if you could take me back to my car." My dad said that we had time for both and when the old man asked if he owed us anything my dad told him he didn't want anything at all.

We rode in silence for the next mile to the exit and my dad pulled into the gas station at the nearest stoplight. The man got out of the car to fill up his canister and I quickly tried to explain to my father that we should drive away right now and go home. My dad gaped at me and with a look of utter disbelief and said "What?" "He's an Egyptian vampire dad! The one from my dream and he is going to kill us!" I said urgently. "Karl that is crazy. That man is not a vampire. Vampires do not exist. It was only a bad dream." my dad tried to reassure me but I started yelling. "No! He is a vampire and we have to leave now!" "Oh God, Karl." said my dad. "This is absolutely embarrassing and I hope he didn't hear any of that. We are not leaving him here to walk all the way back in the rain and I won't argue this any more." We were silent for another minute as the man paid for his gas and put it in the bed of the truck. He got back in the car and we got back on the freeway going the opposite direction in continued silence. I looked at my dad and the old man fearfully as they sat on both sides of me. The vampire spoke, to my dad more than me. "I heard the argument between you and your son and I'm sorry that I have frightened him." "No." my dad replied. "It's not your fault, he just had a nightmare last night and it's just his imagination." The man didn't say anything for a minute and was staring at his knees and unexpectedly he said. "But your son could be right about me." I looked at him with what must have looked like pure terror at what sounded to me like an admission of his vampiric nature. He continued. "For all you know about me I could be an Egyptian vampire like he has said, or I could be a murderer or criminal; I might even be a pedophile and you could have no way of knowing at all." "I'm assuming that you have a wife and I know you have a child and I would guess that you also have a good job and that you enjoy your life, so why risk all of that?" My dad nodded a little to show that he understood and the vampire continued. "Also that I think, that despite your argument you love your son and would not want to put him in danger so even if you were willing to put only yourself in this situation what could compel you to risk something/someone that is undoubtedly more precious than your own life?" My dad glanced at me and at the man seated to my right but still said nothing so the old man continued. "Even if you could keep your son from harm why would you want to frighten him by having a complete stranger sit next to him with the fear that all these things may happen?" "My question is why trust me to be a good person, why help me when all it will most likely cause is angst and strife in you and your son, why should you even stop to notice me at all?" My dad stared at the road in silence. The eloquence and curiosity of the old man had evidently expired and he lowered his head in silence too.

My dad drove on and eventually turned around and drove along the road going east that we had originally been on. The old man's car appeared after about five minutes, sitting with its lights off on road margin. My dad pulled over to a stop and the old man put his hand on the door and thanked my father for the ride as he unlocked the door. "Wait please." my father requested. The man turned back and gave my father a questioning look. I looked at my dad and saw that his face was a little scrunched and his brow furrowed which made me wonder if he had been thinking hard this entire time. "I never answered your question of me and I need to give you answer before you leave." "Ok." the old man replied. My dad paused to think for another second and then said this. "There are days where I fight to try and believe in something, and I fight with myself to find any good way to live every day. And what I keep trying to believe in is that generosity, helping people and actually trusting them is part of being a good person, even though I'm not even sure what a good person is supposed to be like. I stopped to help you and I trusted you because I have to fight the part of me that can only see the worst in people and I can't really fight it by doing exactly what it believes and just saying I believe something else, all that is is hypocrisy. So to fight it/myself all I can do is live how I want to believe and I can't just say what I want to believe otherwise I could never claim to be fighting the distrustful, cynical part of myself and I certainly couldn't claim to actually believe anything I say." My dad looked pointedly at the man who was still seated next to me and sighed saying "And that is why despite all my misgivings, and believe me I had a lot of them, I pulled over to give you a lift."


