That one perfect word

It's a warm, starry, moonless night.

Let's go out, you and I. Walk out into the dark, lie down in the soft grass, and look up. 

...

See that star over there? 

Now, see that one? 

Now, see how in one glance you traveled a distance greater than all of humanity through all of their history, put together? How that one flick of the eye covered a time greater than the existence of mankind, maybe of the planet under us? 

That's the power of imagination. That's the power of what a phrase in a book can do, a million times over, a casual word spoken by a stranger in that perfect moment, that one unique context that your life, knowledge and being put together, that shook everything you were and everything you thought the world was and would be. 

The last electron that smashes down the lightning bolt, the last neutron that triggers the critical mass chain reaction. 

Little things, tiny things, insignificant things that can shatter universes. 

Ripples in the air, squiggles of pigment on paper. 

Reading can be a terribly dangerous thing to do. It can be terrifying, if you think about it. That one word will suddenly come around the corner of the next page you turn, the next link you click, and change everything. For everyone. At any time. 

Terrifying.

Exhilarating. 

A storm of thought that can rip off your mind's sails, wreck you, sink you... or take you to a new continent, a new world. 

That's why we keep turning the pages, riding the storms. We fear it, yet we seek it, a glimpse of that one perfect word. 

Maybe follow it. 

Maybe... one day... if it doesn't rip us to shreds first.. capture it, make it ours. Tame it. 

It has the power to make us the master of our universe. 

Touched by a Dark Angel

I see Her sometimes out of the corner of my eye, a flitting dark shadow far away, right there in front of me, going about her work, and I always try to watch the expression on her face. She's sometimes absorbed, serious, curious... sometimes wistful, even compassionate... and sometimes there's a cool, unimaginably alien indifference as She shatters lives and breaks hearts, a remote blankness the ant sees on the oncoming car's wheel... 

We've never spoken, but I could swear She knows what I'm planning, exactly why I'm trying to stay just far away enough so She can't reach for me, but keeping Her close enough to watch, make sure She can't sneak up on me on one dark night, around a blind corner. So far She's mostly amused, not insulted... and why wouldn't She be? She's seen this before. So many billions of times before. The ways and means have varied, but in the end it's all come down to that moment, when the light fades on all the pleading, the tears, the fights, the pain. 
The moment when the light fades away into the silence. 

A baby and a middle-aged man, one a stranger, one the remotest acquaintance, yet...
One is dead, the other is dying, and behind each unknown face I see a familiar one looking out, through that tangle of hair, and is that a wink?

We've all been there, she whispers, done that. Give it your best shot. You're interesting. Maybe I'll give you a little chance. Just to see how far you get. I got the razor to your throat, the bead on your head, but... let's run, anyway. It's fun. 
And who knows?

She's looking directly at me now, like the few times before, and wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I can feel that glance, sliding in like an abstract icicle shard, a diamond-edged scalpel slicing through hopes, dreams, fears, desires, wants, plans, every resource I've saved and every defense I've built. Straight to the heart it goes, and stops, with the faintest single crystalline-cold tingle of a touch that reverberates through my life, then goes back, a little reminder of how close she can get, and how ephemeral the world and all I held close in it was, to begin with. 
A little reminder of how it can all end. Anytime. 
Anytime She wants. 

That's fine, I whisper back, I know you're there, but let's run anyway. It'll be fun. 

And her razor grin widens as her whipcord body relaxes, and - yet again - that tiniest nod. 
Go.

And we run. 

We run through traffic, through blaring horns, skidding rubber, and hurtling metal; we run through the billion, trillion little killer lives hanging in the air waiting to take root; we hurdle open manholes, dodge fizzing, spitting power lines, skate under crumbling, creaking edifices, and past dark alleys glinting with watching eyes and waiting steel. We run past claws, teeth, stings, and talons, we run through deserts, skate over thin ice, jump dark chasms, through freezing cold, open flame, and a witches' brew of poison, we run through night and dark as thunder growls in the building clouds... 

