Works Cited

A contingent of howling simopaths swing from chandeliers, balconies and trees, shitting and pissing on passers-by. (A simopath--the technical name of this disorder escapes me--is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.)

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

Works Cited

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate. The chief charm of New England was harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility --a cold that froze the blood, and a heat that boiled it --so that the pleasure of hating --one's self if no better victim offered --was not its rarest amusement; but the charm was a true and natural child of the soil, not a cultivated weed of the ancients.

The Education of Henry Adams

Works Cited

And there we have it – the moment of supreme agony on the raft, taken up, transformed, justified by art, turned into a sprung and weighted image, then varnished, framed, glazed, hung in a famous art gallery to illuminate our human condition, fixed, final, always there. Is that what we have? Well, no. People die; rafts rot; and works of art are not exempt. The emotional structure of Géricault’s work, the oscillation between hope and despair, is reinforced by the pigment: the raft contains areas of bright illumination violently contrasted with patches of the deepest darkness. To make the shadow as black as possible, Géricault used quantities of bitumen to give him the shimmeringly gloomy black he sought. Bitumen, however, is chemically unstable, and from the moment Louis XVIII examined the work a slow, irreparable decay of the paint surface was inevitable ‘No sooner do we come into this world,’ said Flaubert, ‘than bits of us start to fall off.’ The masterpiece, once completed, does not stop: it continues in motion, downhill. Our leading expert on Géricault confirms that the painting is ‘now in part a ruin’. And no doubt if they examine the frame they will discover woodworm living there.

Barnes, Julian. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Works Cited

Back in the stateroom with the Swedes and the Japanese, Franklin remembered a TV series about psychology he’d once been asked to present. It had folded directly after the pilot, a loss nobody much regretted. One item in that show reported an experiment for measuring the point at which self-interest takes over from altruism. Put like this, it sounded almost respectable; but Franklin had been revolted by the actual test. The researchers had taken a female monkey who had recently given birth and put her in a special cage. The mother was still feeding and grooming her infant in a way presumably not too dissimilar from the maternal behaviour of the experimenters’ wives. Then they turned a switch and began heating up the metal floor of the monkey’s cage. At first she jumped around in discomfort, then squealed a lot, then took to standing on alternate legs, all the while holding her infant in her arms. The floor was made hotter, the monkey’s pain more evident. At a certain point the heat from the floor became unbearable, and she was faced with a choice, as the experimenters put it, between altruism and self-interest. She either had to suffer extreme pain and perhaps death in order to protect her offspring, or else place her infant on the floor and stand on it to keep herself from harm. In every case, sooner or later self-interest had triumphed over altruism.

Barnes, Julian. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Bulgarity

I passed a graffito today that read "per fabor." I don't know if this is a misspelling on a par with "plaese," which is embarrassing, or "pleez," which is hip.

Anyway, on the same subject, at lunch, Francisco was talking to me about the Balkans. It took me five minutes to figure out he was referring to a Star Trek race and not to chunks of former-Yugoslavia.

Étude

I found this in an old email the other day--I wrote it for a friend a few years ago. It's not good, of course, but I'm still fond of it. And ***, too, for the record.


Étude, for ***
after T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Da questo passo vinto mi concedo
più che già mai da punto di suo tema
soprato fosse comico o tragedo:

ché, come sole in viso che più trema,
così lo rimembrar del dolce riso
la mente mia da me medesmo scema.*


I wonder at the star
You swallowed:
Blue as a bleached shell,
Potent as a strawberry,
Maybe lost in a hepatic well
Or fabled jugular gulley,
But probably placed centrally,
Embedded, I’ve supposed, in cardiac pith.
No myth,
This cellular sidereal coincidence,
For what else explains the wake of hope,
Obsequious, swirled,
The future tense
Frosting a world
That only knew how to be?

Such a legacy,
And you pass.

