Waiting for Beatriz Oil Painting from Vesper Heliotropic the Graphic Novel by Neal Cormier
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14. Beatriz
Camille was standing in front of a set of massive mahogany doors surrounded by the stark white of a barren antique hallway. She could feel the cool air pushing through the marble and steel of the stairway behind her. The doors had ball bearing hinges with square and circular portals of double beveled glass. Continue Reading…
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“Didn’t think we’d need to hold you here for the night,” said a nice old man, chomping a bit as he spoke from ruined teeth and dental sub-jaws. They clacked with the hard consonants, especially.
“Where’s…where is everybody?” she asked, still half awake.
She was safe, she felt, creeping warmly into talking to this man.
Another Playbill. A poster this time. On the wall there, diagonally to her right. In what looked to be the room of a medical facility of some kind…
The GREAT SOMNAMBULIST! It read, in spectacular RED, early 1900’s font on a black misty background with some kind of train operator in an old stained and striped train suit and cap. Behind him was the enormous Train-Flying Machine, it read in a caption next to it.
“Rachael!”
It was the descending voice of her Mother, what must have been her on the Intercom. There were only windows behind her, and she couldn’t see them. Her mom’s voice was indeed, quite amplified.
“We need to go and get you to your grandfather’s room quickly…”
“Is he dying?”
“Well, no but–just get out of that room you’re in and come with me…”
“Okay, okay.”
This was normal. She’d have an incident, and her mom would be the one there. Coincidentally Pam was the least sympathetic mother sometimes.
Must be that German we have…
She left the room after a long while trying to undo Lipids machine tubes and coils. The man had left out of nowhere and she didn’t care to go looking for him. She even turned off the computers that facilitated them, booted em down completely, no problems…
She followed her mom to Grampy’s room.
Helen was there with Andrew and her Nana and of course, Grampy, sleeping alongside her chair backed to a window. He snored as he lay there, unmoving in the small Twin mattress’ bed. “He’s just not up to walking around that’s all, right mom?” added Rachael. No one said anything, but Nana, put a hand out and caressed it with a Mother’s touch.
Andrew, Helen, herself and her daughter now, were meandering aimlessly around the room, savoring a hand that held the wine or beer, hoping to look like they were reflecting, or at least looking for something to do…Rachael reasoned that this was bullshit. Every time. Fractured conversation and polite little drivels of stares darting from object to useless object; a perpetual deer in the headlights every time your eyes met, swiveling about the tiny room. This was often because the room after all, was not a penthouse suite by any means. It was all the Linderen family could afford for Grampy and Nana.
It wasn’t just that though, the Military treated him right, but Government funds weren’t as secure as they used to be twenty or even ten years ago. The budget was forever curtailing Exo-Military services. Many Federal pensions were ‘frozen’ presumably until the date the USC determined that the Economy ‘has most certainly picked up.’ This date of ‘unfreezing’ your funds, as a Senior, could be and very often was long after your date of death. The same was true of Social Security. Sometimes these death certificates were bought and sold ‘Cabal Style,’ a phrase referring to the black market.
A Senior often did ‘Go-Cabal’ as they would say… Or: ‘He’s going fucking Cabal on us!’ many ads ran with to sell Senior driven products or to encourage rebellious youth to do more of the same.
When a Senior ‘went Cabal’ he typically sold everything, sometimes up to and including his wife and grandchildren on the Booty Market. It was as the Views and papers were saying, ‘The Fourth Baby Boom’ had occurred in the last thirty years. It was referring to the historical wave of grandparents, as second parents.
A Senior man having ‘gone Cabal,’ typically starts reading the propaganda literature on Cabal Life as there was so much support for Fetish communities. In fact, there were whole Micro-Gens (non-USC, even) formed, and were, indeed, all the time now, as the press would always point out: ‘waiting for us right outside the changing and encroaching walls of CAMBIAN.’
Everette Linderen, that is, the Colonel’s Pension and funds, were merely ‘thinning’ as the new definition from the new term, from the even newer set of UFED terms–went by.
***
Nana screamed.
Rachael roused herself off the floor, still in the room. She had fallen asleep again, wound up nestled at the base of the Colonel’s feet of all things. That is, where his feet were until he had to go the bathroom, sometime long ago. Her last moments before falling asleep were of an incomprehensible series of noises mixed in with what little her mind automatically recorded happening… Her mom moving around with Helen to help perhaps…yes, get him to the toilet I think…
No telling where everybody was now. No one. Not even Gorsky, and the room was dark. Her SwitchLight was glowing, predictably with a message from her mom, no doubt. There was a message and it was from Pam. “Come downstairs when you wake up.” it read. She was utterly disoriented. How could mom or whoever be in the next room, when they’re not?
Her confusion thickened until–
Another scream, coming from the hallway, right outside the room.
And it was choppy. Almost bloodcurdling screams were trying to get out again! Rachael drew herself to the crack of light in the door and pried it open slowly, furtively. Her mom and Nana were there, halfway down the hallway toward a stairwell past four or so rooms on either side.
“Oh my, oh oh MY! What am I gonna do, what am I going to DO!!!” Nana fell into Pam’s arms and sunk to her feet, exasperated. Hesitating, Pam lowered herself there with her, trying desperately to pick up her Mother’s falling limbs. Rachael had never seen her mom being compassionate like this, not with anyone.
She approached them, to some feeble distance. Nana was unnatural, alien and ghostlike, her question wavered as a haunting apparition in the air. Her voice shrieked with other nonsense in guttural spasms, dissipating only slightly, a mechanism, not a person, convulsing within and without Pam’s reach.
“Oh Good God, Good GOD!!!” The tears weren’t over. Rachael’d never heard her turn from a woman to a…Beast. That sounded like a man’s voice a little.
The screams were now more intense. Like overwhelming music, Nana’s voice was a smear of everything unreal in her life slipping off in glops like the sediment of mental flesh onto the floor. Her comforts; the layers of self—all the different sides of her; the mom, the Grandmother, the gregarious social animal from ‘Dantant’ as they would say, or ‘the age of year’s past’…
And then, her religion, the after life…now all on the floor.
“Bullshit. It’s all bullshit! How could He be this harsh! HOW???! Pam HOW!” Screeching now. Gripping Pam and screaming at her, point blank.
The Reality hit Rachael’s eyes and slammed her beliefs shut. Luxuries, the hyper-extreme wishful thinking that is abandoned in an instant of realness, and thereafter—we are living in actual reality.
Actual time.
But the long shriek made itself clear: you are indeed in Reality, you indeed do exist, you are here, but will not always be.
And the time that you will not always be here, will be forever. And this is the only sure thing you have. And at that point everything you see will be gone to you, from now on.
Not even a billion millennia, even if they were each comprised of a thousand light years into the future–could bring you back. Could bring her back, or anyone… But existence will remain alive in the Reality you will have to leave. And you are not, nor will you be, ever– an exception.
These facts rattled around in Rachael’s head until her Grandmother looked no different than the floor of the gray carpet. Her knees slumped into the rug, making a dent where it happened to be a bit loose and got slightly wrinkled.
The knowledge of the Colonel’s death had them solemn on the way to the car. Jenny was bouncing a little less heartily, but one could simply not seem to remove that almost Helen-like smile they both had.
An apartment complex lay as the sprawling context of the Bitzeri Assisted Living and Interment Camp, on the other side of the bay where the shore was and where they’d come around to enter on foot. Her Grandmother, her Nana had already taken up residence there. They’d pushed the data through, to get her to stay there, paid for, seamlessly prefigured from the date of her husband’s death.
There were huge balloons on a hill, like maybe fourteen of them floating in the intermittent wind after they passed by yet another parking lot.
‘The Brooke.’ The somewhat distant placard that held the balloons, read.
It was for some new apartment complex rental sale. Presumably the one it stood against, there in the middle of four Mega-Lots for cars and Transports. A single ML could hold 50,000 cars when levitating on top of each other at a height of one third a kilometer. On average, for years on end, it didn’t hold in reality more than a few hundred at a time, however.
An expanse of gridded concrete lay in every direction other than the sprawl of indecipherable industrial noise of tall lights, flashing View signs, and Pharmacie-Liqueur Stores that looked more like Kiosks.
All signs of moving civilization save the often broken concrete slab, ten kilometers squared–were now beginning to end, up ahead.
Blue, White, Red, and Yellow blotted their part of the sky as the land rose with those balloons standing at its peak. They had reached the top. The old stained brick apartment placard now seemed merely life size. It must have swallowed the brooke it once replaced, because there was no actual brooke to be seen at all. Just more astroturf circling each street light, and the tallest, most creature-like lamp posts one ever saw. If one could even reach their eyes to the top of one, that is.
A swarm of Transport people waiting for the next shuttle to arrive came out of nowhere like standing in the middle of a mirage. Rachael then saw a Hispanic young Mother with her hair up, standing with her daughter.
She stood next to the big placard in a blue faded T-shirt with some scratched up logo and green sweat pants. She had no expression, a shock of her long tousled black hair bristling in the wind. She didn’t seem to be standing close enough with the others to the Transport Post, so it was hard for Rachael to make out why she stood there.
The little girl, with a plaid outfit, danced off her hand, which was holding to hers more tightly than one might consider imagining. At closer range, as Camille walked by, the lady was still like a statue, her expression now appearing merely drained and indifferent. The weather was so calm. Back to blue skies with faint cirrus clouds again.
She stared up at the bleak sun filled sky of criss crossing contrails. Sonic Imprints were also left in the air above, invisible save the distortion of color and shape they made in their path. There were also three or so other smaller complexes in the ocean of parking lot, that seemed to be trailing off from the big concrete dune where The Brooke stood.
They finally arrived at the car, piled in, rose to a passable flying height, and left the greater part of Maryland.
Sons of the Silent Age Vesper Heliotropic Graphic Novel Excerpt
“All right mom, whatever it is, I’ll just see after we visit okay?”
“It’s about Kim.” Her mom was never very tactful with her, alone.
“What about him?
“Well, are you serious with him? -I mean, you’re fifteen, don’t sell yourself short.”
She did have somewhat of a point there. Somewhere pressed deep in her mind.
“You know Rach, or Cam, should I say?” She hated that–trying to kiss her ass when it’s so obvious that that’s exactly what she’s doing…
Rachael said nothing and just stared at her.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I got to talking to Helen at the little get together, you know, well at Helen’s…(?)”
“Yeah…”
“Well she knows a good way for young girls who want to go to school and become engineers, to get involved…”
“Oh yeah, how’s that?” Rachael implored, suspiciously. Her mom was acting like a salesman. Like she always did upon discovering something she wants that requires bending the will of other people.
“There’s a group that meets on Saturdays every other week and discusses issues and, it’s a club really…”
“Huh, okay I’ll have to know more about it, you know I don’t like the word ‘Club’…”
“I mean, do you really see yourself staying with him?”
Pam just couldn’t resist…It hadn’t even been on-subject. She let it pass.
There was a long pause between them as one black screen after another went by like the broken lines of a highway.
“Only to the death,” she answered her, finally, coming down yet another long silent corridor.
She’d really meant it, about Kim, but her mom had no frame of reference to take words like that seriously, pretty much, ever. As far as she was concerned, people stay with each other out of the bottom line. Everything else, just proceeds from there on out. She wasn’t aware of this in so many words, if at all though.
“Now, honey, no need to be extreme about it, I–”
“I don’t need your cultural nonsense either…’Extreme,’ what does that mean exactly?”
“Whatever Rachael, I just really think you could benefit from knowing or even being friends with this guy that Helen knows, that’s all…”
The fake wooden door opened.
Like the hallway there was no sound. Her Nana could be seen lying on her side of the small room as if there were to be a viewing soon. Her Grandfather, or ‘The Colonel,’ was on the other side, on his own Twin bed, sleeping as well.
“Ok, well, we will…we won’t wake them up until they start making sounds.”
Rachael rolled her eyes and said to her mom, whispering– “Where are we going to sit?”
“We’ll we’re just gonna have to stand for a bit Rach.”
Pam could hear the futility in her daughter’s faint sigh erupt and dissipate. She could get used to feeling that way, she really could…
“Ugh, mom, okay, fine…”
After a while, when her mom got up to use the restroom, Rachael went over and poked at her Nana’s bed, finally after long deliberation. It jostled far more radically than she’d anticipated.
