isbn# 1-891470-37-X
select exerpts from down in the dirt magazine
ccandd96@scars.tv
Janet Kuypers, publisher
first edition
Freedom & Strength Press
This book/CD is copyright © 2001 Scars Publications and Design
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table of contents material sorted by author name (all art work that does not have an author name is generated by the Scars staff) torture & triumph materials
J. Quinn Brisben, 008
Matthew Lee Bain, 097
Sydney Anderson, 237 the key to believing
exerpts from a novel, 325 philosophy monthly assorted essays, 376
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The Old Bold Pilot J. Quinn Brisben I. Cletus Gowrie got a collect telephone call in the middle of
the night in early May, 1975. It was from his older brother Orvis
Dear Cletus,
It was the longest letter that Cletus had ever received or would ever receive from Orvis, and the only letter from him which ever contained advice. Cletus took the advice. He made good advance contracts, kept accurate books, and taught his father how to perform these tasks adequately. He kept his father on the job sufficiently so that the combines and trucks stayed in good repair. The wheat crop was a record breaker, and the harvesting profits were high. The crew called it a year in Manitoba in September. Cletus had declined to join his father and the rest of the men in a big Winnipeg blowout. He made sure that the bulk of the money had been safely sent to his mother, took his own share, and started hitch-hiking south.
Locky wanted to make his father a millionaire in September, 1985, but Cletus refused. III.
In April, 1990, Cletus flew to Las Vegas for a convention of insurance brokers. As a member of the board of directors of the association, he had voted against holding the convention there but had been in a minority. He felt that Las Vegas did not represent the kind of image which the insurance business ought to project.
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The Blue Stem Suite (poems composed by J. Quinn Brisben for the walls of the Blue Stem Restaurant, 1935 W Irving Park RD, Chicago IL 60613, to accompany needlepoint canvases painted by Andrea Brisben of Changing Woman Designs, 784 E 100th PL, Chicago IL 60628 and stitched by Linda Hall, co-proprietor of the Blue Stem Restaurant, copyright 2001 by J. Quinn Brisben) |
Big Blue Stem Rules J. Quinn Brisben
Sometimes tall as a person, sometimes
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II. , Big Blue Stem At Night J. Quinn Brisben
Wind raises dust in dry months
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Big Blue Stem Near Water J. Quinn Brisben
Water seeks its level and the land
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Big Blue Stem As Symbol J. Quinn Brisben
It is always an occasion for joy
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V., Big Blue Stem Comes Back J. Quinn Brisben
Short grass for cattle succeeds;
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Ritual Ken Sieben
Had Catherine Keegan been a boy, she knew she would have studied for the priesthood with missionary zeal. Yet even in the lower grades, when every Catholic schoolgirl publicly professes the intention to become a nun, she knew she had no vocation. She could not envision herself teaching nasty little children and living in a convent of fussy women bound to obey a forbidding, overbearing mother superior. She preferred the breezier activities of the rectory, the strong, silent, safe priests whisking about their solemn duties in flowing black cassocks. * * *
Joan Martins husband moved out three days before Catherine moved in, but Joan insisted there was no connection, that the marriage had been dying for several years. Even Walter didnt try to blame it on you, Kate, so dont blame yourself. Joan hadnt told her until they had finished loading Catherines meager possessions into Joans cavernous 1980-something van. Ill just have to get used to it. * * *
After Catherine moved in, Joan was too unhappy to be pleasant company. So Carolyn could keep her own room, Catherine slept with Joan as she did when they were girls, though the king-sized bed allowed them enough space that they would not actually touch. She thought that Joan would confide in her, that it would be like when she was a high school senior, wise in her knowledge of what boys wanted, and Joan was in the seventh grade, eager to learn about life, but Joan kept everything bottled up. She never volunteered a word about Walter, except to report the slow progress of the divorce proceedings or, later, the arrival of a much-needed alimony check. Joans feelings about the breakup of her marriage remained as unknown to Catherine as the origin of the universe. * * *
Catherines first act after moving into her sisters home was to remind Joan that, under church law, she had never been married. On those grounds, she could be granted an annulment and save herself the expense and humiliation of a divorce. Joan had already rejected that possibility under the advice of her lawyer. Anyway, she added, I want to end the marriage, not pretend it never happened. * * *
Catherine has been with Joan for three and a half years now, but she would like to get her own place soon. Carolyn , though a week shy of eighteen and not married, has a two-month-old daughter whose disgusting smells and frequent crying have made Catherine more nervous than she ever was walking the streets of Amboy. Carolyn was always too pretty, too headstrong, too daring and wild, too much like her father. Now her life is ruined, Catherine has reminded herself every day since Carolyns shocking pronouncement, without warning but with too much sarcasm, last June. Catherine had been trying to let the girl know how pleased she was for what she was misinterpreting as a new maturity. Im very glad to see youre not wearing one of those awful bikinis on the beach this summer, she said.
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A Taste of the Sweet Life Bernadette Miller
She was inside a cake. Three-layered and enormous, it had been ordered for a company party. The outside was sponge with vanilla icing, adorned with pink rosettes; on top, candied letters read: CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW VICE PRESIDENT. Crouched inside the birch container, Sally waited to leap out like a fairy godmother. Air holes between the letters let in oxygen, but it was hot; her sexy mini-skirt and sequined bodice might be ruined from perspiration. After hours of primping in her apartment, she waited impatiently, eager to note the mens appreciative gazes when she appeared.
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Up in the Mountains Bernadette Miller
It was a lovely Adirondacks resort. The large dining rooms French doors overlooked Schwanga Lake with its piers and sailboats cradled amidst mountains. Chandeliers lit damask walls and candled tables, the room bathed with soft classical music. On the columned porch, guests could socialize on chaise lounges or rest nearby in their luxurious cottages. Farther down the paved road was the staff dormitory. Because they had obtained their jobs through an employment agency, the college students had never met the owner, Mr. Hargrave.
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License Plates Marc Igler
When I was a small boy, bedtime-story duty fell to my father. Back then, he was working night rewrite for the San Francisco Call-Bulletin and had plenty of time for me before his shift began at 9 p.m. But we never seemed to have enough books. The library would only let you check out five at a time, and wed go through those pretty fast. So, when we didnt have any books left, my father would simply tell stories.
That night, as we all pressed in close around my father in the living room, I heard the story of the license plates for the first time. They came off an old Buick roadster found in a ditch down in Daly City on a misty night in 1929. The first cop on the scene immediately radioed in that hed found the getaway car used in a daring bank robbery earlier in the day in San Franciscos Chinatown. The robbers, John Dead Eye McCabe and his wife Pearl, had calmly walked into the bank just before closing and made off with more than $80,000. On the way out of the bank, Pearl had stopped to help a little boy whod fallen off his bike. The delay was just enough to let the cops spot the two hopping into the Buick and give chase.
For the next several months, I had my father tell me the story again and again. I wanted details. What color were Dead Eyes eyes? Did Pearl have curly or straight hair? What did they put the money in when they were leaving the bank? Was the boy who fell off his bike OK? Did Pearl give him a kiss on the cheek? Why did they leave the car in the ditch? My father had answers for all these questions. I knew he was winging it, but I didnt care. Often, hed ask me what I thought. Did Dead Eye and Pearl have dinner before or after they robbed the bank? Before, I told him, because they had to be strong and they probably had steak or pork chops because they needed the vitamins. Yes, my father would say, and peas, too, and probably some potatoes. Yeah! And strawberry ice cream, Id say.
My father died 12 years later. I was 30 at the time, working as a high school English teacher, struggling to get kids to read stories - Poe, Steinbeck, McPhee - as more than just words on a page, more than just an assignment to be completed.
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bob, the intake guy Penelope Talbert
bob is surprised that i'm anxious
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Plea Ronda Germain Droogenbroodt
Do not come as light
neither come
but rather come
the rose
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Neon Jezebel Steven Attewell Your electric kiss so carrion-sweet Stuns, deadens, anesthetizes Crashes self-reflection; letting the id run riot
Consume, you croon, gorge and fill your belly
ye pixellated beauty, lush yet hollow
Aphrodite, why can't you kick the habit Crack-whore of industry; mind-raper, will-castrator
What can poor mortals do against you?
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SCENES FROM A MURDER TRIAL (A PLAY WITHOUT ACTORS) Lou Faber I
He walks in calmly II
There is a large map III
She reads from the sheaf IV
The judges stare down V
Juror number 12 VI
They whisper like pack rats VII
How do you sit so still, VIII
The one eye stares IX
I sit and shiver X
He smiles only XI
He holds the gun XII
"There are 5 to 7 hundred XIII
The U.S. Flag XIV
Administrative minutiae XV
Words for blood XVI
Day three XVII
"I thought I heard XVIII
Calm, another bullshit meeting
They are shown XX
Direct XXI
The court officer XXII
It is odd discussing XXIII
Fourteen questions XXIV
A life in four movements XXV
Commonwealth's Exhibit 29
Stare, you bastard XXVII
Day 4 XXVIII
The trail of blood XXIX
The ME is a XXX
Say something, do anything XXXI
Day five XXXII
Upon examination, I XXXIII
He spoke to me calmly, XXXIV
Day 15, XXXV
The map of campus XXXVI
Criminal responsibility evaluation XXXVII
He went to a Catholic school XXXVIII
A maladaptive narcissist XXXIX
In the world of psychobabble XL
There is a fine art XLI
The voice of God spoke
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left handed poet Rocco de Giacomo
when I was 12 years old
We'd been at it all afternoon
at the last second "be careful" my cousin says
stuffing more wood into the I am screaming
hand
reaching
, , window
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A BIOGRAPHY, Ray Fenech
His uncle's summer residence was a lighthouse.
For years his father was a Franciscan novice. Sex was a sin.
In South Africa he lived in a hut with the poor.
The house where he lived, where he would want to die
When he was assigned to Bosnia, he became immune to fear.
He was thirteen and naked. He did not know he was being watched.
His first "love" was homosexual. He was raped by pleasure.
Cecilia had the loveliest eyes he had ever seen.
As a child his favourite companion was a piece of cloth.
Personality disorder struck. He fought against himself.
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EVERYBODY IS CONQUERED BY SOMETHING Robert W. Howington
I tilt the bottle of cheap spirits and the alcohol rolls down my throat. The 40 hour job has had its way with me and I want to become numb. I want to escape, ease the pressure, evade the tension, pretend that everythings a-okay. If just for a few hours.
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Cupboard Door Karen Jean Matsko Hood
Her face was a pigmented sunset
One swollen eye surrounded by
Her familiar fresco looks more artistic
Yet we knew how intelligent
The hues of the sundown will
The courage to face away
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sewing Jesus I.B. Iskov
i am sewing Jesus with d.m.c.
in Jerusalem Jesus graces
no one will kneel down and pray
if i was sewing Jesus in the church
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haircut in North East Valley James Norcliffe
at Hiz and Herz
Sarah flickered at my hair
she told me I had
the old lady said
Julie said
the old lady said
Julie said
Sarah said
I said
I tried to picture Sarah before the war
Sarah kept a fine mist
Julie had shampooed
the old lady said
Julie said
Sarah said almost done
Julie said the old lady stared at the mirror
she said
Sarah said
there you are said Julie
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Angel Face Charlie Newman
I didn't see the murder
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ON THE DISCOVERY OF JOSEF MENGELE ad2000 for Simon Weisenthal Wayne Ray
Good God!
They must all be well
because no one cares originally published in the Well Magazine (Halifax) 1989.
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Approaching the Hunt (beginning with a line from Ntozake Shange) Tim Martin i.
we need a god who bleeds ii.
it's one year later & i still iii.
whose wounds are not the end of anything iv.
Dear Theo, v.
Let songs in the bloodlines be sung vi.
birth-- viii.
a companion ix.
wrestle breaths out
BLUE EYES R. N. TABER
He sat at a table by the window
I lost myself in those eyes,
We found each other and he took
Suddenly, he got up and went out in the rain.
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streetlight soliloquy Justin Taylor
the female form is incredible
smoke billows out of the building
sign says no left turn
three vacant park benches
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weather report Justin Taylor
its humid, but not so hot
shades of somber
not because I fear lightning
if I am outdoors
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Get the Lead Out Viki Ackland
wondrous we
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Bloody Bongwater Boot Todd Carter
To you I am just a toy
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The Spell Paul Cordeiro
Raised on the ragged beauty
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Notes on a Scenario chris mckinnon
A woman drives
First she
when
he moves
--she plops a Heinz bottle
when he pops
--she chugalugs
--sneers at
--then disconnects
--they ring him
--she sprinkles sand
--she moves
--sez her
--dates men
--has a
vacuums
--then sobs
--charbroils chicken
--dusts
--moves blackknight
--rehangs
where he back
--departs
--pulls up
--leaves one door
--deflates
--double creases
---crows at top heat
--matches black or navy or brown
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CHICKS & TURKEYS & GEESE IN SEARCH OF PEACE
To All Turkeys, to Everyone
if you want because
i'm
we're all turkeys
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HIS LEFTOVERS Molly B. Murphy
I know it really must hurt
I'm nothing, in a way,
There I sit, on his plate
You don't know quite what,
I hope I taste good, but I fear
I'm glad you didn't leave me
I didn't want to be wasted
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Approaching the Hunt (beginning with a line from Ntozake Shange) Tim Martin i.
we need a god who bleeds ii.
it's one year later & i still iii.
whose wounds are not the end of anything iv.
Dear Theo, v.
Let songs in the bloodlines be sung vi.
birth-- viii.
a companion ix.
wrestle breaths out
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APOLOGIES TO THE MORBIDLY OBESE, THOSE TRAGIC ROMANTICS Matthew Lee Bain
Upon the couch, deep in
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NEW CENTURY MISOGYNY Matthew Lee Bain
Your tits aren't big enough,
I've got skin like bronze
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NEWLY BURIED COUPLE Matthew Lee Bain
We were just buried,
My beautiful dead, virginal wife
I join my bride in nuptial necrophilia;
Her white wedding dress is so tarnished
The epithalamium is sung
The unity candle illuminates
Even after the flesh is eaten away,
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SAID A MOUTHFUL Matthew Lee Bain
It is amazing,
Chewing is diffucult, and eventually they chew me in return.
Some even find their way right through my cheeks,
Razors are crunchy, gritty. They're grinding my teeth,
Then I swallow about a quarter of them,
Slice, slice. Cut, cut. It feels like I'm drinking blood,
I wonder how many calories these fuckers have, I am dieting,
But first I have to piss. Whoa!
Damn that was great. So full now,
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SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE Matthew Lee Bain
BEDLAMENE IS HERE!
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE: Ask your doctor about Bedlamene today
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I Never Expected to See You Here God Rev. Peter E. Adotey Addo
I never expected to meet you here, God
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cintaku cinta ikan teri Rini Anastasia
cintaku cinta ikan teri
{my love is a salty-fish love
cintaku cinta ikan teri
{my love is a salty-fish love
cintaku cinta ikan teri
{my love is a salty-fish love
cintaku cinta ikan teri
{my love is a salty-fish love
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The Manciple's Tale Revisited, 2001 Carla E. Anderton
Poor Phoebus, he should have known
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Mercy Sex Carla E. Anderton
It wasn't that it was perfect
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Just Before The Drop David-Matthew Barnes
While you finish your painting
Yeah, you said we needed a change
I thought life would be pretty
This all started when I was
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POTENTIAL Leonard J. Bourret
'Zero', an extremely
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Overdue Ode Christopher Brisson
For years and years I've been wondering
O this year perhaps its too late though
said and besides there are all those older women
has accomplished so very much
never see him at her side never DOLLY PARTONA LESBIAN! Ever hear
anything more confounding
Dolly you should form a line
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Black and Blue in Baltimore David Caylor
Benjamin
Betty
Daniel
In Baltimore
Baltimore, MD
Chicago, MD
Evans
Talbot
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Corkscrews Jessica L. Chapman
Freestyle moves and complacent grooves
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Your Will be Done Travis Cooke
"Ten minutes!" My eyes came sharply open, my heart sank, and I wanted some one to say, "Just kidding, we are turning around and going home". No one said it, "Get ready!" and as if you could have missed the sergeant's booming voice everyone repeated his words. I prayed in my mind "dear God I don't want to do this, I am afraid, but if I have to die tonight, then Your will be done. Please God watch over me".