The old man looked like he was about to cry. He then did something that I have never completely understood, he embraced my dad, leaning over me and squeezing me in the middle, then he let go of my father and embraced me which, confused/frightened/paralyzed/shocked/comforted/stilled/blessed me and most of all made me want to hug back a little. He then spoke to me rather than my dad. "Your father is a great and generous man and I will pray every day for you, hoping that one day you will be as generous and faithful as him." Then he thanked my father with all his heart and got out of the truck and removed his large red canister of gasoline from its bed and walked away towards his car. As we drove away I thought I heard him shout "God bless you!" We arrived at camp just fine and only a half hour later than we had expected. That night I didn't dream of vampires or anything at all and the next morning I awoke to over a foot of snow and one of the best weekends of my childhood.

Now that I am grown and starting to live a life of my own I wonder why the old man stopped praying. I didn't grow up to be the person he wished me to be. I think that I fight the same battle my dad was fighting that night but I don't feel like I'm winning. Whenever I pass people on the side of the road with signs that read 'Homeless, Need Help' in scrawled permanent marker and I avoid their eyes and pretend I haven't seen them* I know that I am letting that overly cynical, and entirely apathetic part of me rule my life. And when I am at my church either Christ Church here in Blacksburg or Trinity in Cleveland and people tell me not to just give money to the homeless* and I end up agreeing with them despite my convictions that it is better to trust people than to only worry about uplifting them from their destitution. And when people I'm with blatantly refuse to help someone rather than just ignoring them or handing a few dollars and I say nothing and offer up nothing to help other than an obsessive stare at my shoes. All of these times I can't help feel the loss I suffer morally and emotionally because I can't even say what I believe much less act on it. And now that I think about it, maybe the old man is still praying, I don't think he would forget, maybe I'm just the one who fails to fight for my own morality, my own goodness, and fails consistently, every day.



(Sigh)



*which is a useless trick anyways since both they and I know that I have already seen them; they aren't stupid they have picked a spot where they can't be missed and I can't ever fool myself.

*because they will just use it to feed drug addictions and that it doesn't really help them and they'll just try again to scam you for more.

*The premise of this whole story is true in a lot of ways, I did actually have a documentary dream and the next night I did drive to Beaumont with my dad and think about telling him not to pull over for any strangers. The man isn't real though, he is about the only thing that isn't.

N.B. I did receive permission to use the persona's of all the people used in this story excepting the documentary host who it seems is working on another fantastical show, this one being on Victorian Age time machines. So as of right now he is temporally separated from me by about a century and a half and because time capsules like the US postal service only deliver messages far into the future I had no way of reaching him at all.

God Again*

Dr. Fredrickson didn't really believe in God, he was just trying to figure out how our universe began when he found God staring out at him from the pages of his research. Most people would have understood what he was saying a little better if he just showed them an image of Jesus that had miraculously appeared in place of his equation but that wasn't what happened. God was in the math and Dr. Fredrickson could see him there even if most of the world couldn't comprehend his scrawl. God did exist; the proof was on his paper. Fredrickson was a curious man at heart and felt that since he had been avoiding God for so long he should try to understand him a little before he published his finding and was swept up in a torrent of notoriety. What Fredrickson's paper told him was that God had indeed been present at the inception of the universe and his had been the hand that gave the push to start it all. According to Fredrickson the universe needed action to put everything in motion so that atoms could fuse, stars could burn and burst and life could start and God gave the universe the start it needed with a shove of his mighty hands.

Fredrickson's mathematical model worked well, extremely well but going over his work to learn more of God and his nature he discovered that he had neglected to add any further work by God into his equations after the great push. Fredrickson tried adding that same force back into his equation for later times but his equations ceased to make sense. He turned his thoughts over and over in his head and after days of failed attempts to include God into the universe he eventually resigned himself to the conclusion that the universe only made sense now if God wasn't having anything to do with it at all. But this frustrated Dr. Fredrickson and as he was an eternally curious man he started doing the math for God just to see what had happened to him after the universe had gotten started. It took him days just to get started but going on a hunch he found exactly the answer for which he had been searching. Over 300 years ago Isaac Newton published three laws governing the dynamics of all things in motion and as it turned out God was not excepted from these rules. Newtons third law states that every action results in an equal and opposite reaction. God pushed the world into motion and as Fredrickson discovered, according to that law when he pushed the world into motion he pushed himself into motion too and in the exact opposite direction.