“HelllooooooO…?”
It was the high pitched voice of her Nana. Rachael came over to her side and Nana merely pivoted slightly in her direction, but as if to be merely in ‘motion-detector’ mode. Her eyes and limbs still seemed to be recoiling from having been set back in motion.
“Who’s there?” she inquired, peeling the lids of her eyes open with her small brittle fingers. She continued rubbing her eye cavities with tiny crumpled fists that in the small soft yellow light behind her head, could appear as sepia x-rays of her Thyn little finger bones.
“It’s your granddaughter, Rachael, Nana.” She was speaking a little bit loud, just so she’d be sure to be perhaps loud enough while not upsetting her skull-driven hearing system.
“Ooooooohhhhhhhhh okkkaaayyyyy. How are you?”
Her speech was loud, pithy, and slow. And had a way of revving itself up, she could remember…She also remembered coming there twice and sometimes a third time throughout each year after she stopped living with Nana for the last time. She knew Nana could be pretty senile, but almost exclusively upon waking up or going to bed. It was strange.
“Nana, are you okay?”
“Oh, well hellooooh there!”
“Nana, I’m right here…”
I know, I’ll ask her a specific question, like the Loquanda girl from the Mall…
“Nana, are you at Durago Pines?”
“Yep.” It was as if she’d said nothing, Nana was even falling back asleep, a tad.
She’s not identifying it, cause it’s not outside her context, that’s it!
“Nana, do you remember going with me and mom at La Chateau de Nombres? Rachael spoke and understood a great deal of French, and had from a very young age, just like German and Spanish. She used to talk to her Grandfather, who spoke it fluently, in near fluent French all the time. She also had had a few Frankish school friends there a while back. One of them was black, and kinda ghettie, so that didn’t last. The only one left was Linda, and she spoke French, but only when it impressed people or got her way somehow.
After a while, Nana spoke.
“Yes, of course, I remember that very well…” She sounded to be bounding with triumph.
Her days…what can they be? They must be alllll the same…
She saw her Nana wake. She picked up the plastic little cup of water, tilted it toward her mouth after slowly sitting up. There was no joy in it, only doing it.
A revelation then came to her.
If life can only be life with a purpose, then every moment we are doing the exact same thing, and not combining it with things that are different and purposeful, are moments or days spent without life, and therefore, wasted.
After everyone awoke, a brew of good feeling conversation turned the room into family again.
Shortly thereafter, they decide they’re hungry, and the Colonel needed to take certain pills with Nana that required food. After paying her Grampy the proper lip service, they all headed off in Grampa’s commodious silver Tray Car. The Buffalow Grill, was a Franco-German popular restaurant at the Camp, and also the closest by car, on-compound.
***
A tall black stallion with a pair of outstretched hooves snarled down at them. A sign above, read – The Crrraaazzzzy 8’ (Foot) Horse of Ol’ Teller McJoe. It was a big ol’ plastic horse, right there in front of the restaurante.
“So where’s Teller McJoe?” said her mom, trying to lighten the mood.
No one responded.
Not even the air.
Firey eyes and a wicked smile loomed above them still. The parking lot was empty, and everyone heard the wind whistle a little louder. The silver hover car was parked in the back row of the lot, for some reason Rachael was trying to comprehend. She made a bet with herself if she could figure it out before picking a winning glob of earwax.
She simply smeared it on her shoe.
The Eurasian or ‘Euroden’ design team must have overlooked American people when they considered their target audience. A firey demon horse as not only their mascot, but the greeter and the Maitre D rolled into one, was not exactly what mainstream Americans could find quaint in those days…especially old people.
I guess they figure that beggars can’t be choosers in a way, even though they’re paying for it–they RELY on the very people who choose to feed them, or not…
They hadn’t considered that American fairy tales, after all, didn’t feature major ‘good guy’ characters as anywhere near hanging themselves from a tree or stabbing their sister in the gut to suck out her blood, etc.–like the good old medieval European myths had for centuries.
“Vous pourrais mangent dans Le-BG!” The oversized looming monster horse said with what Camille could detect might be somehow faintly familiar… It was a Country-Western accent with a little cajun in it, it seemed…
Of course, it’s a Euro-Country style…
Though even Rachael only knew this idea through Networks and magazines.
The plasticky rattling horse voice then repeated the boiler plate line, in Spanish, Ethiopian, English and German.
“You can come and eat at the BG!”
Rachael looked at her shoes. The line still struck her as kind of odd, even for a restaurante like this.
The family then entered the dark lit establishment of off-period 19th century lanterns, (Pirates!) red pleathery booths looking to be somewhere circa 1950, with stick-on brass trim. Oaky polished tables featured interactive maps of the ‘Bad Lands,‘ while an array of picture framed photos surrounded the table of each booth with random celebrities. At least they were all American as far as Rachael and them could see.
Right in front of where her granddad sat down, was a picture of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat. Rachael was eying the faintly present Limo in the way back, waiting there with what could be a camera Crew.
Incessant ‘Hoo-tee-Hooing’ or ‘Cowboy Music’ to the Germans, could not be stopped from all pores of what was looking more like an eating hall than a restaurante. Not one of the songs was really American. This was a different kind of German that designed a chain like this, not native USC German, but from the mainland of Europe, German.
“Awwwweeeeeehooooo!” The battle cry from the animatronic of Gen. R. E. Lee, sounded more like “Aloha,” to them.
Vesper Heliotropic Graphic Novel Excerpt
RD AUTO Message 170: Sat 12, Octobre 2086 – Steinenhurst, Maryland |
There was a breeze that sort of didn’t dare make too much sound.
Old people were marching in unison.
The new UFED Cooperation with the Steinenhurst Micro-State of Maryland kicked off an Ad campaign targeting the 45 and up. A series of blockbuster romantic comedies featured newly revived, key pre-era celebrities–and had now consolidated the previously scattered market for seniors. Among these changes; we now had funeral parlors, B&Bs, pancake and breakfast houses, diners, nursing homes as well as Assisted Living communities, all contained inside official Theme Parks with rides!
The beach of the local Bitzeri ‘Arrangement Living and Interment’ camp was a faint sap green and billowed into a muted tan around where its dunes would peak. You could see the yellow blotchy horizon, and the bay, even the ocean beyond, but somehow, none of these things seemed to make a difference. A fog of atmospheric haze coming in from the sea collided with the long perspective of the boardwalk until it disappeared into the sky. The walls that lined the boardwalk were made of a watery blue brick that loomed over their tennis courts and workout cul-de-sacs. Somehow it looked as if to be missing the crown of its own barbed wire. But there were no imprints of where it would have been, as the brick was freshly painted twice a year.
The pitter-patter of quiet sneakers hitting the ground seemed to be in slow motion. Looking at an old painting try to move and watching these people exercise would have required the same visual attention. Somehow it was as if witnessing only the aftermath of some distant speed. They had on noisy jump suits that represented the entire color spectrum. And still, the sharpest thing in Rachael’s gaze was the grayish-blue metal of the fence she clung her fingers to.
She felt playful, suddenly. Murmurings of things past echoed throughout her mind. She’d known pure boredom enough to make life a race against it. She started playing with these thoughts, tossing them around. She did this until she discovered the game in her head had turned her into an insect.
More like a bumble-bee, maybe.
They had made their way into the waiting lobby when her mom turned to her. “Rach–what’s your SSN again?”
“Wh–”
“They can’t pull up Fingers or Hands here.”
She gave it to her and looked around the dull yellows and grays that made up the lobby’s ceiling, aside from the skylights. A small company library could be seen to her right, possessing a curious addition on an island in this adjacent room that could have at one point, been a kitchen.
They stood in the center of the circular lobby filled with baby blue chairs, marble seeming walls, shiny black tile floors, and funny looking glass sculptures. All of this on the axis of a tiny fountain of ornate, undulating white metal. It was inactive and sort of hidden. Hallways spun off from the lobby in four directions.
They were visiting her Grandmother, not quite ailing enough yet in her old age, they all thought, underneath it all…
It was the one on her mom’s side. Rachael was always bored with this sort of thing. Smiles, nods and fractured anecdotal conversation was her fate every time she went. Why should she be made to think anything different?
They made their way down hallways of that sweet, sickly aroma so indicative of rotting flesh. That is, of old age.
Monitors passed them, stuck one after the other on the walls, maybe ten of them to a hall. They were most of them, dead, black screens. Dead to their Eyes anyway, but not the Eyes of the inmates here, or any of the staff for that matter.
“So, I have to tell you Rachael, there was something I did talk to Helen about that I’d like you to consider seriously…”
Page 6 of the Vesper Heliotropic Graphic Novel
The multitude of paper Thyn, textureless, organic and intelligent data systems comprised the surface of its perfectly self-illuminated white walls, cascading fourteen meters tall, from ceiling to floor, covering every inch of the length of the Hall. There were featureless steel looking vaults at either end. Only spoken User-Authorized command could let anyone in, and only those pre-Authorized on the fly, every time anyone entered. Even the echoes of voices were dwarfed by the immensity of the space it enclosed. And it was wet, but only on either side, so the floor and ceiling were perfectly dry. Thin, and sometimes, micro Thyn waterfalls of all kinds of speed and slowness fell either toward or away from gravity, only to disappear, then seemingly reappear from the ceiling. Or was it the floor? One couldn’t tell the difference unless the streams were ‘mapped out.’
“We’re all glad you’re back Helen,” said her boss, Dr. Damiand, his voice, echoing next to the quietly streaming water putting a dancing light on Helen’s smooth round face. Her eyes were even more crystalline in the blue and yellows reflected off the sparkling falls. The side of her face that stood next to the water, caught the glint of a sharp melting pocket of light when it mixed in with her hair.
“Yes, good to be back!”
She’d taken off a few days from work to help David with the yard software.
“Yeah, good to have you back!” he repeated as if nothing had been said the moment previous. “We were getting a tad worried you’d get too used to the retired life, after three days, that is…”
Helen moved the petrie dish that seemed to have nothing on it, from one tiny rectangular white plate to another, then began to feed it into the blank wall. The flowing water opened smoothly, like a curtain, its edges quickly conforming to the shape of her hand. Her delicate finger tips pressed to the surface of the unrelenting Wall, perfectly dry, as it took in the petrie dish. A featureless levitating metal slate stood beside her at arm’s level that held a whole set of different lengths of Thyn glass cylinders, a dull surface to each one. They looked almost too Thyn to support their own length.
She and the head Dr. or U-Dr., were in the Una-Hall, right there in the center of the ‘Higher Dynamics’ department at UNATRAD Headquarters, deep within the compound she had so acclimated to over the years.
The walls had no markings on them of any kind other than the fact that it was white and the surface looked like seamless, polished marble. It was actually a series of machines with interacting nodes that lit up if anyone touched any of them. The vault door they were closest to, looked to be the size of a car wheel, the other, the diameter of a dime.
“Turn on the Emo-Reader,” said the Dr.
“Yes, of course,” said Helen. “Yes, Final Sunset please, it will soothe her…”
Helen clicked her fingers over a few green squares that emerged from the wall as buttons and then receded back into the wall as if never having changed its shape. This activated a set of instructions read in yellow light with light grey outlines, emerging as real as ink on paper, in the consistency and most of the physics of both. This was her work, she and this wall. “Me and my wall,” she’d joke about at home. She could say certain things, as long as they were without context or claim. It was here on the surface of the wall that Helen spent most of her hours and days. She lived through this, because she couldn’t think outside of ‘the many.’ Not in a serious way. She was and would always be of the few, and for the many.
The instructions that had appeared, were as follows:
U CAN = Run. Syntha TURBINES Cron Manager Commencing via POWERLITE INC. = NMR to CVR 25655 (Africa) S C E N A R I O
THEN. U = Enis.
UNDER. U = Run 62% Enis; Then. All Sub Drives.
WITH. Ab U = Collate. Divise. Collaborate Run Program.
IF. U = F-Dev. Avail. Capacity. Trans.
THEN. UJ = Run Gateway
IF NA THEN U = Gateway Active
IF LESS – THEN U = Run Forum: January.
U = U
“Okay, here we go then..,” said Helen, stretching dormant vocal chords with a choppy start.