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3 Paul Donnelly
Once upon a time in the land of Dexter Vector, people of the left hand were oppressed. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. Lefties could not vote, nor marry right-handed people; they could not work at the better jobs, and wherever they lived they had to carry permits at all times. All but the simplest education would have been wasted on them. They were sinister. It was well-known that this was the right way to build civilization.
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Noive Autumn May Davis
She doesn't trust
Love is a
She lost her Now she just uses her fists.
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Unwanted Inspiration Jodie Lyn Fisher
Moldy Green, unadulterated, vindictive smile
Dep[reciated children, polluted,
Unwanted inspiration-
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HOUSEWIFE'S LAMENT Nicole J Flaherty
Why men, something to endure
Endless tasks, empty pleasures
I speak. You hide.
Who are you that you can assume so much of me?
Can you see the animal in front of you
I beg and borrow the limits of candor
You are eager for me to take over everything
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Jeanne d'Arc's Last Night On Earth Don Hargraves
After weeks of torture and being preached to,
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In the Rose Sean Fortenbaugh
From the stem
THE BLACKBIRD Matthew Hewitt
A blackbird with eyes of fire sings a song of death,
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The Common Wall Mike Hovancsek
He was sitting in his room. That was all he was doing. There was, however, a lot that went into sitting. His synapses were firing their little pulses of information around his brain like millions of tiny fax machines; his stomach was busy sorting and reducing his last meal into usable elements; his cells were methodically reproducing themselves at a steady rate; a small cyst was patiently claiming space on his colon where it would remain, unnoticed for several years; his muscles retained the proper amount of tautness that was required for him to remain in a seated position; his perceptual organs continued to gather information from the environment; blood, bile, and phlegm continued to navigate their way through his lymphatic system... Sitting, you see, is a fairly complicated activity. 2:05 AM = Listened to country radio station. 2:30 AM = went to bed...alone. Below that entry he added: Saturday, May 3rd: 11:00 AM = Woke up. 11:05 = Bath. * * *
His name was William Lanceford. I know everything about him (Im omniscient, for Christs sake). William got his start in much the same way that all of us did. He started as an egg and a sperm that had a fairly decent sense of direction. He successfully navigated his way through the usual zygote-embryo-fetus-newborn sequence and was born into the hands of Medina General Hospitals on-call obstetrician. The whole thing was pretty uneventful. To his mothers relief, he had the same number of fingers, toes, eyes, heads, noses, reproductive units, and mouths as all the other babies in the neonatal unit. What a joy it was to be typical (if only for a brief moment). * * *
1:00 PM - 1:22 PM = Called friend.
He was still sitting in his room. He was still listening to his neighbor. As time went by a remarkable amount of information collected in Williams notebooks. He kept track of his neighbors sleeping habits, her telephone calls, her bathing rituals... Her life was slowly becoming a tower of paper, her existence loosely bound by the misshapen spiral wires of college-ruled notebooks. * * *
Freshly yanked from his mothers home, William was pulled through the system like a cat on a leash. He braced himself against the lawyers and the social workers, his feline resistance failing to match the brutish tugs of the system. Like a child exiting the womb, he struggled to remain where he no longer belonged.
Dr. Don: What seems to be the problem my dear?
In order to survive her husbands humor, Rose had to grow a shell over the sensitive areas of her psyche. Over time, she became as tough as a nail bomb. By the time her husband passed away she had enough emotional strength to crush a beer can with a single muscular swing of her mood. She was so strong, in fact, that she dealt with the loss of her husband the way a car deals with the loss of a muffler: She just kept going. * * * 2:23 PM = Called another friend. He was sitting in his room. He was listening. While the common wall that separated William and his neighbor continued to transmit information into the pile of notebooks, Williams head continued to crackle with little sparks of thought. As he sat and listened to his neighbor talking on the phone a new thought occurred to him: If I can hear everything that happens in her apartment, she must be able to hear everything that happens in mine
Thought is actually a chemical process. Once this new chemical was introduced to the stew, the whole recipe changed. William started thinking about all the things that his neighbor must have known about him. She must have known a million little intimate things that nobody else could possibly have known. Excitement rushed through his body like panic through a crowded movie theater. The chemical reaction of thought produced a dangerous potion in his head. * * *
With his grandmothers health on hold, William had to be placed in an emergency foster home. It was a numbing experience for him. After having his life pulled out from under him for the second time, he decided that it was time to allow the door in his heart to rust itself shut. * * *
He was sitting in his room, listening; waiting for his neighbor to leave her apartment. He was listening to her grooming patterns while his moment of neighborly contact raced closer and closer. The sounds of love crammed themselves into his ears. He listened while she rustled into and out of various outfits; while she picked through her personal belongings, looking for her car keys; while she descended the stairs, her musical key chain jangling at each step; while she stepped through the door; while she pulled the door shut; while she gently slipped the key into the lock, lacing its puzzle pattern into the tumblers... * * *
The sheriffs deputy read William, Della, and Nick their rights. He also informed them of the charges that were being pressed against them. It wasnt until this time that they realized how their fates laid scattered on the floor in front of them. Della and Nick were being charged with criminal damaging, evading arrest, grand theft auto, and a slew of other crimes. William was charged with all of these things plus one other: Attempted murder. Apparently, the staff member who received Williams diversionary blows to the head was in a hospital where he lay suspended in a coma. Although he survived the attack, Mr. Steve would never completely recover. * * *
He was sitting and listening. It was the first time that he got to hear sounds from the female side of the common wall. Excited, he knew that his chance to meet his neighbor was at hand.
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IVE GOT RHYTHM Margaret Karmazin
I examine my skin in the mirror. The color is slightly on the orange-yellow side, in some places cream. My hair is brown with one skinny blonde streak at the left temple. My eyes are dark brown.
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Critique (inspired by a sweet poem on the internet) Charlotte Kellison
I feel the pulse of that poem, But beware of my criticism...
I have ripped my heart out from my chest
Discovering:
I am learning to accept the discomfort.
Ten paces past the metal slam of the auditorium doors
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help me through laura johnson
I'm reaching out
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skin bare Derek Kittle
don't worry about your hair
no need to watch your weight
wrinkles will smooth themselves out
relax sit back and embrace the mess
the one of the skinniest smile
the mess is what we have
in the soft moment when breasts are firm
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Andrew Hettinger janet kuypers
I never really liked you. You never revealed
I never really liked you. I met you through
I never really liked you. You never revealed
They told me the patch was from eye surgery
I heard these stories and I thought it was sad.
I never really liked you. You would come home
I never really liked you. Every time you talked
This is how I thought of you. A man who was
I received a letter recently, a letter from
station; instead of leaving this town you
And I was asked to be the messenger to my
I never really liked you. No one did. But when
I never really liked you. But now I can't get
I never really liked you, but maybe we could get
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Holding My Skin Together janet kuypers
is life pre-ordained?
is it just me?
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being god janet kuypers
I'm tired of dying for your sins
I'm tired of taking this knife to my hands
I'm tired of being humble when I'm
I'm tired of preaching to the converted
I'm tired of coming to you and healing the sick
I'm tired of giving the earth up to you
I'm tired of being your salvation
I'm tired of being your teacher, handing you
I'm tired of wearing this crown of thorns
I'm tired of being something for everybody
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god eyes janet kuypers
It was a stupid point to argue about at 2 a.m.,
You told me of a dream you had: in it you and
You were the optimist: yes, there is
It's now after three and we listen to music:
I tell you about the first time I got drunk - I was
Passion is a hard thing to describe. Passion
All of my life I have seen people espouse beliefs
on the television screen. You don't gamble. Neither
And you looked into my eyes as it approached
passion, well, thank you for finding it. "Good-bye,
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Sassy
Helen Mallon
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RIP Tsahai Martin
Your words
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Change Sherry Ann Meagher
Change your mind as often as possible.
Get lust out of the way.
Never lie, and never let anyone cause you to lie.
Never do anything you are ashamed of.
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ANOTHER INTERVIEW AT A WIPE AND DIAPER JOB Jeff Michaels
I am in a hallway with three other people
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Pizza Ben Mitchell
In front of the pizza shop,
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Hidden Face.. Robert Michael O'Hearn
Where do you even begin
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SEWAKTU BANJIR MENDESAH (When the flood sigh)
SHAMSUDIN OTHMAN
Sewaktu banjir mendesah
(When the flood sigh
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MY MOM THE CONQUERER Jason Pettus
You came and visited me in Chicago about a year ago. Without dad. And I was terrified. You see, the only other time youve visited up here, you were scared shitless. I convinced you and dad to leave the car at the hotel one evening and come to my house on the el. And you just went on and on about how scary the whole experience was and how you didnt feel safe until you found a policeman in the tunnel, and not just a regular policeman but one of those Chicago ones dressed all in black with the leather motorcycle jacket, and how you and dad followed him all the way down the underground hallway to your train. I thought this was how your week with me was going to be. I had to work the whole week you were here, and I was deathly afraid that you were going to sequester yourself in my apartment all week and not get to see or do anything.
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Down Hill Tom Racine
1.
2.
"Do you have another floppy?" I asked.
I sure wish I got that poem
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On Spooning Tom Racine
She didn't roll over
So I fell off the bed with a soft
but she wouldn't help me up;
She laughed as I
I may
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A Short History of Tool Making I.B. Rad
Early in our natural history,
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POEM ATTACK Danny Rand
She hopped on the elevator "There's a lot of crazies up on the sixth floor," I told her. She smiled shyly. "I just moved in." "I used to live on the sixth floor."
She nodded politely
"I probably should be saying this, The elevator stopped and the door opened.
"Ahh, thanks...," the new attendany said all tongue-tied,
I rode the elevator up the next level,
So I discussed it with Joan "I didn't mean to scare the new resident or anything," I said. "Don't be silly. That redhead really is crazy." "Yeah, but...."
"Oh, it's fine. You were just making conversation." "I guess, you're right."
On the way down, "Good, and you?"
The crazy woman rolled her eyes back.
The irony of it all, I thought,
I felt my head whirl about.
Then all at once,
The the elevator came to a jarring stop "Hey, Sammy, you don't look to well," Joan exclaimed. I fumbled about in some literary paroxysm. "Are you okay?" she asked.
I could hear the concern in her voice,
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Society's most common Belonging Shannon Robertson
You wake up with an empty wine bottle at your side
what of tomorrow?
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Blame Jennifer Rowan
Blame it on the first angel
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The New Sirc Race Mike Seegel
Green life quickly vanishing, oceans disappearing, people no longer exist - it was a nightmare to behold. I, Gus Raloband, am the only human being with flesh on his bones and breathing oxygen. Men dreamed of this day, desperately and eagerly awaiting its arrival, and now I am the only one to tell and see the gloriousness of this moment. I have nowhere to run and nowhere to seek refuge. My cause of existing is hopeless. My intellect urges me to end it now by decapitating myself with a surgical laser beam, but my pride will not let me. My anger will not subside until I leave no regret behind. * * * * * * *
The electronic recording device beeped twice and shut down. Gus sighed heavily and bowed his head. He broke into a loud wailing with tears streaming down his cheeks. Because of no fault of his own, Gus lost everything - his wife, children, friends, and all humans - and he was alone because of a greedy mistake. Mankind was greedy for knowledge and pride that people could do anything and go anywhere. Furthermore, he never asked to be the last one left to save humans; he wanted to live a normal life and raise his two boys to be happy, productive men. Life dealt him a lousy hand this round, and he knew he would sooner or later bankrupt his funds. * * * * * * *
Gus woke up staring into a bright light. Exhausted and famished, he attempted to sit upright, but he could not. Then he realized why. He was strapped to a table, arms, legs, neck and head. Frantically he tried to free himself, but it was no use. He was helpless.
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The Outsider Jonathan Sorensen When I killed the deer
I had punished myself before. After my two older sisters graduated, the keys had been handed to me and I attained the status of the one who drives us to school. One morning, driving my brothers, James and Paul, to school, I was feeling my oats a little on a straight stretch. I was pushing sixty in my parents Pontiac when a buck leapt from the forest smack into our path. There was nothing to do. We sailed into the buck, broad siding him and knocking him a good 15 feet into a ditch. He raised his head once, looked at us and then laid it down for good. At first I was too surprised to feel upset. What had I done? We got out of the car and checked. It was dead.
Nearing the top of the little valley I searched the ditch for the fawn. I am sure it was right along here somewhere. Hes going to think Im nuts if I dont find it. Finally, halfway down the slope, there it was, still and brown in the wet leaves. It raised its head as we climbed out of the car.
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QUESTIONABLE HABITS Jim Sullivan
During the 60s, at places like Woodstock, when other kids were doing drugs, getting high, and dropping out, I was being good. At the local movie theater, I was doing duds, Milk Duds that is. Sure, they had their downside: chocolate smudges, rotten teeth, and zits galore.
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ABJECTIVES Paul Thomas
The foibles of fables, coined in clich
The melodic charms, of grossly endemic
Iconoclasm and elastoplasts
Rosarch tests, and silicon breasts
Merely stepping, when what was needed was a hop
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Base Ten Melissa A Thullen
The number ten is a handbag, a doctor's black stachel.
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Mihai's Visit Bogdan Tiganov
Mihai was my companion.
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TREATMENT RESISTANT DEPRESSION (2000) Chris Toll
Let's begin in a dream
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CLAUSTROPHOBIA Cheryl A. Townsend
Sometimes
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NOTHING TO BREAK UP cheryl townsend
He wrote me
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READ IT WITH A DRAWL, DAHLING cheryl townsend
He's my heart attack lover
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CONTENTMENT (plus or minus) cheryl townsend
The clock is closer to midnight
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DRIVING BACK FROM CLEVELAND cheryl townsend
and it's raining like Hell
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drawing faces Noah M. Tysick, M.A.
children can be so obscene.
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ROSE BUDS Melanie Washington
pricks blood from an already stricken wound
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the muse Yosh
an ideal I created
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down i nthe dirt
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the hunter and the fox sydney anderson
I've been a hunter, you know
I've been looking for the right prey
Ive been looking for an animal
I've been looking all this time so where is he
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You Know What I'm Talking About sydney anderson
i know it has been years since we have talked
and maybe I could tell you
maybe you would talk to me
well, maybe you know what i am talking about
maybe something out of life
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If I Will Have Time marina arturo
Oh brain
What else do I have to do
I'll have to get groceries soon Paycheck Friday
What should I make Think
Damn
I wonder
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Spring marina arturo
Spring Waving
Back
in the the sun
shining
the world
after a
it is the spring
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What Are Those Noises In The Dark marina arturo
What are those noises in the dark
Are they ghosts under the bed
Or is it the sandman opening your door
Maybe it's just
Yet you seem to hear unknown footfalls
Yet you seem to hear a rustling of curtains Maybe those noises are only your imagination Maybe
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It's You marina arturo
I loved my soft quilt blanket
I had al ittle teddy bear
I loved my rusty bibycle
I have aged since the younger days
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forward Gabriel Athens
apparent
arms
knives
you
forward
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mask Gabriel Athens
masquerade
dress
pay
high
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James Gabriel Athens
I
pushed right
sat
room
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hole in the heart Gabriel Athens
night
light feels
missing
lay
you
my
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knife Gabriel Athens
there
hard
know
bought
proud
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C David-Matthew Barnes For Dromio - who once played my twin
You call yourself a cynic
I do cartwheels "What you see is what you get." I can only covet so much.