Fredrickson had never taken interest in theological matters but he wondered what this meant for the church and theology in general. What did it mean for all the faithful people if their God was moving farther and farther away every moment. So he went to ask. His university had a respected school of theology so he dropped by the office of one of his colleagues the next afternoon. After his colleague had ascertained that Fredrickson really did have the proof of God and that he could also prove that God had been drifting away from the universe since its inception he went silent for a few moments. Then he asked Fredrickson if he knew what sin was. Fredrickson answered "Well I suppose I thought a sin was something you had done to offend God." His colleague chuckled "That only how people think of it today. The definition of sin I prefer to use is distance from God, which is also the same definition I use for hell. Do you have any idea what I'm getting at?" Fredrickson didn't feel like being lectured so he gave it his best shot and said "Because God is so far away we are all in sin, by your definition." "Precisely!" boomed the other professor "We are drowning in sin because of our distance from God and our sin is ever increasing. Have you ever felt like the world was going deeper and deeper into sin all the time?" Fredrickson wanted to say no but held his tongue for the time being. "This means that you and I and everyone who intuitively felt that have been right all along. And there's more! You have conclusively proved the idea of original sin, since our distance from God was all caused by one act. You have validated so many of my theories; I would have never thought it could all be settled with math and that I would be right on the mark!" Fredrickson had been listening very closely and knew he had pieced together something his colleague had not. "I haven't proved any of your theories." Fredrickson interrupted. The professor who had almost completely forgotten Dr. Fredrickson was there mumbled an apology and asked him what in the world he meant. "Well you seem to have forgotten entirely that God was the one who pushed the universe into motion." "I don't quite follow you." his colleague replied. "You said that I had proved the idea of original sin, because we were getting farther away from God due to a sin committed long before our time. I'm assuming that original sin was a sin done by man and we are paying the price in our distance from God. What you failed to notice is that God was the one who pushed the world into motion and pushed himself away and I think you know exactly what that implies. It was not man who sinned rather because God pushed us away the original sin is really his." Then Fredrickson gathered up his papers and left his dumbfounded colleague to figure out exactly how he was going to defend his papers and his job when the proof of God saw the light of day.

*I am again writing about God, not the same God I wrote about last time. The God I am writing this time is just the creator of the universe, he isn't even the Christian God; so please don't be confused. This was inspired by my ridiculous philosophy class and I'm just toying with ideas from the reading for tomorrow. Just try to be amused.

The Word of the Lord.

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless - of the cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of my eyes that vainly crave the light - of the objects mean - of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of us all - of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest - with the rest of me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here - that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Uncle Walt1

God languished at the edge of the universe for lack of something better to do. He was just so bored by everything he had been doing for the last half of eternity (infinite minds are awfully hard to occupy indefinitely). So he told himself stories and waited to run into something or someone interesting. The universe that he had seen this far had ceased to interest him especially since there wasn't much to see, mostly shades of black on darkness; so he abandoned the void where he resided and his profound thoughts that can really only be contemplated in absence of anything else and went in search of something other than empty space and empty-headed thoughts. As there was still nothing to see God closed his eyes and watched the colors and forms that danced on his eyelids and wrote stories about the color and the little points of light. God liked to think that he was a great story-teller and his stories were filled with the detail and sensuous delight his universe was lacking. People with depth and life filled every scene; they had back stories and dialogue and were story-tellers in their own right. God was actually very proud of his creations; they were unorthodox in the void which swallowed everything that couldn't stand on two legs of truth and that they could stay in his head without being sucked up by the void as well delighted him. Most of the inhabitants of the void, those true things which couldn't be denied, agreed with its philosophy that anything that wasn't true should evaporate into emptiness because that's all lies and fictions are anyways, just emptiness, the absence of truth; some even thought God should evaporate as well since he was just full of it but none of them could deny his truth, so he stuck around and spent his days imagining entire worlds of imagining people.

