Florence

Tomorrow Rachel and I are leaving for Florence, Italy.  We’ll be there for six weeks, studying and drinking and eating, etc.  I’ll be bringing a personal journal to do some old-fashioned travel writing by hand.  Whenever I go to an internet cafe I’ll try and remember to do a small Twitter update.  http://twitter.com/farmyardagency

Ciao

Abducted: Tangent During Interrogation

I couldn’t see anything.  No, I’m not saying that in retrospect I was young and couldn’t see how things really were.  I mean, that’s true, but I really couldn’t see anything.  Like my hand in front of my face was invisible.  Anyway.

I could hear the water.  I could hear it seeping from the cracks in the wall.  Each fissure was an exit, a light, not a light because of the unbelievable darkness, a release, a relieving, a reliving?  I remember closing my useless eyes and just, you know man, listened.  Have you ever tried that?  Just listening?  It’s nice, but only briefly.  Think about how different and dull and depressing life would be if we could only hear and feel.  No sight, nope.  I bet some of my hippie friends back in college would say, “no brother, you got it all wrong.  We just need to listen to Earth, just listen to Her and us and absorb and become assimilated.”  Back then I would have agreed with those people, but if things were really that way then how would love work?

“What?”

Love, man.  Yeah, write it down, listen up.

Now I only have experience as a male because that’s what I am and I can’t tell you how it is for all my sisters, but this is how it is for me.  When you first feel that ache, that swelling, that something in your stomach, your chest, your throat, your head, your self, when you feel that, man, that’s love.  Hey, and don’t get that confused with lust, man.  That’s more of a burning and a different conversation for a different life with a different guy that ain’t me.  But that feeling, whether it comes sooner or later when you look at that girl, it comes when you’re looking at her.  You can’t hear her and feel love, can’t touch her and feel love.  Make sense now?

“Yes, at least one thing has become clear, though unfortunately not your intended metaphor”

I don’t talk metaphors, man, I talk reality.

“We understand your ignorance and stupidity and understand now that it must be destroyed along with your confused ideas about time, but especially space and your existence in it.  Not to mention your misconceptions on what you call ‘reality.’”

What?

The dominus Part 1

The dominus lives a life.  Just a life.  Not a good life, or a cursed life or an okay life.  Actually, he used to live a good life until he did something really bad and unspeakable (who knows who might read this some day!).  The bad thing he did was so bad that two things resulted from it.  First, he lost the capital ‘D’ in his name.  No longer would be he dominus with a big ‘D.’  And to make sure he didn’t cheat and capitalize the ‘D’ as the first letter of a sentence, the word ‘The’ was placed before dominus.  So he became known as ‘The dominus.’  Second, his good life was demoted to just life.

This second consequence actually turned out to be of some utilitarian use.  It sort of physicalized the phrase, “well, that’s life.”  If something unfortunate–not really devastating though–happened to someone, they would just shrug their shoulders and say, “well, that’s life.”  But many of the people that lived in Cavern didn’t really understand what that meant.  “What do you mean, that’s life?  Where is it?  I don’t see anything.  I can’t point to something ostensibly and say that it is life, can I?”  Living in Cavern robbed most people of the valuable skill of thinking common sensically.  But if The dominus was around, someone could point at life.  Well, sort of, at least.  The dominus was the closest physical thing there was to ‘life’ with no adjective coming before it.  Besides, even if you say I’m wrong, at least the confused person would look at The dominus and say, “Oh, okay, I see now.”  Close enough for them is close enough for anyone.