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Monologue To A Married Man David-Matthew Barnes
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Mr. Death David-Matthew Barnes
He is a man, a stranger, with dark hair, deer brown eyes and a dangerous smile that lights you up like birthday candles. You meet him when you least expect it, when you are particularly vulnerable and craving some type of reassurance that you are beautiful and worthy. From the first sight of him, you know that he is the only person in this world and in your life that you will ever truly love.
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This Man's Watch David-Matthew Barnes
I wear it
The band - it is silver
In the fumbling dark
Early dawn is reflected
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Thresholds David-Matthew Barnes
*A portion of this story was originally published as a poem titled South Shore in the magazine Backspace (Volume 3.03, 1995).
Josie and I would get really stoned and listen to Diana Ross records on my turntable. We would play them on a faster speed, mimicking the chipmunk squeal of a dying diva. We would crank call people we hated (like that bitch Amy whats-her-name) and we drank generic beer and thought we were cool because we were Seniors.
Bridget and I wanted to be rock stars in the worst way. Like crack-addicted canaries, we would sing until a neighbor would threaten to call the police on us for disturbing the peace. We wrote songs at coffee shops, harmonized together in the rain and passed each other song lyrics in between classes. I still remember the first song we ever wrote. It was called Party Love and it was about a guy and girl who fall in love at a party and then they get separated forever and spend the rest of their lives looking for each other.
Mara was my best friend and she was Jewish and she dated a black basketball player at school. She was the best dancer and she knew Swahili and sign language. I met her in English class when the teacher reprimanded her for being snide. We spent the rest of the year with wine coolers on our breath, hip-hop in our souls and a common quest for true love.
Donna was the Homecoming Junior Princess and she was the epitome of everything that I wanted to be. We cut class on a Wednesday, drove to a park and got stoned out of our minds. And even though we thought it was funny at the time, Donna told me that she hated everyone in her life. She was fed up with ski trips, French Club and college applications.
Natalie and I rode the bus home together everyday. She was the best actress in school and the most beautiful black girl I knew. She had parts in The Crucible and South Pacific and the audiences would cheer and stomp and scream her name. I knew she would go far. Anastasia and I drank all of the Vodka out of her mothers cupboard and then we filled up the bottle with water. We never got caught. We staggered in the inebriated rain to the movie theatre on University Avenue in Berkeley to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and I let her read all the letters I wrote to a boy that I liked and she told me to love life freely, you have to freely love your life. I think she was from Canada and life was effortless for her and I envied her freedom. Although we had a lot of friends, she and I were just kind of sad and we never really knew it. Until the night we shared a bottle of champagne in a scare-the-piss-out-of-you cemetery, surrounded by our own ghosts, hauntings and grave realizations that we could fool anyone, even ourselves.
Raymond was the brave one. He was the protector, then lover, of my fifteenth year. We lived in a bad neighborhood, surrounded by liquor stores, failed attempts and the thundering echoes of gunshots and the misery that follows a permanent sense of loss.
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Unauthorized David-Matthew Barnes
You told me not to write this
Tell them about how we met and how you promised
And tell them about how you would rather watch television Above all, tell them the truth. They will never believe you.
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Jalene Berger
A heart worn on your sleeve is vulnerable, tender and open.
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most accurate metaphors Jacob Best
rape is one of the most savage
it is a political crime
rape is an attempt by men
now there's two ways
you know you want this
i saw the way you were
did you think those drinks
how long did you think
just do as i say
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a socially accepted target Jacob Best
rape is connected
rape is anger
i didn't get the promotion i deserved
this traffic is always in my way i'm angry all the time
and the damn kids are banging i just want a fucking beer, you bitch it's all your fault
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A Married Man's Catholic Guilt Paul Cordeiro
I was supposed to be miles away
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Even A Beach Bum Poet Is Too Satisfied For Greatness Paul Cordeiro
He says the old ladies love it best
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My Golden On-line Friend Paul Cordeiro
In her fifties, she still has Marilyn Monroe's playboy image.
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Motive Lauri McGill Galentine
What I remember most
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Innocence Stolen Rose E Grier
This is a secret journal. No one knows I am doing this. No one knows what I have done. As of late I have not been myself. They say it is because I am old. I do not try to convince them they are wrong. I sit inside myself and let them think that they know me and what is best for me. It is the only way I can continue this. It is the only way I can live my life for the duration with some semblance of sanity. One must admit at one time or another the realities of what their life represents. What it is they have done or not done with what the good Lord has given them. I stand firm in the belief that I have used my talents to the best of my ability. It is what I know. I claim full responsibility for my actions. The subject is not up to debate. Facts are facts.
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And I Don't Care aeon logan
I'm tired of them asking me
well, I'm fine
they tell me it is my attitude
and it doesn't do me any good
there are a lot of things I don't care about
Are things getting better?
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a diamond aeon logan
most of the world lived in desolation
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Is it just me Shannon Peppers
I remember how you used to pay attention to me I haven't lost hope, but I'm getting close
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I Want More Than That Shannon Peppers
I am tired of the one night stands
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@$%&* Being Alone Shannon Peppers
I know I'm picky and need attention and love and support
I've been let down before, I've dealt with liars full time
I've adjusted my schedule for you
I'm tired of being let down
I've had to keep to myself all this time I've had to learn to be alone
I was hoping for good news
many times I'm going getting kicked in the teeth move on, girl
I don't know what I'm moving to
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Maybe You Can Shannon Peppers
I
I feel like I've lived a hard enough life, in some
II
III
I'm sure you weren't planning to save money and
no, I haven't expected any answers, even,
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Hot Flames Tom Racine
She now sleeps soundly,
Later, she leaned towards me in the bed and said,
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I Have to Go Out Tom Racine
She phones and talks of food,
"I've been working on poems
I rise slowly,
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Marilyn Tom Racine
She stands in the door way,
Air shoots from the floor fan
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They All Become Great Writers When I Meet Them Tom Racine
Tonight went pretty smooth;
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Winter Defeat Tom Racine
During those days,
We would wonder over dirty cloths, boxes of books piled high
I would lay in the bed, and
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religion alexandria rand
"We do expect you to marry someone
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rendering me alexandria rand
the heat
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sometimes the understanding alexandria rand
Sometime the understanding
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journals 1997 journal entries mackenzie silver
8/15/97 08/02/97
A co-worker quit from the company I work for today. I work in an office with about thirty-five people. Now this co-worker was in charge of our important material and quit two days before an important even for out company was about to begin. Apparently she was at a meeting about the event and someone else started badgering her and twenty minutes after the meeting she was on the phone with her husband saying, "It's been bad enough that every day after work I cry when I get home, but now I'm on the phone crying while I'm at work." So her husband told her it's okay if she wants to leave, they can work it out. So leave she did. She collected her things, said, "Fuck you all, I'm quitting," and just... left.
08/29/97 ***
I hate having pride in my work at this place. It is hard when you know you're good at something and everyone tells you you're good and yet no one will let you make decisions. I'm the highest-ranking worler in my field at this company and people outside my department overrule decisions of mine arbitrarily - and regularly. They destroy any consistency or style something may have. And then I have to answer for it, since I'm the head of this department. But I'm really not. I'm a slave to the whims of people who don't know anything about my work. It makes me want to leave so badly. *** I have a headache that just does not want to go away. It is so strong, and it is all over my brain. It's like there is so little moisture separating my brain from my skull that I'm really afraid to move my head around, for fear that the scraping will not only hurt but eventually damage parts of my brain I may actually need. I need to drink some water. ***
I feel like I'm making such a large decision in my life now. When I left college, I knew I was only going to be going to school for four years, this was the logical conclusion to my schooling, but it was a great change to go back home, as an adult, and start to look for a job. Once you're working, though, you make your own schedlules. You can stay at the same job for thirty years, you can marry and quit your job and take care of a family, you can get another job. And the thing is, I had no idea how long I was going to be at this job. I thought I'd be here for at least six years' that's when my 401(k) becomes fully vested and I will have made the optimal amount of money in it, then I'd be ready to go, I'd have a few other investments, I could quit my job right about when I was probably ready to get married and possibly move to another city. But here I am, quitting a year and a half ahead of my plan, planning to spend a third of my savings on travelling instead of working for the next year. ***
One of my male coworkers is leaving work. Today is his last day. I've worked with him for over three years, more like four, I think. He got another job in Los Angeles, and the market is better there in education for his wife. His brother is also out there, married with a new baby, so this guy will be able to spend more time with his brother. And the weather is warmer. And it's not THIS PLACE. ***
The manI'm dating called me three times after work this evening. Twice to see if I was okay, because I told him I was in a bad mood, and once to start an argument with me about how I never open up to him and he can't take this anymore and he never wants to speak to me again. So I ask him if he means that and he says no, that he want to make me happy. Can't he make up his mind?
08/30/97
Today I"ve been going back and forth between elation and complete depression. I have learned to turn it off when I need to, the depression, that is, when someone surprises me or if someone gives me a call I have learned how to just turn it off. But then I get off the phone, or they leave the room (finally), and I am allowed to feel as miserable as I did before again.
08/31/97 *** I'm visiting my friend right now, Well, his roommate is telling me about the obnoxious neighbors, and how they've been lighting fireworks late at night that are loud, and then she said one of her neighbors lit a cat on fire. And I thought, well, they probably just lit the tail and it went out a second or two after they did it. I'm then listening to the news later on tonight, and one of the stories shows a picture of a cat with almost no hair, burned all over, with a cone on.
journal, undated So this is where I am. What do I do? Maybe I should post this on some "relationship news group" on the internet and see if anyone can help me. I know you're going to say that I bring all of these things upon myself. But I feel like I have no choice half of the time. It's either get next to nothing or get nothing. Maybe if I got nothing I would at least stop kidding myself.
I told my boyfriend last night that maybe the idea of being boyfriend and girlfriend is not the right idea right now, and maybe we should just hold off a while until we actually miss each other and want to see each other and go out on a date.
Okay, so this part of the story is called "when it rains, it pours":
The new installment...
What chapter am I on? Hee hee. So he ends up coming over and sitting next to me and we're whispering while others are there and we kept talking, you know, in groups with a bunch of other people too, but alone too, and we're talking about America's love of mass murders and pornography and having good conversations, like interesting ones, ones you can't just have with a frat guy type in a bar. And I was a little surprised, because I know he's only 23 or something, so I didn't know what kind of conversation i'd be having to deal with.
So, to make a long story only slightly less long, we talk until after one in the morning, and I give him my email and my business card and he gives me his number and email and I drive him and two other people part of the way home and ...
So we get to the party and he tells me he wants a relationship and since I don't seem to want that, he's dating someone that night be better for him. And I'm like, fine. You know, fine, like I didn't want a relationship with you, you were right, don't worry about it. Only thing is, I wish he could have told me before we got to this party, because now we've got this uncomfortable tension, unless he was just trying to get a ride from me, so he held off on telling me until he actually got to the party... So then three minutes after we have that discussion, which is like three minutes after we get to this party, some jerk knocks into me and spills my full glass of wine all over my shirt and a little on my jeans, too. So now I'm like, well, I've been here for a total of six minutes, had an awkward conversation and got a full glass of wine spilled on me and am now soaking wet. I've had about as much fun as I could possibly have at this party, so I should probably just go home, towel off and go to bed. I tried calling you last night. I guess you were eating. You did not say anything bad on friday :} You would have a hard time offending me. I am so not awake yet. I got up early to work on homework-only to find I don't have any. Well time to eat some Capt. Crunch. Talk to you soon.
Went on a date with Shawn.
undated journal entry 1998 journal entries
August 21, 1998
August 24, 1998 Non-American 1999 journal entries
1/27/98
I don't need a guy realtionship or any of that other crap. I've pretty much gotten used to the idea of not being gushy in public or anything; that's not my style. But I know I'm an attention whore, and sometimes I just need to hear that I am worth something. I know, I know, but I never pay attention to that; it's like I'm not capable to understanding that kind of stuff. I know there are men out there that find me attractive, too, but it is like this: in my own perverse head I often discount what other people say or think. Well, usually my assessments are accurate, but you know, such is life.
It is hard to think about that "love" theory, and all that other crap, when there is nothing like it out there... according to my views.
Friends are fickle, and selfish, and they lie. This much I know. Even when I'm not at full capacity I am aware of this. That is why I shut up all the time and don't tell people things.
1/29/99
oh, nevermind. I've discovered that it is pointless for me to have hopes. I've done a pretty good job of repressing all my dreams. we'll see if he wants to see me again.
I have met one person who has been honest with me. I mean, that I know is honest. But honesty is seldom the best policy, at least for the average person. I was just reading over these now, and yes, I am very used to people lying regularly to me. I am not used to honesty. I crave honesty, and I never get it. it's like this, if someone seems honest with me, they might hold back on the truth and all, but i want people to be people who don't lie. well, not to me. I want to have hope in something. I have been let down so much that I don't know what or who to turn to any more. Even when I have hope, a have to get let down, and then I have to kill a little piece of me. And I am tired of doing that to myself.
8/8/99
08/05/99
8/6/99
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Born Old Jerry Vilhotti
When Johnny, with the blond curly hair, could walk, his father would take him on very long journeys all over the neighborhood: by the shoemakers, adjacent to where the baker's son had fallen from the mountain to his death who had given Johnny many rides on the handlebars of his bike, with a fake cat in the window holding the sole of a shoe; across cobblestones the great poet Poe once walked upon with his inner demons clutching his heart and mind while living in matrimony with his sister-cousin when the area was called Fordham Village and by the tire store with a cardboard print of a little boy inside a tire holding a candle against the darkness surrounding him ... but even before Johnny could walk, the father would hug him closely and kiss him tenderly; push him out above his head - bringing forth excited screams of joy from the baby and he would get excited over the excitement the boy showed. The more Tina, the father's daughter, began to look like a grown woman, the more he hugged Johnny and caressed him as if he were an anchor probing deep murky waters.
