Massive dream. There was a procession across a hill side and on that hill side there were hundreds of tombstones. The hill side was a little over grown and as it sloped down the entire thing was cut off at the far edge by a cliff. There was a procession happening there, the women dressed in gowns with all kinds of frillies and big brimmed hats with white flowers in them and all of the men dressed in tuxedos with black ties and shiny shoes
I was watching it from where the birds sit in the air and I wanted to get a closer look so I dove down and sat on one of the tomb stones to watch them walk. They were hiking on a narrow trail that led around the curve of the hill top and I couldn't see where they were going or from where they walked. I noticed some of the men wearing top hats and it was kind of cool. It made me want to have a top hat of my own, but not enough to actually make one. There was no music, only the sound of their feet kicking up dirt, but it rained the day before so there was no dust.
Some of the women had really thin canes and used them to help themselves push farther up the hill while they walked. Everyone there looked so stately and I wanted to be a part of it so I pressed myself into the grid, but I wasn't thinking and ended up there with a football and shorts and a dirty tee once I got the address right. That was the only hard part.
I kept throwing the football at people, but my resolution wasn't good enough and it kept passing through their bodies like they weren't even there. It would take a bounce or two and go off the side of the cliff and I felt worse and worse trying to make it happen and every time I kept saying "I'll go get it" and I would hike down the hill, navigating the gray and black and mossed over tombstones to the cliff side and then start the climb down. The view was incredible. There were birds flying beneath my feet dipping in and out of the canyon and there were trees growing down there where the cliff would ledge for a few feet and then drop down hundreds.
I fast forwarded the climb and return and clicked back on when I got back to the top. The procession must have been miles long. I was doing it all day. Another pass, another pass through, another climb. "I'll go get it." And they kept on walking. Some of the men had taxidermy turtles on the tops of their hats, spray painted black. I started to follow the procession to see where it was going. I liked being up in the air, but I liked being in shorts better and the football felt good to hold and toss even though I couldn't make anyone in the procession catch it. It felt good to walk.
I got distracted though. One of the tombs was a mausoleum. I wandered off of the trail because I was really interested in the iron work of the gates. They rusted over beautifully and I wondered about the hands that made them so pretty. The tomb itself was a simple white box of big blocks. No angels or ridiculous adornments. No saints. Nothing grew on it. The gate was unlocked so I walked inside.
The floor sloped down and into the hill side. There was nothing inside of it except a stone work tunnel. Inside of the tunnel there was a waterfall that arched through it. Thinking back the water probably was blown up from the right side and across the roof to terminate in the left side gutter. I started walking down it and then running because the air smelled so good and earth filled and wet and oxygen rich and I wanted to blow as much of it down my lungs as I could. I wanted to take my shirt off so it dissolved in bits of dust, pixel for pixel, and while I was running my friend started running too and caught up to me. I heard him and his shoes going step for step, but he still caught up to me because his stride was longer and I was thinking I could beat him to the end. I started off with quick feet, the same tempo, but we both got to our top gears and once you're there the only thing that matters is how far your footfalls can distance themselves from the one coming before.
He said "do you want to race?" I said "Hell yes." We booked it toward the light, running underneath the procession. I still had the football in the crook of my arm. I beat him out by a step and came to a skidding halt. The tunnel was a field of gravel on the other side. All of the pebbles we kicked up stopping went over the other side of the cliff and made little pock pock noises on their way down. I looked over my shoulder and the hill top was still dotted with tombstones. Some of them broken and graffiti on them. The procession was gone though.
Catching my breath I realized I was breathing hard outside of dreamland and it woke me up before I was ready to leave that place.
/// Lionrock - "Packet of Peace (Chemical Brothers Mix)"
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label the chemical brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the chemical brothers. Show all posts
2/17/11
Teleportation and Flight and Why the Hell am I From Here
I was walking down the street on my way home the other day and there was an exceptionally bright spot in the early morning still dark sky and it couldn't have been the North Star as I was walking almost due East. Is it possible to walk almost due to a cardinal? There's probably a different term I wanted there. Well anyway, walking almost due East and there is this bright point and I'm watching it and trying to figure out if it's flickering because its engines are vibrating and its moving or if its shaking because of the atmospheric interference I read about in that Astronomy class I almost failed because I didn't go to the Mars viewings.
A couple blocks later on down the road, still looking at it while taking in the rest of the sky and being generally happy that the moon went to bed much earlier in the night and I wouldn't have to deal with trying to sleep underneath it (I hate sleeping when the moon is out... it's just weird... I feel like I'm being watched whenever the moon can see me... like being really tired, but ambitious enough to sit in the front of the class... never ends well) I figured it must be a planet. So then I'm going down my mental list of attributes of planets and trying to figure out if the dot is tinged orange or red or brown or if the after image of headlights pouring in the opposite direction towards downtown are fucking with my eyes. Turns out the history channel's lessons about the planets combined with a couple thousand dollars worth of classroom credits taught me nothing retainable about the planets. I figured it's probably Venus. Anyway... where was I going with that, because I'm falling asleep with my head propped against the wall...