With his eyes closed God could see everything ever wanted in the way of interesting worlds and things and people except one thing that he couldn't see because it wasn't inside his eyelids and he was very startled when he bumped into it. The soul that he bumped into shrieked, well it would have if it had known what a shriek was, but God had some idea and that's how he heard it. God whipped around and opened his eyes to see what he had unwittingly disturbed but like everything in the void it was black against darkness and even with Gods keen eyes he couldn't pick it out until he brushed up against it again and another shriek trumpeted in his ears. It was a speck and God feeling especially guilty for frightening it so badly cupped the speck of soul in his hands to calm it down, but when he reached out to it again to soothe it he was taken aback with shock and wonder. The little soul he held in his hands has no senses, it couldn't see the void or hear the booming voices of truths that passed though the universe whenever they were announcing their new platforms; it had never perceived or known anything until their chance encounter and since then all it felt was mortal fear. God was puzzled but his immediate reaction was to calm the trembling soul, to make it feel something other than fear since that was certainly the worst way for any truth to go through life. He spoke to it softly and tried to feed it calming thoughts but the soul was panicking at the intrusion to its previously blank mind and it darted frantically from one palm to the other only feeling more and more trapped. God was visibly upset and was afraid that if he did any more that he would only make the souls condition worse. But he wanted it to have more on its mind than just a terrifying encounter with something so much bigger than itself so he started feeding it images from its mind so that one day it might be able to remember those and not only its own experience. The soul fled eventually and God watched it go until he blinked and suddenly couldn't make out its form any longer. He had scared off the first interest thing he had run across in the universe: he sat and pondered since there was really nothing else to do and turned his mind back upon itself.

Bump! God was so confused. Bump-bump-bumpbump-bummmmp! He had been lost in thought for ages and this was such a weird, persistent feeling that had broken his reverie. He looked down at the speck that was poking him in the side with such conviction. The soul was back; and putting on the most impertinent display God had ever seen. God knew why it was here, every bump communicated the same idea and conveyed it very intently; interest, in anything God had to say. Ironically all God could think to say was "Huh."

The speck followed God wherever he went, mostly latching on to hear stories and thoughts that were constantly flowing from Gods mind and devouring each one with eager delight. God let colors and forms flow out of him and into the void where they mostly dissipated and some were captured by his enthralled parasite; God no longer cared that his thoughts were fading into nothing into the void, he was broadcasting for everyone to hear and was triumphant in the knowledge that he had one listener. Then out of nowhere came another bump-bumpbump, and God looked down; another stray soul had pressed up to God. It had just heard the faintest sound but after existing for an eternity without a single voice the soul flew to the sound of God. Suddenly scores of souls were flocking to God, all hearing and thinking for the first time. He had stumbled upon thousands of souls all clustered together as they had been since the moment of creation. They swarmed and flew around and God stood in awe for the first time in his life. All this time they had been sitting here at the edge of the infinite universe without a thought, a question, a voluntary movement or a story to speak of and every single one was now pressing up against him to hear something, well just anything at all. God thought, and pondered; he was so intrigued and he had hoped for someone to listen to his stories ever since he could remember wanting anything and now he had writers block. What to say, what is good enough? Then the very first soul did something he hadn't expected, it articulated exactly the story it wanted; it wanted to hear its own story, and at that moment God knew exactly how to begin.