IF U = U. THEN –
Please wait a moment…
She could remain still like this while the computer processed, sometimes for whole half hour stints.
THEN. (U)
.U = January-Transitional Commencing.
U = Forum Inactive.
U = Run + X O X A X B X X L X I S T X X X XXXX||||
She tapped something in midair and then this appeared…
U = Run + S O X A X B X X L X I S T X X X XXXX JuXXX
U = Cron-Morning-Snow.
U = Forum Active.
U = Gateway Active.
U = DoubleFace. Active.
U = Morning Active.
U = Phonograph Commencing Periodic Sound Vibration ‘Music.’
USC = “To whose star do you face Helen XXXXXXXX?”
“Morning Snow,” said Helen back to the MachineWall.
UJ + USC = DoubleFace. Active.
D345fgh9987d345fgrpentagonissued=+?< – RUN PENTAGON ISSUED DOCUMENTS TO USC INDONESIA CLIENT – ON -MEGA-FLIGHT 25655 USC (Affiliate) AIR – >Ca>Home<-/-*DARA> U = RUN HOME = END STATE THEN <-/-*DARA HOME> wait the birdcage is|
a fw-class-678cf2122651d430a0e345ea7406ee74 Indonesia Client 25650 = FALSE. libido animals produce| D345fgh9987d345fgrpentagonissued=+??D345fgh9987d345fgrpentagonissued=-?D345fgh9987d345fgrpentagonissued=+?< D345fgh9987d345fgrpentagonissued=-?< D345fgh9987d345fgrpentempty|more
agonissued=-?< ++
TRUE>libido animals . more
Active = Morning + Snow += linkedseries = linkedseries ++
MORNING ACTIVE 2…
“I Face Early Morning Snow.”
And with this more zillions of calibrations were made, and she was finally in. For that day.
“Okay, Dr., now I think we’re ready to proceed.”
“Good, good, okay…Is Gateway Active?”
“Sure is. And, the new Sonic-Architecture is underneath everything.”
“Great, okay,” he said, adjusting his spectacles, appearing also to get slightly more situated in his medical Jacket. He was a much older man than anybody she worked with, in his late 90s.
“Did you tell it what Star to Face?”
“Yes, she is facing Morning-Star, January Transitional Commencing.”
“Cron is checking for receding fractions. Oh, sorry, receding Pairs.”
“Receding Pairs?”
“Yes doctor, the fractions are finally multiplying in pairs.” Pairs are the most efficient way that equations of this sort could multiply organically.
“Ha, my god, that’s…That—are—are you sure??” He knew she couldn’t be more sure.
“Well, aren’t you surprised at least, I mean, the Theorem worked, we have Gateway responding intelligently to multiplying exponentials here, that act biologically, no less. Don’t you get it–not only a Learning Brain, but a brain that can self-evolve its own biological matter!”
The absence of excitement was shored up by Helen’s ever present miniature smile existing only on the right or left side of her face, like the Mona Lisa. At least that was the joke around the Lab.
“Well, it’s what we’ve been working toward all along here, isn’t it?”
“Helen, you’re such a talent, and yet, you don’t give a shit or a hoot about any of it.” He’d said that smiling, but reproached himself when he suddenly asked why. To himself, of course. But it was too late, he had to pay attention, and resigned his thought on the scroll of his presently focused mind.
She knew what a revelation he must have felt, what a breakthrough this was for him. For him. For everybody else. She was simply delighted though, in the emotional reaction people made, that actually made things, produced things–could feel like. She’d always pay his passion just the proper amount of lip service though.
But all she could think about was The Game with her Hubby later on that evening. It had been like this, for as long as she worked at UNATRAD. She was just so damn good at everything requiring the quick witted understanding of harmonics and Bio-Symbol-Systems, I mean, you name it in terms of what she’d sought out to do. Certain concepts that took others forever, she could do in minutes. Made her non-expendable.
The good Dr. did find it mildly odd she shared no exchange of passion with him, ever. Maybe that’s just how women are, he thought. It never occurred to him what actually resulted in putting this conclusion to action. Then again, he didn’t do much other than spend time at the lab’s facilities in some way or other.
There were also the rumors. Oh, the rumors, she’d say to herself. But in the end, she told herself she cared and ignored the fact it didn’t change her life in any immediate way, so her interests would then stray to thinking about something random, like Jenny. This typically wouldn’t last very long before she was on to Kenson’s new album and her top Fetish shows.
She looked at him just then, almost to test herself. She knew what he’d done. The child he molested was nine, not ten as the authorities reported, and there were rumors that bounded through Space and Time itself, it seemed, that he had been molesting his daughter, Harietta, all along. There was no way to prove anything either way but the surveillance of the church the incident occurred in.
Intra-Cam Nano Surveillance wasn’t allowed in the homes of certain elect Diplomats. Dr. Damiand had no Nano Recording installed in his home, ever, due to his membership to Global Community One, GCO–CAMBIAN’s Central Global Networks, since 2044.
She had known the wife, Johanna. But whenever this thought came back into her head, somehow she had a harder and harder time imagining it. What she didn’t realize is that if she’d ever tried, she would have discovered the same difficulty in imagining anything. And the test resulting in the same thing: she couldn’t feel more than distant from actually loving this stuff.
She also and weirdly, knew that his daughter was no longer ‘present’ on God’s Good Earthen Soil, either. Harietta Damiand had died in a horrible Hover accident involving several or more automobiles. She was nine at the time of her death.
He had loved her, like Daddy’s do. Or like, Daddy’s can. To complicate things, Johanna, his wife was going senile. Her sudden dementia was combatted with restructuring software and everything, but in the end, she just slipped away.
This made things more convenient for him of course, especially. Harietta had been made of God’s Good Flesh when she lived. She was made of God’s Own Good Born Silicate and now, well now, she was made of wood. Dr. Damiand, resurrected her by copying what the Intra-Portable Equiv-MRI Bot, that is, the brain software, had recorded for the duration of her life. Damiand, being privy to software and Skins in the Lab, got quite a discount in taking over the more expensive parts of her. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a Hollywood man, nor exposed to many artists, so he regarded Human Silicates to be cost prohibitive. Anybody with his income could have found a less expensive Human Silicate Equiv., but he was an old fashioned kind of guy, and the new Networks Spots and channels were a little too fast paced for the likes of him.
The IPE-MRI Bot had obtained most of the details. Things like the surface textures identities of formica or certain types of metal and wood etc., didn’t copy over. Amongst an entire host of lost data, such as her first time using the toilet, which as a mahogany wood Real Girl, a subtype of Rubber Girls and RBoys.
So, Harietta was now made of mahogany, fine polished dark cherry wood. The Dr. Had grown to like the aesthetic of wood. But his sexual appetite was taken care of on behalf of the FED Marriage Sexual Health Act of 2067. He had amassed enough FED-MSHA-2067 money in a special FED linked account, to buy him RealSkyyn, or actual organic home grown genetically engineered flesh and muscles in a small private Lab. She would have RealSkyyn, soon.
There was something different though, even to her now. She had begun uttering things her mom had said, his wife and himself, could only have known, as they had never shared certain details with Harietta.
***
“Hey Cam, come here quick for a second.”
“Ok, what’s up?”
“All right, first of all–are you Mikin’ sure that this Switch Light is the only data device that’s retaining this event?”
“I mean except for Unambiguous. eah…why?”
“Take a look at this. Look, the two numbers.”
“What? Oh, wait, yeah, I guess–they’re not the same number but…”
“But they are the same number of digits.”
“Holy fuck, you are right! So what does that mean? Naw, no way, were not doin’ what I think you’re getting at.”
“Oh, so you know what I’m getting at?”
“I think so, you wanna use these digits somehow to…to make money somehow…”
“Yeah, literally, like, Print money.”
“No one uses Print money anymore.”
“Not off the Main Line.”
“So, the only places we could use whatever you’re concocting is here in central CAMBIAN?”
“Not, ah, what about Oakland Community Mall?”
“OCM is so…”
“Ghettie I know, but not entirely, they have some good stuff cause like, business men go through there…”
“I don’t know, Oakland? That’s so dangerous though.”
“You know it’s funny, as much as you say you hate your mom, sometimes you really listen to what she says…”
“What?? Whatever, I guess, well anyway, I’ve got nothing against going, but well, what are we even talking about here Kim?”
“Camel Toe, this is an entry key code for bills, and its just a coincidence it matches up here, I mean, not just the digits, but the letters and dashes too! And Una gave it to you, prolly for a reason. Mike! This is what my Dad does or well at least knows a lot about money printing in the old days and he pointed out the number range of certain numbers that are or were allegedly, numeral skeleton keys.”
Read More at:
RD AUTO Message 178: Fri 18, Octobre 2086 — Fairview, VA Main-Line USC – CAMBIAN – SUBURBAN ‘Inner Crust’ Territory: ‘MM-PS 255 Munich District 5’
Role call.
As it were.
“Linder?”
“Here.”
“Sazumiat?”
“Here.”
The room was fairly quiet, no one dared to try and make a sound.
Other than their Role Call Voices.
The colossal Gym Room seemed only to crane from above. As if witnessing the long gradual motion of a distant shooting star.
They kept on in a droning, murmuring…faintness. Squeaky voices slipped into the Gym stratosphere, as if sucked up by the lines they thought were probably the roof’s intricate paths of crisscrossing Metal rafters.
Every five minutes or so, you could hear the tiny threads of students running by, flitting past the long slit windows of the four rows of pale blue double doors; repeating off into the Gym, lining nearly the entire course of every wall receding into the big white beige of the Room. Five hundred and seventy doors total. The lines of Gurls were near the first doors of their Section, off to one corner: Exital Orb-Group Section B114, Sqaure Resendo 8.
Somewhere in the distance were the faint suggestions of other Sluts doing acrobatics.
Wasn’t a big deal if you did make a little cough or hand gesture fiddling with a shirt or something, but you weren’t really supposed to. Some people disappeared. No one wanted to disappear.
Not really.
The Coach cradled a thin old brick slate with actual pen and paper, facing the square grid of five long, distinct rows.
Out of the blue, Camille randomly placed a disingenuous foot outside her Square. For kicks. No one would care, per se, but it was there, her foot. Placed outside the Square. Retracted it instantly when Ms. Steven’s bobbly head peered up again. What is she reading on that damned sheet of paper that takes up the entirety of her attention for that long?
“Slout?”
“Here.”
“Corroz?”
“Here.”
“Jenny??” Everyone laughed. Ms. Stevens smiled at Jenny.
There was something peculiar about Jenny today, though…
Her neck. There was something curling around it, Rachael observed, wrapping around the base or something… Something dark like a bruise. She couldn’t put a finger on it from her range.
It was first Session. Rotating Session, which meant, Gym class at the beginning of the day. Feet felt clammy and hard meeting unremitting tile. So cold.
They’d all pass time with a gradual muted little dance to keep their feet from freezing. Like they were laughing without smiles or sound. All wore faded red short-shorts with darkening white T’s. None of these dress ‘uniforms’ were ever really washed. Just stuffed into lockers day in and day out. Neither Rachael’s, which one could smell of female essence if it weren’t for the boundless space of the enormous Gym.
It would take a solid forty-five minutes for Role Call to finish, and when it did, every one of the seventy or so females had to herd into the locker room.
First, today though, “Basketball tryouts!” Ms. Stevens added, placing the RC sheet and board under an arm. Steven’s uniform was washed.
Sighs and grunts like chimps let out with this last word.
“Okay, okay, let’s settle down girls!” shouted the dikey buzz cut P.E. Teacher with echoes not caught by any Sound Web to mute them, the sharp grating tones, vacant and unpromising.
“See how long you can hold em up girls.”
It was painful. Part of Role Call was that you had to hold up the girl in front of you, then rotate after half of Role Call was finished. No one rotated anymore though. Most of the time it took place to cradle ‘the dead,’ the girls too drunk or high from the night before to even stand. Instead of being sent to the First Aid room, they could at least show up for attendance first. Other Gurls were just doing it to make the rows uniform in appearance.
The object was to see how long you could hold the other one up. It seemed. Or is it a trust exercise? Rachael couldn’t care less to remember all the reasons for the cradling of your front partner in Gym.
“Hold her up there Lindi.”
“Linderen,” corrected Camille, instantly.
