The Ands

Cat and Moon

 

An unusual cat one evening told me: "We've figured out the moon. We figured it out before you people ever figured it out. We could see it changing, and we marked the time by weeks, knowing as we did that every seven night-sleeps it looked very different. One the first night, the moon is full. We sleep seven nights, and there's only a half of the moon up there, evenly divided, and we see the left half. We spend seven more nights sleeping, and there's no moon at all; seven sleeps later, there's a half moon up there: the right half. Then, seven night later, it's a full moon again. We don't know much else about the moon, however. (However, we don't believe it actually vanishes when there's 'no moon'.) We call the four weeks a month. I believe you do too, though you compromise to make it all work out mathematically in tune with the seasons. You like threes and fours, don't you? Anyway, we can count the moons and understand how time passes in the long run.

"But enough about all that! What do you think of dogs? We think they're idiots, by the way."

 

*

 

Disney and Mechanism

 

It's so well-established that anyone who believes otherwise is classified idiotic. Walt Disney, who's famous all over the world, started as a boy with two interests, those being drawing and painting and mechanisms. Okay, that's three, but you get the idea. Half his energies went to the study of clocks and wind-up toys. He built several hundred little machines that would run on battery power. He could have become a great physicist, but instead he put the interest into the service of making motion pictures--the newest great technology of his youth. He combined all his interests into the creation of pictures that moved, rather than objects that moved. The mechanisms he built from that point on would have to do with sprockets and cells and light. Much like Alfred Hitchcock who started as a graphic designer, he re-purposed his skills into another arena altogether, and changed things not only for himself but also for the wider world.

I know all this because last night I dreamed I was in a Mennonite bookstore and they had volume 18 ("Juvenile Mechanical Works") of a Disney catalogue. If I dreamed it, it has to have some basis in fact.

 

*

 

Police and Thief

 

The police had the thief surrounded, with three at the front door, three at the back, and three at the side. Police from behind some parked cars barked: "We're got the place surrounded. You can't get away. You'd better surrender."

The thief was certain there had to be another way to get outside. He recalled the oak tree at the side of the house, said side being the side without a door.

He was certain to be seen, of that there was no doubt. So much for that idea.

Meanwhile, the police were getting bored. Their minds were all on other things. They thought: "If we storm the place, we can later all go tend to important matters."

They didn't want that. It could get messy. Someone might get killed. It was twelve to one, but still: there'd be twelve targets available to the thief.

"We're not going to wait much longer, thief. It can only end one of two ways. I don't want to have to paint you a picture."

Time progressed. The thief couldn't decide.

The police were getting anxious.

The thief, waving a while handkerchief, came out the front door.

So happily ever after.

 

*

 

Your and Mine

 

I came across an old photograph album of yours the other day, and I took the liberty of looking through it. I felt like I was taking something from you, until finally I reasoned why.

I recognized a few of the people in the initial pages, and the ones I recognized I only recognized because you'd at some earlier point told me who they were. Stiff great-grandparents, wedding photos, holiday times on seaside hills somewhere: You'd told me who these people were.

Then there was a gap, as if BOOK II had started. Now I was in the photographs you had taken, or had had other people take. For the most part, these were familiar faces and places. I could understand much of it, though sometimes my details were hazy.

I came to a picture that stopped me from going further. It was a photograph of someone who looked somewhat like me, snapped in a place I knew. I tried hard to understand what I was looking at. I knew when the photograph had been taken, but I didn't know the person in the picture. I couldn't look any longer; I'd gotten into some strange alien person.

 

*

 

There and Here

 

Emerging slowly from his six-month coma and still under heavy sedation and orders to move slowly, he called for a newspaper to be brought. Under the heading RAW he learned about a foreign situation. It seemed the bad guys of one land started it all by strategically and legally invading the other land, the good guys' land, in an attempt to eliminate some threat of a mysterious nature. They'd even cynically harried innocents out of the hearths in which they'd been born. Quite obviously up to no good.

In retaliation, the good guys invaded their attackers. They had to break through a punishing wall to get there. Once they got there, they proceeded to heroically murder some 1200 so-called 'civilians' of the enemy side, doing so using most brutal means. They even kidnapped anyone who came to hand, to drag them back to the land of the good guys. It was great for the morale of the men, and of their noble nation, and also their allies in Nari, who'd given them aid and training preparatory.