God began his epic poem and said "Let there be light" and everything was bright. The souls could see the world of his invention and watched with anticipation. God separated the light from the dark to distinguish everything in it; unlike the universe, his mind was filled with things that were light on dark, where you could really see. Then he created an object, huge and permanent; a world to stand on and just for variety he gave it water and air because this world would be more than just something and the absence of it. Then God looked and said "There needs to be more, this world should be decadent and full of things that multiply to make more and more until there is no space on the world for anything stale or bland. So God imagined into his world, plants that grew and reproduced to fill water and the land. God also played with the light in the sky so it always moved and so every night he and the souls could look up and see twinkling stars: he was really on a roll. Then God looked at the teeming souls, without eyes or ears that could really only see and hear him and he decided to make them something too. He experimented with forms putting each one on the Earth and tweaking the next until finally he came up with something suitable for what they were; in fact as he saw it now they all were human and he gave each a body. The souls all started talking, touching, smelling, tasting and hearing the world God had created and they loved their story. God sat back and listened because he loved their stories too, each of them had at least one to tell. God had made them all in his image; they were all story-tellers too. They told stories of love, passion, hatred, war, honor, courage, loyalty, adventure and every quality that could motivate their tongues move. God watched every story unfold and people listened to people recount them again and again. Humans died, they died a lot but each time their souls would wake up from their dreamlike state in the universe and bed to be let back into the story of their life, even if they had to start over.

One day a soul came rocketing out of the story, screaming, shouting, cursing at the world and life itself and in his rage he ran straight into God. He looked bewildered for a moment but then aimed his curses and rants at God himself, saying that everything was a lie, screaming at him for deceiving all the people the world, never allowing them to know anything because he has shut them off from the truth and the real world. God was perplexed; no one had ever told him that they felt this way before; no one ever thought the story was a bad thing, or even a deception. He asked what the outraged soul wanted in the clearest of terms. The soul responded simply "I want to see the world for myself; I want to know what my existence really is; I want to know the truth!" "Oh." God said he picked up the tiny speck that was so full of anger and he placed him an arm's length away. "Here you are." he said and let go. The souls sight went black, his senses numb and he could no longer scream. He couldn't hear the truths trumpeting their ideologies and he barely even knew he existed at all.3 God watched with pity as the little soul squirmed and darted blindly one way and then another. He wanted something that his nature denied his having and God regretted that he could never show the souls what he feared some of them desired most, a glimpse of reality itself. It was in their nature that they were unable to sense reality for themselves and his nature was to to invent stories and fabrications and in consequence he could never truly show them it himself. He listened to the blaring truths but he could never recite their knowledge, their teachings. He looked at the souls crowded around him and wondered whether his stories had anything to teach.

The end.


1. Walt Whitman. For those of you who enjoy footnotes, Whitman is referred to as Uncle Walt in the Dead Poets Society which I just watched last week.
I found this particular poem (O Me! O Life) while searching Poets.org which I highly recommend to anyone who has some free time and can stand to read in verse. (Yes I do search poetry websites in my free time. Don't judge.)
2. The only reason this got published is because I couldn't sleep. It's 6:10am. I have church in 4 hours and 20 minutes. Hopefully the Scotts think this an appropriate excuse for falling asleep during the service.
3. I wrote the following after publishing this post on Sunday, I wasn't satisfied with the ending so I rewrote it on Monday. Just in case any of you were interested enough to read it again. =)

"Oh no, not again."

I want to feel like a real writer for once so I'm dedicating this short story to my parents who have given me a wonderful sense of humor to keep my spirits up. And to Mrs. Campbell who first taught me how to write.

Phillip had always been stuck to the rest of his family, and their constant presence was starting to agitate him. Immobilized by cellophane walls and held fast at the tail which was inconveniently stuck into his brother, Shane's breast, he couldn't even turn himself over. He just watched the world with the one eye facing out and a mind overflowing with curiosity. Phillip yearned to see the world but in the short span of his existence he rarely ever saw anything other than the box in front of him. Luck and a large marshmallow spewing snake had placed him at the edge of his family so that whenever the number of boxes to his right dwindled to three or less he could get a glimpse of the world beyond. Things moved, made noise and took boxes away constantly. Since they had arrived on their shelf Phillip had always wished for a spot right on the edge; nearer to the movement and noise that plagued his thoughts.