These days, the urge comes with guilt –
So despicably male and crass –
To mold you into a ball,
To clamp it close (and safe), light and all.
Then who’s to say
With one ear pressed
I shouldn’t hear within your breast
The religious thrum,
The rippling orbit, the secret hum –
Even triste et beau
The shred of a something
That wetly washed over the snow
When He made the first spring day?
(When two lovers shameless laughed and ran
And buttressed each other;
And time began.)

I wonder at the soft of your skin,
Waxy as molten glass,
Tender as a moth’s abdomen:
How a touch might blow you
Into a suspension of sand,
Or prod you into a sun,
Where the nebular dust pounds itself to become one.

(It is a wonder that a mere spherical form
Has afterthoughts so powerful
It keeps worlds warm.)

So I’ve thought at this – I’ve guessed at more:
I’ve watched the light seep up the floor.
(There is a lozenge-shaped hole in the door.)
Things appear in light, and light takes time.
The fact lingers behind.

Only in sleep can a mind meet a mind.

How fine the turf!  Translucent, semiotic.
How cordial comes the wind, abaft.
Chaotic.
How forever the landscapes in dreams…
Remember our running?
Starlight poured from your seams.


* Dante Alighieri, Paradiso.

Vanquished do I confess me by this passage 

More than by problem of his theme was ever 

O'ercome the comic or the tragic poet;


For as the sun the sight that trembles most, 

Even so the memory of that sweet smile 
My mind depriveth of its very self.

Moore

Attached to the second volume of Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" there's a traveler's almanac, which documents the world surrounding the Victorian setting of the book, and includes mention of every mystical realm ever dreamed up by an author. Of course it includes Utopia, Ruritania, Treasure Island, etc., but buried within are also these marvelously modern references, such as:

"Elsewhere in Washington we discover Chisholm Prison, thought to be escape-proof until the ingenious professor Van Dusen did just that during the first years of the twentieth century, while travelling further south, just past the logging town of Twin Peaks, with its many interesting Indian legends…"

And then even better, there's:

"…save to mention that a crewman who had sailed with Robert Owe-Mulch from the isle of Scoti Moria… eventually to settle near Los Angeles. The crewman, a fellow named Lebowsky, had been formerly a member of the Naiad race of Scoti Moria, but is it not known if he continued the traditional Naiad habits of smoking and nine-pins once established in America, or indeed if he produced any subsequent offspring of note."

Giving

DENISE: Oh, it's an "I Gave Blood" sticker. I thought it was one of those "I'm Special" buttons.

SCOTT: I don't need a button for people to know I'm special--that's what the tattoo's for.

Works Cited

‘Clevinger, what do you want from people?’ Dunbar had replied wearily above the noises of the officers’ club.

‘I’m not joking,’ Clevinger persisted.

‘They’re trying to kill me,’ Yossarian told him calmly.

‘No one’s trying to kill you,’ Clevinger cried.

‘Then why are they shooting at me?’ Yossarian asked.

‘They’re shooting at everyone,’ Clevinger answered. ‘They’re trying to kill everyone.’

‘And what difference does that make?’ Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

‘Who’s they?’ he wanted to know. ‘Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?’

‘Every one of them,’ Yossarian told him.

‘Every one of whom?’

‘Every one of whom do you think?’

‘I haven’t any idea.’

‘Then how do you know they aren’t?’

‘Because…’ Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.

Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn’t know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn’t funny at all. And if that wasn’t funny, there were lots of things that weren’t even funnier.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Richard's Rehearsal

My Dad's speech at Richard's wedding rehearsal.

(DAD: Did you hear me quote Robert Heinlein?
SCOTT: Yeah! That was awesome!)

And here's Richard's impromptu response.

Haircut

HAIRDRESSER: How do you want your sideburns?

SCOTT: Short.

HAIRDRESSER: Ok.

SCOTT: And the same length.

HAIRDRESSER: Are you sure?

SCOTT: Yeah, I don't care what the kids are doing nowadays.