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Learn To Do That Too Helena Wolfe
Maybe there isn't much of a chance for us
I know we don't have a lot in common maybe you still do
you've been able to shut all that off
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It's Only The Tip Helena Wolfe
there are too many things that I want to say,
I've wanted to tell you how I feel
I haven't been able to tell you everything
I want someone to share that knowledge with me
I know I should have wanted that before
and I'm still afraid to tell all this to you
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the key to believing exerpts from a novel
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It wasn't enough that dedicated medical researcher Sloane Emerson developed new drugs for HIV and AIDS patients. She needed to discover a cure. Follow us after discovering by the U.S. government manufactured AIDS, expose the government, save her life, fall in love and change the world. this is to strong people who have battled too much This is dedicated to william douglas ward
They Key to Believingchapter 1
The WomanSix a.m. arrived, sounding the alarm clock in his bedroom. The noise crashed through their room, and Kyle Mackenzie rolled over, slammed his palm into the buzzing clock, and rolled back onto his side. He turned his head toward the window. A slight rain tapped against the edge of the roof and dripped over his windowsill. He didnt want to get up, not today. Every morning he would pull his umbrella from the stand by his front door, run to his Honda in the driveway, and wind his way through the streets of downtown Seattle, to the opposite side of town, to Madison Pharmaceuticals. Every morning he would go into the office, walk back through the long hallways to the lab, and work with his team, usually making no progress. Honey, why are you getting up so early? his wife Elisa moaned from the other side of the bed. Getting in at nine means youre only there three hours before lunch, Kyle answered. You cant get anything done if youre interrupted like that. I figured this way I can work for a good five hours before having to stop. Are you going to make a habit of this? his wife asked. Well see, he said as he put his hand on her shoulder. Dont worry, Ill try to make it home early enough tonight for dinner. Ill call you. And with that he got up and walked into the bathroom to shave. Kyle hadnt given up hope. Just a few months ago his team, headed by the prominent researcher Sloane Emerson, developed a new drug that drastically improved the T-Cell count by lengthening the time the viral load was down for AIDS patients. In the best-case scenario old protease inhibitors, when coupled into cocktails with the usual drugs like AZT, reduced the viral load of AIDS patients to a nearly negligible amount around a year. With the new inhibitor they worked on, Madison Pharmaceuticals laid claim to the only drug to date that when taken properly reduced the viral load for just over two years. This was an astonishing feat; some theorists claimed that after three years the AIDS virus would die out from within the body, and if cocktails of drugs could extend the time a patients viral load was almost gone from one year to two years, hope was in sight for a cocktail that would eliminate the virus after three years, thus eliminating AIDS in the body. And if researchers couldnt find a drug that killed the HIV virus, they could at least find a drug cocktail that holds it back in the body until the virus actually dies. He thought about this during his drive to work. More than the accomplishment itself, Kyle thought about the celebrations after the drug, Emivir, named after Sloane Emerson, was released into the public. The P.R. department handled the release of Emivir perfectly, and Madison Pharmaceuticals seemed to be in all of the newspapers. Madisons stock split less than one week after the F.D.A. had approved the release of Emivir. The parties, Kyle kept thinking, seemed to be at times the best part of the release of the drug. For the first few weeks after the release of Emivir he had plans three or four nights a week, to parties in ballrooms of hotels, to parties at the luxurious homes of both the president and vice-president of the company, to parties in Los Angeles hosted by famous actors, even to parties in mansions of government officials in Washington D.C., which were weekend-events where the executives and the laboratory staff flew on the company plane across the country to celebrate. He bought a tuxedo for the parties. He met people he thought he would never be able to rub shoulders with. He remembered at one party walking over to a group of women having a conversation about dinner parties. He didnt know who any of the women were, but he could tell they were professional socialites, that they viewed their position in their life as their job, as a title to uphold. One woman, wearing a floor-length black dress with gold trim at the neckline, asked, So if you could invite anyone to a dinner party, who would you invite? Another woman, wearing a red beaded dress, answered, You know Id invite the Addisons, of course, and the Bronsens as well. And the regulars would be on my list, you know, Daphne Hassan and her interest of the moment, or even the family of Amelia. But then Id invite some people that would really stir things up, you know, a few others from Congress that would like to talk to people like the Tates. Everyone started laughing in the small circle of people. Kyle had no idea who these women were talking about. Have you forgotten the Madisons? Kyle turned to see an older woman glancing at him and smiling as she spoke. You know the Madisons are very important. At that moment Kyle felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned to see Sloane Emerson. Hi, are you enjoying yourself? Kyle asked. He could feel the cold stares of the women in the group - not glaring at him but at Sloane, the woman of the evening. She never looked like she fit in at these parties; her demeanor suggested, without her consciously trying, that she was above the group. I was just wondering how you were doing. What are you discussing here? She looked around at the group of women. Well, the first woman started, We were just discussing if we were to invite anyone we wanted to a dinner party, who would be on our list. Let me think about that. Sloane said, and genuinely thought about the question for a moment. How many people could be on this list? Are we talking a small party or something larger? Oh, just forty or fifty people, the woman in black answered. If it could be anyone, Sloane answered, I think Id invite Jesus Christ. Definitely Aristotle would get invited, and some of the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson. But Einstein would definitely have to be on the list as well, and maybe a few astronomers, too. Realizing how the women were looking at her, she stopped. Grinning at the assumption she made, she tried to save face. But I dont suppose you were posing a philosophical question, were you? She looked around the circle and saw every set of female eyes staring at her with disdain, except for one woman, who was rolling her eyes and looking away. She turned to Kyle and smiled. Ill let you continue your conversation, she said to Kyle as she turned back to the group of women. It was very nice meeting you, and as the last words were trailing out of her mouth she was turning and walking away. Kyle shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the group, then turned and followed her. Sloane? She turned around and glanced at him, smiling before she spoke. I forget that most people dont think the way I do, she said to Kyle, nodding her head to the women she just talked to. You know, you didnt technically meet any of those women - they never even told you their names. Kyle grinned at her response of a smile, telling him in her look that she never cared to meet them because they had no resources of value to her. I just have one question, Sloane. Yes? Why Jesus Christ? So that when he doesnt show up I can have the last laugh. Sloane winked at him. Kyle never liked it when she made such rash comments, especially when she knew he was a practicing Catholic. You know he was a real man... Many people believe the Bible is meant to be read as a metaphor and not taken verbatim. And I know there is scientific evidence that a man named Jesus lived, but I also know that as this son of a supposed god, his name was one of many names for gods, and names were adjusted as created so they had the numerical and religious significance of the number 888. But if he was at dinner Id be able to talk to him and find out if he was actually a prophet, or if anything from the New Testament actually happened. Kyle then watched her begin to turn away before she turned back to him briefly. You know, she added, you should really spend more time with your wife when you bring her to these parties. She smiled, gestured to Elisa, then turned and walked away. Kyles favorite part of these parties still seemed to be having the chance to talk with famous women and meeting wives of famous dignitaries. It wasnt because he liked the attention of other women, he loved his wife dearly and would never think seriously of being with another woman. What he loved were the way these women, who worried about looking good and being famous and adhering to all the necessary social graces, looked up to him because he was a part of a team that accomplished something. The team he was on, his team, set their minds to something, and they did it. And everyone wanted to know how. When he was at these parties, Kyle felt like and astronaut who just came back from traveling to the moon. What exactly does your drug do, Mr. Mackenzie? asked Katia Turner, a Hollywood actress, at one party in Los Angeles. Kyle was amazed that the famous Katia Turner actually came up to him to talk - and knew his name. He cleared his throat. When used in combination with the old drugs, Emivir coincided with a lowering of the viral load to a negligible amount for about two years, versus one year, the best result of the other inhibitors on the market. How does it work? You said its an inhibitor? He didnt expect people to want to know. Well, the first drugs on the market, like AZT, targeted only one of the HIV enzyme components. This was basically attacking only one part of the virus, which proved effective for only a small amount of time. The new wave of inhibitors, called protease inhibitors, attacked a different enzyme component of the virus, so HIV was then being attacked at a different level. Using a cocktail of drugs instead of just trying to attack the virus at one part worked well, but the new wave of inhibitors could only reduce the amount of virus in the body for about a year. This new protease inhibitor weve created can continue attacking the virus for nearly two years. He could tell that although she seemed interested, she was straining to act. So Emivir delays the continued spread of AIDS for an additional year? Kyle smiled. Yes, but its more promising than that. The theory is that the AIDS virus, without causing infection from its birth to death, can live in the human body for three years. The problem is that in that three-year life span it continues to mutate and reproduce itself. If we can stop it from doing that for two years, were getting closer and closer to stopping it for three years. After that point, the remaining virus may die within the body. And thus a cure? Well, a human could live with AIDS in the body until the virus dies. He tried to push out of his mind the thought that the HIV-infected cells could seemingly hide in pockets in the body, such as the lymph nodes, or in the spine, or in the testes - and that three years might not be enough time. Researchers still didnt know everything they needed to about the virus. But Kyle needed to think that there was a goal line in sight. Thats amazing, Katia crooned. So how long do you think it will take to come up with the drugs to destroy the AIDS virus in the body altogether? Kyle paused. She asked the question he did not want to have to answer. That is what we dont know right now. Well have to keep working on it, hope for the best.
It was with that disheartening thought that he came back to today, in his car, driving to his lab. It was 7:15 a.m. when he pulled into the parking lot. He walked through the main office, through back hallways, towards his lab. It wasnt the parties he liked, he thought, but the chance to rest on his accomplishments for once. To feel good about something he had done. Whenever he thought about the search for a cure now, disappointment crept into his pores and he felt like he was going nowhere, no matter how many hours he put in at the lab. He hoped that at least today he should get in before his supervisor because she must like to see that her staff still has the desire to get through this puzzle. He walked down the last hallway to the lab. He could see through the frosted glass of the door that the lights were on. He opened the door. Sloane Emerson sat on a stool, one foot on the floor, one foot on the bottom rung of the stool, lab coat open, falling over her hips to the sides of the stool. She always looks lanky, Kyle thought, but it seemed to fit in perfectly with the test tubes and pieces of scientific equipment placed in rows on the line of tables along the wall. Her black hair was straight, just above the shoulder in length, cut into a bob and she always tucked it behind her ears. She seldom wore make-up. She was reading some lab reports. She looked up at him. Kyle, youre here early. Kyle was frozen for a moment in the doorway. The door hit him as it slowly closed behind him, reminding him to move forward. Youre here early. I thought I beat everyone else. Some things were on my mind about the tests we did last night and I figured Id get in early to read the results. And? Nothing. Its not making any difference what we do with Emivir, were not making any improvements at all. And with that she turned back to the reports, to read on for a more detailed explanation. Thats what is amazing, Kyle thought. She never gets depressed about making no progress. At least she never shows it. He thought back to the parties. Once most of the guests had arrived Sloane would enter, never with a date. And although she didnt attempt to attract attention to herself, everyone always noticed her when she walked into the room. The rest of the researchers noticed her most of all. After seeing her every day in navy slacks and a white blouse, watching Sloane Emerson walk into a ballroom wearing a floor-length taupe satin dress instantly turned heads. She wore the simplest dresses, ones that showed her off, not her clothing. The fabric from her clothes seemed to glide over her skin as she walked through the room. For jewelry she wore just a necklace with a solitary diamond. At these parties, Kyle thought, when all the women wore too much jewelry and dresses that looked a little difficult to walk in, seeing her confidently glide through a room with the same determination she had when she was in her lab, made her look like she was in charge of everything around her. Kyle knew she didnt do it intentionally. It was just how she was. Kyle walked closer to her and glanced over her shoulder at the test results. These werent very important, I mean, we werent expecting much from these tests. Is this really why you couldnt sleep last night? Closing the lab notebook, she placed it down on top of the pile in front of her. Ive just been getting exasperated, she said. About our lack of progress? You know, you should really take a break, weve made great strides, and youre - Its not just our laboratory progress, you know. Tyler, from marketing and P.R., said that hes heard of a few groups lobbying the government to check into our production speed because were not getting enough of Emivir on the market. But they dont realize that Madison holding off on the number of people that get the drug, because we have to be able to keep them on the drug once theyre on it. An AIDS patient has to take a series of pills a number of times a day for years. Once a patient gets on Emivir they have to stay on it. If they miss two or three doses the virus can have enough time to mutate in their system so the virus becomes resistant to it. So we have to make sure that the plants are producing enough Emivir so we dont run out for the people already on it, we cant just give this to anyone, because if we do, then all of the patients will be out of the drug if the plants cant keep up with production. If we did that, wed have more of an epidemic on our hands. Weve got a plant of our own going, and weve outsourced three plants in the States, Canada and Japan. What more do they expect of us? Why are you letting production become a problem for you? Thats not your department. But its my drug, and these people dont understand what theyre suggesting. I think none of these people think that businesses have to plan, that they just make so much money and every decision they make is just to hurt the public. They dont think about the fact the businesses have to sell to the public so theyre obviously concerned with their market and theyre doing what they can for their market. Businesses, in order to stay profitable, have to do what the market dictates. And this decision - to hold back some people from using Emivir right away - its for the good of the people, but no one wants to look at it logically. If we were being a mean business, might we be more interested in selling it to as many people as possible, Kyle? A smile came over her when she heard Kyle respond with, No, not if all of our patients die when we run out of drugs. So were planning to do something thats best for the business and best for the patients and still they complain. I dont see any of those lobbyists making a better drug and selling massive amounts of it. But they complain when we do it for them. Its like these people think they own us because we are talented and do something with ourselves. Im sure Madison is going to out-source production to a few more plants, and theyre probably going to complete another plant within the next eight to ten months. I know, but it angers me that we provide a great product for people, we do our jobs, we do them well, we even perform a service to the public, if thats how they want to refer to it, and these lobbyists still think its not enough. Is this something you havent realized before? No, I suppose not. Sloane paused and began to smile. Boy, you dont let me just wallow, do you? What good would you be if we let you do that? Thanks, Kyle. No, really, you never usually complain about anything or let those people affect you, so if you need to vent now, feel free to do so. But if youve managed to put those lobbying goons out of your mind before, Im sure youre capable of doing it again. You know you really shouldnt even waste your time thinking about them. I know... But I just keep seeing the lack of progress weve made in the months since Emivir came out. It makes me think were on the wrong track. Kyle looked at her, wondering for a split second if he saw resignation. So Ive been thinking about looking at this from a different angle. Kyle looked at her when she spoke and the look of resignation Kyle thought he saw was instantly gone. Kyle paused. You know, you really should rest more. Its Thursday, go home tonight and do something social. Take the day off tomorrow. Oh, Im seeing my father for dinner tonight. Not too much fun. You know how family obligations go. Your father Bills a great guy, I love it when he comes to visit. Spending time with him cant be too bad. I suppose not. He recommended you for the research job at the University, didnt he? Yes, but I didnt want that job. Anyway, Im sure Ill be in tomorrow; Ill need work as a rest from my dinner tonight. As the rest of the staff filed in, work resumed as usual. They had managed to create their wonder drug, Emivir, by working with formulas for existing inhibitors and modifying them so that the HIV virus could not become immune to it so easily. Their current effort was to do the same to Emivir - to work with that formula to extend the attack period for an even longer period of time. It managed to work once for them; it made sense to try it again. But they kept hitting brick walls with this research and she knew she had to do something else. She studied the reports. She supervised the tests. Maybe Kyle was right, Sloane thought, maybe I need to rest. Her father was a nice man; she could have a nice dinner and get some rest and come to work on Friday with a clear head. Calling her father from work at 6:30, she tried to get her mind off work to make plans for dinner. What restaurant did you want to go to? Ill just meet you there. You shouldnt have to pick me up. Youre still at work, sweetheart, arent you? Yes, but Im about to get out of here, so I can meet you anywhere. Okay. How about Dimitris for Italian, say, 7:30? Sure. Ill see you there. When she got to Dimitris Bill Emerson was waiting at the bar for her. He was leaning over the bar, but looking back, checking for her. He was wearing the same sports coat he owned since she was a child, but now it stayed unbuttoned because it was a bit more snugly around his waist. Still, he looked comfortable. She walked to the bar. Hi, sweetheart. Theyre setting up a table for us. Oh, I was hoping that was your first drink and you werent waiting for me long. She glanced at the bourbon on the rocks in his hand; it was his drink of choice. Yeah, I havent been here long at all. Lets see how our table is doing. Bill Emerson was a university researcher, working in the archaeology department, studying relics brought in from digs that the university was able to acquire. He went to work on time every morning, and he made it home in time for moms home-cooked dinner every night as Sloane grew up. The university seldom sent him out on digs; they usually made him classify what the archaeologist groups found on their expeditions and brought back to the university. Bill Emerson had been publishing less, so in recent years he was doing less research and more teaching, per the administration at the university. He seemed fine with that; besides, his retirement was coming up soon and he wanted to slow down his workload. When finally getting out of school, he talked to some people at the university and placed a recommendation for a job in the medical research department. Sloane knew well that you couldnt just recommend someone for a job, that the university research team would have to look at her records... She went through three interviews for a job at the school, but her father seemed to show more excitement about the job than she did. But when they offered the research job to her she turned it down to work in a low-end laboratory position for Madison Pharmaceuticals. Her father thought she was making a mistake. During her seven-year career at Madison, however, she managed to make her way to the head of the research department. As she began to prove herself at the company, the executives gave her whatever she needed. And she produced results. Her father never understood why she wanted to work for a company and not the university. Do you want some company dictating what you do? Its better than having the government dictate what you do, isnt it? But you can work for the good of the people if you do university research. And I can do work for my own benefit if I do research at a company. Do you really want the bottom line to be the almighty dollar? Why yes, dad, I do. And whats wrong with that? This would always exasperate her father, but it would also end the conversation. Eventually the university job was offered to one of her classmates, Toby Graham. Toby was more suited for the university life anyway, Sloane thought. Besides, since they would both be working on improving treatments for HIV-positive and full-blown AIDS patients, they would also be in the same town and could confer on ideas if they were working on similar theories. Ordering a linguine with tomatoes and mushrooms in a basil pesto, she listened to her father ordered the usual - meat ravioli. He ordered a bottle of red wine. Whats the occasion, dad? Well, it would have been our anniversary, your mothers and mine. Sloane sat silent for a moment. Im sorry. I didnt even think about it. Im just glad that you didnt back out on me again. Dad, I - I know, I know, dear. Youve got your work. You shouldnt have to worry about your old man anyway. Dad, its just that - But you know, you should spend some time with your brother and your sister while you still can. Dad, theyre not going anywhere, I can see them - We thought your mom wasnt going anywhere, either. Whenever her father brought up her mother the conversation always became morbid. It had been seven years since she died in a car accident, but the way her father treated her mothers death made it feel like a cloak of guilt that he could lay over her whenever she had been away from the family for a while. You know, you never see your family anymore, he said. She knew where the conversation was heading. Her mind wandered to the last Christmas they spent together. Her brother, a mailman, and her sister, a housewife and mother, never understood her love of her work. Family gatherings became efforts to make Sloane see that there is more to life than accomplishing the goals at work she set out to accomplish. When are you going to settle down, get married and have children? her sister would ask. Once you have children, youll know what I mean. Children change everything. Her brother would attack in a similar fashion. You know, high school friends ask me what youre up to. I never know what to tell them. Tell them Im a doctor that heads a medical research department at a pharmaceutical company. But its not as easy as that. Why not? Her brother never seemed to be able to answer that; he merely felt that something was wrong with a woman so obsessed with her work. Dad, I know where this conversation is going, Sloane interrupted. Weve had it many times before, but you still keep trying. But sweetheart, they miss you. No they dont, dad, they miss the chance to judge me against what they think I should be doing - which is very different from what I think I should be doing. They just want whats best for you. And why do they think they know whats best for me, more than I do? Dad, they seem to revel in imposing their standards on me, and no offense dad, but so do you. Its just that we care. I know, dad, but trust me when I say Im happy with the decisions Ive made in my life. Her father looked at her. They sat in silence for a moment before they returned to their food. She never meant to have these arguments with her father. He was always the one that would bring it up. As she drove home from Dimitris she tried to understand why her family couldnt believe her when she said she was doing what she wanted with her life. Walking into her apartment after dinner, she tossed her trench coat on the chair next to the front door and propped her umbrella against the wall. She walked across the living room; shadows from the city lights from the picture window followed behind her and stretched across the floor and curled along the opposite wall. She made her way into her study and turned on a lamp at her desk. She sat down and looked over the test results she brought back from work. Although there was still no progress, looking at the data made her feel better after talking to her father; at least she could decipher the data, make sense of it, follow its rules and learn something from it. Possibly even master it. As it approached midnight, she got up from her desk and walked over to the window. She scanned the skyline and watched the city lights flicker like candles in front of her. These arent candles, she thought, these are lights, lights in buildings where people are cleaning from the days work, lights in restaurants where people are enjoying the fruits of their labor, headlights of cars moving through the city going home to their families, lights of apartments and homes where people prepared for bed. This is what my data does, she thought. This is what thinking does for the world. It lights the cities. It lights everyones way. It moves people. It makes all this possible. She wondered how other people could not understand this. She closed the shade and turned around for bed. She wanted to get up early in the morning and get some work done.