I had this idea about teleportation. If it could really work. I was trying to think of what it would look like for a man (or woman, or hamster) to teleport from here to the surface of Venus. This idea lead to another that I had about espestos. I don't think I spelled that right. Asbestos? That looks better. So this was an idea about asbestos. It stops things from burning. But that's not entirely true. It trades the burning. Instead of a speedy reorganization of carbon you get the very slow and meticulous reorganization of your carbon and fat chains in the form of a slow burning cancer. You're still burning, but just ridiculously slowly, which is a reasonable trade off I think. The guarantee of no sudden death by combustion for the guarantee of a slow death by, well you get the picture. So back to teleportation. Imagine teleportation as a similar thing.
A man or woman or hamster sitting zen lotus on a rock on the side of a mountain staring at Venus, well not staring because their eyes would have to be closed to meditate or something like that, and they're teleporting themselves. I kind of had to slap myself on the hand with a ruler because my first thought of what it would look like was this big flourish of streamers of energy and cool colors and aurora borealis out the asshole and spinning star fields and what have you and that's all just computer graphic bullshit that has taken imagination and turned it into rock candy on a stick for ten bucks a pop. I thought about some more and what it would probably look like is what we see when things are decaying.
The man would, sitting there zen buddha downward dog or whatever next to his meditating hamster, waste away atom by atom and cell by cell, decomposing himself and streaming himself invisibly, because the particles would be micro sized bits capable of being radiated photon like across the intervening space of time. Eventually his heart would stop. Consciousness would "leave". He would be pronounced dead, but suppose you just left him there. Eventually there would be nothing left. The argument could be made that all of the evidence of his presence is still there in the dirt he sat on next to his also legally dead hamster and the legally dead lady, but if its like sending a fax, maybe the copying process just takes that long and the original is left behind. And then on Venus because of the order in which things would have to be sent and the lossiness of the transmission of the radiated particles, maybe he doesn't reconstitute perfectly. Maybe he doesn't reconstitute at all accurately and ends up landing as a bunch of bliss filled bacterium that contain all the parts and codes to eventually rebuild himself when the surroundings and materials become available, but not before. Maybe that swatch of bacteria on Venus is some monk from like 200 B.C. who's just been hanging out waiting for the rest of us to get there.
It wouldn't be all that feasible once transportation is established. You'd be talking years to process yourself fully, assuming no one messes with your remains when you're not watching like some punk co-worker tearing the bottom half off of the page you were trying to fax while you're off grabbing a quick cup of coffee (I still haven't forgotten Brendan, it was not funny), and then a thousand year layover for conditions to present themselves that would allow you to finally rebuild yourself, but - yeah actually it seems like something no one should really want to do. I guess what I'm saying is I'll just wait for the rocket ship. I probably need to think about this concept some more. I can't tell yet if it's promising or retarded in terms of value. I might have to short circuit some things to make it appealing enough in terms of science fiction to warrant a suspension of the laws of science for the sake of a good story. But still, could you imagine how awesome that would be. Or gross. If you were on Venus and this fleshy fetus thing randomly started growing in the corner of your room. Would you let it go on for a year or two or would you draw the line at it starting to grow something that looked like a face and scrape it up and dumpster that shit. Oh, I just grossed myself out. I don't think I'm going to so much as look at mold the same way again. Gross.
Well the other thing that happened was in the sky by the big dipper and all of those ice blue glimmering lights there was a contrail and right where it crossed the North Star there was another running perfectly perpendicular to it. It was so beautiful. The kind of beauty that sucks the air out of your mouth like an earnest kiss and staring up at the stars all I could think was "home". It's ridiculous, but so often I feel like 'god damnit why the hell am I from here. I should be from there." 'there' being any other planet besides here. But anyway, the two contrails were catching the starlight and took on this silky translucence that was too delicate to touch and the coldness of night felt more like the coldness of thin atmosphere and I wished so hard that I could just jump and keep going up until I crossed those contrails and could see the moon and where the deep dark blue of sky is swallowed up by vacuum's black and see the star shine and my heart gun, full of weightless adrenaline and shredding and steeling nerve and quantum probability faults streaming wider and wider like ice nine through cement, but it didn't happen and I kept walking to work.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Pioneer Skies" This came on the shuffle in my head phones while I was walking and star gazing and I nearly wilted with longing to get off this rock. Don't get me wrong, I love it here more than anywhere else I've been so far. My heart just loves to wander and my blood runs for adventure. I probably won't be entirely happy or fulfilled until I'm living on the side of a mountain in the wilderness with a gun and a couple dogs and some solar panels and enough night sky and open ground to fill what's left of my lifetime.
