Readings from a book I got at a garage sale: Week 2

Somewhere on a strange moon in a faster orbit, where plump, furry creatures sit in cozy corners sipping tea, or maybe in dog time, a week has already passed - man, time flies, doesn't it? - and so it's time once again to read together as if we were special children incapable of pursuing our own choices on our own.

With any luck we'll be able to pick right up where we left off, although since this exercise is ultimately only about me that really shouldn't be a dealbreaker, should it?

We will continue using the FreeOCR translation for its superior rendering of the more subtle nuances of the text.

Let's roll:

'~d‘l‘QpeJ' of wondered for a second if he should tell her about Orv. It would most likely delight her. But he decided she could read about it in tomorrow’s paper; he didn’t want to complicate this talk. “How long had you known Joe?” he asked. “Since last December. I met him at a Christmas party.” %¢@ 39 ygg ass to him. “Merry Christmas to you too. I should have stayed home under the tree.” Tim wasn’t sure where to go from here. The flavor of crystal was still with him as i-ie walked to his car across the street from Africa. Anyway, he was beginning to realize that wwgéf 9 wasn't totally on his side. It was hard to see that because Bewegung didn't have as detailed a platform as he had. Finally, he turned and said, "Listen eyoid of human ing,” {by then he was calling Or^b$) "you would not be doing that thing you do, writing, talking, whatever it is you 8Ms E Ugmggg 3do in the theatre, if it were not for Orv and the United States Navy stopping the Russians from taking over the world."

He was amused and a little surprised that forces, too, must serve the causal principle (which in Hgnwaga? 2: is simply sufficient reason by another name), and must, therefore, be “indestructible, variable, imponderable objects.” Mechanics offers a familiar special case—the consaateservation of vis viva. Beyond this what she had been like . . . and surprised also at the reaction she had set up in him. She left little question about herself, and yet she still excited his curiosity--perhaps, he thought, for this very reason. He didn’t think he’d go back, not because he wasn’t interested, but because this was something he automatically wouldn’t do.

He ?nished his drink. “Me?” He realized he was pleasantly in- trigued that she should be interested in him. “Not much. I run ?shing boats. You know that. And you know I was ]oe’s partner and I was ?eeced. That's about it.”

“And you should have known better,” she added. “You act like one of the kind who go around trusting people. That's a big mis- take.” “You made the same mistake,” he reminded her. “You trusted him."

Trust. Sometimes a hard thing to come by in our tormented age. Who can you really trust? That's all part of the mystery. And the flavor of crystal in one's mouth can never end well.

He went crazy: topped the bomb grailep?zznoinwashed I here is the nuclear destmI;c1;1d EgiegE:1I:§c]f1OO%€uP1'6SS1I1g that S 801I1g to do wait Y , E ou, all of you, don t want to dre going to die 1f you push that b , Ju have to hve for I had to th 1:lt}:°nd Th _ In 31' 1 If ue ?ake cocaln?, for instan hup ‘K couples Th‘? 5Wed1sh whorrgzeawio as he was getting into the car; he let the idea tantalize him for a moment before he set it aside, or rather, put it to one side as an issue not yet absolutely settled. He thought about his existence at opening out toward the future.

The future is the nd the past is the no-longer; and these two negatives— et and the no-l0nger—-penetrate his existence. They are .1 in its temporal manifestation. lly know time, says ]o?. He wondered how it had been between them. He couldn’t get a picture, only an irritation—and the idea of going back to see her faded further into the rear of his mind.

He was about to start his car when he saw Cagixpgiggbral come hurrying down the walk from the apartment house. cII31gYDl:;al wore a suit now, a charcoal ?annel. His hard heels cracked rapidly across the cement. Tim watched as he climbed into a black Ford convertible. It was a well-kept, three-year-old model with its radio antenna sporting a fox tail. There were white-wall tires on the rear wheels.

White-wall tires. A radio antenna sporting a fox tail. The inevitable crunchy fruits of Mammon.

A reader interrupts with an email: "Keith, what a wonderful insight we're getting into the minds of plump furry creatures inhabiting cozy tea corners on strange moons. But I have to ask, what is that cold cut they put on some Italian sandwiches which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat, principally the hard fat from the neck of the pig?"

Mortadella, Reader. Now let's try to stay on topic, shall we?

From here Orv's mystery becomes more dense:

as well as spatially. Man, WO/®_¢@_&@$§ says, 1s a creature ce: he is perpetually beyond emgs froln, because we know we are die. Without this passionate realization of our mortality, ld be simply a movement of the clock that we watch , calculating its advance—a movement devoid of human * Man is not, strictly speaking, in time as a body is im- ~ a river that rushes by. Rather, time is in him; his exist- mporal through and through, from the inside out. His T1 care and concem, his anxiety, guilt, and conscience- turated with time.

Everything that makes up human has to be understood in the light of man’s temporality; = -yet, the no-longer, the here-and-now. three tenses of time—future, past, and present—Hei- lls ekstasies, in the literal sense of €VE§ UUMUNHU m_$£ standing next t jacket and apron, a fact that puzzled him outside and beyond oneself. They waited. There was no further sound from inside. He glanced questioningly at “YEAH mamas“ Es iwsmsm as a series of “nows”—present mo- 7 owing each other like points upon a line.

This is what ock time—-time as measured by chronometers and cal- ut in order to construct time as a sequence of§£nows” ,0 be able, Tim says, to understand what ‘now” d to do this we have to undOw 69¢“? Q’erstand it as the moment ast and future—that is, we have to understand past and ‘ther in order to understand the present. Hence, every interpret time as a sequence of present moments, slid- p into the past, presupposes that Wil‘11i'1 0'1’ already stands T “self in one of the three ek-starses of time. His existence eld spread out over time as it is over space; his tem- a basic fact of this existence, one that underlies all his ical measurements of time. Clocks are useful to man se his existence is rooted in a prior kind of temporality. er’s theory of time is novel, in that, unlike earlier phi- .- ith their “nows,” he gives priority to the future tense. according to him, is primary because it is the region "ch man projects and in which he de?nes his own being. r is, but always is to be.”

To be, or not to be. His own being, but always is to be.

A less distracted reader brings, I think, the conceptual focus we've been looking for at this point. "Keith," he writes "it's just so wonderful of you to be leading us all on this journey." There's really nothing I can add to that.

Let's try to wrap up this week's reading with a look at what may prove a point of resolution, at least for now:

All at once he was trying to push dread theol0g1'0éI1PT°b back and close the door and turn because he was sure what was going to happen. And it did. The blow crashed at the back of his skull. In the blinding light he heard humanoid na rest’ Mother E;-m needi cry out and the sound cut off by the slam of the door. He was falling, reeling forward toward Orv on the hliInan. Tim knew then that joules results would never quit.

And now, twenty thousand dollars.

That's it for this week, adoring anonymous readers whose emails conveniently make my points for me.

Thoughts? Comments?

Again, I'm not going to publish any comments which gratuitously disparage either Orv or mortadella.

UPDATE: Hey, great news, gang!

Following the suggestion of our anonymous commenter Anonymous, I'm posting the first "View From The Hood Of Your Car" from our recent meetup at the Blue Rhino butane refill cage.

In the foreground is a glorious shot of Reader V.'s cheeseburger (although what's with all the mayo, V.?), and in the background just a little kerfluffle following M.'s not stubbing out his Marlboro properly. Do you see why people frown on smokers these days, M, lol? But be honest, wasn't the whole thing a whole lot of fun?

Now: who's got a good suggestion for our next meetup location?