Works Cited

Already you could see through the dust on the ponies’ hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes made from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. 

Oh my god, said the sergeant.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Works Cited

“I am twenty-eight but look younger,” he remarked to Mr. Meek. “Perhaps that is because I am twenty-seven. My mother is not English, she is Scottish. My father is not a Hindoo.”  

“I warned you against reading the newspapers.”  

“But he is not a Hindoo.” 

“It’s near enough for the Gazette.”  

“But Mr. Meek, what if I said you were a Welshman?”  

“I would not hold you inaccurate, as my mother had Welsh blood.”  

“Or an Irishman?”  

Mr. Meek smiled back at him, unoffended, perhaps even looking a little Irish.  

“Or a Frenchman?”  

“Now there, sir, you go too far. There you provoke me.”

Julian Barnes, "Arthur and George"

Biblical Origin of Modern Easter Traditions

Read the rest of the gospel at College Humor.

He'll Be Legendary

LAURA: So they did an ultrasound. My baby's head is in the ninety-ninth percentile and his legs are in the fourteenth. Giant head... tiny little legs. He's going to fall over constantly.

CARLOS: He's going to be a soccer player.

SCOTT: No! You should get him started in a sport that requires falling headfirst. Like, um... diving!

Works Cited

The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he'd been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that that was what he sought and it would have been.

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Works Cited

Thus, if you liked a girl, you gave her a nickname. Elmore Weldon, for instance: a pretty, sturdy thing with whom he flirted furiously for weeks. He called her Elmo, after St. Elmo's Fire, that miraculous light seen about the masts and yardarms of ships during a storm. He liked to picture himself as a mariner in peril on the seas of life, while she illuminated the dark skies for him. Indeed, he almost became engaged to Elmo; but then, after a while, he didn't.

He was also much concerned at this time about nocturnal emissions, which had featured little in the Morte d'Arthur.

Julian Barnes, Arthur and George

Works Cited

Now that I'm more or less safe from him, and him from me, I can recall him with fondness and even in some detail, which is more than I can say for several others. Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings, then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines. What will be left of them when I'm seventy? None of the baroque ecstasy, none of the grotesque compulsion. A word or two, hovering in the inner emptiness. Maybe a toe here, a nostril there, or a mustache, floating like a little curl of seaweed among the other flotsam.

Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

Shuulinjii-in: A Practical, Phonetic Means of English Spelling

I've created my own orthography for the English language. Many people have done this before, and it wasn't adopted, not even when Shaw gave it a go, nor will this be. Nonetheless, my orthography is eminently practical and sensible.

As anyone who's learned a foreign language knows, it takes a while to learn an alien way of representing sounds, no matter how simple the rules underlying it. Which means, this will sound more complicated than it is.

Attractive features of my spelling system include: (1) it uses less letters than the current English alphabet; (2) it uses no new letters; (3) it's entirely phonetic; (4) each letter, digraph, or trigraph represents a single sound; (5) the sounds of the letters are largely derived from traditional English spelling; (6) it has a sensible arrangement of voiced and unvoiced consonants.

Let us begin with the consonants. The consonants come in the following groups (1) the stops; (2) the fricatives; (3) combinations; and (4) the liquids. We start with the stops as they are generally regarded as the "strongest" consonants.

A stop is any consonant that completely stops the flow of air in the mouth. We'll present them based on where they are formed in the mouth (the so-called "point of articulation"), starting at the back of the mouth and moving forward.

Velar stops.

These are formed with the tongue touching the back of the mouth.

Without a pitch, the sound is of the "c" in "car." This is represented by "k." (A pitched sound is one when the vocal cords vibrate. Hold a finger over your throat. Make a "k" sound. Now make a "g" sound. Hear the difference?)

With a pitch, the sound is of the "g" in "gun." This is represented by "g."

Finally, with the nasal passages opened, the sound is of the "ng" in "hang." We represent this with "ng."