A couple blocks later on down the road, still looking at it while taking in the rest of the sky and being generally happy that the moon went to bed much earlier in the night and I wouldn't have to deal with trying to sleep underneath it (I hate sleeping when the moon is out... it's just weird... I feel like I'm being watched whenever the moon can see me... like being really tired, but ambitious enough to sit in the front of the class... never ends well) I figured it must be a planet. So then I'm going down my mental list of attributes of planets and trying to figure out if the dot is tinged orange or red or brown or if the after image of headlights pouring in the opposite direction towards downtown are fucking with my eyes. Turns out the history channel's lessons about the planets combined with a couple thousand dollars worth of classroom credits taught me nothing retainable about the planets. I figured it's probably Venus. Anyway... where was I going with that, because I'm falling asleep with my head propped against the wall...
I had this idea about teleportation. If it could really work. I was trying to think of what it would look like for a man (or woman, or hamster) to teleport from here to the surface of Venus. This idea lead to another that I had about espestos. I don't think I spelled that right. Asbestos? That looks better. So this was an idea about asbestos. It stops things from burning. But that's not entirely true. It trades the burning. Instead of a speedy reorganization of carbon you get the very slow and meticulous reorganization of your carbon and fat chains in the form of a slow burning cancer. You're still burning, but just ridiculously slowly, which is a reasonable trade off I think. The guarantee of no sudden death by combustion for the guarantee of a slow death by, well you get the picture. So back to teleportation. Imagine teleportation as a similar thing.
A man or woman or hamster sitting zen lotus on a rock on the side of a mountain staring at Venus, well not staring because their eyes would have to be closed to meditate or something like that, and they're teleporting themselves. I kind of had to slap myself on the hand with a ruler because my first thought of what it would look like was this big flourish of streamers of energy and cool colors and aurora borealis out the asshole and spinning star fields and what have you and that's all just computer graphic bullshit that has taken imagination and turned it into rock candy on a stick for ten bucks a pop. I thought about some more and what it would probably look like is what we see when things are decaying.
The man would, sitting there zen buddha downward dog or whatever next to his meditating hamster, waste away atom by atom and cell by cell, decomposing himself and streaming himself invisibly, because the particles would be micro sized bits capable of being radiated photon like across the intervening space of time. Eventually his heart would stop. Consciousness would "leave". He would be pronounced dead, but suppose you just left him there. Eventually there would be nothing left. The argument could be made that all of the evidence of his presence is still there in the dirt he sat on next to his also legally dead hamster and the legally dead lady, but if its like sending a fax, maybe the copying process just takes that long and the original is left behind. And then on Venus because of the order in which things would have to be sent and the lossiness of the transmission of the radiated particles, maybe he doesn't reconstitute perfectly. Maybe he doesn't reconstitute at all accurately and ends up landing as a bunch of bliss filled bacterium that contain all the parts and codes to eventually rebuild himself when the surroundings and materials become available, but not before. Maybe that swatch of bacteria on Venus is some monk from like 200 B.C. who's just been hanging out waiting for the rest of us to get there.
It wouldn't be all that feasible once transportation is established. You'd be talking years to process yourself fully, assuming no one messes with your remains when you're not watching like some punk co-worker tearing the bottom half off of the page you were trying to fax while you're off grabbing a quick cup of coffee (I still haven't forgotten Brendan, it was not funny), and then a thousand year layover for conditions to present themselves that would allow you to finally rebuild yourself, but - yeah actually it seems like something no one should really want to do. I guess what I'm saying is I'll just wait for the rocket ship. I probably need to think about this concept some more. I can't tell yet if it's promising or retarded in terms of value. I might have to short circuit some things to make it appealing enough in terms of science fiction to warrant a suspension of the laws of science for the sake of a good story. But still, could you imagine how awesome that would be. Or gross. If you were on Venus and this fleshy fetus thing randomly started growing in the corner of your room. Would you let it go on for a year or two or would you draw the line at it starting to grow something that looked like a face and scrape it up and dumpster that shit. Oh, I just grossed myself out. I don't think I'm going to so much as look at mold the same way again. Gross.
Well the other thing that happened was in the sky by the big dipper and all of those ice blue glimmering lights there was a contrail and right where it crossed the North Star there was another running perfectly perpendicular to it. It was so beautiful. The kind of beauty that sucks the air out of your mouth like an earnest kiss and staring up at the stars all I could think was "home". It's ridiculous, but so often I feel like 'god damnit why the hell am I from here. I should be from there." 'there' being any other planet besides here. But anyway, the two contrails were catching the starlight and took on this silky translucence that was too delicate to touch and the coldness of night felt more like the coldness of thin atmosphere and I wished so hard that I could just jump and keep going up until I crossed those contrails and could see the moon and where the deep dark blue of sky is swallowed up by vacuum's black and see the star shine and my heart gun, full of weightless adrenaline and shredding and steeling nerve and quantum probability faults streaming wider and wider like ice nine through cement, but it didn't happen and I kept walking to work.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Pioneer Skies" This came on the shuffle in my head phones while I was walking and star gazing and I nearly wilted with longing to get off this rock. Don't get me wrong, I love it here more than anywhere else I've been so far. My heart just loves to wander and my blood runs for adventure. I probably won't be entirely happy or fulfilled until I'm living on the side of a mountain in the wilderness with a gun and a couple dogs and some solar panels and enough night sky and open ground to fill what's left of my lifetime.
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