She didnt know why she was there, but she had just started a new job. It was her first day in the office, and her supervisor said to her, Oh, you must have misunderstood from the interview. Research work is only a small fraction of the work youll do here. In fact, the laboratory and offices arent even set up now, were doing some construction and expansion in the building, so your first assignment is to go on a health-mission with a few other staff members. Standing in front of her supervisors desk, Sloane blankly managed to get out the words, Where will I be going? Africa. Its a humanitarian mission. You see, they think were hoarding our products here in the States and certain villages are going to be wiped out entirely unless we go in there and vaccinate them. So what I need you to do is let our company driver take you home so you can pack a few things, and then hell take you straight to the airport, where youll meet up with the rest of the staff. Youll probably be in Africa for about a month vaccinating children. The next thing she remembered was that she was in her apartment packing, thinking to herself that she cant pick up and quit, she needs the money from this job, and she didnt even know what to pack. She had no time to call anyone and say she was leaving, so she changed the message on her answering machine. Hello, youve reached Sloane Emerson. Ill be in Africa on business for the month of April, so please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible. After leaving the message she realized how ridiculous it sounded. Im in Africa for a month, so leave a message and Ill get back to you as soon as possible? she thought, but she had no time to change the message on her machine, she would be late for her plane. And then it occurred to her that by listening to her message someone will then know that no one is in her apartment for the entire month, making it a prime target for a break-in; she could see it now, shell come home from her trip and there will be nothing left in her apartment. She looked over at her suitcase. I dont want to do this, she thought, but she had no choice. She needed the money from this job; this job was all she now had. She closed the poorly packed suitcase, grabbed her passport and trench coat, unplugged the answering machine and headed for the door. How could I have missed this in the interview?, she thought. How could they have misled me like this? The next thing she remembered was being on the plane, starting the descent. They would be landing within a half hour. Her new coworkers were sitting in the aisle and the window seats; she was crammed between them. The only thought that kept going through her head, during the painfully long flight, was How did I let this happen? The thing with this company is that they want us to know where their heart is, the coworker on the aisle was saying to her. He was slightly overweight, he had a moustache and he talked a little too loudly, especially for being in an airplane. I mean, they want us to like the company we work for, so periodically they send us out on these humanitarian missions. Yeah, chimed in the guy in the window seat. Its like doing volunteer work on company time. And how many people get paid to go to Africa and get the trip paid for? Dont dress up too much, the guy in the aisle said. The company also brings along a photographer who takes a ton of photos of us vaccinating all the little African children, you know, holding them and caring for them and stuff, for press releases. They want us to look like were down in the trenches doing hard work for these little starving children. All she could do was look around the plane. She felt trapped between these two loud men. She wanted to get out of the plane. Are you afraid of heights? the man in the aisle asked. Cause you dont look so good. The next thing she remembered was being escorted into her hut. This is where youll be sleeping, the native told her. Apparently he guided Americans like her and her coworkers through missions like this, this seemed to be a regular occurrence for him. Your bathroom is that building over there; you can get a bucket of water to clean yourself off with pretty much daily. Pretty much daily? went through her head as she moved her suitcase to the corner before putting on a pair of shorts. This is not where my talents are best used, I should not be here in Africa doing the work any volunteer could do to make people think that I work for a kind and caring company. I should be producing better drugs for these people, I shouldnt be going out here and hand-delivering them. She held her head for a moment. She then walked outside her hut and there were fifteen emaciated children with wide eyes standing in the doorway, looking up at her. Thats when she sprung up in her bed, panting. She looked over at her clock. 4:07 a.m. She did a mental check: No, I did not quit my job at Madison. No, Im still doing AIDS research. No, I dont have to pack my bags and go to Africa to vaccinate children. She fell back onto her pillow. Her heart was racing; she was still breathing heavy. This was the point, she thought, that a man beside her would wake up and say, Its okay, darling, it was just a dream. But no one was there to say it to her, and she was used to that. She couldnt fall back asleep. This was one more dream for her to analyze. She never had nightmares, not in the traditional sense of the word, but to her they were most definitely nightmares nonetheless. She had deduced that they had all entailed her losing control of some aspect of her life somehow. In one dream she moved into a new apartment, to find out that she didnt read the lease carefully enough, and she had only rented a room in the apartment when she thought he rented the entire apartment and she would have four roommates sharing the common spaces with her. The remainder of that dream was spent trying to do two things, trying figure out which bedroom she wanted, before her other roommates came in and laid claim to their bedrooms, and trying to figure out how she was going to fit all of her furniture into a fraction of the space she needed. All of her dreams were like this, losing control over something, by overlooking one small detail, and then having to frantically work to pick up the pieces. Why do I have these dreams? she thought as she wondered if they had overlooked something to produce a vaccine or an attempt for a cure. She glanced back at the alarm clock. 4:18. Her alarm would go off in forty minutes anyway. She figured she might as well get up. She walked over to her window. The city lights were on, but it was quiet. She looked at all the dots of light, dots scattered among the tall buildings. She turned toward the bathroom to shower.
Kyle Mackenzie was the third person to get into the laboratory Friday morning. As he opened the door, he saw Sloane hunched over with another laboratory technician, Howard Shindo. Look, we were lucky with our protease inhibitor, and you know it, Sloane was saying to Howard. When the first wave of drugs came out, doctors didnt know how to use them - they were just prescribing them as a single-drug medication, which was as effective as using AZT, or other drugs like it that affected just the reverse transcriptase component of the enzyme alone. Other doctors were prescribing protease inhibitors even after patients became immune to AZT, which was doing the same amount of work as giving it to patients who were not taking AZT at all. I mean, yes, our drug has proven itself as holding off the reproduction of the virus for a substantially longer period of time, but we dont even know if the other protease inhibitors were being used in the best fashion. What are you suggesting then? Im suggesting one of three things. One is that we have to keep modifying Emivir to improve its ability to attack the protease enzyme. Another idea is that we have to start research into integrase inhibitors, and by attacking a third enzyme we might further help AIDS patients. Thats the one that should take the most research. And the third idea? Kyle walked over and asked, pulling up a stool to sit. To change the format of these drugs, so we can eliminate two problems with the drugs on a patient-level. One problem with the current cocktails is that they cause so many side effects that some people cant take them at all. Youve heard the stories, some side effects include nausea, muscles that feel like theyre burning, difficulty in walking, diarrhea, bone-marrow suppression, spontaneous bleeding in hemopheliacs, a sudden upsurge in blood sugar levels, which can in some cases lead to diabetes and possibly ketoacidosis, vomiting, dehydration, weight loss, confusion, even a coma or death. There has to be more research into placing these pills together to streamline these pills, and into time-releasing them, so people dont have to work so diligently at watching the clock - and potentially miss pills. Some patients have also contracted shingles, which is the same virus as chicken pox, or even problems such as excessive flatulence and gastroenteritis. And with nausea being the most common side effect of these drugs, if some people develop nausea daily to these drugs and cannot take them, intestinal upsets may cause the drug to not be fully ingested. If we can eliminate these side effects, well see an increase in the number of patients that respond positively to the cocktail of drugs. Howard finished her thought. So maybe we could redirect our efforts to making the drugs more ingestible. But theres also an emotional problem with taking these cocktails, Sloane answered. And taking the drugs properly, thats the second part of the problem with these drugs. Patients take usually about 20 pills a day, sometimes more, sometimes up to 60, all at different schedules, some with food, some on an empty stomach. So the continuous clock-watching and changing of their eating schedules because of these drugs is a constant reminder to them that they have a deadly disease. The emotional reminder of having a fatal disease by taking drugs so often can be a negative reinforcer in taking the drugs properly, and a patient doing well may skip drugs. Tack that on with a possible rejection from their family because of this disease, you have an emotional system wreaking havoc on the patients body as well. Some patients dont have the money to sustain the drug purchases, because insurance companies usually wont allow for one hundred percent coverage of this treatment. Because the drugs can cost upwards of $20,000 per year, some patients may then decide to take less of the drugs than they are supposed to take, to lengthen the time they have the drugs and therefore save money, and end up taking the drugs improperly. And skipping just a few doses, for any of these reasons, can cause a strain resistant to these drugs to emerge in their body, making the taking of these drugs useless in the long run, making those patients even more difficult to treat. Think about the fact that fifteen percent of current AIDS patients are initially, keep that in mind, initially unresponsive to AZT. My hypothesis is that its because of a strain that was developed and transferred to these patients by people who took their medications improperly and developed a strain of the virus that could just chew up AZT and spit it out. Kyle looked at them. But how do you attempt to solve that problem? The cost of the drugs decreases in time, as production methods become streamlined and the demand is adequately filled for the drugs. But the emotional strain of taking these drugs on such a rigid schedule could possibly be avoided if we could develop drugs - whether in pill or in liquid format, either as a drink, maybe, or to be taken by needle, like a diabetes patient taking insulin or Humulin, something that was time-released, so that patients would only have to worry about taking medication one to three times a day instead of 12 times. Couple that with eliminating side effects and you have a drug cocktail in one dose thats easy to use. Yeah, but a needle? Howard asked. A lot of these patients are drug users, and might misuse a prescription for hypodermic needles. If theyre getting the needles somehow. They might as well pay for clean ones, Kyle answered. Besides, Sloane cut in, if this could be developed in pill form, then we wouldnt even have to worry about the needle option. In fact, it probably would be easier to make it in pill form. More technicians were arriving into the laboratory to work. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with three courses of action. One is to improve Emivir, the protease inhibitor. Two is to work on an integrase inhibitor so that our cocktails attack three enzymes of the virus instead of two. And three is to work on making these drugs easier to take so that people will take them properly. Well, in theory we could work on a class of drugs that targets the infected cells, instead of being absorbed and spread throughout the body, but thats in the future, like a vaccination and a definite, short-term cure. These three modes of attack are plenty to get started on. And all three strategies could help produce better results, Howard said. Kyle asked, But how do you want to attack these three different plans? The door opened. A few more laboratory technicians came in to start working. Why dont we see what each technician thinks they can do the best job on, and divide people up accordingly? she asked. I think were on to something, Kyle answered, scribbling in his note pad. Kyle, if you could write up goals of each of the three attacks for this virus, and reasons why they would be effective, we could have a meeting this afternoon or Monday and see how we should go about doing this. Understood, chief. Smiling, she answered, We havent had much luck improving the length of time Emivir worked, but if people wanted to continue working on it I would be behind them one hundred percent. But if some people wanted to try this from a different angle, it might refresh the staff as well. With those words the door swung open with a violent push. The three of them all looked over to the doorway. Tyler Gillian barged into the lab with his usual presumptuousness, assuming he always had an invitation and a right to walk in and claim the space. Tyler looked like he should have been the high school class president. As the Director of P.R. and Marketing, a title which he wore like a badge, he made a point to dress impeccably, he made sure his hair was always in place, and he wore a smile that was probably used to seduce ladies into one-night stands during his college days at the fraternity house. Tyler was a diplomat. Sloane was sure that the only reason he didnt run for political office was that he would have to wait until he was 35 before he could run for president. It amazed her that his position paid enough to warrant the expensive suits; surely her work was more important than his. It wasnt that she wanted the money - this was just another one of the mysteries of life that eluded her, like the mystery of why her family always badgered her. Tyler always had one of two looks on his face: either he looked perfectly calm and collected, saying what his department needed as if it were a scientific law and that it would be done, and thats when hed plaster on that charming grin of his to get his way, or else he had a look of panic on his face, one of where he was in a crisis situation, where he was in code red, and he needed to put out fires and eliminate the problem A.S.A.P. to save the company from an otherwise inevitable peril. Usually when he looked panicked, hed end up talking the problem out with someone and throwing look number one, the charming look, on his face, in order to recruit all the help hed need to solve his crisis of the day. He barged in to the laboratory, and she assumed hed have look number two on his face. She was right. Tyler quickly scanned the room until he found her, then he charged over, indifferent to the other laboratory technicians in his way. Sloane Emerson, just the woman I desperately needed to see. Youre the woman that can save the day, my dear. Tyler, the last time I checked you were in the P.R. department and I was in the research department. But you know that what Im marketing is you. What I thought you were marketing was Emivir. But people want the whole package, you know they want you. Sloane dropped her head an almost imperceptible level, and only Howard and Kyle noticed. They looked at each other and smiled. So, Tyler, what is the crisis of the day? I know this isnt very scientific, but you can help me out of this one. He attempted his award-winning grin; it never worked on her. Remember that lobby group that said our production speed wasnt good enough because were not getting enough of Emivir on the market? Yes, Tyler? She felt she almost needed to bat her eyelashes to mock his fake wooing. They just said in a press conference that we should either out-source the production to more plants or we should open up the production of Emivir to competing markets. Sloane stood up with this stab. What? she almost yelled. I know, I know, its our drug, that would be like revoking our patent from us, and unless they get a law from the government its not going to happen. But this is making us look like were the bad guys. Tell them that were expanding production. We need to not only make sure the drugs meet up to our standards, but we also we need to make sure there is enough product for patients to not only get on the drug, but stay on the drug. What were doing is in the patients best interests. Well now that same group is also complaining that we should lower our prices because were destroying the market, since no one can afford to buy the drugs. Oh, and is that why our production plants are running at capacity and people are still waiting for more? Because no one is willing to pay for Emivir? I know, I know, but these are the masses were talking about, theyre not rocket scientists, or medical researchers, for that matter. But Tyler, the cost to produce Emivir is extremely expensive. There are so many man-made elements to this drug that its a seven-week process to completely make one batch of the drug. I know, I know - And why do people think that businesses are making so much money that they burn hundred dollar bills to light their cigars? Madison is reinvesting most of the profits from Emivir to work on better drugs for AIDS patients. Why do people not see that? I know, but there are the people - Tyler, if our drugs were so expensive, then wouldnt they be alarmingly more expensive than other protease inhibitors? And theyre not, are they? They cost just about the same amount, and Emivir is a much better product. I know, but thats not all of it. This group is also suggesting that Madison should be donating some of our drugs to poor who cant afford Emivir, you know, on a compassionate use basis. If you know all of this, why do you come to me? Youre saying that they think Madison is made of money? That money comes out of his pores? It might be a good public relations investment to - When she heard the words good public relations investment, she thought about the dream that woke her up early this morning. So what youre saying is that most people should pay for our product, but if some people beg enough, no matter how sick they are, we should give them upwards of twenty thousand dollars a year for free? I dont know why you - Look, Tyler, you know I find it extremely irritating that these people try to lay claim to our product. Thats why you come in here and tell me, in the hope that I will help you out of this. But I also find it extremely irritating that you cant keep a lid on this, seeing that youre the Marketing God, and Im in the lowly research department. Its just that - Okay, Tyler, Ive heard enough. We lowly research people have to go to work now and find the cures to diseases you want to sell to people. Tyler stopped trying to interrupt her. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and tried to smile. Tyler, why dont you use that smile of yours when you explain in a press conference why the lobbyists are wrong? You can woo anyone with that smile. Except you, Sloane. Of course. But its not me you have to convince. They looked at each other for another long moment. Now Tyler, Im sure you have a lot of important work to do, so I wouldnt want to keep you. Okay, I get it. If you need anything, Im sure youll let me know. And with that she turned back to the list Kyle was attempting to write out while this bureaucratic tragi-comedy was unfolding before the entire research department. Tyler walked toward the door. Kyle was writing notes for what would obviously become the Monday morning meeting, and not the Friday afternoon meeting. He could tell that there was no way theyd be able to meet about their plans before then. During reading Kyles notes she looked up at the wall clock above the door as Tyler walked out. I told you theres a lot to do, Kyle said. And when I came here this morning I was just thinking about how boring the scenery was in this commute. At least we get something closer to a view of water here, being just off Second Street and closer to Washington. And you know, Ive never thought about what it looked like around here. Where do you come in from? Closer to the airport, you know, by Kent. Makes the trip in easier for the office to be on the south side of Seattle. And just think, all this that we have had to deal with, and its not even nine-thirty yet. Sloane got up, told Kyle to keep writing notes for the meeting, and went out the door to get a cup of coffee. What is it about people? She thought. Why do they feel like they can go to the government using all scare tactics, to make companies give them money? She made it to the coffee machine; everyone in the break room looked at her strangely. She turned to a receptionist in the break room, one that was sitting down and taking a smoke break. Are you looking at me like that because the conversation I just had with Tyler is already being gossiped about? Youve got to admit its a strange thing when someone here can get away with giving Mr. Gillian lip like that, Ms. Emerson. But then again, we love to hear the way you talk to people. Not even registering the receptionists name she answered, Why is that? You just have the guts to say it like it is. Seldom do people get the chance to do that. Why would you say anything other than saying it the way it is? And why dont people get the chance to do it? I mean, you just say what needs to be said. Some people arent in the position of being punished for voicing an unfavorable opinion. Leaning over the table the receptionist was sitting at, she had to answer her. Let me tell you something. If you know youre right, and someone tries to squelch you, get out. Youre slowly killing yourself if you dont. The receptionist smiled at her, understanding. But the girl still felt apprehensive - even Sloane could see that. Kyle just tried to take a moment to relax. He knew relaxing was never enough, but he tried to do it every once in a while anyway. He knew it was morning, but he didnt know if his wife would get a phone message before Kyle got home from work. He thought about not calling. He knew that avoiding the call would be an easy way out, though. He reached over for a phone and dialed his number. He didnt know what he would say on the answering machine. He listened to his wifes voice on the answering machine on the phone. He listened for the beep. He still didnt know what he would say. He waited to hear the beep on the answering machine to finish before he started speaking. Hey, I thought I might be able to catch you. I didnt realize what time it was. I wanted to let you know that I thought of you. And I guess I wanted to say that I really do think about you, even when all this other crap is going on here at work. And I love you. Sometimes I forget to say that. Anyway, be good, be safe, and Ill be home tonight. Thanks for listening. If You need to, call me at work. Ill talk to you soon. Kyle put the receiver down when he was finished talking. He wondered if his wife would hear the message, or if Kyle would just tell her tonight that he tried to call. Maybe then he would hold her. That might make things better, if they had a little time together for each other. Sloane walked out of the break room with her coffee and decided that she needed to voice her opinion a little more. She walked down the hallway, took a left turn, and went up the stairs to the executive branch. She walked to the end of the hallway to the presidents door. She turned to the owners private receptionist. Is Mr. Madison seeing anyone right now? No, hes not, Ms. Emerson. Should I tell him youre here? Why, yes, I would, She responded. Why else would she be standing here asking if Mr. Madison was seeing anyone, she thought. She slid her sleeve slightly up her arm. Her watch read 9:52. Mr. Madison, Sloane Emerson is here to see you. It amazed her that everyone here knew her name, even though she was sure shed never met any of them before. You can go right in, Ms. Emerson, She heard from the desk, and with that she moved through the doors to Colin Madisons office. The one thing she liked about Colins office was that it wasnt cluttered. She imagined a presidents office being all dark wood with ornate trimmings, and knick-knacks everywhere, elaborate lamps and gold pen-holders collecting dust on the desk. Colin Madisons office was clean, bright, with one painting and a select few framed certificates on the walls. His table was glass. Everything was clean, organized. She liked Colin; she liked the fact that they were on a first-name basis and that she felt comfortable calling him by his first name. He was a businessman more than he was an executive, and she could relate to him on that level. She thought back to the Madison Pharmaceuticals Emivir party, held at his house. She met his wife, Bethany, then. When she walked through the doors she noticed two things. She noticed that everyone seemed very concerned about what clothes they were wearing and who they were talking to more than what they were talking about. But she also noticed that the Madison home was very rich, that was the only way she could describe it. She was used to the clean lines of Colins office, what she didnt expect was the antique vases and chandeliers and Persian rugs that were obviously chosen by his wife in their home. Bethany by any standard was a socialite; she concerned herself with shopping, owning just the right help around the house, and being above everyone else. Sloane could never understand this, and she couldnt understand how Colin fit in with this. But she never asked questions about his private life; she preferred to think of him as a good businessman, as a businessman who trusted her ability and gave her the opportunity to excel at her work. And it paid off for Colin Madison, so she was in good favor with the owner of the company. She walked toward the desk. Im sorry to come in unannounced, Im sure you have a lot - You know that if I let you in its because I want to hear from you. Besides, I always have time for you. Colin Madison was one of the few men, other than her father, who could successfully interrupt her. But it was only Colin Madisons interruptions that Sloane didnt mind. Now, what can I do for you? I wanted to talk to you about Tyler Gillian. Oh, yes, I just got off the phone with him. He seems to be a little upset. Colin, is it my job to tell him how to do his job? No, of course it isnt. I know what Tylers up to; hes just looking for someone to help him, so that if his plan fails hell have someone to blame. Is that what you think, Colin? He is a marketing man, you know. His job is to do marketing for this company, but its in his blood to market himself. I just want to know how youd like me to deal with him. However you want to. If he wants to scream and cry, let him. Although you know it would be helpful if you showed up for a few words at an occasional press conference. You know I dont like those press conferences, the reporters always ask the most inane questions. Couldnt Someone like Kyle Mackenzie or Howard Shindo go in my place? Maybe. You can work that out with your men and then talk to Tyler about it. But people know your name, so you can understand why theyd like to hear from you once in a while. I suppose. Ill try to be better about it... Im sorry to hear about the flack youre getting from that lobby group. You know youre doing the best for your market, which in turn is the best for your company, but no one else seems to think that way. I think they all just think youre made of money. Well, what if I am? Sloane smiled at his question. It still doesnt mean they have a right to it. Its yours, and you earned it. Colin smiled at her. You know, youre one of the few people I know who would say that to me - and mean it. Still smiling, she knew that this is why she liked Colin. I think that on some levels business is a science. You have to follow certain rules in order to keep your business successfully running. The part I dont understand is the public opinion factor, you know, the Tyler Gillian factor. And thats why youre the head of the research department. Ill make sure Tyler stops bothering you. I just wanted to know that this wasnt a part of my job, that I was right to say the things I did to Tyler. Consider the matter closed. Now, there is something I wanted to talk to you about. Yes, Colin? What is it? You know you could be conferring with other scientists more, thats why I told you that you can use the company plane whenever you needed it. I know, Ive been starting to use my e-mail account more, too, to communicate with other researchers more. I just wanted to let you know that option was still open. Just check the flight schedule, at the main reception desk, to see if its free, and its yours. Thank you, sir, I will keep that in mind. Is there anything else you need? Yes. Take a vacation. Hell, fly somewhere this weekend, the plane is free. Just get some rest. Ill do what I can, sir. Thanks. And if I dont talk to you sooner, have a good weekend. She turned and walked to the door. You have a good weekend, too, she heard Colin Madison say before his door shut behind her. As she walked back down the maze of hallways, she attempted to take the first sip of her coffee, which at this point was cold. She threw it into the first garbage can she could find. By the time she made it back to the main laboratory room, the clock above the doorway read 11:08. She couldnt believe that she didnt even sit down in her own office yet, after being in the office for five hours. Kyle was the first man to talk to her when she got back into the lab. Well, do you want the good news? He asked her. What good news? Theres another reception dinner, Kyle answered. Want to go? Its next weekend. Looking confused, she had to ask. Why is there another party? Its more of an AIDS party than a research party. But it would look good if we both went to it. An AIDS party? she thought; she still didnt know how to react to this party. A part of her didnt even want to go. Well... A friend of mine, Steve, he wants to go, you could even talk to him if you got tired of the dinner party. Im bad with names. Who is this Steve guy? A friend of mine. Ive known him since college. Hes a teacher. But he finds research talk interesting ... unless he just seems interested for my benefit. I dont know - but he wants to go, and hes not coming with anyone, so... Kyle knew it was pointless for him to suggest that Sloane and Steve should be a date; that would make Sloane want to not go. ...Is he that friend of yours that comes into the office every once in a while, shorter than me, curly brown hair? Thats the guy. So... Are you going? Pausing for a moment, she finally answered. I dont want him to think Im going to say yes so I can have a date with him. Hed want to see you because hed want someone to talk to. Fine. Tell him that Ill be doing work while Im there though. Got it, Kyle answered, noting that She wanted to leave this conversation. Give me a copy of the plans, the location, so I can get ready, she said as she started to walk away. Consider it done. Kyle watched her walk away as he spoke. Kyle hated being the matchmaker, so he did his best to act like he had no hidden motives when talking to her. He knew that Steve did like a good conversation, but he also knew that Steve liked women and that he always thought She was cute. Kyle remembered telling Steve that She would never be interested in him, and that Steves response was that he always loved a good challenge. Steve relished the thought of putting another notch on his head board with her, but Kyle knew that She wouldnt want that and that they would just end up bickering instead of talking - and he knew they would never make love. But Kyle knew that he couldnt argue with Steve; he knew that it was merely his role to set the table - rather, the stage, for Steve and Sloane.
Later She walked into the lab and people were waiting for her. Sloane! Weve been looking all over for you, one of the technicians said to her. I was in Colins office. Whats the matter? A colleague called for you. They didnt want to leave a message. They said it was urgent that they talk to you. They said theyd call back at 11:15. And did they leave a name? It amazed her that she had to ask. Oh, yes, Im sorry, it was Tobias Graham, from the universitys medical research department, the viral branch. Ill be here when he calls. Make sure the call comes straight through. She walked into her office. There was a small stack of mail sitting in the center of her desk. A few journals were sitting in a pile on the chair that faced her desk. Ill get to all that later, Sloane thought. She walked around her desk to her seat. She almost forgot what her chair felt like. She never worked in her office; when she was at work she wanted to be literally in the lab. She could read at home. She slid her sleeve slightly up her wrist. 11:12. She knew she couldnt start working on something; she had to just wait out the next three minutes. She didnt know how to wait. She took her mail from her desk and the journals from her second chair and placed them in her briefcase, thinking she could get to them during the weekend. Sitting back down, she thought about the fires she had to put out this morning. How do they expect me to get any work done, she thought, if Im saving everyone else in the company first? It seemed to be getting more and more problematic, she thought, it seemed that more and more people from different departments were asking for help to save them from their problems. She leaned back in her chair. The phone rang. Sloane Emerson. Sloane, hey, its Toby. Toby, where are you? Brazil. Look, I cant explain it now, I - Were you doing more rain forest studies? Yes, but Im on my way back to the U.S. now. I was wondering if there was any way you could meet me in Miami in a few hours. Miami? You mean this cant wait until you get back into Seattle? I could really use someone to talk to about whats happened. This research Ive been doing is a complete mess. Can I bounce some of it off of you? Sloane thought about Colins plane offer, thinking that this could be a business expense as well as a personal trip. Sure, Toby, I can make it. Where should I meet you? Toby told her his flight number; since his flight wasnt for hours she told him shed meet him at the gate when he arrived. Hanging up the phone, she picked it up immediately, dialing the main receptionist. This is Sloane Emerson. Is the plane still open this weekend? Yes it is, Ms. Emerson. Please have it ready to go to Miami within the next hour. Im leaving the office now; I need to meet a colleague. She felt like she needed to tell the receptionist that this was a business trip. No problem, Ms. Emerson. The pilot Jim will be waiting at the airport. Sloane got up and grabbed her trench coat, her umbrella and her briefcase. Would this help her with her search for the key to her puzzle? Or would this be just another dead end? She looked at the mail billowing out of the front pocket of her briefcase. At least Ill have reading material for the plane, she thought, and she walked out of the office.
chapter 2
The Rain Forest ExperimentTurning to the room, Howard asked, Do you have any idea where shes going? to everyone in the room. She was waiting for a call from Tobias Graham, a young technician answered. Oh, Toby, Kyle answered. Id assume shes meeting him somewhere. When has she ever left before six in the evening? Howard asked. She did have a strange look on her face, Kyle said. I hope shes taking a break with Toby and spending some time with him as a friend instead of talking about their research. You know her; its got to be business, Howard said. You know she wouldnt leave work early to be social. She wouldnt leave on time to be social. But on the plus side, at least no one will be barging in here looking for her. Howard turned to Kyle and smiled. Yeah, but those confrontations are entertaining to watch, Kyle smiled back. Now all we get to do today is work. They both smiled as they turned away from each other and went back to what they were working on.