So this gives us the series: k, g, ng. All are articulated at the same point in the mouth, with the first non-voiced, the second voiced, and the last nasalized.

Now at a different part of the mouth.

Alveolar stops.

These are formed with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, behind the teeth, and occur in the same order.

Unvoiced: "t" as in "ton." Represented by "t."

Voiced: "d" as in "dam." Represented by "d."

Nasal: "n" as in "note." Represented by "n."

Finally.

Labial stops.

These are formed with the lips.

Unvoiced: "p" as in "pit." Represented by "p."

Voiced: "b" as in "beat." Represented by "b."

Nasal: "m" as in "moose." Represented by "m."

This completes the collection of stops. It forms this pleasantly ordered square.

k g ng
t d n
p b m

The first column is unvoiced, the second column is voiced, the third column is nasalized.

The first row is velar, the second is palatal, the third is labial.

The next group is the fricatives. Again, we group this by point of articulation, starting farthest back in the mouth.

Glottal fricative.

There is only one fricative at this location, the "h" as in "hot." It is formed in the throat, and is unvoiced, and is represented by "h."

In some languages this fricative also occurs voiced, Sanskrit, for example, but in English we only have the unvoiced version. Moving forward towards the lips, we arrive at the palatal.

Palato-alveolar fricatives.

Unvoiced: The "sh" sound in "shin." This is represented by "sh."

Voiced: The "sh" sound in "measure." This is represented by "zh." Note that as "z" is typically the voiced variant of "s," so "zh" is the voiced variant of "sh."

Alveolar fricatives.

Unvoiced: The "s" sound in "sin." This is represented by "s."

Voiced: The "z" sound in "zoo." This is represented by "z."

There's a slight difference in the position of the tongue here (it reaches back for "z") but the location is pretty close.

Dental fricatives.

Unvoiced: "th" as in "thin." This is represented by "th."

Voiced: "th" as in "the." This is represented by "dh." These two sounds, typically spelled the same in English, have to be distinguished. As "d" is the voiced variant of "t," it makes sense that "dh" would be the voiced variant of "th."

Finally, as we move forward, we reach the lips.

Labial fricatives.

Unvoiced: "f" as in "fun." This is represented by "fun."

Voiced: "v" as in "vine." This is represented by "vine."

This completes the fricatives.

h
sh zh
s z
th dh
f v

Combinations.

There are two sounds in English that are combinations of a fricative and a stop. They occur in a voiced unvoiced pair and are articulated at the alveolar ridge. One option would be to simply write these consonants as a combination of the fricative and the stop that make them up, but since (1) it's closer to current English usage and (2) it's easier to type one letter than two or three, I've represented them as single letters.

Unvoiced: "ch" as in "cheer." This is represented by "c." This is a combination of the stop "t" and the fricative "sh," and thus could be written "tsh." But I've chosen "c."

Voiced: "j" as in "judge." This is represented by "j." This is a combination of the stop "d" and the fricative "zh" and thus could be written as "dzh." But I've chosen "j."

This gives us the following combinations.

c j

Liquids.

The final group of consonants is the liquids, which are tougher to order, so here they are in no particular order.

"r" as in "run." This is represented by "r." "r" is a weird consonant, since after a vowel it consists of bending your tongue backward, but in front of a vowel, it's more done with the lips. This "r" represents the front of vowel version.

"l" as in "laugh." This is represented by "l."

That completes the consonants.

Vowels.

We could arrange the vowels by where they are in the mouth, but it's generally easier just to go by the typical English arrangement, which roughly goes from the top to the bottom of the mouth anyway. The vowels are as follows.

"a" represents the vowel in "fun."
"aa" represents the vowel in "watt."
"e" represents the vowel in "fed."
"ee" represents the vowel in "they."
"i" represents the vowel in "bid."
"ii" represents the vowel in "meat."
"o" represents the vowel in "caw."
"oo" represents the vowel in "foe."
"u" represents the vowel in "wood."
"uu" represents the vowel in "food."