Compared to the thoughts excited in Phillip by the world beyond, his family's thoughts were infinitely less interesting. They spent their copious free time memorizing nutrition facts and ingredients printed on the box that claimed their entire view. It bore all the ideas that they chose to live according to, that they must always have 200 mg of sugar and 0 mg of protein and of course that Marshmallow Peeps must always be a low-fat snack. Phillip had no clue what they were thinking but he couldn't avoid it. Being physically attached right to someone's heart gave you a pretty good understanding of them, inside and out. Feelings traveled especially well down the family. Mostly there was just the dreary feeling of complacent reverence and occasionally a bit of agitation in response to his insatiable curiosity. He sometimes considered that they only scorned his interest for a lack of a better view themselves and that maybe when the box preceding theirs was removed they might find a world that was more interesting to them than meditating over a few sentences that never changed in meaning. Until the moment when he could touch the world and not just his barriers of cardboard and plastic Phillip thought he could bear the gravity of their thoughts and when that day arrived he hoped that maybe with a change of heart his family would join him in the adventures he was to have.

Phillip had no way to measure time, he knew that sometimes the lights and the noise ceased but he felt the time of light, noise and motion was much longer. The light had just arrived and murmurs of sound were starting to pass by when the box in front of them was suddenly removed. Phillip's rejoicing was almost entirely drowned out by the shock and terror emanating from his family. They had known of the world beyond from his thoughts but they were now acutely aware of their exposure, the precipitous drop before them and perhaps most keenly felt was the loss of their precious text. Phillip could hear his father's trembling prayer to be delivered from their plight and for the safe return of their saving words and guide. Momentarily their prayers and the wishes of Phillip were all answered. To the temporary horror of his family their box was removed from the shelf and placed in a bag with the other box. Phillip was in awe of all he saw. He thought that there was nothing more wonderful in the world than movement and he relished the feeling that he had dreamed about endlessly. They stopped and started, turned and accelerated, rose up and fell down and there was noise surrounding him always.

After a while the movement stopped and Phillip though desperately curious to examine his new surrounding and to be set at liberty from his cellophane enclosure and the unbearably distressing attitude his family had assumed. To his relief the movement suddenly returned and they were pulled into the open. Phillip was delighted and his anticipation only increased from observing how often their box was being handled. He dared not hope that they would be free so soon but the creature broke the plastic just below him and his anticipation was proved not to be in vain. Fresh air filled the box as it was opened and for the first time Phillip smelled aromas other than that of sugar and corn syrup. They were light and intermingling, the scents of the entire world, it seemed had all been let in at once and just for him. He watched in admiration as the creature reached in and separated one Peep to give her freedom, but his admiration suddenly turned to horror and fear as the creature lifted her into the air and without warning removed her head with it's terrifying teeth. Phillip plainly saw the disgusting saliva running down her side, ruining her crystalline coat and those vicious teeth besmirched with yellow pigment.

He could think of nothing but escape but for all of his screaming and agitation nothing could posses his feet to move. "No!" he cried aloud. "I need to live! I have to see the world! I was never meant to die! All I have seen is the inside of this box and those useless words!" At that moment he felt his father calm himself and direct his words towards Phillip. "Maybe if you had read those words more and endeavored to understand them you would not be so afraid right now. Have you considered that maybe what they were telling us all along was that this was our future and our place in the world, in the grand plan?" Phillip struggled and fought with all his might, whatever his father thought he had not intended this to be his future. He knew that those silly words they had studied were no substitute for the real world even if he would never feel it. Even their feeling of certainly, of purpose, of security in their fate could never compare with the reality that he saw through plastic walls every day. When his father was taken he felt his resolution falter for just a moment and felt the fear that still resided in him despite his courage and faith. He hadn't escaped it at all. Phillip was taken after Shane and he screamed at the top of his lungs "What was the point?! Why did I dream of adventure and the world beyond if I was just made to be food for some monster?!"

