random.

The Sad Truth About Relationships

Today I listened to my officemate discuss the details of his brother's slow death in another timezone with his sister on the phone. Brain cancer has destroyed an optic nerve, and surgery to correct the growth caused a stroke and complete blindness as well as hydrocephalus and short-term dementia. He wakes up starving from naps and doesn't know where he is or why he cannot see. The news has to be broken to him over and over again. His wife there holding his shaky hand. How can I write something fictive that matters after thinking of that? And how did I spend all day thinking of my personal bullshit?

Western civilization and technology encountered island populations in the South Pacific and even Indian Oceans long after much of the rest of the world was "settled". When westerners discovered Easter Island the few remaining inhabitants (they had cut down all of their trees, understand?) had been living under the impression that the universe consisted of their dying island and an infinity of ocean on all sides. In New Guinea, in the 1930s, a British official encountered a previously uncontacted village. After several days of trying to communicate with them, one villager strolled out to the air strip that had been hacked into the mountainside and lashed himself to the airplane there. He had to see where the thing came from. He was willing to die to see where it came from. There is an island in the Indian Ocean, Sentinel Island, that is occupied by a long dissociated collection of the Andaman tribe. No one understands their language and they have only seen other tribes and Westerners from a distance. What do they make of our helicopters and boats and airplanes?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU

Barack Obama just gave an amazing speech about race in America. Watch it.