From the Library: Ariel - A Book of the Change
I am, for better or worse, scattershot and easily distracted. I also normally don't feel like I have anything to say. It's probably that last that is the most reason I don't update as often as I do. Not a lot to say, and most of what I feel is worthy of comment are thigns I don't feel like casting out into the world.
What prompted this is the internet going down. Funny really. Some people turn to drink, others drugs. Me? Just let the ADD carry me through the web so I don't have to think about things. Wha'd I do before the internet? I read. A Lot. I still do, just not nearly in so organized a manner.
I love my kindle. It allows me to carry a rather large library wherever I go. Which is real nice because i have one dinky book case in a corner that's more decorative than utilitarian. The Kindle also lets me futz around with text size, which has been an absolute Godsend as of late.
Thing of it is, and this is a question I've seen asked, 'What if the internet didn't exist?' Ariel sees that and goes' nah hold my beer I'm gonna turn off the whole of modern society.'
A few bits and bobs.
...We fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph. —T.S. Eliot
I am convinced these words more than any other have described my out look on life. I often go into a lotof what i know are hopeless rage inducing arguments against people who by that point are so beyond *DONE* with me they're looking for an excuse, and often already have it ranging from 'I don't like you' to 'you arne't a true fan' to 'hey remember that time you had a psychotic break from reality?' and on and on. It's why I will have glorious shouting matches with my stepdad to the point I'm genuinely surprised we haven't killed eachother. I know going in I'm not going to win, but I can't just roll over and let things happen without anything said.
The Change drives a lot of hardcore SF people bonkers. I used to defend myself by conspiratorially whispering to them, “It isn’t reeeeal.” It’s fun to do but unsatisfactory: the truth, of course, is that I simply know a lot more about how the world works now than I did then (remember my main interests in school?), and nowadays I would at least try to address some of these frustrating inconsistencies.
But as it stands, the Change is an awfully inconsistent phenomenon, isn’t it? I mean, how come a bicycle doesn’t work but George’s watch does? They’re essentially the same thing, using gears to transfer motion. Ditto fires: people smoke cigarettes and light campfires all over the place, but guns don’t work. Why one combustion and not the other?
The origin of the Change as milieu is pretty simple: as a long-time martial artist, I really hated guns. I wanted to make them all didn’t happen no more, so I did. Firearms don’t work because I said so. Again I say to you: nonny nonny pooh pooh.
The man is honest about it. 'The Change,' is an effect where guns stopped working, cars stopped working, most if not all of the long term lingering polution went away, and you had fantasyland creatures popping up. The sequel book (which in the notes at the end of the e-book rerelease of the first) Mr Boyette is ademant that he would not write a sequel,) further demonstrates that electronics didn't work either as an iPod remained innert even with a solar charger until placed in a bubble of 'normal' reality in which it charged (note that the fantasyland critters stopped existing in those pockets, but if they were in a moving thing like a blimp they would resume existing if it passed out of this space.) There are some grudging concessions to science. All clocks worldwide stopped at 4:30 regardless of region, so it was a rolling region of Change that the earth effectivly rolled into with all the horror that implies.
I love both books. It's been close to twenty years since the sequel book, andit was twenty years between original and sequel. So theoretically? But I won't hold my breath. Yet at the same time the first was 'a survivor of Our world journeying into the next. The second is that person's son who would now find Our world alien, and yet the potential for the new Rules that Govern are barely understood.
All this from 'I hate guns. So. Poof. They nolonger work.
I wrote Ariel on a Royal manual typewriter5 on a rickety green metal typing stand with folding arms facing a blank bedroom wall. Lisa used to go to sleep to that sound. Sometimes she’d wake up if I stopped typing, like the old story about the lighthouse keeper who, one night when the foghorn doesn’t go off, pops awake and says, “What’s that noise?”
I loved the feel of her asleep near me while I wrote.
Having spent my entire adult life plus a bit into highschool trying to write and often failing? I think i understand. It isn't for nothing, nor is it totally 'alone' even if you're the only one doing the thing. Some people will say it's a moral failing to abandon a project or passion. Others will point out there is only so much time to give and the definition of madnes is doing the same thing over and over hoping for differing results.
I have no idea what I'm doing, but if I had a chance to talk to that head-up-his-own-ass kid between graduation and collage? The moment you think you have everything figured out is the moment your legs get snatched out from under you, and it is a long way down. Also, brush your damned teeth more.
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