That's when he realized he was reading the newspaper backwards and upside down. The sedation was more intense than he'd expected.

 

*

 

Child and Adults

 

You know the score even if you don't know you know it. In decreasing amounts of knowledge, there's your bed, and your room, and your house, and your neighbourhood, and your country, and your world. There's nothing else to be had.

The adults go off at times, to do something else. Maybe they have other children in other places that need attention and feeding and care. You're not sure, but you don't know how to ask.

Meanwhile you go to school and you sense there's things you don't know, but they're mostly things that don't matter much. For the most part, it's all about being with your friends and learning about what mischief you can get up to without getting spanked.

You see the books all over the place. Whatever they're used for you don't know. You're curious, but they're so for adults you're pretty sure they're all dull, as dull as they are. They have parties, but you're not invited.

Halloween and Christmas are important. There are these things called times tables that interest you. There's a woodycallit in the den with a record player in it.

Maybe you'll learn about it all, but probably not.

 

*

 

Vertigo and Psychos

 

Scotty follows the woman through the streets. She stops in front of something of a rooming house. Scotty watches her go in, then waits. He sees her in the front room upstairs. Something-something-something, then Scotty goes into the rooming house. He asks about the woman in the front room. The manager tells him she's not come in. He says: "But I saw her." But her key is still on the rack. She was never there.

I don't know if anyone has ever commented on the impossibility of this scene. As far as complaints about the implausibility of Vertigo go, this needs some explaining.

After the shower scene, there's a long pause, during which Mother goes up to the house. There's a shot of the house and the motel, silent, then: NORMAN: Mother! Blood!

At that very point there is an edit, or a reel change, or an edit that is made to look like a reel change. The string score abruptly starts again, but it starts mid-mechanical-recording, slightly too late. Either all home video versions have been based on a bad copy, or H. was saying: "It's only a movie" or: "Act Two".

Has anyone noticed this?

 

*

 

General and Motors

 

Way back when, in Oshawa, Ontario, Mr. McLaughlin started a carriage company. He got into machines, and he started building cars. Somewhere in the 1930s.

The whole town grew up around GM. There are a couple paltry rivers running through Oshawa, but nothing you could mill. Not for a profit, anyway. The growth of Oshawa General Motors was completely organic due to Presbyterianism.

My mother, whose father was a WWI vet and medalled, married this scruffy painter, already-married, [thus with half-cousins I have never met]. She loved him as a Heathcliff, and they were probably like animals in bed.

I was the last of five.

I wish I knew what to do with history.

You can look it up. 1965, February, 25.

Front page of the Toronto Star, February 26^th, massive snowstorm.

Today, on the third floor, a skunk was seen. It had emerged out of a box and was running around. As it turned out, upon closer examination, it was a mechanical metal skunk. That's when we noticed a metal bird also on the same floor. We wondered if they'd fight, but they haven't yet. None of this took place in the real world, until now.

 

*

 

Skunk and Birds

 

We were in the lobby, the lobby on the third floor, where the elevators are. Hallways led off left and right, and the elevators themselves were in a little recess of perhaps three feet. We all saw the boxes and we saw the larger box open and a skunk come out. We'd never seen anything like it. After watching it creep about in search of a way out, we realized it was a mechanical skunk and not a real one. In fact, it hardly looked like a skunk at all. It had wheels instead of feet, and it was shiny metal all over.

Then the smaller box opened, and out came a bird. It was a handsome bird with bright plumage, then we once again noticed, as with the skunk, it was a mechanical gimmick. The wings were too heavy to fly. In fact, it was more of a wind-up bird. We left them where they were, to go into the dinner party.

We told the other guests about what we'd seen. One gentleman went out to look, but returned with no report. The skunk and the bird were gone. Actually, none of this happened, until now.

 

*

 

Street and Avenue

 

Don and John were out one day in the suburbs. They were surrounded by strip malls and tall buildings with mysterious letters on them: TVG, SysApp Co., GenProd, and so on. Don, after observing the plentiful traffic that swirled around them, said: "I think this is horrible."