“Whatever sweetie, jus’ keep holdin’ her up by her armpits.”
Sally’s pits were wet and cold, but Cam’s fingers bunched into fists that acted as a push-up bra. Camille could feel her finger tips burrowing into the flesh of breasts and underarms. The tips of the girl’s straggly short sleeves appeared to be slightly crusty, the creases nearly wet from sweat stains. Fleshy bruises would be left there from Rachael’s grip, but at least the girl didn’t have to rest outside her Square.
Ms. Stevens was rather weighty and tended to center over where her monumental gut was hanging, though somewhat hidden inside her T-shirt. Like a big billowy bag to catch her guts.
Some kids were just too tired. There was always a TwoKiloRun before any Gym class as well, not every kid made it through. Even at the very start of the day. It’d been way too cold out.
Everyone had to be in five perfect rows, no matter what, for morning Role Call.
Camille was holding up Grace, a tall girl like her, who’d just taken too many Injections the night before…or…whatever… Maybe she’s pretending…
Everyone knew what that was like. She wasn’t the only one, there were fourteen or so girls basically keeling over if it weren’t for the ones behind them, barely holding them to their feet.
“Why do we still have role call, coach? I mean, doesn’t Janus take care of attendance?”
“Look, like I’ve said a trillion times, Janus, eh, Err, UNA–doesn’t always catch everything.”
But that was only what they’d told her. In Reality, Una was Perfect. Everyone knew it, but the instructors had to do role call anyway.
When everyone lined up again for Basketball tryouts, Ms. Stevens had them practice shooting first. The girls lined up, single file before each of the four hoops on each wall of the large Gymnasium. No one got to put on their shoes again until matt exercises.
They all missed, most of the time. About ten balls that never quite seemed to bounce enough, hit the floor as if with one disgruntled thud and bounced maybe halfway to the basket before someone had to help it to the goal. All the balls were a soft white. Some of them kinda deflated. A few girls kicked them, and that seemed to work better. None of them made it to the baskets without being hurled directly by hand from a short distance. To hit the ground most often with nothing more than a…thud.
“Okay Ladies, time to hit the matts! Lie down in five lines here on the five mats!”
***
The locker room stank of designer perfumes. All actual “BO” was monitored, but some still slipped into the stuffy room, overflowing with steam from the showers.
“Pick your soap and get in the showers, girls!”
She always watched them, Ms. Stevens. Watched them shower. They’d zone her out as she ‘stood watch.’
To make sure soap got over all over the bodies.
Jenny was still squirming her way through the showering bodies when she snuck around Camille and grabbed a boob.
“Hey Biatch,
“Woah! Hey, that ain’t free, Slut!”
Giving her that specialty kaleidescope look again, and with a curious little smile Jenny stuck both fingers inside Cam’s vagina. Then in her ass.
Camille jumped.
“WoahhhH!!!”
“Yeah, stop it!”
“Not much of a CAMBIAN girl, then huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the big push now: everybody’s bodies, are well…everybody else’s.”
Rachael’s face deflated into a precise rest.
“‘Oh, come on, not in the mood girl.” Cam whisked an ever persistent hand away from her pussy. But then Jenny, as usual, put a finger to her lips, slid it in her mouth, and tasted the juices of poor ol’ Rachael…
…Who kept turning to Ms. Stevens with looks of blank contemplation.
Stevens, in her yellow “T” remained stolid as ever there in the background…behind the thick heat. Crossing her arms and parting her legs like a Sergeant.
“Time is slowing,” uttered Cam, softly.
“What, what are you discussing with yourself now?” inquired Jenny.
“She does me favors you know…”
“Yeeeeah, I, –I know Jenny.”
She kept staring while the droplets of shower water fell and slipped over her brow and nose. The sight of Steven’s veiny cottage legs, irregular clumps of flesh and fat, remained the direction of her stare.
“Oh Cam!” Jenny’s intermittent voice seemed to dart around the rushing water, muted from it and chopped up like broken frequencies.
“What now Jenny,” grunted Camille, scrubbing her face with bare hands, accidentally sticking her index digit up her nose. “Ah, shit, what the fuck!”
“Hey, what’s with the weird fuckin’ scar, Jenny?”
“Eh, got some more Knife work done.”
“On your fucking neck? Dude, the thing is like a TummyTuck scar, or well, if you can’t get the more expensive VacuumPress nano shit…”
“I don’t–”
“You don’t what?”
“Jenny?” Jenny stopped talking.
“Come on bitch!”
Jenny was suddenly, seemingly in a very furtive way, staring at one of the other girls. Rachael scanned between the turning and pivoting whitening bodies, the even brighter florescently glaring, misty tile walls…but saw nothing but matted hair, buts, backs, landing strips, elbows, girls, tile and steam. And Ms. Stevens back in her office now, almost directly visible from the showers, if it weren’t for all the mist.
“I’d like you to meet a good New friend of mine.”
“Oh…?”
“Her name’s Gena.”
“Gena? Oh hi!” blathered Camille through the spouting ripples covering her lips as she moved from under the tiny spicket.
Camille felt Fear rise again. The Them again.
Gena was a Tranny. That meant, she had a penis, and a girl’s body. Weren’t many of them at Fairview. Yet.
“How do ya do!” shouted Gena in an overtly feminine voice, a tall tan Gurl, or Tranny, shaking her dick, about to show off the distinction between her and The Rest of the Otherly Gurls. It was a large one, and Camille kinda just rolled her eyes. She wasn’t always into dick out of context, but once in a blue moon could make an exception for a Tranny.
“Gena is um, well New, but I’m Sponsoring her anyway, she’s a great Tranny-Gurl.”
Tranny-Life.
Camille knew she’d have to fuck her to break her into The Peer Group, and felt tiresome from chewing on the idea, so went on to do a little small talk while she cleaned her pussy more. She kept a vigilant eye on her own junk and not the dick–NOT the dick!
***
“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”
“Oh come on Cam, it’s not like it’s a big deal, just put your fuckin’ hand over your heart…”
History class.
Camille could hear the bouncy ball of her mind, shooting around the room, dribbling onto the floor, once again, loosing its momentum…
Breathes in all chambers…
She thought about it, sex with a Nigger. That white pussy being penetrated softly yet hard, by another color.
Why always sex? Always.
She looked at his thighs. His back. The way he stood upright and Mr. Shermer, sitting there, hunched, broken over that old wooden desk with nothing but wood and metal bolts to hold it together…his beer gut flopping over his near invisible belt.
“Arthur. I love you.”
She could say.
Under her breath.
“Turn around. Turn around.”
“Is there something you need Cam?” The entire class turned around. Ah fuck, thinking aloud again, damn!
“Arthur?” Mr. Shermer stood up abruptly. “You are gonna have to exit as well, I’m afraid. An apology is expected.”
Without delay, cordially, Arthur Blina, this tall structure of a Boy in navy and white imperial CAMBIAN uniform, gathered his bag and left the room with hardly a squeek from his sleek, polished jet black combat boots proceeding as if to remain single file, toward the door. It shut gently with the clicking sound of its latch.
NeauBlurbs, transparent video messages from Peer-to-Peer were floating around the room, making sound only to those to whom it was sent…there were a lot of rich kids in History…
She knew she couldn’t exit the class without setting off the UFED alarm and as usual, her mom’s bank account would be chiseled off a hair.
“I think I’m sick, can I have a hall pass?”
Go ahead, Cam, I’ll remove the hallway InSessh Dect. He meant the InSession Detector.
It was a long way to the main office, where she’d assumed Arthur must have gone. This was the second time she’d seen him, and the first time up close. It was a weird to like a black guy, but…not so weird. She couldn’t help thinking how tall he was and what features! The way he spoke…narrow hips, wide shoulders. Egypt. Toothbrushes.
The restaurant had indeed been the one they thought of; the old Maryland-Bound TransCar. It was enormous, all steel and some kind of special glass. It leaned ever so slightly to one side, still levitating off its remanning energy store. Energy in ‘the good ol’ days’ wasn’t energy today–a single power bond Nano-battery store could last a hundred years in its day. The world just couldn’t afford millions of transports like this, as the Feds never came in with more than a few hundred thousand of these units.
They were waiting nearly an hour to get inside the battleship-museum of a restaurant, and their conversation dissipated into silence upon seeing the large crowd made of proud American dining. Camille felt like Rachael again, and got that ever-returning tinge of ‘I have no idea what to say to him.’ She dismissed the feeling though in a moment of fight or flight.
Camilles Room Vesper Heliotropic Graphic Novel Series
RD AUTO Message 162: Fri 4, Octobre 2086 – Fairview, VA Main-Line USC – CAMBIAN – SUBURBAN ‘Inner Crust’ Territory: ‘MM-PS 255 Munich District 5’
“Rachael!” shouted her mom’s high pitched voice from downstairs.
“Yessssss, Mother! It’s Camille now by the way!”
There was no answer. And then…
“Don’t forget your make-up!” her mom’s faint voice could now barely be made out.
“Ugh.” Rachael said to herself.
“Okay!” she yelled back, vein and limply.
Rachael sat upright on the edge of her bed, her widish butt planted deep within pillows and Tynker Animals lying about, her legs pretzeled Indian style. There were disheveled bra straps under a Thyn white T-shirt falling off one shoulder as she constantly pulled it up only to have it recede back to her upper arm. Her room was fairly tidy with printed posters, arrays of ads, a large mirror to her right along with bottles and cheap makeup.
Short little mounds of laundry were shoved to the edges of the soft lightly tinted carpet, pink. Pinkish. Large suburban bedroom windows obscured the bright room of its details, shafting a morning glow of dreaming breakfast. Rachael had been fantasizing about strawberry pancakes in the City on this particular day. Sometimes it was boys, other times a nice mental round of fantasy morning sex with a sibling.
A short blonde bob swayed back and forth, back and forth, as she browsed with her hands through multitudes of levitating virtual options; left to right, left to right, her gaze, preceding her arms, crisscrossing over and over…
She was scrolling through dozens of Day-Theme posters, one after another, as each one disappeared, only to have another colorful Pop-Band Day Theme poster reappear in midair.
The silhouette of a factory and some kind of penal institution cut a panorama straight across the blank yellow and blue dawning sky in one poster that read: “FinnLaNDIK, the New Album! DEISANIK CELL BLOCK LINE P344, PRODUCT CO.”
Another: “‘BEAT A BITCH UP FO’ YA SQUIRD ON HA,’ Shokolok, the New Album OUT NOW!”
A slight whopping sound then blossomed a little blonde Whyte Gurl with crystal blue eyes from out of Thyn air. Multicolored signs, banners, and comic blurbs trailed from out her mouth like live flying drool. In a stark yet softly aggressive female voice, came…
“All New Finally Fourteen Perfume, straight from the company that brought you Fexalot Smart-Maquillage!”
Rachael continued to page through the transparent spherical depth of the floating View like she were swatting at flies she could never catch. Each poster retracted in a circle upon moving to the next like a moving clothing line. The receding Posters disappeared behind the one she was Viewing in a half-circle. Band after band, soap bar after soap bar flew by, NeauDolls, Cereals and ‘Biono-Lymbs with All-Free Cosma-Surgery When You Buy Two!’
“KENSON AUDI DAY!” one of them read with an absurdly blunt solid pink and purple border with shimmering translucent photo of the band, focusing especially on its front man, Gary Sake next to his one and only Hoe-bag, Merry-Eight. It was a kind of Great American Autumn scene. Sun shot through the profile of an inner city alleyway, buildings climbing up the sides of the lucid shot. The three other band members stood obscure next to the two ‘partners in crime,’ gusting steamy breath in kissing each other next to a dumpster as trash fell like leaves from tenement roofs. A caption imbedded inside a hot pink heart graphic floating on a cartoon cloud suspended below the poster, read: “Pick your Fexer ‘Day-Theme’ from any Movie, Musician, Artist, or Media Fyle!”
“Put together a Soundtrack for each emotion and event with Emo-Life Readers!”
Camille Sketch for Graphic Novel
Vesper Heliotropic Dystopic Sci-Fi Novel
“–Everything is just fine, and that vacation time means everything is going to be fucking fun!” He then turned to his wife and added with an off and rancorous tone, “No Eileen, not this time, I see you with that look of yours, but nop!-This is too important, this is the big event, we’ve been waiting for months–the cook-off, the Big-Game barbecue!”
