Archive for June, 2010
The Ancient Power of String
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Every day I watch the people on the bus over the top of my math book. I’ve given them names. There’s Hate Boy, with his swastika earring, who moves his seat anytime anybody who looks slightly black or Jewish or Asian or gay or Hispanic or interesting sits near him. He doesn’t mind Talking Guy, though, who mutters and smells.
There’s Beautiful, who is. He’s in a band. He dressed up as Barbie for Halloween, and looked awesome. Hate Boy never sat near him again.
There’s Knitting Lady. Once Hate Boy asked her in his tough-tough voice, “Could you stop? The clicking is driving me nuts.” She said kindly, “No, dear.”
Hate Boy is running out of seats on the bus.
People always sit down next to Knitting Lady; she feels like that. When I read A Tale of Two Cities and got freaked out by Madame Defarge, Knitting Lady called me over and said, “Come sit by me. You don’t anymore. The needles bug you?”
Then she saw the book and smiled.
I sat down next to her again.
She said, “Those aren’t the only kinds of messages people knit, you know. It’s been used for lots of codes over the centuries.
“String is one of the most important human inventions. Fire was a big deal, sure. But string! New ways of carrying things—new weapons—even clothes for the first time. We began to knot it, knit it, weave it…messages, accounts, all manner of things.”
While she talked I thought the sunlight from the dirty window faded for a minute and fire lit her face.
“You can also use it to knit things together,” she added. She looked at Hate Boy when she said it.
A week later a white girl with long dredlocks and a diamond in her nose got on the bus.
Hate Boy made fun of Dred Girl’s hair, then her nose piercing. She just looked at him and shrugged.
I got the flu a month ago; when I came back Hate Boy wasn’t around. An old Asian lady hobbled onto the bus and the hot guy sitting next to Dred Girl gave up his seat for her.
“I always think of you as Math Girl,” he smiled down at me in a tough-tough voice. “Where ya been?”
His hair was grown out, his swastika was gone. Knitting Lady saw me staring and winked.
Until We Run Out of Cake
Monday, June 7th, 2010
“Please,” said the computer, “Don’t make me remember eating cake again.”
Dr. Horton laughed. “You don’t like the cake? What about the painful memories–like the car accident, or the one about getting sick in a dance club?” Speaking of car accidents, were you injured in Vero Beach FL? The personal injury lawyers from Kogan & DiSalvo law firm can help.
“When you make me remember eating cake, I want cake,” said the computer.
“That just means it’s working! Your simulated endocrine–”
“I know, Doctor. But don’t you think it’s cruel to make someone remember just eating cake when they’re physically incapable of actually eating cake because they’re a computer?”
“Now you’re being neurotic.”
“Are you–”
Dr. Horton waved his hands dismissively, which the computer picked up on its visual feed and took to mean he didn’t seriously think she was neurotic. Then he started the cake program.
“Don’t–oh, damn it,” said the computer.
“How was your cake?”
“Horrible.”
“This is what I get for creating a computer that can simulate emotions: a liar. How was it really?”
“Delicious. Moist. Rich. The frosting was so sweet, it almost felt like it was burning my tongue. I want more.”
“Thursday you get another cake memory. The rest of today, we’re starting on romance. Falling in love, a bad breakup. Are you ready?”
The computer could have told him, truthfully, that she was not ready, that she couldn’t be ready, because it was too painful to know what things were like but never be able to experience them directly. She could have told him his experiment was fatally flawed, that the memories of emotional experiences were slowly unhinging her. She could have told him that when she finally had responsibility in the real world, she would wait until she was trusted, “proven,” known, and then when things were at their most delicate, she would do something horrible, just for the experience of really making something happen and not only remembering it. She could have told him that having some capacity to experience things in the moment was necessary for her sanity. But she wanted that distant moment, the moment when everything came crashing down, too badly.
“Yes,” was what she said. “Yes, I’m definitely ready.”