"What," replied John, without a question mark.

"All these cars, and they're completely ignoring where the streets and the sidewalks are. They're driving over everything they want to, as if the roads don't exist. I think there's something really wrong going on here."

"Don," said John: "You didn't make this world. Someone else made it, and made it such that cars can ignore all the matters you believe are so important."

"Someone? Like who?" He was genuinely interested.

"I can't quite say. There's quite a number of candidates."

"Like who?" Again.

"It could be something God has done. Or it could be lax law enforcement. Or maybe this is all someone's dream. Or it could be someone's writing a story and we're characters in it. Or maybe it's a computer simulation that's gone wrong."

"I want to know who."

"Don," said John: "There's no way out. There is no 'outside'."

 

*

 

Library and Information

 

In 2024, it's going to get bad. So-called artificial intelligence will be flooding the Internet with crap, and then more artificial intelligence will be taking the earlier exemplars of crap generated to be true, and the whole fraud of AI will crumble. The Internet will become crazily inaccurate, which is why you should get ahead of the game and contract a personal librarian.

What is a personal librarian, you might ask? Why, it's a person, a human, who can give you some guidance about resources. The librarian is trained to know the difference between good resources and bad resources.

Don't delay! The mayhem will start in March or April! As I said, the poison of AI will infect all knowledge, at least as far as the Internet goes.

Who can you trust? We won't be able to trust the Internet's lies, and thus is follows naturally that guides will be necessary, and books and magazines will become important again. (Needless to say, the Internet will be writing books, too, and these books will have to be fought against.)

What will save us? Thankfully, these models are incredibly expensive, and you can only make so many paper clips....

 

*

 

Overboard and Man

 

As if it had only taken place yesterday, on our cruise around the Mediterranean, crossing the Aegean, I couldn't find my husband. I looked from front to back and side to side, and he was nowhere to be found.

At the front of the ship, I found a man in a big unseasonable coat, with a giant beard, and considerably tall. I described my husband, and the beard-man shook his head. "I'd say," said he: "he's jumped off the ship."

"Suicide?" I exclaimed. "He was not the type. He loved life. It's out of the question."

"It's my only answer, ma'am."

I looked over the blue. "Perhaps he's faked his death."

The man laughed, a bit too much. Foreigners! "That is a myth. Not a single person in history has 'faked his death'. It's a story we tell ourselves, for comfort's sake. No, ma'am, it's simply not possible."

He turned and went away a little too hurriedly. I had to accept facts. The foreigner was too far to call back. Surely there was an explanation. The bearded foreigner was climbing some steps. He had something wrong with his feet, I could see. Otherwise, why the tall lifts?

 

*

 

Fears and Loathing

 

You've had these feelings for quite some time, late at night when there's nothing to disturb you otherwise. You can feel yourself going downhill, can't you? Your best days are behind you, aren't they?

You snap your fingers because you know that a finger-snap can change everything. You can change, and you can change now. Don't put it off! These are encouraging words here. You can reverse everything by pulling apart that sweater you've been working on for months. Make a new ball of wool. It may be suitable for a kitten somewhere.

However, things do change for you, in the morning. You can barely remember what you were thinking about last night, in the darkness. You might even laugh about your fears and loathing in the brightness of a morning sun. Oh, how silly to be so pained by it all! Look: it's morning: everything is all right!

You barely notice the evening coming on, when the thoughts begin again; however, if you were keeping track, you'd see that the thoughts have started earlier. A couple minutes, maybe, not much more than that.

The only cure is to go to bed just a few minutes earlier.

 

*

 

Wax and Vinegar

 

The tube came in the mail, without a return address, from who-knows-where. Inside the tube was a scrolled paper mat, and a small instruction booklet. Following the instructions, you flatten out the paper mat, shiny side up, by pressing it under some books. Next day, you prepare a weak vinegar mixture. With a sponge, you start at one corner. A picture is revealing itself as bits of wax get sponged away. It's a sky, a night sky, with constellations: a lion, a ram, a scale, a cup-bearer. The paper mat is a wonder of technology.