After that, he grabbed his daughter by the collar of her T-shirt and threw her…Read More of VH Book II. RACHAEL
The reason was because I got held back after the first year after the first grade. Don’t remember much about Kindergarden or pre-school. I have some very strange memories of rainy days, girls, me clutching a Federal Express styrofoam airliner model that my Dad gave me. Have no idea from where or how but I think it had something to do with his work. He was a Word Processor early on, (yep!) and then later a Real Estate agent. I eventually crushed it I think, the airplane, after taking it with me to school too many times. I always hated the sound of crushing styrofoam. Always made me sad.
In terms of school, I had probably what was dyslexia, or something akin to it, but I was diagnosed ‘Reading Disabled,’ and therefore (I believe) LD, or ‘Learning Disabled.’ Ironically enough, I would later be put into GT, or Gifted and Talented (6th grade) and learn the difference between what boiled down to smart people and the rest. Yes, I can say that with a good bit of confidence. That’s later.
Mrs. Arola was my first grade teacher at Brennmar, Mrs. Shermetzler my second and first grade teacher at Ravensworth. All I remember from Shermetzler was that she didn’t like me standing out too much. One day I wore a white glove to class and even stretched it out in front of the kids one morning upon receiving a paper. When it met my white soft velvet gloved hand, Shermetzler said: “What’s with the glove?” I have no idea what I said back. Probably nothing. Felt ashamed. I always took everything WAY too seriously. Columbine shooter kind of geek kid in his infancy I suppose. Eh, those stupid Columbine kids are nothing, fuck em, I grew up on Hitler movies.
My father, interestingly enough, for bettwe or for worse (though we all know it’s for the better 😉 had a very interesting and dichotomous infatuation with ‘The Fuhrer.’
Well, our Fuhrer, Der Fuhrer. Okay. Well, anyway, we weren’t anti-semitic, at all. And I am not one to this day. Some of the most influential people in my life were Jews, and I have no problem with this. Tops Christians anyday.
Despite this, right along with it was my Dad’s big World War II interests coming out of the 1960’s Nuremburg trials. They are quite interesting indeed. My Dad’s Dad was a Colonel in the U.S. Army coming out of WW2 himself. So I can definitely see where the interest path lies to Hitler and the War. My Dad’s most notorious Hitler story from his youth was the time he decided to hang a swastika flag outside his room in his house I beleive on Long Pine Drive, Virginia. It was discovered by The Colenel’s boss I beleive when THE GENERAL came to dinner one night. Great. Must have made em wonder. Eh, oh well, nothing was said I don’t think until after the meal I bet.
Hitler, like the Columbine kids, was confused, creative, and angry at a depression filled country where you could never pay for coffee upon ordering coffee, but only upon leaving the shop cause inflation was so rapid that even 15 minutes not only could change the price, but did, basically every time I think. In those days. 30’s.
It wasn’t just Hitler. My parents, both of them, good ol’ liberals. I didn’t end up that way, but hey, they can’t be perfect right? Heh. Anyway, funny enough, Hitler was my introduction aside from my Dad into the life and mind of the Artist in terms of what I consider now to be genetics. Think Hannibal and his cell of fine cutlured items, his paintings, his wish to peer out a window. I can hear Anthony Hopkins doing Lector now…
“I want a view with water…” Chilling voice. So calm, so rational, yet, underneath…
My Dad yelled. A lot. Spontaneously in terms of our point of view. Perhaps that made for a metaphysics of constant alertness for me. I would later read this was similar for the Vienna based artist as well. 😉
The Themes were this: The relationship of, the fine lines between civility and barbarism, dark genius and altruism. Dynamism vs. Statis identity. As McLuhan says, “The Nazi is tribal.”
I grew up thinking of life on epic terms in the way that an Artist faces the world, and namely the Beurocrat. “Yes, the beaurocrat with his nice tidy desk, doesn’t know what to make of the Artist and his vivi-sectional (living section) view of life…” -Marshall McLuhan
The story of the Artist is something I began to consider myself with reluctance and at every turn learned that ignoring this would be to my detriment. That’s why I was never pretentious in reality, an Artist is what I figured out who I was.
My mom played into this. I think Ruth Coombs (maiden name) thought I was some sort of Pariah. I swear. That woman treated me like a Price. Spoiled me, oh yeah. It’s a confidence that never goes away. Steve Jobs, I am learning recently was similar that way with, I forget, but I think it was his mom.
Tangent to this: Two of my closest friends would be El Salvadorian and I would learn that there were other mothers like mine, who made their sons into what was beyond ‘momma’s boys.’ I think it might have been the Jewish influence in my family. From my mom. Maybe somewhere down the line the value of knowledge was passed on.
Big Fish Being Eaten By Little Fish. Yes it is. YES!
Or should I say the backwards fish, food chain, like fish eating themselves literally backwards…? The metaphor = Consider what will happen when apps and software write themselves?
And developers are still saying hand coding is the answer. NO! SEO, Mobile, Apps, Tablet tech, iPad, individuals, consultants—in short the corporate structure is imploding! This means that consultant firms and hi tech tele-conference level companies (even if they operate from a garage) are trumping and will take over high dollar brick and mortar Enrons and Walmarts, not to mention even Microsofts and eventually, sorry guys, yes even Google will become too automated to employ anyone en masse, even their best scientists will write their own coffins. The apps they create will make them into content, and hence, we will be mere personalities rather than primarily producing agents: service becomes personal. That is, the personal life on that level, is over.
The reason they are still saying this is because one, they think I don’t know how to code, (CSS JS, jQuery, HTML5 etc..) and two, they themselves treat the web like a 57 Chevy, a technology we know has little functional use, and everything to do with girls and biology if you catch my drift.
Anyway, as McLuhan says, every technology that becomes obsolete (in the Marshall McLuhan sense) is then treated as and hence becomes art form like as always the photo that created the impressionists. Anyhoo, you should check out iBooks Author if you think the web is going to be specialist in nature, think again. eBook and Mobile app related tech is going to take over and this is where the little fish begin eating the bigger game on up the food chain. That is, think of it this way. Apps and tech iBooks Author, Drupal, Joomla, Expression Engine, popup, semantic tech, or any code generator and of course all other mobile related technologies, (and now even validators and customizers!) —in Short apps can essentially be automated.
Consider as an ebook author, myself, I can say that without the intiital start of open source technology, I wouldn’t have a roof over my head. iBooks author is FREE and allows my father who is a poet and doesn’t know a lick of code to save his life, can now publish on a nothing less than totally professional platform able to insert images, video, manipulate text, etc. not to mention the most important: it connects as an iBook straight to iBooks! Yikes. Talk about no more big fish. Open source Drupal Content Management System is doing the same thing, code writers become code manipulators. Meanwhile SEOers and Mobile apps writers, which have you heard of xCode for Mac? Auto GUI that totally allows people who don’t know objective C to output albeit limited, but fresh professional functional content. And only limited for now, Drupal is connecting at a startling rate with its D7 release that streamlines for Social Media, Semantic and SEO markup and of course, HTML5. Funny that PHP5 represented the same code shift that HTML5 does, and yet no hype really…
And have you even looked at HTML5? Code flows like a painting. The markup in HTML5 is completely auto-semantic oriented. Tags are shrunk, more CSS style and near ontological. Actually it is computer termed ontological because its a finally decent level of object oriented HTML. Plus video. I shouldn’t say plus video, it is video! Much simpler to boot. Did I say streamlined? Backwards compatible? – Backwards IS small fish eating big fish. – See, even code is becoming implosional, shrinking faster than the paragraph. The paragraph which by the way over the last 30 years in books and just about everything, shrank by about 75%. (!!!)
The curve is always and has always been, always will be automation. Since the wheel automated the rotation of the feet, so too will apps and open source CMS’s semantic knowledge, web savvy and GUI tech will replace hand coding altogether. Even customization which is now reaching a premium cannot escape the curve of automated technology as even now we can see the apps becoming more and more complex as people like my Dad learn via app software on their Blackberries or iPhones. Mac has really spearheaded this with their iWork software. Bought my Dad a Mac Space Shuttle (21″ LED Screen 2011 iMac) in May I think. Loves it. He’s now writing and publishing on POD via Lulu.com. Another vanity publisher right? Like Amazon I suppose that just announced the top 30 eBook millionaires. Oh those are just he big fish right? Yet there are plenty of self-published romance novelists paying their rent with the sales of nothing but their books.
It’s important to know what you need to know to get ahead and that is, drum roll…Mobile, Semantic, Asyncronous, Decentralized, App Driven, Apple Monopoly (for now), no JS, jQuery, Frameworks…all this is the infancy of what will later be the HAL9000. If the web doesn’t become another NASA. Or maybe NASA is just a sleeping giant. 3D is next. And how long is now?
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
But here’s the gag: Every Like is free advertising for people who (such as on WordPress) appear with other blogs of theirs in a sample blog, right into your email. Or what happens is that the other person goes and looks at your stuff even if it is not automated like this. But the WP style email ‘Follower’ model is probably the winning stroke for now in that it is direct advertising. I wonder still when social networks start developing into enough modular societies to be able to start closing themselves off to evolve into self-sustaining micro-states. Anyway this is going to magnetize, polarize and pocket the world by means of interest and merit rather than nepotism, or ‘who you know.’
SALE OF MY BOOK! 20% Print Edition: PAPERBACK OR HARDCOVER - VESPER HELIOTROPIC BOOK I CRYSTAL TURBINES
I never thought I’d be the one to say this was a good thing, that the web is in some ways actually inherently altruist in structure. (I say this, being sort of an x-objectivist.)
But I must say, the power of the reciprocal is brought with an innate and new level of pervasiveness. The Facebook ‘Like,’ the Google +1, the Stumble Upon…These are all very powerful. In the absolute very beginning of SEO for me (2005) I thought the social array of buttons were rather superfluous.
Get this: they are still the same tools, it’s just that people are taking the web more seriously, which is what I’ve been crying for, needs to happen for some time. That said, I would like to share with you what I’m discovering about the ‘Like’ paradigm to web computing in terms of ‘social’ network building. It’s happening in LinkedIn and WordPress for me now. Two rules:
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
Apple IIc
The little beige box that looked to be peering over at us, was I believe purchased by my father in 1987. I bought my iMac in 1998. A $1,326 wad of cash I’d saved from what was actually the tip of the iceberg from a total of around $6,500 or so, I’d still had left from my first serving job. It took me roughly two months to save that. 17 hour days. Yikes. Then my mom died the same summer.
My Dad, a professional ‘Word Processor’ working in the cocaine addled 1980’s government contract office environment of Crystal City, Virginia. I think the software had cost more than the machine. The ‘Word Processing Software,’ along with BASIC I think was around $5,500 at the time and I think he got the computer with it.
It came with a keyboard with integrated floppy (5”x8”) drive. I loved that computer. Remember the ads for it: The apple would be sitting by a stream, by your office seat, near you in the bathroom…The Apple was with you. That was the message. Jobs was WAY ahead of his time in this way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdtY0LxBCsg
– Scrub to a little but passed the middle of the video to see Sarah Conner’s quote. –
This notion, that the computer was your pal, your assistant, the replacement perhaps to the secretary. Ha, Apple made the secretary so obsolete that we just kept her anyway, cause she looks pretty. Obsolete media, including secretaries, become art form. Wonder how many more pretty women got hired as secretaries or managerial assistants as the result of the influx of the desktop to the office…(?) The office must have gotten a lot more decorative. Thus, the computer produces multiplicity!
It would always be there, from there on. The computer, would be…Yes. Watching. What we didn’t realize all along, we were not so much giving it commands as it was watching us…learning. In a way, this is true, the computer has in a sense gotten to know us and in turn, completely transformed our environments, and hence, our lives.
(In the sixth grade I wrote an essay titled, TV is Watching TV. My Dad helped me with it. But as a result of it, and my art talent, they flung me from LD to to GT and threw away the key for good.)
My Dad’s Apple IIc which resided in our immitation wood living room, that for some reason happened to be rather Earthy, would be rested in the corner opposite from the couch and to the right of the TV. On a brand new actual wood and metal desk, which I thought of implicitly as modern. No compartments. No slots, nowhere to put anything. Except the disk drive. This was the new paradigm, and none of us knew it. Yet.