Before Sloane got to the plane she checked her messages at home. Normally she did not worry about her phone, but seeing that she was in such a rush she did not even get the chance to change her answering machine. She dialed her number and pressed the code to listen to her machine messages. Hi, its your dad, didnt know how you were doing. We didnt get a chance to talk much when we saw each other last, and I know you are at work, but this was my only time between working here, so when you get the chance, give me a call. Talk to you soon. Miss Emerson, hi, its Kyles friend, Steve... I know you werent expecting someone who was almost a stranger to call, but Kyle gave me your number, and I know this will sound silly, but it would be cool to have someone to talk to next weekend. If you need to, my number is three six four ten sixty-three, cause Im always up for a refresher course on the work you guys do. Otherwise Ill see you next weekend. Those were the only two messages, though she was surprised that there were that many messages there in the first place. Making a point to write down Steves phone number and to call her dad and Steve back, she smiled, hung up the phone and made her way to the plane. After sitting down, she thought it was strange to be on this plane. She was used to seats in rows of three with no legroom and a thin aisle. This plane had large, roomy seats, some facing inward, toward the aisle, some facing forward, and there were a few cocktail tables and large counters bolted to the floor. This was a social airplane. This was a plane for entertaining guests. So, Jim, whens the flight attendant going to get on the plane and show me how to fasten my seat belt? The pilot laughed. Havent you been on enough flights to know your safety rules, Ms. Emerson? Please, call me Sloane, and yes, I think I could mimic every move those people do. You know... If there is a change in cabin pressure, your oxygen mask will come down. Place the mask over your head and continue breathing normally; the bag will not fill up, but there will be a continuous stream of oxygen. If you are taking care of a minor, place your mask on first, then assist the child. The pilot was laughing at the show she was putting on, using two fingers to point where the oxygen masks and exit rows were. And those flight attendants mock putting the mask on over their heads, but they never put the elastic around their head, because they cant mess up their hair. You do know how its done then. What I cant imagine is how infuriating it must be for those flight attendants to have to do this degrading little exercise and as theyre looking around the cabin they can see that no one, I mean, no one, is paying attention to them. And still, they have to stand there, do these silly gestures, pull the loose end of the seat belt, point to the lights along the aisle. I never thought about it, actually. And why do they point with two fingers? When they point at something, they use both their index finger and their middle finger, and it looks so unnatural. You know, theyre actually trained to use two fingers to point those things out. In some cultures, pointing with your index finger is considered very rude, so they are trained to use two fingers so as not to offend anyone. Pausing, she answered. That never occurred to me. If youve got a screaming Japanese businessman on your plane because you pointed in his direction when you were showing the safety rules, it occurs to you. I suppose it does. Well, Ms. Emerson - Sloane, please. Okay, Sloane, since there is no flight attendant here, let me tell you to keep your seat belt on during take offs and landings. And the other important thing you need to know is where the refrigerator is. Its stocked with a few sandwiches, I think theres ham, tuna salad, roast beef and turkey, and theres just about any liquor you could want in there, too. Usually people go for the champagne, and actually, I think the bubbles help with people who feel queasy flying. Got it, Jim. Can I ask another question? Of course. This plane isnt too big for you to fly by yourself? No. Actually, if this plane were any bigger by law Id need someone with me. But this plane is fine for me. Besides, they add all these control features on planes like this, like auto pilot, so this plane could literally fly itself. Why do you ask - do you not feel safe? Im just amazed that this much machinery flying in the air can be comfortably controlled by one person. Visit the cockpit while were up and Ill show you how it works. Thanks. What time should we get to Miami? Oh, right around seven oclock their time. Thanks, Jim. No problem. Jim walked into the cockpit and closed the door behind him. After leaning back, she could only close her eyes. She figured shed wait until after they took off to get her work out. Besides, she thought her briefcase should be stowed away under her seat during take-off, right? She waited for the plane to move. She enjoyed airplanes; she liked knowing that a large, heavy piece of machinery could lift her up into the air and fly her across the country, or around the world. She listened to the engine start up; the plane made its way to the runway. The engine always seemed loudest when it just started up, it always forced her to pay to the motors the attention they deserved. Someone made this engine, She thought. Someone made it, not merely put it together, but someone created this engine. Someone figured out a way to create the power to fly, to move, faster and faster, with this machinery. Someone created this. I want to create like that as all that kept going through her head.. Leaning back in her chair, she felt the plane moving faster and faster down the runway. She could feel the first wheel leave the ground, then the others. She was in the air. With the nose of the plane pointing so high, it felt like she was almost lying down. She felt the pressure of gravity pulling all of her body into the seat. It felt like her clothes were being pressed to her skin. It reminded her of when she would go to amusement parks when she was a child and go in the spinning room where the floor fell out from underneath her. Once she accidentally swallowed her gum on that ride; it was almost impossible for her not to have swallowed her gum, the force of the ride spinning was strong against her. Having the chance to lean back in her seat, she got to enjoy the ride, until the plane leveled off. Straightening her hair, she opened her eyes and sat upright. She reached under her seat and looked into her briefcase. She almost pulled out her computer, but she decided that her notepad and pen would do the same job. She saw the messages to call her dad and Steve. A flurry of thoughts went through her head; she didnt entirely understand why her dad was calling her, she thought they had caught up at dinner, and then she thought about what she should make of the phone call from Steve. Men arent usually calling me, Sloane first thought, but then she thought that it might be just what she needed, someone to talk to about work that wasnt in the field, someone that might actually want to listen. Then she thought about the work she had to do when she got back to the office, and she wrote down: 1. Improve Emivir 2. Integrase Inhibitor 3. Improve side effects and ease-of-use for drugs Then she stared at her list; she drew a line under her list and wrote: ------------- 4. a vaccine 5. a cure After putting her pen down, she looked out the window. Its not as bad as it seems, she said under her breath, looking at the clouds the airplane was flying over outside her window. She had to look over her list. There has to be something Im missing. Just look at this from a different angle, she thought. She looked at her list. She stopped on point three. She picked up her pen, and drew another line again. ------------- 6. psychological treatment 6a. alleviate depression, may help immune system 6b. help memory to take drugs, and keep positive attitude 7. homeopathy 7a. nutrition, diet and herbs to improve general health 7b. herbs to alleviate nausea for patients who experience side effects and to make injections more plausible 7c. vitamins and herbs with effects on immune system 7d. is there a psychologically positive effect of eating things good for you? ------------- Homeopathy stuck in her head as she looked at her list of notes on homeopathy. She was surprised that she knew nothing about this. She never thought of the nutritional aspect of illness and health. She remembered that in order to get her degrees, she needed only three hours - one class - on nutrition. And no one in the medical community in America seems to give anything credence for health benefits other than a drug - at least not on paper. Tearing the paper off of the note pad, she put it in her briefcase. She pulled out her mail and her journals, placed them all on the table before her and started reading. A few hours later, while she was still reading, she heard her pilots voice over the speakers in the cabin. Have you been working all of this time? Have you eaten any food yet? You have to be starving by now. The door to the cockpit was open; Jim was glancing back at her. Okay, okay, Ill get some food. Good. You know it will be after dinner by the time you get settled in Miami, she heard over the speakers in the cabin. She knew he was right and slowly walked to the back of the plane and grabbed a turkey sandwich and a can of juice. She looked at the champagne in the refrigerator before closing the door. Instead of going to her seat, she went to the cockpit. Maybe Jim was right, she thought, she probably needed a break from her work. Standing in the doorway, she looked at the tiny cockpit. Mind if I come in here? Ive never been in a cockpit before, and yes, I would like to see how you fly this plane all by yourself. Sure, come on in. theres an empty seat here. Sitting down, she opened the wrapping from the sandwich and peeled it down. Is it okay to eat in here? Oh, wait, will you need some food? I should have asked before. No, Im fine, I ate right before we left Seattle. With eyes transfixed over all the controls, she then looked up at the sky in front of her. The sky unfolded rows and rows of billowing clouds in the panoramic picture windows before her. You know, the sky looks a lot better here than from the passenger seats. You know, seeing the world from this high is going to be a lot better when you have a window bigger than a magazine cover. Sitting for a few minutes in silence, eating her sandwich and drinking her apple juice, she smiled while Jim radioed controllers at the ground to check for weather conditions. A few minutes passed, and then she spoke. Jim? Yes? What kind of feeling do you get when youre flying a plane? You mean, while Im in the air? Yes. Youre in this cockpit, dealing with all of these controls, high above the ground. Do you ever get lonely or scared? Lonely? Scared? No, not at all, Ms. Emerson. Sloane. Sorry. No, Sloane, I dont get scared at all. I feel, well, I dont know how to say it, but when Im up here I feel like I have more control than I do anywhere else in the world. This is my space, this is my domain, and it makes me feel, well, I dont quite know how to put it... Jim paused while speaking. Alive, I guess. I guess I could feel scared, but here I know that if I do something wrong its my fault, theres no one here to tell me how to do my work or to second guess me. I never get tired of flying airplanes. And as for lonely, well, no, I dont feel lonely, either. I guess Im alone up here a lot, but theres a difference between being alone and being lonely. And when Im up here, flying, I could never feel lonely. I feel like I have everything I need right in this little cockpit, flying in the air. Are you sure you dont need anything? I think Im going to put my work away, I could bring you something. No, really, Im fine. Yeah, you should pack your stuff up, I think were going to be landing in about twenty minutes. Really? Weve been on the plane that long? Yes. Apparently you lose yourself in your work, too. Sloane walked to the door of the cockpit. I suppose I do, she said as she walked back to her seat to prepare for the descent into Miami International Airport. The airplane arrived at the airport only about fifteen minutes before Tobys plane was landing, so She didnt have to wait long for Toby to arrive. She stood at the security gate, just past the customs agents, pulling out the last journal from her briefcase. She leaned against the railing along the window. Was he was going to give her any answers, as all she kept asking herself. She knew that she was supposed to be there for him as a friend; thats why he asked her to meet him in Miami. But she knew she wanted information about his search for a solution to the AIDS mystery. She wanted to get somewhere with her search, and she traveled across the country to try to get it. Toby walked through the passenger terminal toward the security gates. He spotted her before she saw him, which is the way he preferred it to be: he could then look at her for one long moment before having to collect himself. Something about Sloane Emerson appealed to Toby, but he could never understand why. But shes not very feminine looking, Toby thought, ...her jaw is even sharp and rigid... Toby saw her sitting on a ledge along the window at the side of the terminal. Her trench coat was over her right arm, and she was holding her journal in her right hand, and holding the strap of her overnight bag on her shoulder in her left hand. She was wearing beige slacks and a white button-down shirt. He could see that she was wearing a gray tank top underneath her shirt. Her hair kept falling into her eyes; she continually had to let go of her luggage strap to guide her hair back behind her ear with her fingertips. She stared at her journal. For that moment, she saw nothing other than the words she was reading and processing in her brain. And for that moment, Toby could see nothing other than her. It took him about thirty seconds to be processed by customs. He walked out of the hallway and to the open area where she was waiting and started walking toward her. She looked up at him. Toby! I didnt even see you coming. Standing up, she crammed her journal into her briefcase and put her arms around him. Toby smiled. That was the warmest greeting youve ever given me. I forget that my friends need reminders from me that Im their friend. How was your flight? Fine. I dont have any luggage, so let me just run into the bathroom and then we can go to the hotel. Oh, a hotel, she answered. I completely forgot about where Id stay. Dont worry. I made sure I got a room with two beds. Im sure I could get my own room. What for? Look, dont bother buying a room, it doesnt make any sense. youve got a point... So, get to the bathroom, will you? Toby smiled at her again and walked to the bathroom. It occurred to her then that Toby was smiling all the time. She couldnt actually imagine that he was that happy all the time, it just couldnt be possible. She watched him walk to the bathroom; as she watched him she thought that he looked like he belonged on a beach in California and not in a laboratory in the dreariest city in the United States. His blond hair was long on the top and short on the sides and bounced with him whenever he walked. His usual five oclock shadow looked like little spears of copper and light brown. He almost always wore jeans, faded ones, with a t-shirt and sometimes a sports coat. He looked like he needed a convertible to complete the outfit. They walked in stride through the airport and found a taxi. The Pelican Coast Hotel, Toby said as the taxi sped off toward the expressway. Toby checked in while Sloane stood by his side. She thought it was strange that she was with a man in a hotel; she usually checked herself in, because she usually traveled alone. They went to their room. Sloane started unpacking her bag. Cant that wait? Lets get a drink at the bar. I want to hang my clothes so that they dont get more wrinkled. Okay. How about I meet you down there? Sure. Toby bounced his way out of the door. Noticing that he was his usual happy self, she still thought that he seemed much better than he was when he called from South America earlier that day. She walked over to the thermostat. It was 76 degrees in the room. She turned the temperature down and took off the white blouse that was over her tank top before heading downstairs. Toby was sitting at a corner table in the hotel bar. It was relatively quiet; usually the tourists went to other bars on the weekends. He saw her walk through the lobby and enter the bar. He saw that She had taken off her white shirt in her room and was wearing only the tank top with her slacks. Toby wasnt expecting this. He knew She thought of her clothes as only functional garments; that they were doing a job for her. It was warm in the hotel; she wouldnt have a need for her white blouse; it served its function; it could now rest from its duty. But now he saw her shoulders. He noticed how she moved around the tables through the room. When she maneuvered around a table or a chair she turned one shoulder to the front, as if it were a guiding force, as if she was steering with her shoulders, as if she were about to shove her way through a crowd in a room. She held her purse in her hand, and even in how her arms held her purse, it seemed as if her limbs consciously knew they served a function and should do it effectively. Toby was transfixed on her shoulders and arms as she made her way to the table. He stood up and pulled out the chair for her. As he was seating her, She asked, Okay, Im here. Care to tell me whats going on? Is it always business with you? Toby, you called me this morning upset, asking me to fly across the country, and now that Im here you act like nothing has happened. Can you explain it to me? The waiter walked up and placed a wine glass down in front of her. I hope a Chardonnay was a good pick. I didnt know what youd want. The waiter finished pouring and brought a shot of whiskey and a draft beer for Toby. The waiter walked away. Shots, already? She asked. Look, Ill get it out, but I just wanted to say, and he raised his shot glass in the gesture of a toast, and She followed his lead, that Im really happy that you came here. I mean, Im glad that you thought this was worth traveling to Miami for. I do need to talk to you, but I just want you to know that I appreciate the effort youve made. Thanks. Their glasses clinked; Toby threw his head back with the glass and grabbed his beer to chase it down while She watched him and took the first sip of her wine. Look, remember the last trip I took to South America, to look into natural materials that may have anti-viral effects on humans? The natural materials, and yes, and Toby, Im still amazed that you got the funding for it. You didnt even know how to go about looking for material for AIDS drugs. You forget that I work for the government, you and your little company probably would never have funded it, but the government did. Thats why I like working for the university. All I had to do was make the proposal sound nice. You just had to make it sound nice, She replied, almost with a condescending undertone. Yes, you know what I mean. So getting money doesnt necessarily depend on merit or talent? Oh, dont start, I didnt mean anything by it. And you said the government pays for it? Well, yes, to the university. Who pays the government? What? Who pays the government? Um, taxes, I guess. Yes, they do. And who pays taxes? Okay, you can stop now. Im just trying to gently remind you that your money has to come from somewhere, its not like the government is giving you free money, it was taken from somewhere else, taken from all the people who pay taxes. Sloane - That everyone pays money so that you can go to South America searching for plants when you dont even know exactly what it is youre looking for. Sloane - Okay, okay, Im done, Im getting off my soapbox now. Thanks. So on your last trip... So on my last trip I managed to find something from the sap on the back of some bark there, and we brought it back to the States, and it seemed to do a very good job of fighting the virus. Yes, you told me about it, what was it, two months ago? Yes. In fact, theres a little write-up about you and your findings in a medical journal I was reading on the flight over here. Really? Did you read it? Sloane did her best to put a coy expression on her face. Maybe... Toby laughed. We did a bunch of laboratory tests on it and it seemed to be doing really well, so we administered it to four test subjects. Half of them showed marked improvements in their condition - their viral load dropped and their T-Cell count shot up. For the other two the substance had no impact. Still, thats great, with a little engineering you can find out what made the substance not work for the others and alter it to give it a higher success rate. Exactly. In doing all of these tests, we used up all of the drug. Oh, so you were going back now to get more of the bark. To get the sap - not the bark. So you were going back to get more of the sap. Exactly. Toby emphasized his last word too much; Sloane was sure he intentionally placed too much emphasis on that word. She looked at him for a moment. And... how did the trip go? How did my trip go? Toby almost laughed as he signaled the waiter for another shot. I go back to the same place where I found that tree, because you know how rain forests go, a tree there might be the only one of its species, or one like it may be very far away from it instead of right next to it, its a very diverse and very rich area. The waiter brought up the shot; Toby held up his finger while he did the shot and handed the shot glass to the waiter and gestured for another. I go back to that same place where I found that tree, and you know what I found? He took a swig of his beer. What happened, Toby? What happened is that some American cattle-ranching beef company or something bought a thousand acres of the land my tree was on and they cleared all one hundred acres for cattle ranch. Cleared. I mean, my tree was right smack-dab in the middle of the hundred acres. And it was completely gone. This field looked like it could have been right in the middle of Illinois or Iowa. Not a tree in sight. There was a little fence all the way around and a little sign every hundred yards at the fence line with the company name on it. So you had to come back empty-handed. Yes, I had to come back empty-handed. Is there any way that company could have known that researchers were using the material on that land for disease research? I mean, could you have notified the government or something? I did notify the government. But how accurately are they going to keep records in different departments of these things? They make a note of what Im doing and they seem to just put it in a file cabinet. Hell, they could have put it in the circular file for all the good it did. When someone wanted to buy the land, the government was the first to want to make a penny out of it. Well, of course they want the money for it. And if no one really knew... Theres so much bureaucracy, no one knows what the guy next to them is doing, unless theyre doing something wrong. Sloane looked at him for a moment. Is there anything I can do? Get me that tree back. Toby - Im sorry. It all flashed in her mind that she should learn to be more social, especially in these situations. She did the best she could on such short notice by saying, I mean, do you need to talk more? What can I do right now to make you feel better? Toby was surprised by her concern. He responded by stating, Its not like you to make such an offer. I didnt make an offer. The waiter brought another shot to Toby. Point well taken. The waiter walked away. Toby looked at his shot, then at her. You know what you can do for me? Name it. Just have a drink with me. Isnt that what Im doing? Toby looked at her, then at her half-full glass of wine. Waiter, She called out, Two more shots of whiskey and two pints of his draft. Toby could hardly believe his eyes. He smiled almost inquisitively at her. The waiter brought back two shots and beers. Sloane picked up the shot with Toby and they held them in the air. Toby counted to three; She followed his lead and they both drank. Sloane shivered after drinking the shot and followed his lead in going for the beer to wash the whiskey down. Toby thought it was cute that she was doing this for him, knowing that she didnt drink much, and he watched her as he drank.