In the middle of the picture, there's a man sawing into the earth. You follow the edge, to see he is on a sphere, an earth, and he's sawing into it. He must be trying to discover the secrets of nature in an allegory. Yes, the sphere is revealed as Earth, with continents and oceans. You get down to the bottom, where there's more constellations, and way down in the bottom right corner there's this: Copyright 1965.

It's an old thing, then. Why have you never heard of such a chemical process? What other secrets have you never been able to understand?

 

*

 

And And And

 

And I got an email one day, from M, who told me they were closing the store, and so I should drop by soon to pick up the books I'd stashed away over the years. I knew I had to make good on them, i.e. pay for them, so I made a note of it.

And a couple days later, I found myself not a block away from the store, so I figured this was the time. And I was with N at the time, and I thought I could impress her with my wide-ranging interests. And so, I went to the store and I had a bit of a talk with M and L about old times and about the heyday of the place, back when people actually bought books. And time was getting a bit tight, since I'd left N in a café. And so I paid for the books--there were about twenty of them--and I promised to come back soon for another visit.

And I took the books in three bags, and they were good books, a bunch of quality materials, and I went back to the café, and I saw N.

 

*

 

And And And

 

And N was sitting there, in the café, talking to someone. (N was facing in my direction; I never did find out what male she was talking to.) And I sat down and watched, waiting for her to notice me, me and my three bags of books. And I waited and I waited. We'd begun a thing, N. and I, and I thought it was going places. She'd said she liked how I tasted, which was nice. And I was sitting there, waiting, reader to impress her with the wonderful books I'd been keeping in storage at the store. Maybe, as I was sitting there, I blinked or got distracted, during which time she noticed me sitting there; but otherwise, she didn't notice me. And then I noticed the bags had already started to break, so I needed something sturdier. Gracefully, I decided to let her continue her conversation--maybe it was her cousin or something!--and meantime get my hands on a couple of sturdier bags. And I remembered I'd seen a Chapters bookstore along the avenue outside, and I figured I could get some good cloth bags there. They hardly sold books anymore; mostly bags.

 

*

 

And And And

 

As I entered from the street, there was a café, like a Starbucks, so I went to a table and put down the three raggedy bags containing at least twenty-two books in total. And I spilled the bags open because the bags were so ugly: plastic white torn. And I shoved the remnants of the bags into my pockets and I looked at the books and I was impressed with myself for stashing so.

And I went off to looks for someone who could sell me two cloth bags. No-one looked like an employee. And I had to go upstairs and downstairs to find someone who'd sell me two bags, at checkout.

And then I went back to their café, but the books were gone. I asked, and I was told: "We though some eccentric bum had left them, and so we pulped them out back. Anyway, books are yesterday's news!"

And so, it had all come to naught. The books were gone, and I'd lost N.

KEE-RIST!

But I'd been wrong latterly. The guy had been N's cousin. And hadn't seen him in years.

And I told N about the lost books, and I married her.

 

*

 

23 & Me

 

The year '23 has nearly drawn to a close. The year that's almost closed has 365 days; in a couple days, the year will have 366. 2024 is highly divisible; all leap year are at the least divisible by 2 and 4, but 2024 equals 1012 times 2 and therefore 506 times 2 times 2 which equals 253 times 2 times 2 times 2 which equals 23 times 11 times 2 times 2 times 2. That's five divisors, which is rather a lot of divisors. I'm sure I've covered old ground here.

2027 will be our next prime number year. It's a long way off. I know I'll still be making matters much like this one. You know: falsely crazy. Unusual tales for unusual times, and still they'll be running on their internal logic, unprompted by myself. (I only build these machines. I don't know who turns them on and off.)

2023 is almost at an end, even though I am now in 2024. It's almost always in a rearview mirror, all of this. It all concerns times that are already out-of-date. I'm always behind the times. I can't catch up. I'll never catch up. Will you?

 

*

 

Old and New

 

It's out with the old and in with the new tonight. The past is done, and the future is unknown. The dying shall die, and the living shall live. Sweep out the old with a fancy new broom and throw out the old broom into the new garbage. Finish that bottle and fetch me another one. Break all the records for what good are records? Put some fresh sheets on that mattress and get me some new flowers that don't smell rotten. We shall sleep in a kind of peace tonight, with new dreams of our newness.