Thought Palace

Yesterday I got acquainted with our leaf-blower. It’s electric, thank Cthulhu, but not what you’d call “whisper quiet”. We got it as a gift several years ago, and I tried it once back then and it just blew the leaves into a huge swirling cloud that settled down exactly where it began. So I disappointedly put it in the shed and forgot about it.

This time, though, I treated it as if it were some new and powerful item from a game. The controls seem simple — just press the A button to turn it on/off and rotate the C stick to point it, kind of like Luigi’s Mansion — but it takes time to master. Here’s my brief player’s guide:

Anywhere near a wall you get the howling leaf tornado that I experienced before; I’m not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but avoid that. The brick patio was the best surface, though I had to evade obstacles like the picnic table to get those elusive remaining leaves for bonus points. The limited length of the extension cord added an element of strategy, as I often had to retrace my path to unwind the cord from around trees and [...]

…each of us had a little box. We didn’t know each other, not at first; we weren’t even aware of each other. “We” was a grouping defined solely by the fact of our having these little boxes. Each box was black lacquer and about two inches on a side. A network of fine black raised lines covered it. The lid could be opened, revealing nothing much inside.

To be honest, it was hard to remember what was inside after you shut the lid. Sometimes people would look inside, shut the lid, then look inside again because they couldn’t remember what was inside. They’d repeat this process for minutes or hours at a time until someone kindly distracted them. Anyway, whatever was inside the boxes, sometimes it talked to us. Usually it would name a place to go. It didn’t make much sense for a while, but all the time the boxes were gradually bringing all of us closer to each other.

Then the instructions started to change. They still didn’t make much sense, but now we would walk around and see something like … like a couple of Coke cans stacked on top of each other, or a blue circle spray-painted on [...]

…we decided that staying awake as late as possible was the way to write new and creative things. This to be accomplished without the aid of stimulants since the goal was to be as sleepy as possible. In ideal circumstances we would actually fall asleep while typing without stopping, finding ourselves squatting in a gray hypnogogic landscape still tapping on the keyboard finishing up priceless new thoughts. The dream-laptop could then be carried along throughout the night as a powerful and modern spirit guide, helping us to keep appointments with buried archetypes and instantly add new dream symbols to our address books, in addition to the obvious utility of taking dictation during the dream, before the veil is torn on waking and the dream story scattered. The major obstacle was the discovery that waking has the same effect on the laptop as on the mind, leaving the hard disk fragmented and the contents of RAM corrupted, necessitating re-installation from a backup. The solution was to email or IM dreamnotes before waking, a nerve-racking business since the passage of realtime during dreams is so uncertain, and any moment might bring the noise of the alarm. We would therefore type our dreamnotes [...]

The apricots are falling, bit by bit
helped along by interfering squirrels.
Though not yet ripe, they roll upon the bricks,
all with tooth-marks, some with chewed-up pits.
This fruit debacle fills us with dismay,
as we had hoped the ripe fruit to preserve
and so retain the sweetness of the day
In far December when light’s gone away.

Arranged on a torn out page,
silver “S”s of old wire pulled from broken clocks.
A razor shadow scratched by halogen behind each,
tracing its shape in intersections with blue ink lines,
a curve modeling stresses and crystal faults.
Exhausted by years of funneling pulses from a quartz chip,
the wires relax now bit by bit,
slow motion snakes,
emitting sub-audible scritchings against the paper fibers.
As it unwinds, each proudly imagines itself a mainspring.

The Zen master Yoshi was playing a video game. Seated in the lotus position, he expertly maneuvered the controller with his gnarled hands. Nevertheless, on the screen Mario failed to leap from one block to the next and plummeted screaming into the void.

Again, Yoshi began the same level. Again, the moving platforms eluded the sprite onscreen.

Seventeen more times, master Yoshi caused the hapless plumber to fall into nothingness and lose another life.

Still, his pose remained serene, and a bud of a smile played on his lips.

At last the novice Ohta, who had been watching the whole time, could not contain himself. “Master,” he blurted out, “how can you remain so calm in the face of so excruciatingly difficult a level? Even when the platforms evaporate into thin air when you are yet a split second from reaching the Shine that is your goal? How do you restrain yourself from throwing the controller through the nearest shoji?”

Master Yoshi replied:

“The platform is not moving.
Mario is not moving.
Only the mind is moving.”

At that instant, Ohta attained enlightenment.

We are all snakes. We have a tail and onetwothree mouths. The middle mouth bites the tail to hold fast to form, to keep the extra blessings from dropping off one end and becoming lost in the untidy æther. Leftright mouths are perhaps free to latch onto other snakes should the local geometry and snake density so permit. When our fangs sink into each other we exchange blessings. It must be so. Blessings endlessly recirculated become stale, they need another blood type in which to flow for a time before being returned freshly laundered and creased & giving off a pleasant aroma of incense.

Eli finally entered the Fulfillment Center at dusk, through the wide metal doors opening into the chilly space within. He had been waiting in line since dawn, shuffling slowly back and forth through the cracked remnants of the old parking lot under the eyes of the security guards. The Center was an old, damaged warehouse – this had been an industrial area before the war – and was lit within by banks of fluorescent tubes suspended from the high ceiling.

Once inside he waited briefly before stepping up to one of the many card tables set up in a line near the door. A tired looking young man checked his ID card, walked back to one of the many large crates filling the space, rummaged about inside, and returned with a small cardboard box.

“You’ll have to sign for it,” the young man said mechanically, sliding a clipboard across the table. Eli did so, using the ballpoint pen chained to it, and picked up the box as he slid the clipboard back across the desk.

“It’s smaller than I thought, somehow.”

“That’s the standard size. They only put in as much stuff as will fit in there.” The young man blew his nose with [...]

We stepped out our back door into splendor:
– the rain-choked hills casting off their muddy carapace of topsoil
– uprooted trees shedding their last dead leaves like ticker-tape
– all of up heading for down.
All the wet rot of the rotating Earth converged on our yard
but was held back by cinderblock walls
with a splash.

Our house lay alone at the foot of a brown slope devoid of landmarks:
a virgin field of stumps, poles, and spinning tires.
Anything might be planted in that field and grow.
Any possibility might be granted in a new equilibrium.
Like two children we held hands and stepped over the wall,
digging our bare feet into dark humus, taking root.

The horizon folded down its blackness.
Overhead curled exalted green clouds
of Sun-born particles spiraling in.

Now upward in an arc, tied to the long invisible armature of the Pole,
flew my humble cardboard tube of Earthly minerals,
in one moment transmuted into circlets and spheres of sparks —
dark materials achieving by dint of effort
glory surpassing the Sun’s electrons,
if only for a second.

Hood thrown back I howled a warning to low-flying angels.
The dogs lay panting in the snow, unimpressed.