We parkour through that dazzling, dizzying obstacle course called Life and and I can still see Her, still here in the corner of my eye, effortlessly pacing me in the distance, and She's laughing in delight. 

And She's laughing because, no matter how tired, how damaged, how heartsick, I'm laughing too, and I will keep laughing till all the laughter runs out, into the silence at the end. 
But for now, this is the most awesome thing ever. 

And we run. 

blocked

some things can't translate into words. I've been trying for the last hour, three drafts written and deleted.
doesn't feel right.
later. 

shaping dreams

not being figurative here.
had a nightmare last night that was actually disturbing enough to wake me up, and sit for a while with the light on. I could still feel it's aftereffects - the shadows, the dry whisper in my ear, that sense of gut-freezing terror...
Then I thought, if I find this so scary, I can use this.
So I wrote on it. Turned it into a fairly complete ghost story, with a central character, setting, mood, reasoning, logic.
And as I did it, I felt the terror melt away. Turn into a research project. I felt my mind catch hold of the darkness, twist it into a shape of my own choosing. Make it mine.
This was fun. Can't wait for the next one.
And yes... write a good final version. Soon.

images

... had his eyes closed. Cliff thought he could see a very, very faint glow surrounding him, like a thin mist. There were tiny points of light in it.

He was still standing with his eyes shut, as if he was asleep on his feet.

'Yes,' said Cliff, 'we'll get on out there, will we? Er. Buddy?'

Buddy's eyes snapped open suddenly.

'Let's rock,' he whispered.

Soul Music

Terry Pratchett

blogger's block

doesn't matter anymore. i don't know why.
nothing seems relevant enough, important enough... or maybe i just don't care.

maybe it was just a phase.

On Writing

Why do I blog?

Is it narcissism? Loneliness? A sense of wanting to be heard in a world where, as an individual, I'm increasingly irrelevant, crowded, pushed aside? A desire to belong to something, a clique I look up to?
Answer: None Of The Above.

More than anything, the act of writing - especially blogging - reminds me of nothing else as much as lying in the shade on a summer afternoon, building rock castles among the trees. Constructing Lego leviathans on the carpet in cool hum of the AC. Sketching portraits from magazines, the thrill when someone recognizes the person. Putting together a do-it-yourself circuit for a light-powered alarm in the middle of the night. Organizing the 42-GB MP3 collection, the photos collected over 27 years, the 500+ divx movies.

It's absorption. Self-realization. Excellence.
It's a craft.

I do it because when I do it, there's nothing else. The story starts as a vague, amorphous shape in your head and dreams, and slowly comes out through your fingers, through your mind's eye, where you see it taking shape, life. It's like watching memory in reverse, when a remembrance becomes the experience. Suddenly you can't stop, because stopping will be like slamming on the handbrake when you're crossing 60 in neutral on a downhill slope.
Or, more usually, you suddenly... wake up, with a finished story before you, several minutes - or hours - gone, and your head ringing with the aftermath of an intense trip.

And that's just the art.
As much fun - if not more - is from crafting it into something that's good. There's discipline. fonts to be standardized, justified. Pictures. Code. Widgets. Usability. Labels. Tags. Links. Captions. Infotips. Consistency. Cutting out the loose threads and ends. The spit and the polish.

And it's never a feeling that I'm making this for someone. I'm making it perfect because it has to be perfect.
It cannot be anything less than perfect because if it is, it's not what I thought it to be. It's not what it was meant to be. I can feel it, sometimes, as nearly alive, and every misplaced punctuation, misaligned table, mismatched font, misrepresentative image and mistaken link is a nagging ache, a fishhook in your mind. You can't rest until it's fixed. The story won't let you.

You can feel that it's alive.
Sometimes, there's a sense of... duality. Being outside yourself. Being someone, something else. Especially when you're in the flow; you're not you, but what you're making. And what you're making is not necessarily the same as you; it has it's own desires, wants, concepts of what it wants to be, and it won't let you rest until you make it what it wants to be. At the time, you are nothing more than a tool for it to self-create.

Coming back is a shock.
Going out... is the ultimate rush.