Generally speaking the double vowels in the list are farther forward than the single vowels. In the cases of "ee" and "oo" they actually represent diphthongs, but few English speakers have any sense of diphthongs vs. monopthongs, so the distinction isn't terribly important.

Unfortunately this doesn't exhaust the vowels.

The vowel sound in "cat" was represent in Old English by the letter "æ." This isn't easy to reach on a modern keyboard though, so it's easier to just spell it as "ae."

The vowel sound in "fight" is represented by "ai." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "a" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "five" is represented by "aai." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "aa" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "boy" is represented by "oi." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "o" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "south" is represented by "au." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "aa" and "u." I've simply omitted an "a" for simplicity's sake.

To my ear, a vowel plus an "r" produces a sound so different from the vowel and consonant that makes the sound up, that we might as well just count the combination as a new vowel, in much the same way in French we count nasalized vowels as a new vowel.

So, the r-vowels, or "rhotic vowels" are the following.

The vowel sound in "car." This is represented by "ar."

The vowel sound in "wear." This is represented by "er."

The vowel sound in "fear." This is represented by "ir."

The vowel sound in "core." This is represented by "or."

The vowel sound in "fur." This is represented by "ur."

The vowel sound in "bower." This is represent by "aur."

The vowel sound in "foyer." This is represent by "oir."

The vowel sound in "fire." This is represent by "air."

So that completes the consonants and the vowels. This leaves the so-called semi-vowels, which are vowels used like consonants. That means that the vowel is said very quickly while leading to another vowel. Again we'll start from the back of the mouth forward.

The "y" sound in "yarn" is represented by "y."

The "w" sound in "warm" is represented by "w."

That's it, the complete palette of English sounds.

Leftover letters.

"x" wasn't used, but it could be used as a substitute for "ks" for the sake of speed, or alternatively represent foreign glottal sounds, like German "ich" or "nach" or Scottish "loch." "q," since it always occurs as "qu," which we can spell just as easily "kw," is completely superfluous and not to be used.

Hiatus.

It may be necessary at times to distinguish between two separate vowel sounds and diphthongs. In this case, as has historically been done, an umlaut can be used. This is somewhat difficult in modern keyboards, so feel free to substitute an n-dash.

Allophones.

Certain sounds are different in English but the difference is generally ignored by native speakers. The "t" sound in "ton," for example, is aspirated, meaning it is followed by a puff of air. The "t" sound in "stun," on the other hand, has no aspiration. Yet we spell them the same, and unless made of aware the distinction, native speakers are generally unable to distinguish the two. This is to be contrasted with, for example, Sanskrit, where the distinction between the two sounds is perceived by speakers.

As native speakers ignore the distinction, it hardly seems necessary to represent it. However, for foreigners learning to properly pronounce the language, the distinction might be beneficially marked, in which case, an apostrophe could easily be used, as in Ancient Greek.

"Pun" would thus be spelled "p'an." "Spun" would be spelled "span."

There's also the matter of the dark and bright "l" sounds, but that's far too abstruse to be represented as this level.

Stress.

Another distinction that isn't typically marked in English is the stress of a word. Again, this needn't be marked, but for purposes of teaching foreigners, an accent mark on the vowel can easily be used.

Alphabet.

For the purposes of ordering the alphabet, using digraphs as actual letters (e.g., treating "sh" as a letter by itself rather than simply a combination of "s" and "h") simply makes things more difficult. So to order the alphabet, we will simply use single monographs, and organize them by phonological position and quality.