Bits and pieces fell down and dissolved. As Phillip's pieces fell on top of his family's he screamed in agony with them though for a very different reason. He had just been freed, let into the world and was now entombed again, his chance for a real life gone forever and it pained him more than being reduced to moistened shreds. As the pieces of him dissolved he calmed and just began to think "I was just food, all along. Despite my dreams and hopes for a better life, I was always just food for something else. What was the point? Did my life have more meaning than just being a low-fat snack? What about my ambition to live? Doesn't that mean anything?" His thoughts swirled around in stomach acid and were slowly digested. As his body became part of his captors he felt the thoughts swirling through monsters head too "What is the meaning of life? There are so many ideas and I don't know what is right. Where do I go when I die?" As he disappeared Phillip whispered "You are just food, food for someone else who doesn't understand it either."

The End

The title is taken from the bowl of petunias in Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This story was inspired by a journal I wrote in fifth grade in Mrs. Campbell's class as a creative writing assignment. It was originally titled The Peeps.

"We're making a better world; all of them, better worlds"

After one semester of school I have already come to the conclusion that I really dislike the Virginia Tech College of Engineering or at least the Department of Engineering Education (though I am still set on being an engineer myself). I am sick of the focus on sustainability (yes I did just say that), the arrogance expressed in our textbook and the attitude of half the freshmen that I meet who think that all the world's problems will be solved by strapping solar panels to the blades of a windmill. I am exaggerating a lot but I have heard the phrase renewable/sustainable energy so much that you might just think it's really going to fix all the worlds problems. Well I have some sad news for the Department of Engineering Education; sustainable energy won't fix the world's problems, but neither will Jesus nor Superman; politics won't help nor will free public education (sorry if I'm saying something you don't like, but it's my blog and I can be as ridiculous as I want). With that said I would like to propose the preposterous idea that I do have the solution to all the worlds problems. Yes I am being a little full of myself but I'm entirely in earnest; and it's pretty simple (and certainly a lot easier than Jesus' commandment to love one another). All that needs to happen is for everyone to get a little more comfortable with their neighbors.

The problem that I have spotted, the one that everyone else missed is that individually we have too much space and as a race, on a planet of limited size, we have far too little. This modest proposal asks that everyone just get a little closer together. It asks for the reduction of the suburbs and the elimination of the exurbs (large McMansions that have been intentionally built in the middle of nowhere) and just to put as many people as possible in large cities. Why do something so counter intuitive? It's pretty easy to predict that when you put a lot of people together you will get a lot more robberies and muggings, the crime and violence you always find in cities. Well the first thing to think about is that with a lot more people living in one place you will certainly have a lot more police, but that is not a solution to the problem. Something to think about is that people in general would not like to live in an area with lots of crime and violence and most of the people left the city to avoid those problems. However if they do stay, the people the city will try to make their lives better, which is something people routinely do and I would hope that if they tried long enough they would eventually start to succeed. I think most of the people in the world would like the streets to be safer so they weren't afraid to leave their homes. Most would like to have good grocery stores and restaurants. If people want these things bad enough someone is going to oblige and clean up the streets, open up restaurants and other stores if only to make money off of their desire for something better.

Now that I have cleared that general concern I want to address some specific concerns.

Cities are wonderful places, if they have jobs. But the wonderful thing about having everyone in one place is that all the jobs can be in one place too. Imagine that every day, people in Town A get in their cars and drive on the free way to work in Town B 10 miles away and at the same time everyone in Town B gets into their cars to drive to work in Town A. Well doesn't this sound like every day driving to work? A river of taillights flows out in front of you on one side of the road while cars on the other side of the road drive in the exact opposite direction to where you just came from to work. Wouldn't it be great if all the people could work in their own town? Can you imagine how much gas and frustration that would save? Except the people in Town A were only qualified for jobs in Town B and the people in Town B could only find work in Town A. However if you put everyone in City C and all the jobs are there then no one has to travel for a job because it's right next to them. So, are you happy outraged environmentalists and frustrated white collar businessmen? I just saved you all 20 miles of travel every day and if the city has good public transportation then you will only need a car for family vacation and camping trips so, everyone can have an SUV without worrying about gas money.

