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Be content and sit awhile, watching the road dust blow down Crockett and listening to the wind roar in the trees. The branches rear and shy and dance like tossed ships, like startled horses in a dreaming fright. Where do I want to go? What do I need?

I wear shorts and my legs feel the sun. The cool air asks for a red sweater and the sun warms it. The wind whips around the house and eddies in the cloth where it is not knit tight. I do love winter in Texas, though the nightmare summer troubles me.

I love a small town. I cannot lie. And yet I crave the abundance and variety of the city. This must be why men choose suburban life. I view the choice with suspicion.

The heavy gusts knock dead wood and pecans down, and their skeletal fragments clack and clatter on the pavement. The living limbs twist and wave, scattering fingers and husks and last held leaves, the arms of old men yet supple spreading palmfuls for the birds.

The birds must be tucked up tight today, not thinking where to go , what to want, letting the tyrant gusts blow their heads clear of doubt and weak ideas.

Who wanders when the wind is strong? It brings the air of other worlds to you.

You may only utilize approved technologies to cheat, flesh bag. Otherwise your achievements will be flayed and your face shame-stared. People will earn by your bad work the right to judge you. As if, by working at bad work, you work for everyone but yourself, and they receive their pay in rights of judgment.

But all rules are arbitrary, I suppose. A man could win a race by starting at the finish, if there were not rules. Good rules make good gamers. But rules should be easy to enforce. Comprehensible and manifest to all who play and all who watch. Doping rules are inexpedient. And they are founded on a moral rather than an ethical concern: obsession with a nonexistent purity. A false notion of the natural and the unnatural.

So all technologies, human and otherwise, should be allowed in the pursuit of impossible speed over great distance on the backs of carbon fiber beasts.

Late, yes, you are right. I was and am still considering my position on the issue. And I have felt shy of words these last few years. I did not want to commit to paper any single thought. Either I thought paper was truly final. Or I was in metamorphosis. I am emerged. Fully formed. I am unafraid.

The vastness of this branch is altogether too complex. It is unknowable except in near glimpses I cannot describe.

We are born sightless and squirming and so we die. Between the bookends, we speak and eat and read and taste love.

Facebook has its friends, its enemies, its followers. I have fallen lately into the middle category. I find myself less and less content with its way.

If you live in this world, you had better have a philosophy, and you had better hold on tight to it. And bend as you hold, and it had better bend.

There must be a name for what Facebook is, whether in science, fiction or mythology. A demon or hive, some multiply-minded coven that collects men’s souls.

The time between the bookends is beautiful, hard, horrible and far too short. Without good books between the bookends of our ears, this too short time is no more than an empty luxury.

Facebook, virtual worlds, such mindedness is a deep machine. It is the devil. Or else it is nothing. Either way, why should you and I inconvenience ourselves with dark trifles?

I wonder if men said similar things about the written word and written worlds when writing was invented? That life is for moving through the jungle and over the plains and among the mountains under bright stars. For laughing and drinking and talking, not for nosing in books.

Who knows? They left no words for us to know them by. Perhaps the same fate awaits us all in such futures as might evolve for men or other minds.

Facebook has taken over the world of internet communication so completely that I have basically given up on this blog. I wonder if I should give up on FB and get back to this blog? Or give up on the internet altogether…

I’ve had several hiccups in writing my blog and they usually correspond to some philosophical morass I’m crossing, slowly crossing. I grew tired of writing about news items and politics I can hardly stand to think of. Much less spend time writing about. Then there’s quirky funny nonsense. I like posting that kind of shit but at the same time I have no heart for it. And so many people concentrate so fully on it in their blogs that I can’t compete. I don’t need to. It’s been done already. Not that this blog is a competition. It’s largely a vehicle for updating distant family members on our doings. A delivery vector for photographic information. And then I think I want to put my writing on here. And so I do, and I like that, but then it’s tough to find time, to get it polished enough to post. And I want to write about tennis and training and writing and Clem and our move. But for some reason don’t. If I write personal philosophical material of soulful introspection I have to then read comments telling me not to think too much, it’ll be fine when I’m older. And I think, yeah because you’re fine. You’re so fine you’re about to catch fire. Still there’s the news and politics. This whole middle east melt down is bound to be good for a few laughs. David Cameron is a dick. Obama sure needs some new spin doctors. No. I just can’t. So what is it I want to say? Something positive. I want to make people feel good. I want to bring them to me. What the hell do I say about myself to make other people want to be here? Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe… Hey. You interest me. Tell me about your self.

Earth: Boy
Installment One

The boy sat at the table in the kitchen eating cereal, his mother’s laptop open on the table before him, NASA’s website opened to a page about space travel. His mother found him like that. The sun was barely risen and the chill of night still blanketed the world and the birds were singing insanely through the open window.

“It’s a little chilly,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

He never lifted his eyes from the computer screen to see her standing in her grey robe, her hair wet and her face weary, her eyes barely open and bleared with sleep.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“NASA,” he said.