The monitor was smaller than you might expect, and the keyboard rested on a different level of the double platformed desk. No mouse. Not yet. I think I didn’t even experience a mouse in the home until the iMac.
To be continued in my ongoing book memoir ‘My Struggle’ out next summer!
BTW: Deleted scenes from the original Terminator!
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. Crystal Turbines out now on Nook and Kindle, Paperback and Hardcover via Lulu.com
Yeah, I guess I’ll start there.
Going through my entire life starting there.
I was 4.
Standing in a bright room, contemplating something I think. The sun was coming in, nearly blinding me. I just stood there anyway, let the piercingly uncomfortable light pour warm glow over rosy nose and cheeks. Rosy cheeks and sickel’s compass come, maybe…
Intensity never bothered me like it did other people I guess.
I was like that, but kind of a dumb seeming kid, unintuitive.
I could walk into a wall.
Or at least so extremely gullible you could lead me down any hallway or alley or play any dirty trick, I fell for everything. They called me ‘Neal-Peel-Wheel’ at school. Elementary school. Reminds me of when my brother was kidnapped.
He called me ‘Neal-Peel-Wheel,’ too.
He was also, two years old at the time, and just followed these bullies -Jamie Lance- (his real name). I forget the other fucker’s name.
I knew him from Ravensorth Elementary school that led my 2 year old brother from our driveway mind you, on his bigwheel 3 or so miles, all the way to Lake Acatink park.
Left him in the woods. Nice guys.
I wish I could have eaten their brains and drowned them in their own blood. Yeah. Bitter? Hmm…Wise men say that ‘when you hold a grudge, you are letting someone take up residence in your mind, rent free.’ That is true sometimes. I could see it that way. Most of the time. Maybe. It is true in many cases. So is the reverse. More on that later.
I think they hadn’t even touched him. The bullies. Jamie and what’s his fuck.
That’s the gullibility I’m talking about though. We both had it, that innocence maybe. There are people I know who wouldn’t have fallen for that, even at two years of age. Lili, my daughter is one of them I think, little smarter than we were at that age.
The room, though: When I was 4. – It was those patchy shallow old carpets that resembled vomit. Why the hell did they make green carpets anyway? Seventies. Uck. The point of the bright room is that I also spent time there staring into space, thinking, and I even remember what I was thinking at that moment, too…
It was that ‘I am 4.’
“I am 4,” I told myself.
I knew it on that level of self-concsciousness. Wish I’d known at that time what a gift that really was. At least my parents were intellectual enough to nurture it to an extent that on one hand, didn’t exceed their culture, on the other, was 43,000% better than any other parents I would ever come to know with few exceptions.
That said, Joseph Campbell, Ayn Rand, Marshall McLuhan, Ben H. Bagdickian, and others as well as ‘the group’ of my 4 closest friends whom I will introduce later, would become my second family. I took all of them to heart.
“I am 4.”
“What does that mean?”
This is the kind of self-reflective abstract thought that would come to characterize one of the vital differences of me with just about everyone else I would meet from there on out. I’m 34 now.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go back and tell myself that. School myself. That would be nice. Hell, prolly wouldn’t believe myself, although I would certainly have been intrigued.
Anyway, I had good parents. Great parents. My Dad, my mom, both intellectual, artist types I guess you could say. Yet, hippie gone yuppie in a way. Fuckin eh, they had kids, they did their best.
Both were at Woodstock, both got high there I think. More my Dad. That’s a stupid thing to say though…
…I guess I say that cause I heard other parents who ‘were there’ that say they didn’t. Yeh right. Suburban people are strange. Very. I would learn this, a large life-theme I’d say.
Suburbia.
If I wasn’t the boy who fell to Earth, my awkwardness and innate utter lack of social ability at the time, knowing people, other people, would make me such. I looked retarded in my Ravensworth Elementary yearbook photo. God. Nearly cross eyed.
Girls never looked at me then. I looked at them though. Always.
In Elementary school. I had gone to Brenmar before Ravensworth, as we lived in Centreville apartments, and then, proceeding this, Edsal Road VA, and then Ravensworth and Springfield VA.
Stay Tuned Tomorrow for ‘Elementary School’ 😉
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
SPRINGFIELD MALL, Springfield, Virginia (Literally Half Abandoned)
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
www.VesperHelioTropic.com
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
Latent Inhibition: Random Person on bus to Olive Garden
He didn’t move his head once I think with any real interest in anything outside his ‘tunnel.’ Swear to god, and I look around the bus, and nothing but zombies. Nothing new of course, on my way to the restaurant I worked at. Olive Garden. Hah.
LI along with certain other social-metaphysical concepts is ‘The Program’ in my Novel, VESPER HELIOTROPIC BOOK I. CRYSTAL TURBINES that not only refers to, but heavily involves Latent Inhibition as a pervasive reality in how it affects us and even more, transforms us.
There are, in my observations many people that look around. Try and pick out patterns in their ‘stares’ though for signs of intellectual brain activity which involves Abstraction and a process of elimination, the act of making a mental model or hypothetical model in which a process of building or eliminating occurs. A solution to a problem or a generation of new ideas out of a control set, I would say is a good synopsis of that.
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved
Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
RD AUTO Message: CCCC, CCC 26, Octobre 2089 – Washington D.C.Main-Line USC-CAMBIAN City Territory: ‘CAMBIAN CITY’ |
Her body had collapsed on the dark wood booth seat, her head lay slapped atop folded arms.
“You okay girl?” This was the soft, deep voice of Dave, the head cook at Coswa’s.
“Huh?”
“I said, are ya aight?”
“Who?”
Her face sprouted up for the briefest of moments through her eyes that looked punched shut.
David said nothing but looked over her with a fond smirk. At least he did at first, then seemed to be inspecting her with his eyes as his body gradually lunged over her back and head, as if he were about to pounce her. He quickly retreated when he heard a loud noise and figured the rest of the wait staff was probably at the door.
“Okay, yeah, I’m fine,” Camille said, finally.…Keep Reading…
***
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area.
– www.NealCormier.com – His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration.
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Crystal City, Virginia with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES by Neal Aaron Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License Vesper Heliotropic Book I. CRYSTAL TURBINES © Copyright 2011 Neal Cormier All Rights Reserved Visit the Author’s Website – Neal Cormier Art
The Inner CAMBIAN core Emblem as it was framed in a circle, not a square. The CAMBIAN Emblem was black, set against a large white rectangle. A center circle had three stems with adjacent petals as if to rotate. It was surrounded by ‘U-Blue,’ the UNATRAD Trademarked Navy Colour.
There was no wind, it was flapping, billowing widely on its own Neau-Engine.
“Mom, I am fucking un-motha-mikin’ comfortable in these shitz!”
“Rachael, please!”
“Mom, they like kill you slowly or something(!)”
“Pantyhose are what women used to wear, it’s normal Rach.”
“What slave women like you wear.” Her mom didn’t know what to say, as always…Read More…
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Crystal City, Virginia with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
Rachael knew the drill. She tore and cleaved her way to the front of the left-most part of the crowd of mainly girls, and joined the heel clicking lines to then go on to the school’s early morning Detectors. Of the twenty-six doors lining this side of the snaking edifice, Rachael was aiming for #16.
There must be a fountain downstairs mass-producing kids.
She thought this virtually every morning, looking at the tops of heads bob up and down on the other side of the dusty square windows of the watery line of doors…Keep Reading…
***
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Crystal City, Virginia with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Crystal City, Virginia with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
Until they lose someone, or you almost lose yourself, either more mentally or physically, you are suddenly in reality. Alive. You can’t know life until you’ve lived it. One line that always gets me is – “The world’s a better place when it’s upside down.” – Amy Winehouse
This is often true because you have to suddenly stand for something when what you took for granted is at stake.
– Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved –
He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of which Vesper Heliotropic is his first full length novel publication with Amazon, Barnes and Nobles (eBooks) and Lulu Inc. (for paperback & hardcover) Neal recently had a showing at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He also, and even more recently, had a first book signing for Vesper Heliotropic at The Midtown Scholar, a local hipster style bookstore in downtown Harrisburg, PA.
Neal has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafés, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France.
After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Crystal City, Virginia with his fiancé, Kristin.
List of Art & Media By Neal Cormier
Art & Blog
Web Design/Development Services
The Novel’s Website
My total vision of the future, is dramatized in My novel: www.VesperHelioTropic.com
What is listening?
What does it mean when someone actually listens to another person?
How often does this actually happen?
In order to answer the last two questions, obviously you have answer the first one, first.
So what is listening?
—
“You know why I come here?
“Why?”
“Cause when people think your dying man, they really, really listen to you.”
“Instead—“
“—Instead of waiting for their turn to speak.”
–Flight Club
Why does this have to be the case and what is meant in this instance about what listening is?
Imagine if you said something about your day that was really important to you, had an impact such as getting a promotion or making some new advance or innovation in what you do.
Wouldn’t you rather someone understand how and why it happened, as opposed to just that it happened?
And let’s say you then brought it up to someone equally important, like a friend or spouse, and in response they said something like: ‘Wow, yeah, that’s great!’ And left it at that.
And what if that’s pretty much the extent of all they said for anything that was important to you at all, whatsoever.
It amazes me how often I actually see just that between people who get away with doing it, and ‘leaving it at that.’
In this way relationships are less like relationships and more like two ships passing in the night.
Is that what a real relationship consists of?
Simultaneously, I see people give long-winded advice, stories, situations, etc., I see the other person sitting and ‘listening’ to them, and the one whose telling the story just keeps going while the other says things like…
“Right”
“Exactly”
“I get you”
“No, I know exactly what you mean.”
“Uh huh”
“Continue…”
“Sure”
Beware of these, if a conversation or any verbal interaction of any length consists exclusively of these, and there is a theme resembling this in how someone interacts with you, odds are, they are humoring you more than they are listening.
Now contrast these with phrases like:
“What do you mean?”
“Can you give me an example?”
“What exactly does that imply?”
“Are you sure?”
“That doesn’t sound too healthy.”
“Because…”
“Then, that must be why.”
“That’s how that works.”
Then I wonder: How much of what people ‘hear,’ are they actually getting?
Now imagine if someone said in response to your accomplishment on your good day:
‘Wow, that’s really awesome, it’s going to enable you to do more work, and if you keep using the technique you’ve been trying, it will grow exponentially.
Isn’t that a bit better? Why?
Because: It is FEEDBACK.
The dictionary will tell you that feedback is…
‘the modification or control of a process or system by its results or effects’
I would say this means feedback is modifying what is said (the system or process) by means of how you react, whereas, in a conversation without feedback, no modification takes place.
Another part that seems vital to it is also the translation of an idea into another form as synthesized through another piece or set of data, ending in a new deduction, which in turn, furthers more and more feedback.
In other words, someone listens to you, and gives their opinion about it, and the original opinion, yours, has been transformed in some way that adds onto it. You then react to how they reacted.
I am astounded at how many people actually regard listening as merely being the recipient to information. The reason that I regard this as basically and often completely superfluous, is due to the fact that when I actually go back and see what the person retained from what I’m saying, I get either one of two responses:
Either, A, they can’t repeat anything back to me, or B, they repeat back what I said verbatim.
Of these two responses, I reveal that their difference Is an illusion by the mere fact that in suddenly asking what I meant by a given idea, people are not generally able to tell me, or (which happens more often than anything else) they save face by coming up with something right there on the spot, which is nice, but wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t called them out on it. And I don’t want to have to call people out on not listening to me all the time, its exhausting and I have better things to do.
All in all, this means that people are either completely zoning out or they take what I said as a memorized recitation, both of which tend to suck.
What people are not normalized to is the fact that neither of these is valid, because neither of these actually produces anything.
I want to say to all those friends and family members, all the people I see who think they are being listened to, to actually stop for a moment to test the person for comprehension. I think anyone would be astounded at how little of what we say is actually being processed.
So, does listening mean that someone is able to repeat back to you what you’ve said verbatim?
Does listening mean comprehending? What is comprehension? Why bring something up if nothing is generated from it?
Comprehension doesn’t mean memorizing. Most people take understanding something to mean a general regard for it. But what use is a ‘general understanding’ if it seldomly relates to action?
Comprehension is what produces feedback.