Kk Gg Tt Dd Nn Pp Bb Mm Hh Ss Zz Ff Vv Cc Jj Ll Rr Yy Ww Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu

The order being:


Consonants
Stops (Velar[Unvoiced, Voiced], Alveolar[Unvoiced, Voiced, Nasal], Labial[Unvoiced, Voiced, Nasal]),
Combinations,
Fricatives(Glottal, Alveolar[Unvoiced, Voiced], Labial[Unvoiced, Voiced]),
Liquids,
Semivowels,
Vowels

Summary.

k, as the "c" in "cat."
g, as the "g" in "gun."
ng, as the "ng" in "ring."
t, as the "t" in "ton."
d, as the "d" in "dirt."
n, as the "n" in "not."
p, as the "p" in "pear."
b, as the "b" in "bear."
m, as the "m" in "mile."

c, as the "ch" in "chop."

j, as the "j" in "joke."

h, as the "h" in "hoe."
sh, as the "sh" in "shoe."
zh, as the "sh" in "measure."
s, as the "s" in "soap."
z, as the "z" in "zoo."
th, as the "th" in "thin."
dh, as the "th" in "that."
f, as the "f" in "fun."
v, as the "v" in "vote."
l, as the "l" in "loan."
r, as the "r" in "row."
y, as the "y" in "yell."
w, as the "w" in "woke."
a, as the vowel in "fun."
aa, as the vowel in "watt."
e, as the vowel in "pet."
ee, as the vowel in "they."
i, as the vowel in "pin."
ii, as the vowel in "sheet."
o, as the vowel in "raw."
oo, as the vowel in "show."
u, as the vowel in "book."
uu, as the vowel in "lewd."
ae, as the vowel in "cat."
ai, as the vowel in "fight."
aai, as the vowel in "five."
au, as the vowel in "cow."
oi, as the vowel in "toy."
ar, as the vowel in "car."
er, as the vowel in "care."
ir, as the vowel in "cheer."
or, as the vowel in "sore."
ur, as the vowel in "fur."
aur, as the vowel in "tower."
air, as the vowel in "fire."
oir, as the vowel in "sawyer."

A Robert Frost Poem.

Sam see dha wurld wil end in fair.
Sam see in ais.
Fram wat aaiv teestid av dazair
Aai hoold widh dhooz huu feevur fair.
Bat if it haed tuu perish twais,
Aai thingk aai noo iinaf av heet
Tuu noo dhaet for distrakshan ais
Iz olsoo greet
End wud safais.

Raaburt Frost

Note how easy it is to tell which lines rhyme.

Skaat Shuul

Works Cited

One clue that there’s something not quite real about sequential time the way you experience it is the various paradoxes of time supposedly passing and of a so called present that is always unrolling into the future and creating more and more past behind it. As if the present were this car--nice car by the way--and the past is the road we have just gone over, and the future is the headlit road up ahead we have not yet gotten to, and time is the car’s forward movement, and the precise present is the car’s front bumper as it cuts through the fog of the future, so that it is now and then a tiny bit later a whole different now, etc. Except if time is really passing, how fast does it go? At what rate does the present change? See? Meaning if we use time to measure motion or rate--which we do, it is the only way we can--95 miles per hour, 70 heartbeats a second, etc.--how are you supposed to measure the rate at which time moves? One second per second? It makes no sense. You can’t even talk about time flowing or moving, without hitting up against paradox right away. So think for a second: What if there is really no movement at all? What if this is all unfolding in the one flash you call the present, this first, infinitely tiny split-second of impact when the speeding car’s front bumper’s just starting to touch the abutment, just before the bumper crumples and displaces the front end and you go violently forward and the steering column comes back at your chest as if shot out of something enormous? Meaning that what if in fact this now is infinite and never really passes in the way your mind is supposedly wired to understand pass, so that not only your life but every single humanly conceivable way to describe and account for that life has time to flash like neon shaped into those connected cursive letters that businesses’ signs and windows love so much to use through your mind all at once in the literally immeasurable instant between impact and death, just as you start forward to meet the wheel at a rate no belt ever made could restrain--THE END.

David Foster Wallace, Good Old Neon