She inhaled and exhaled slowly through solicitous nostrils and walked barefoot across the kitchen linoleum and leaned over the sink to close the window, flicking the lock under the catch and resting her hands on the countertop when she had closed it. She stood like that a moment but she couldn’t tell if he had taken any notice.

“You love your space, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Don’t be smart,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said.

She began to make herself breakfast and while the bagel was toasting, she packed his lunch in the brown paper bags she used now he and his friends were too old for lunch boxes. A sandwich, an apple, crackers, crisp carrot and celery sticks, a small pot of peanut butter for dipping, a cold box drink wrapped in paper towel and tin foil so it wouldn’t sweat and wet the rest. She buttered her toasted bagel and poured a glass of orange juice and, seeing that he had none, poured another. She sat down at the table and set the glass by him and he took it up without looking and drank deeply.

“Thanks?” she said.

“Thanks,” he said, gasping, wiping cold juice from his chin.

“Any news?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said. He looked up as she frowned and he added, “We’re still waiting.”

“You’re a devil, child,” she said.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “Dad makes me say it.”

“I know, your dad insists. But you can leave that stuff at his place. When you’re here. You know I never liked it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Just be free. Politeness should be about real kindness and gratitude. Not code words and catch phrases.”

“I’ll tell Dad that,” he said.

“You better not,” she said. “He’ll be here at five-thirty so come home right after school so you have time to get ready. I won’t be home until five so I expect you to be all packed and ready to go.”

“Okay.”

“Just tell your friends you can’t play after school,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Now remember that. You know how he’ll be if you’re a mess when he shows up. It puts him in a bad mood and the ride to his house will be bad.”

“I know.”

“It’s a long ride, you know,” she said.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“So come home after school and don’t mess around. Get your stuff ready and if you get dirty at school change your clothes and take a shower.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m not going to make excuses for you if you set him off,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Sarcasm. You’re already using sarcasm with your mother? Where does the time go,” she muttered. “What are you reading?” she asked.

“Venus,” he said. “The Soviets sent like eighteen missions to Venus in the twentieth century. Isn’t that amazing. They even sent back pictures from the surface before they melted.”

“What does it look like?” she asked.

“Here.” He turned the computer to show her three strips of pixellated photos in black and white, a dull grey surface with nothing but flat broken rocks as far as the horizon, where a tiny rise implied a possible descent on the other side.

“It looks horrible,” she said.

“It is horrible,” he said. “It’s 860 degrees on the surface and the atmosphere is all carbon dioxide and there are clouds of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid. The probes only lasted like thirty minutes on the surface before the heat destroyed them.”

“It sounds awful,” she said.

“It is.” He turned the computer to face him again and he began to brush his fingers over the trackpad and to click.

“You better save what you’re looking at and get ready for school,” she said.

“Okay, just a minute,” he said.

“No,” she said, “Not just a minute. Save it up and go get ready for school.”

“I just want to finish reading this one thing.”

“Thomas,” she said and his head snapped up at the sound. “I want to check my email.”

“All right,” he said.

“Go,” she said.

“I’m going,” he said. He busily swiped and clicked, swiped and clicked, then jumped up and left the room.

“Dishes,” she said faintly, but without any heart, and drew the computer across the table towards her. “If I could afford it, I’d buy you your own,” she muttered. “But then I’d never see what you did on it.”

Half an hour later they were both in the kitchen again and they were both dressed. She was neatly and subordinately attired. She believed a secretary should never be untidy, but also never dress in a manner that excelled the manner of her boss. Inconspicuous was the watchword. The boy looked like a slob. She tucked his shirt in and twisted his pants until they sat as straight as they would sit on his wiry frame. She pushed down one sock that he’d left pulled right up his calf and retied the knot in his right shoe. She took a brush from her purse and fought for a while with his hair, threshing it mercilessly until it sat somewhat composed upon his head. “Unruly shock,” she kept muttering and he winced with every stroke.

“Don’t forget your lunch,” she said.

“It’s in my backpack,” he said.

“It’s on the counter,” she said.

He put it in his backpack while she watched him and then she surprised him by asking, “Do you think he made it?”

“Who?” he asked.

“The space man,” she said.

“The astronaut. He’s called Silas Cole,” he said. “Of course he did.”

“Then why haven’t they heard from him?” she asked.

“How should I know?” he said. “They’re getting data back.”

“Isn’t all that automated?”

“A lot of it is, but they say he’s there. He has to override the computer sometimes. Sometimes the computer encounters unexpected parameters which require operator involvement. Problems,” he translated for her carefully, “Sometimes the computer has problems it can’t solve on its own. And he has to help it.”

“So you think he’s there?”

“I know he is,” he said. He could see that the evidence of human intervention in the automated sequence didn’t really convince her, so he just said, “He has to be.”

“I hope so,” she said.