Take this exchange for example:
“I detest pornography, it’s demeaning to women.”
“I know, I hate porn, it’s cheap, smutty, full of images of people having sex with no love attached, and that’s what people learn when they watch it, to view sex without love.”
“Yeah, I know, more and more, we’re detached from the actual act of sex.”
“Well, in any case, its demeaning, we have a whole genre of pornography devoted to each individual type of how a woman can be degraded.”
“There are so many examples of this, our world is becoming more and more removed from nature too, just look at how we’d rather watch TV and DVDs than play on a playground with other children.”
“I know, it’s getting crazy, I think that we could actually say porn is now totally mainstream too. It’s infecting how we talk and think about our world so much, look at how my daughter wants to dress, back in the day, she’d be considered a prostitute for what she wants to wear.”
“Something’s got to be done, before women are viewed solely as sex objects like they are in rap music today.”
“You know my mom was a feminist, hardcore one in the 60’s and 70’s, did a lot to speak out against the objectification of women.”
“Really, my family really didn’t, I have to admit, I’m pretty much the one who’s more adamant about philosophical or political issues.”
Are these two people ‘listening’ to each other? It may seem like they are since they say a lot of things like “Really?” “Something’s got to be done…” “I know,” or “I know, it’s getting crazy..” and stuff like that.
Wow, aren’t these, really similar to saying things like: “Right,” “Exactly,” “I get you,” and “No, I know exactly what you mean,” “Uh huh,” “Continue…” and “Sure.”
But if someone says:
“Yeah, I know, more and more, we’re detached from the actual act of sex.”
To which the other responds with ‘feedback’ by saying…
“Well, in any case, its demeaning, we have a whole genre of pornography devoted to each individual type of how a woman can be degraded.”
This doesn’t mean they’ve heard you, it means they are changing the subject to say what they wanted to hear themselves say.
A proper response to:
“Yeah, I know, more and more, we’re detached from the actual act of sex.”
…with actual feedback would have been:
“I think that’s true, just look at how porn portrays people making love: they’re not even face to face half the time.”
It would then have been valid to bring up a new idea, usually its better if it relates and personally, in polite decorum, one apologizes in a mild degree and asks if they can change the subject. This is not simply a matter of respect for the other person, it allows for there to be a change of pace and a line that is drawn between subjects makes for better clarity.
But in this example, as it is, what is being produced through their interaction aside from their original opinions?
How about these two people?
Bill and Jenny are entering a carnival; the entirety of their date takes place inside the small amusement park. They now stand outside its gates waiting in line before a huge crowd to get tickets.
Bill: “Look at these people, their all just like us aren’t they? And yet, we’re miles apart.”
Jenny: “What do you mean?”
Bill: “We’ll even though I hate to be condescending or sound like I’m on a high horse, it’s just that you always get this sort of run of the mill crowd, the rank and file of every town in America or in the world.”
Jenny: “We’ll that’s for sure, nothing new about that.”
Bill: “I know, I know, its just that I notice certain things about people in general wherever I go, I tend to see the same kind of groups emerging.”
Jenny: “And what groups would those be?”
Bill: “Well, you’ve got every hick and redneck going to carnivals and movie theaters these days, you don’t see too many well-to-do’s at a place like this.
Jenny: “Those are hardly more than vague categories, but I know what you mean, I wonder if that has anything to do with these being obsolete forms of entertainment, I mean, you have these huge sprawling amusement parks now, like Six Flags or Kings Dominion, and the movie’s are taken over by video, more specifically, DVD and even internet downloads now.”
Bill: “True, that’s probably the reason actually, I still think carnivals are a sort of weird place too, you know, sometimes I get the same sense at a movie theater, that ‘being-alone, but liking it’ feeling, you know?”
Notice something different with their interaction as opposed to the first one?
The difference in the second example, is that Bill and Jenny are COMMUNICATING.
Their original opinions are being altered through comprehension and feedback.
In communication theory, two people are said to have communicated if and when something is relayed, encoded, and then translated.
What good is it anyway to translate something in your head, and not tell the other person about it?
And that is what I’m saying: that at best, people are just getting a general understanding or even just a ‘feel’ for what you’re saying most of the time.
Ask them to tell you what they think you mean sometime out of the blue, and I almost guarantee you, you’ll catch em off guard.
And hence, most of the time, relationships between people resemble two people, living on two different islands, never having even interacted, though it might look like that’s what’s happening from afar.
I’ve come up with a list of principles, some of which have been covered here and others that are new. In any case, I think these embody the common denominators of all good, even minimal communication.
They can all be observed even in the two examples given, but I assure you if you look at your life, you will find them effective, and you will be astounded at how little you and other people are actually listening to each other at present.
They are the following:
Objectivity: Truth vs. Falsehood: If you aren’t trying to establish the truth of a matter in mutual agreement, what are you trying to do? A conversation cannot be generated without objectivity, since there would be nothing to debate or seek: This means that the primary focus is to establish whether said idea(s) are true or false by means of rational argument.
Rational Argument: What good is talking if nothing is resolved or furthered? The technique of rational argument is a ‘back and forth’ whereby premises are met with objection, and objection is resolved rather than left alone. The process of listening, processing, giving feedback or your opinion about something is unfortunately more often met with another statement. This hardly ever gets anybody anywhere. Ask a question, you will get an answer, this will then enable you grounds for your idea to be integrated into the other person idea, or at the very least, you will be able to pinpoint where disagreement that can’t be resolved, lies, and take action accordingly.
Comprehension & Feedback: Actually listen to what someone says by thinking about what you think it means, to you, to them, and in general. Don’t merely think about it on a superfluous level either, depth is required to really understand, generate possibilities about what you think they mean and ask them if that is the case. Then, give them an integration of your opinion on the matter with theirs. If you disagree tell them why. (If you don’t want to do this, well, then I’m sorry, but you’re fucked and I don’t care about you anyway)
Item for Item Responses: A real discussion is an exchange, an intersection, not a parallel highway; meaning that each and every statement or question is met with feedback to that item as a proposition. The earmark of bad communication is skipping a person’s statement, which only breeds the downward spiral of misunderstanding which usually leads to all things counterproductive, i.e. force.
Questions or Inquiry: My Dad always said that if you aren’t asking a question within at least every 30 seconds of a conversation or debate, you’re losing it. How can you understand what a person is actually saying to you without asking them? The primary way people miscommunicate is probably through lack of asking questions. What ends up happening is that you take what you thought the person means by a given idea, instead of what THEY mean, and since more often than not, it is not identical and most often, totally not what the person meant, you might as well be talking to a gerbil, cat, or horse–all of whom at least won’t scream at you out of misunderstanding.
Skepticism, Delimitation, and Divergence: What good are ideas if you aren’t seeing both sides of the argument? This is a more specific extension of objectivity. We only know something is true, by means of isolating that that idea is X, meaning that there is no other possibility within the realm of what we know. This is tricky because what we know is always limited. This is the reason is so important to always be expanding one’s knowledge, which leads to the next principle: divergence—the constant generation of as many multiple possibilities as you can. Delimitation in its etymology, means to ‘set boundaries around.’ In the realm of ideas, this means that one sets boundaries by understanding what’s outside as well as inside the concept, such as opposing views and why that answer and some other answer is the correct one.
Reason for Claims: Each proposition bears the burden of proof before the next is presented: that is, each new idea must prove itself as valid by gathering facts to back it up within the current frame-work, at which point it is debated and resolved, before continuing. This means in a more specific way that each claim is backed up with a reason for said claim. ‘You know what I mean,’ is not and should never be a sufficient basis for true understanding and communication.
Retrieval-Integration of Past Topics: Old ideas are retrieved upon being relevant, not forgotten, and synthesized or integrated with new ones.
Integration: Each proposition (concept) builds upon the last. That is, the goal of any conceptual conversation is to build a framework of new ideas, which builds from older ideas.
If you have ‘listened’ to this, and are able to master these principles, I assure you, your life and you’re entire understanding of people will be radically transformed into a progressive rather than stagnant or static relationship, into understanding rather than miscommunication, learning in place of ignorance.
***
Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved
–Neal Cormier is an artist and writer originally from the Washington D.C. area. His concentration is visual art–especially oil painting and graphic novel illustration. He is also an up and coming fiction writer, of whichVesper Heliotropic will be his first full length novel publication with Lulu Inc. Neal’s most current showing was at National Airport in Arlington, VA (March 11 – June 25 in Terminal A). He has sold a variety of pieces to clients from around the world. His artwork has been shown in cafes, bars and galleries in New York City, Washington D.C., Paris and Alençon, France. After high school, Neal attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and spent four years living in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. He moved to France after this, and spent roughly about the same length of time in the region of Basse-Normandie, northern France. As a result, he speaks French and has a (tall) 9 year old daughter, Lili. He now resides back home in Crystal City, Virginia with his fiancé, Kristin.–
Copyright © Neal Cormier 2011 All Rights Reserved
-Neal Cormier
Artist
http://www.NealCormier.com
Novel
http://www.VesperHelioTropic.com
Web Services
http://www.NealCormierweb.com
–This is the first chapter sample of my all-new VH short story! The only place you’re gonna find it: ‘Springfield’ here only now, and exclusively on WordPress!–
It is always the best state, to have time.
I’ve always noticed the disparity in the pant of a male. That triangle of space where it wouldn’t be on the ken doll version of him. The material meets the leg and caves in toward the crotch. What we don’t want to admit is a person under there. A less conforming entity. Than a doll anyway. Than a RealGurl. Or Boy.
I know that I’m only just waking. Up. I know that I am traveling here in the rivers of my dreams. There are no more dreams though. I’ve been sent to record it. From the human point of view.
RD AUTO Message: +-XXX, Fri 1, Octobre 2087 – Springfield, VA. Off-Line |
We are post history.
Too much to record. Style trumps, meaning trumps style, both are fused into one. But it is indeed recorded. We are indeed being recorded. Forever.
No way to bring it all to focus. Like how we overlook things. Like…
I am looking outside. There is light.
The white Sun melting through the trees.
Shards.
Gas clouds.
Air again, still.
A familiar quality to it. The windows, her windows…were dry. Sepia room, light splintering through the NeauFan blades above. She turned her head on her pillow, laying there, once again spread out on the bed, contemplating the ceiling with straying Eyes.
Her mom’s lawn was outside, gray-green through the unwashed windows. Always unwashed. No Neau Tech, can’t afford it. Crescent Hill Drive and Jenny’s house down the road a bit, but she couldn’t see it.
There was a place and time that was Springfield Mall. When the dream of CAMBIAN was still alive…
She thought of C-iiiNOBuN, CAMBIAN’S Official State Bakery, USC sponsored, of course. They’d taken it from the French style when the original Founding Father in the 20XX’s had still been alive.
NeauMusic was on, barely throwing a few piano notes into the air, thick with NCense and a dark ViewHorizon of a Penthouse in New York City.
She’d never been there.
The light from her dresser was creeping out into the darks of her room. Blues, blacks, muted whites, sheets. It was early morning. Her mom hadn’t gotten up yet. A stern, yet soft, almost melodic Voice from the RadioWalls came on in the background…
“The Learning Man Thinks The Learning Man Finds The Learning Man Does The Learning Man Runs The Learning Man Runs The Learning Man Thinks The Learning Man Does, The Learning Man Has, The Learning Man Can, The Learning Man Smiles The Learning Man Was, The Learning Man Wants, The Learning Man Struggles, The Learning Man Wishes, The Learning Man Gets, The Learning Man Finds, The Learning Man Wounds, The Learning Man Absorbs, The Learning Man Completes.”
“Planet Earth Is Blue,’ read a Neau brochure peeking out from…
“ArchStoneNeauDriven State Sponsored Apartment Housing Available!” the small magazine read. Then the UberVoice from her EmoReader began chanting a soft few phrases as if under Her breath…
BECOME A ‘LEARNING ENTITY’ AND TRANSFORM INTO A PROPERLY RETRIBALIZED ‘SOCIAL CITIZEN!’ – read a random generic CAMBIAN Ad on the back of a Jewish ZinePamphlet sitting on her bed with a few SoftSkynn TrannyDolls.
Jews themselves now a popular and recently official UFED UberGroup or ‘MicroGen.’ She didn’t care for ‘The Hebes’ really, though most of her friends when she was young were Jews before they all moved from her neighborhood, Crescent Forest.
