Monday, March 28, 2005
The Moment I Realized You're Smarter Than Me
You were giving a presentation on
the Incas of Peru
in Political History.
Normally,
I don't particularly care about
any topic so dry and ancient,
but today you really had
the entire class hooked.
You threaded us
with tales of peasant rebellions,
and did we know
that their entire literature
is written in knotted string?
Unfortunately -
you said -
the empire crumbled so quickly
at the advance of Francisco Pizarro
that we never found out how to read it,
and so their written knowledge will forever remain to us
a series of enigmatic knots.
As you said this -
a gleam in your eye,
the teacher greedily grabbing at
the gold spilling from your lips -
I began to feel my own knots
locking up at the bottom of my stomach.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat
and began to look around for an explanation.
"Is this hunger, or some other physical malady?" I wondered.
Perhaps some bitter form of new-world nostalgia?
The Spanish -
you continued -
conquered the Incas in two short weeks
despite the Incas far superior developments
in the fields of
agriculture
mathematics
and map-making.
They did this by
calling out the Inca king
for "peace talks",
and upon getting the monarch in the open
ruthlessly kidnapping and executing him
before the entire royal town.
The Incas scattered in a confused panic,
and the rest -
as they say -
is history.
"You see," you concluded
with a dramatic sweep of your hand,
"sometimes in history,
the more advanced civilization crumbles
before a military might.
The Spanish didn't know
where they were
or what they were doing,
but they still knew how to get from
A
to
B."
The class gave you a mighty applause
and after a moment -
as I processed your final stanza -
I joined the clapping,
those terrible knots
loosening into elegant threads of silk
drawing up and out of my chest
in an exhale of pure relief.
You were giving a presentation on
the Incas of Peru
in Political History.
Normally,
I don't particularly care about
any topic so dry and ancient,
but today you really had
the entire class hooked.
You threaded us
with tales of peasant rebellions,
and did we know
that their entire literature
is written in knotted string?
Unfortunately -
you said -
the empire crumbled so quickly
at the advance of Francisco Pizarro
that we never found out how to read it,
and so their written knowledge will forever remain to us
a series of enigmatic knots.
As you said this -
a gleam in your eye,
the teacher greedily grabbing at
the gold spilling from your lips -
I began to feel my own knots
locking up at the bottom of my stomach.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat
and began to look around for an explanation.
"Is this hunger, or some other physical malady?" I wondered.
Perhaps some bitter form of new-world nostalgia?
The Spanish -
you continued -
conquered the Incas in two short weeks
despite the Incas far superior developments
in the fields of
agriculture
mathematics
and map-making.
They did this by
calling out the Inca king
for "peace talks",
and upon getting the monarch in the open
ruthlessly kidnapping and executing him
before the entire royal town.
The Incas scattered in a confused panic,
and the rest -
as they say -
is history.
"You see," you concluded
with a dramatic sweep of your hand,
"sometimes in history,
the more advanced civilization crumbles
before a military might.
The Spanish didn't know
where they were
or what they were doing,
but they still knew how to get from
A
to
B."
The class gave you a mighty applause
and after a moment -
as I processed your final stanza -
I joined the clapping,
those terrible knots
loosening into elegant threads of silk
drawing up and out of my chest
in an exhale of pure relief.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
The first draft of my novel is finished.
With all the creative energy I put into this project, I feel completely drained of any reasonable or creative thoughts. There will be no witty outcrops in this message. Rather, I give it to you strictly by the numbers.
"Something for the Long Flight Home"
first draft completed March 13th, 2005, 2:36 A.M.
pages: 255
words: 70,073
characters (spaces not included) : 312, 853
characters (spaces included) : 385, 334
previous novels written by this author: 0
age at time of completion: 21 years, 7 months, 6 days.
And that's how I'm feeling right now. Exhausted and goodnight. Maybe tomorrow I'll write something with a shorter focus. A haiku might be nice. I'm spent.
With all the creative energy I put into this project, I feel completely drained of any reasonable or creative thoughts. There will be no witty outcrops in this message. Rather, I give it to you strictly by the numbers.
"Something for the Long Flight Home"
first draft completed March 13th, 2005, 2:36 A.M.
pages: 255
words: 70,073
characters (spaces not included) : 312, 853
characters (spaces included) : 385, 334
previous novels written by this author: 0
age at time of completion: 21 years, 7 months, 6 days.
And that's how I'm feeling right now. Exhausted and goodnight. Maybe tomorrow I'll write something with a shorter focus. A haiku might be nice. I'm spent.