Now there are a lot of hungry people in the world, or so I was often reminded at the dinner table when I refused to eat. How does this idea help them? Well since the whole world population is now concentrated into small areas there are now lots of places to grow good food that can be shipped to the nearest city and with all of the heat in the city it becomes a perfect greenhouse to grow foods inside large buildings as well. With so much food it becomes dirt cheap and the basic foods would be barely worth selling at all. Also with a sudden abundance of good farmland there is no reason to keep burning down the rainforests at all because that land is not needed. Nature preserves can be kept as an escape from the city and now it would be a lot more wild because there would be no people anywhere. Poor starving kid in Africa satisfied; check! Naturalists and people who chain themselves to trees satisfied; check!

Now for the cherry on top of my social planning sundae; war and disease, the two worst killers of civilizations. Disease is certainly handled much better in cities with hospitals and modern medicine than out in rural areas but what of war? One of my heroes Nikola Tesla was an inventor more prolific than the famed Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Edison. He invented our current system of AC power, he was the inventor of radio (which was NOT invented by Marconi!) and he invented the science of robotics. Tesla believed that with his robotics the world could engineer away war. He envisioned remote controlled planes and mechanical men to fight wars in our place. He wanted war just to become a big game until it just faded away as a novelty like every other game we have played. We have robotic planes now, electronically guided missiles and machines of war that should keep our soldiers away from the bullets flying across the battlefield but war continues, our soldiers still die and the people who lack these machines to put distance between them and the bullets die as well. War is not going to be engineered away. But if you put all the people closer maybe they won't fight each other as much. It's a pretty common idea that if you allow people to get to know each other they will fight less and less. Tesla thought that his invention of the radio would help people communicate better and reduce conflict. Alberto Santos Dumont thought that if he invented a personal plane the world would seem like a smaller place where people could get to know each other. The problem with both of these ideas is that people don't have to live with each other in either case. They still can go home at night and they still have another country to which they have sworn allegiance. People in the same city may not get along that well but they still call the same place home which is a lot to have in common. Also they can't really blow each other up, especially if the military is all on the same side.
War; Poof! Gone!

Any questions?

Well then, I am done being silly for a bit. I don't really know if this would work at all and I have hardly worked out all the details but I was just making a very long example. I just said that you couldn't engineer away war and earlier that sustainable energy couldn't fix the world's problems. In the same context you can't engineer away hunger or poverty, you can't fix deforestation with technology and you can't make people happier by making a bigger car to drive to work in. You really have to think outside of engineering to solve the problems of the world. But this plan wouldn't work without engineers, it couldn't be built, it couldn't be organized efficiently, it couldn't be designed without them. I'm still set on being an engineer though and I don't want to relegate my profession to just enabling the dreams of others. Engineers and inventors have always had the big ideas that made the world a better place and I would like to be in that position someday.

For New Years Eve I was partying with my parents at the house of a NASA engineer, Chris Burke and at the end of the night he was talking to me about how to go about being the best engineer that I could. He told me simply that I had to think outside the box, the engineering box. He started talking about perpetual motion machines and their physical impossibility but the abundance of people attempting to make them. We both knew that thermodynamics prevented them because they violated conservation of energy.** All that means is that it is useless to try to make them at all. But he suggested to me that instead of thinking they were impossible and giving up, to try and think outside of the box to use the energy that is everywhere in the world to make the illusion of one. To make a machine that seemingly could go forever and even make energy out of nothing but really just converting the energy around it. This is what engineering really is. We are not just physicists determining what is possible and impossible, and instead engineers think beyond the rules to make something interesting happen. In essence it is our job to think creatively and not keep our minds trapped in what we have learned.

This is the kind of engineering and inventing that I want to do with my life, the kind that has nothing to do with my drawing or programming skills and nothing to do with the physics and math I have learned. Those are tools which should only help us think outside the box and not define the walls that hold us in.


Ta ta for now!


*The quote in the title is from the Assassin in the movie Serenity.

**A simple explanation of the three laws of thermodynamics. 1) You can never get more energy out of a machine than you put in. You can only break even. 2) You can only break even at absolute zero. 3) You can never reach absolute zero.