“Let’s do this, okay, Victor, the Man of Total Involvement, of Total Awareness, absorbs everything around Him, the Running Man Runs, the Learning Man Learns, The Running Man Learns The Learning Man Runs…”
“Let’s do this, okay, Naomi: the WoMan of Total Involvement, of Total Awareness, absorbs everything around Her: the Running WoMan Runs, the Learning WoMan Runs, The Running WoMan Has And The Learning Man Does…”
The Running Man says this, about to do his morning Marathon. The CAMBIAN FIT WAT!
He repeats these lines to ‘Cast’ the NeauSpell over the Learning Software in his Brain to get better bicycle mileage. He knows that the wrong combination of wishing will get him the wrong muscle software configuration. This is a sposmodic discipline, the Life of the Learning Man.
He begins again…
“The Learning Man Thinks The Learning Man Finds The Learning Man Does The Learning Man Runs The Learning Man Runs The Learning Man Thinks The Learning Man Does, The Learning Man Has, The Learning Man Can The Learning Man Smiles The Learning Man Was The Learning Man Wants, The Learning Man Struggles, The Learning Man Wishes, The Learning Man Gets, The Learning Man Finds, The Learning Man Wounds, The Learning Man Aborbs, The Learning Man Completes.
Himself.”
“The Learning Woman Thinks The Learning Woman Finds The Learning Woman Does The Learning Man Runs The Learning Man Runs The Learning Man Thinks The Learning Man Does, The Learning Man Fucks The Learning Man Eats The Learning Man Has, The Learning Man Can The Learning Man Smiles The Learning Man Was The Learning Man Wants, The Learning Man Struggles, The Learning Man Wishes, The Learning Man Gets, The Learning Man Finds, The Learning Man Wounds, The Learning Man Aborbs, The Learning Man Completes. Himself.” The Learning Woman Runs, The Learning Woman Has, The Learning Man IS.”
Camille felt herself mezmorized by the Near-Hypnopaedic voice.
The Radio kept on…
“More Homeless SAVED from the streets by the CAMBIAN INFANTRY! Given Up? Join Up.”
Turned over in her bed. The white wash from the windows made her blink twice. “Oh shit, what am I gonna do about Kim?” Neasuea. Again. Fuck. She had to shit. “Gotta make bumper,” she exclaimed to her empty room. “Is there anything I can do?” asked Una. “Ah, wipe my ass.” There was no reply.
***
The wood of the bench kind of pinched her butt-cheeks when itty-bitty parts of her rear got caught between the slats. She was waiting for Blo-T, the next Transport out of Main-Line and into the gray area of now, Off-Line toward Springfield-Springfield. This was as opposed to the Oakland Community Springfield.
…Stay Tuned For More of ‘Springfield’ Tomorrow!
– ‘Springfield’ is an All-New “VESPER HELIOTROPIC CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES” Short Story. –
– Vesper Heliotropic is a general teen/adult sci-fi ebook, paperback and hardcover, and is a Steampunk(ish) serial novel. The first written publication is OUT NOW VIA LULU.com on PAPERBACK and SPECIAL-JACKETED HARDCOVER, and is available for THE AMAZON KINDLE as well as BARNES AND NOBLES NOOK EBOOKS. VESPER HELIOTROPIC, THE CRYSTAL TURBINES SERIES GRAPHIC NOVEL IS ALSO OUT NOW ON FULL COLOR GLOSSY PAPERBACK! 46 Pages Full Color Interior and Exterior – ONLY $19.99! –
From a voice file:
This is my own observation. I think that it is inherently cerebral. At the moment. At the moment. I suppose that will change when we are through media able to visualize everything that’s in our heads as some kind of (no doubt) 3d display tech, in which the viewer is now participant for real, in a void or vacuum of a million balloons he must now sort out. But even then that’s cluttered, and we will need once again to sort it out, and once again, if not permanently, overabundance of information is the problem.
Because the Internet is basically text now, and will be inevitably voice dominant in the future (with text only as subsidiary form and filter) –we instinctively have an emphasis on words as filter bits in which we are funneled most of our information whether to each other in bed making love, chatting in our cars while talking to lost loves, or building a website; it is all involvement with the same medium, over and over. Looking at nothing but what are in reality, literally, flat planes through which our eyes pass through maybe a centimeter.
We will then gain the loss of perspective of the New Guinean Jungle tribesman, forever surrounded by the trees and no perspective, nothing literally beyond a meter or two. Who thought upon visiting as Joseph Campbell and McLuhan point out, thought the buffalo on the horizon were ants. Why? Because for some moments at least, I don’t know, maybe minutes, maybe a day or a week or many years, but the tribesman literally thought the buffalo, boar sized beasts the size of three men put together, were ants crawling somehow in their vision like flies to swat from their faces, and I don’t remember, maybe they did.
Anyone who supports Obama, should THINK again. He is NOT going to veto the American INDEFINITE DETETNION ACT – AS IF THE PATRIOT ACT WEREN’T ENOUGH He has now betrayed the left as well. This is the end of Rome.
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1. Technical companies offering jobs in exchange for specialized labor, is on its way out, non-specialism in the form of do-alls, artists, thinkers, inventors and computer wiz’s, is in.
2. College and Universities are bunk, and Education is nothing but class war. Well, the class war thing is already well on its way, but the, what will become, a national scandal over what universities have been doing to kids and their parents, will be revealed very quickly. The reputation of higher education in general will yield itself identical to the trust lost in our government since Vietnam.
3. Right brained is in, left, out. Geeks are in now, but right brainers who can use their intuition based conscious logic will neither create solutions nor solve problems so much as brainstorm and invent.
4. The country is on the brink of decentralized force, being the result of the politically stunned apparatus of Law – i.e. Militia groups like some sects of extreme Tea Partiers – I predict the left will have a backlash and grow a brow. This means that localized mass abundancy i.e. Wallmart will be in vogue to some great degree in terms of produce and groceries. Meanwhile most malls fall into abandonment or become strip malls for the new nomads.
5. The highways are going to become stop ways, junctured at every point in the end where superhighways are meant solely for Internet travel while residential zones undergo gridlock. This means that the Howard Johnson style diner ‘points’ along the very local-identity-way, will become quite a cultural blogging and blogging axis and cultural insignia of decentralization in general.
6. Possible: The Republican party is disbanded and/or completely re-invented.
7. In-sourced labor. Your grandma will be making retro-fitted rims and possibly bomb parts for domestic terrorists. In other words, cars won’t be in demand, but ripped limb from limb for spare parts while the new products will mostly be made here in our own countries.
8. The fall of Puritan America. Sex will become a culturally integrated phenomenon to the point of women being identical to men in drive and form. The exposure to sex on this scale such as already seen on Loly33.com or Loly2.com in the New Art Porn will become cultural reality. Underage sex will start at 12 on average and kids will continue to medevalize into little adults. Slut is the new vogue, forever. Women have lost the US as their matriarchal reality while men lose their patriarchy.
To be continued in millions of on-going blogs…
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“My Dad taught me many things.
Right here in this room.”
– Michael Corleone, The Godfather II
It felt as though a door had been shut on a party in the next room.
But the sound that seemed to be all around me, yet outside of me, the sound usually muffled by a shutting door, I knew, wasn’t a sound at all, but a feeling. The feeling that I was waking up on the eve of something new, big, the noise next door making me heavy with excitement.
It was a strange kind of immersive feeling. I lay in my old blue sleeping bag I think I’d found in the closet, unravelling its bright red inner lining from my body. I thought, “This is it, here it is: you’re free–finally free”
I lay in the basement of my father’s new townhouse, well, it was still somewhat new to me, he’d been remarried four years I think, at that time. It was the early morning of January 11th, 2005, I had just arrived once again from being away, which so characterized my twenties, this time from being in France, married with child for roughly a little over three years.
I’d left them, well, so to speak, after not having a job basically the entire duration of that time living in a prison with a person I discovered I had very little in common with, happened to marry, happened to have a daughter with, and stayed for that long–for that reason alone.
It had that this is a new life’ feeling. God I love that feeling, so fresh, like I’d never lifted a finger in that land before. But I was in the place I’d grown up, a few neighborhoods off from Springfield, in Annandale, Virginia.
Virginia never felt mythical, or enchanted in any way. Now it does, looking back, and each time I re-arrive there. Of course so much has changed, it’s risen into a sprawl comparable to LA now, and was well on its way, even at that time.
My dad’s old glass cased Sony stereo system with big ol’ black speakers rose up from the floor with some sort of oak or mahogany imitation wood.
I had turned on the lamp and remembered that, of all things, of all people, my old High School English teacher, Mrs. Rice, had picked me up from Dulles the night before. She was Jewish, had absolutely huge, enormous black hair, and quite a homely appearance, which was something she always would openly admit, which I always found interesting. It was even more interesting to me though, that she was once ecentric and yet, on every occasion I came in contact with her, had a talk with her, what have, you, she never talked about anything but the most asinine things.
We had a funny discussion, or rather, not quite a discussion, but a conversation in the car that was a bit different and at first made me think she was in fact the usual result of eccentricity: somewhat interesting . She wanted to know everything…Stay Tuned for More From Neal Cormier: Memoir I.
Objective Philosophy is a place for people who believe that philosophy, as a fundamentally non-contradictory system– is attainable to man, and that man is able to sustain and operate this system competently to achieve a better way of life. It is for those who accept that knowledge ought not to be a...Read More at Objective Philosophy.com
…& the conceptual age.
Our lives have been inexorably changed. F ac ebook searches better with more results, spelled this way. This is the mark, that signifying element in our psyche, that a paradigm has changed. J.P. Guilford had a theory about what he called (and what many businesses adopted since) – ‘Divergent Thinking.’ He divided thought or intelligence into two parts. Divergent and Convergent. Divergent goes from one point out, convergent, from multiple points inward. In abstract thought like forming the concept ‘political system’ it uses both with a primary focus of right brain-TO-left with right as the origin in my theory.
Recently I came across a book at Barnes & Nobles titled: “A Whole New Mind” Or something like that. Link here:
From the article:
— “Pink, a former chief speechwriter for former Vice President Al Gore, presents a convincing argument that our country is entering a new era — the so-called conceptual age — during which right-brained skills such as design and storytelling will become far more crucial than traditionally left-brained skills such as accounting and computer programming.” —
It was as if I were reading straight from one of my own blogs. But why is this true?
I will package it up neatly this time into an initially loose hypothesis:
1. Divergent THINKING & KEYWORDS: The backbone of the internet is keywords. Why is this non-linear and divergent? Because keywords relate in terms of how people search in a heterogeneous environment, it’s called the Internet. Think of a suburban planned community. Then think of the streets of New York City. Which one has the power to relate anything to anything else, instantly? WHich one does not?
2. Right brained equals all points simultaneously viewable, like standing in the middle of The National Gallery of Art, Modern wing in D.C. -As WIRED has said: “Secrets are at the same time, the Internet’s true forty..” (Paraphrased) The Net is both hetero and homo. It is a replica of how the brain behaves and we are living in it. Those who think from all points simultaneously (coff coff) i.e. ARTISTS and CREATIVE INTELLCTUALS.
3. Conceptual thought. Concepts are integrated units that are by nature, abstract. So is the Net. Big time. Think of an assembly line. Then think of a train track. Then think of a highway. Which one subsumes the most decentralized frenetic activity? Which the most linear? Concepts, esp abstract concepts like “Freedom” “Love” and “American Women,;)” are totally non-linear in their formation. (concept formation)
4. Dating portal s have become a mainstay and increased sexual activity in a safe, divergent structure. Just like how the right brain works, one of the Net’s prized media today is the dating site or ‘dating portal.’ Think about micro-organisms running around a maze. Think about how people would look if an office building’s top were taken off and you could see the top floor functioning? How would people move? Now do the same thing to what dating would look like in that same projected analogy. Intellectual dating is another story, but combines both right and left brained with dominance, again, going to the right! 🙂
I call the new mind: “The Abstract Synthetic Mind.” Adolf Hitler had it. Ayn Rand had it, so did Van Gogh. ALL artists. All abstract thinkers.
That’s it, there are only 4 reasons. 😉
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Neal Cormier 