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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Madness and a Sock Full of Quarters
Saturday. 2.10.07 10:08 pm
Sometimes I think of a conversation, and I turn it over and over in my mind, thinking of how it would go and how I could best tell the story and how everyone would react and what they would ask and how I would respond to their questions and after a long while I think I've got it totally worked out how the whole thing is going to go....

...and then I realize that in order to have this perfect conversation that I've in envisioned for myself, the contents of the conversation (i.e., whatever story I would happen to be telling) would actually have to be true. Then I have to go through a major mental revision because all of the responses that I'd been giving my pretend conversation partner, while self-consistent, are also absolutely imaginary.

I usually have a brief feeling of relief that I came to this conclusion before actually attempting to realize my imagined glorious conversation.... not that I would even actually ever really do that.....so I don't know why I feel that relief for not doing it. But today it kind of occurred to me how sad it is that these imaginary conversations never find a place in real life. For example, today I was getting quarters from the change machine at the laundromat. I put them in my pocket but I imagined that it would set up an interesting situation if you didn't have any pockets but you needed a place to put the quarters so you put them in your sock. Then you'd be walking around with a sock full of quarters. The perfect thing to happen then would be that you'd be attacked by some would-be mugger, and seeing as the only money you had had been transformed into quarters, and they were all in your sock, you could beat the hell out of the robber with it. Triumph! Then the best part would be the part where you'd get to tell everyone about what had happened. You'd start by saying, "remember yesterday when I left to go get quarters?" and they'd remember. And then you'd explain how you had to put them in your sock, and then you'd say how you were attacked, and your listener would be aghast! Then they'd say, "whatever did you do?" and you would say that, incredibly, this was the one day when you had on your person the perfect weapon, and that you'd beaten the crap out of him and escaped unscathed. I get halfway into watching their expressions and thinking about what an amazing coincidence that was when it occurs to me that it was only a coincidence because I just set it up that way in my mind. It would only be an amazing coincidence if it ACTUALLY HAPPENED. So you start to think about how you should find someone to whom this actually happened so that you could relate the story second-hand to your friends.

Then you start thinking that maybe you should get your head examined....

I think that must be the way that authors operate. They must be constantly thinking of crazy coincidences or really witty repartees, but in order for their repartees to be witty, both sides of the conversation have to go exactly as they want them to, and events have to be as such that their witty verbal sparring has a particular resonance with the events that have just been happening which give them extra meaning. Of course the words on their own would have no meaning at all, they would just be the product of the author's imagination, thinking "if this long series of events happened, and then the straight man set up the drift of conversation just so, I could be interesting/witty." But... none of that actually did happen.
That must be why people write books.

So maybe, next time I write a book, I'll put in a guy who was going to get quarters and then beat another guy into the ground with a sock. Because what a crazy coincidence that would be, non?
2 Comments.


After reading all that, it wouldn't be that crazy.

I didn't like Sleeping Beauty.

I do like that you think about having a conversation with yourself. That makes you twice as crazy.
» Dilated on 2007-02-10 10:48:01

that is EXACTLY how i think sometimes
i'm known for having amazing comebacks about 5 minutes AFTER they're appropriate. Then I wait to be burned again so I can lash back. The first time that I catch it, of course, I make a "half-court" shot on instinct. On occasion this actually works, but even if it doesn't I can usually work with it. Usually.

I'm glad you like the poem and the pic. Personally, I like the last stanza the best, but that's because I got to read it out loud and make it a bit more dramatic.
» middaymoon on 2007-02-11 04:29:16

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