Sloane took the hotel key from Tobys pocket and leaned Toby up against the wall. Now you stay right there young man, dont move, Sloane ordered Toby while she reached over and opened the door. She kept her foot in the doorway to hold the door open while she nudged Toby toward the door. Okay, Im not guiding you anymore, get to the bed or bathroom yourself. Toby lifted his head and looked at her and smiled. What, you cant help a guy in need? he asked. Not when I know hes perfectly capable of doing the job himself. With that Toby burst out laughing. Only then did she realize what it sounded like she meant. Toby walked to the bathroom, splashed some water on his face and walked toward the bed. Sloane stopped and leaned against the wall and watched Toby slowly walk over to the bed and fall face-first onto the bed. She smiled, grabbed a t-shirt and shorts from her drawer and went to the bathroom to change. A few minutes later she walked out into the room and pulled the covers off of her bed. Toby was in the same position as he was when she walked into the bathroom. After she got into bed she heard Toby mutter, Why did this happen? What, Toby? Why did this have to happen? Toby, just get some rest. But I was so close. Considering it for a moment, she thought: on some level it hardly did seem fair. That rain forest was much more valuable than a cattle ranch. But all she could think was: why did this have to happen? It didnt have to. The company that bought it had a right to buy that land; they just made a bad business decision. Then again, if no one knew this patch of land was being used for research, how would they have known the value of it? The government kept poor track of things - they made a bad mistake by making the sale. I know you were so close. But theres no use in lamenting over that when theres work to be done. Are you sure theres no way you can use anything whats left from the samples and try to replicate synthetically? She heard Toby start to snore. Smiling, she got up and walked over to his bed. She untied his shoes. She tried to push him up the bed, so his head was on a pillow. She slid his jacket off his shoulders. She figured he could sleep in his t-shirt and jeans. She got up and turned off the light next to her bed. She sat upright in the dark for a while. She couldnt stop thinking. There would have to be a way to replicate that tree sap, even if he used it all in tests, as long as he kept some of the results. Maybe he could search other rain forests nearby to see if there was any chance a tree like this existed somewhere else. She thought about Colin Madison, telling her that she has a green light financially to do whatever she needed for research. That she could use the company plane whenever she wanted. But he offered that to her because she proved her talent and created a good product. She made strides and she was being rewarded for it. Toby was given the green light because he worded his guesses appropriately and got lucky. How could she? She couldnt blame Toby for using the system? The government allows it, the government has created this system where independent panelists of people unrelated to the field dole out millions of dollars to the people who have a grin like Tyler Gillian, or who have a lobby group that talks the loudest. Maybe she should blame Toby, though. She knew she didnt want that university job; she knew she wanted to be rewarded for her merits and nothing else. Toby liked the fact that the university had this caste system that gave him security in his job. Now he had a bad break. He has to learn from it. After trying to think about the rain forest, she wondered: why would it be so hard to find another tree? She realized how little she knew about the planets rain forests. The tree had to be seeded from another tree, right? Is his search over? She got up and walked over to her briefcase, by the window. She quietly pulled out her computer and plugged it into the wall. I can get on line tonight, she thought, and see what is on the Internet about the rain forests, and possibly about the possible relationship of AIDS and HIV to it. Looking out the window at the darkness for a minute, she noticed a few boat lights moving along the water. She saw the lights of the Miami were still alive, at two in the morning, even though Toby was out for the night. She saw the lights of a few bars crowded with people. And then, like a page ripped down the center, next to all the lights was the ocean, a void of blackness. Anything is conquerable, She said under her breath as she closed the drapes from the ocean versus the city and went to bed. Her Internet research could wait until morning.
But she still thought about the Internet research, even when she wasnt on line. This would be something she could stand some help on, she thought. Maybe the team at Madison would be able to use the Internet accounts to get more information on specific parts of the problem for the Madison group. She knew that if there was a concern for the rain forests on the Internet, then there would probably be concerns - and a number of web sites - about things like alien abductions and government conspiracies and AIDS and homeopathy and more. And if it was on the Internet, she could find it. And so could anyone at Madison.
At ten in the morning Toby rolled over. He thought he heard a slight tapping of rain outside his window. When he opened his eyes, however, he realized he was in Miami and not in Seattle, where he would expect the rain to be falling outside his window. He turned over and looked at the window. The sun beamed in, streaming around her, sitting at the table in front of the window. The light sound of rain was Sloane typing into her computer. How long have you been up? Toby asked. Since six. He rolled back over to check the clock; he remembered that he was still dressed and checked his watch instead. He picked his head back up to look at her. Youve been up for four hours? Why didnt you wake me? You needed your rest. Besides, I wanted to get some work done. Is that all you think about? Sometimes. Toby let his head fall back on to the pillow. How are you feeling? Sloane asked. Oh, my head hurts. Surprise. I just need some food. Youve had breakfast, right? Oh, I forgot. No, I havent eaten yet. I can understand letting your mind go into overdrive, but doesnt your body remind you that you have to maintain it? Im fine, besides, Ive been so amazed at the information on the Internet that I havent been able to stop working. Now I know why Colin wanted me to get on line so bad. What do you mean? Toby started to sit up. Ive been using the e-mail they gave us, right? Well, the boss kept telling me to use the Internet, and I dont even think hes ever been on it, I dont think he knows how it works. And Ive never had a real need to get on line before. But this morning I was thinking, I dont know much of anything about the rain forests, really, so maybe I can get on line and learn something. Madison Pharmaceuticals has a T-1 line as well as a national dial up number, so I just got on line. I checked my e-mail, and then I got on to the Internet to see what I could find about the rain forests. One question before you go on. Sure. Are you going to let me take you out to breakfast when youre done? You can take me to breakfast now, as long as I can tell you what Ive learned. Toby got up out of bed. Okay, Im ready. For breakfast, or my story? Both. Im dressed, arent I? Sloane laughed. Toby walked to the washroom; he turned back and looked at Sloane. and spoke. Maybe you can wait until I have some coffee before you tell me your story. Its a deal. Toby ran some water through his hair while she closed her programs on her computer and shut the laptop off so they could go to a breakfast diner. The both of them both simultaneously turned their coffee cups over as they sat down in the booth of the diner. The waitress came over and filled them up. Toby curled his left hand around the mug. Okay, Im ready. You know, its not that big of a deal... Oh, just spit it out. Okay, so I decided to go on the Internet to find out what I could about rain forests. So I went to a search engine and typed the words rain forest in to see what I could get. I got so many entries that Id never be able to check all of the web sites. So I typed in the words rain forest destruction in and got a number of sites to tell me about why and how the rain forests are being destroyed. And? Toby asked. And did you know that the three primary reasons rain forests are being cleared are farming, cattle ranching and logging? It makes sense, I suppose. Did you know that orange juice sold in the United States that is from concentrate has oranges from groves in Brazil, on what used to be rain forest land? Really? Yes, just check the fine print on the package. Usually it will say something like oranges from Florida, Mexico and Brazil. Right on the package. Wow, I had no idea. The waitress walked over. Are you ready to order? Sure. Id like a Spanish omelet and hash browns, white toast. Would you like any orange juice with that? Sloane glanced at Toby, then looked back at the waitress. Is it from concentrate? The waitress answered that it was. No, thank you, she answered. The waitress continued, And for you, sir? Two scrambled eggs, two sausage links, hash browns, and toast? Sure. Actually, miss, can I change my order? What hes having sounds good. You want exactly what hes having? Yes please. Okay. Itll be up in just a few minutes. So, Sloane turned back to Toby, I thought it was interesting to learn this stuff about rain forest destruction. Most of the people that want to save the rain forests are talking about atmospheric changes, but theres no proof in that, and theres not even any proof that theres permanent damage to the ozone. I was surprised to find that people were arguing about saving the rain forests from that angle and not from the medical research angle. Good point, I guess. So then I went back to the search engine and typed the words rain forest AIDS to see if there was anything. Get this. There was even a site about the monkey theory about how the first human got AIDS - You mean the theory that a monkey transferred the virus to a human by biting his butt? A virus jumped from animals to humans? Do you even believe that theory? Just listen, I never said I believed that. What Im saying is that this site suggested that it was the destruction of the rain forest that caused the spread of AIDS in humans. From monkeys. Not from monkeys biting a human butt. Toby laughed. The theory is that a man ate monkey meat that was contaminated with a virus, not that a monkey bit a man in the butt. But still - Im just telling you what was on this one site. The suggestion it was making is that not only do rain forests contain a plethora of rare animals and plants, so too it could contain rare viruses. A plethora? And records of some viruses that have erupted since the beginning of rain forest destruction in African towns are spread by the air, not just by blood, which could mean the beginning of more drastic epidemics. And you dont need to make fun of me because Im coherent enough to use big words like plethora in the morning, mister drinker. Mister drinker? Im going to keep telling my story. No one is stopping you. She mockingly glared at him. They posted the theory that if AIDS mutates as much as it has been known to, it may mutate to the point where it can be transmitted by air. Thats not going to happen. Are we sure? If it is possible for it to mutate to that point, it will not be for years and years and years. Im sure there will be a cure within the next decade or so. Still, its something to ponder, something to spur you on a little more, isnt it? Sloane paused to eat some of her eggs. There were a few more sites, and most of them were about herbs and vitamins and things people were selling - products that had origins from the rain forest. Like what? The waitress checked on their food. Could I have some hot sauce? Sloane asked the waitress. Toby looked at her with just a tinge of disgust. Sloane answered his glance with, Just because youre hung over, doesnt mean I am. The waitress brought the hot sauce to the table, and Sloane continued. The other web sites primarily contained products with health benefits derived from plant extracts and the like from rain forest materials. There was an immune system rejuvenator made from rain forest materials, phytonutrients, colloidal minerals and even a tea to help with energy that was derived from a tree bark. And you think they all work? I have no idea, I havent had the drugs, the extracts, or the research facilities to check them all out. I would say probably not. My point is that there are other people out there looking for cures to diseases, utilizing the rain forest, people that you might be able to communicate with. People making a wonder tonic and selling it on the web do it because it makes them more money than driving from town to town and gathering a crowd for a sales pitch. Rev up your romantic life! Get the energy of your youth! Everything you need is in this handy... I get it, Toby, Sloane answered. Super-potent... Toby cut in. Toby, enough, Sloane protested. Energy tonic! Toby continued. Are you not interested in finding a way to solve your problem? You think Ill find it by people selling energy tonics? With ingredients possibly from the same place as your research materials? Look, one of the herbs, or whatever it was, was one that claimed to help with peoples immune systems and had testimonials from AIDS patients. They said the materials were from a Peruvian rain forest. They found that this substance, from the inside of a tree bark, also helped with phagocytosis. Toby looked up. She added, Is this sounding a little more familiar now? Toby leaned back in his booth. Okay, Ill let you eat the rest of your breakfast in peace. Just let me know when you want the web site address. I saved it for you. Youre doing my work for me while I sleep off a hangover, because Im too mad about my lack of success. Dont think for a minute Im doing it for you. This is a puzzle, solving this disease. And Im a sucker for puzzles. You know me, I cant help but pick up a piece and try to make it fit. Besides, this research makes me think of other avenues I could be taking in helping people with AIDS. She smiled at him. They ate for a moment in silence. Hey, are you going to use the jelly for your English muffin? No. Here, take some. They got back from breakfast and checked out of the hotel. Hey, Toby stopped her in the lobby, What do you say we have the hotel hold our bags for an hour or two and we take a walk on the beach before we go? I havent even been able to spend any time in Miami, and Ive got two hours before my flight takes off for Seattle. By the way, what airline are you on? Maybe we could go back together. I would if I could, but Ive got the private plane this weekend. Well, well, well, Ms. Emerson, youre really the big-wig over there, arent you? She started to give a humorous sneer as he paused before speaking. Thats what I get for giving up the university job. Well, can you at least go for a walk? Sure, let me phone Jim. Sloane pulled her cellular phone out of her jacket pocket. Jim? Its Sloane. Yes, I suppose you knew that... Is it possible to take off in maybe around two hours? ... I didnt know how long Id have to be here, but I didnt expect it to be all weekend... Yes, I know Im supposed to rest. No, I should probably just fly back this afternoon... Okay. It can be ready? Great. Should I just meet you at the airport? Okay, Ill see you then. Thanks. She hung up her phone as Toby took her baggage and gave it to the clerk at the registration desk. You know, you really should go somewhere for the rest of the weekend, Toby said once they got to the waters edge. Theyre letting you take the plane - dont you have anyone youd like to visit? I mean, youve got the company plane, you could just go for a while. I suppose, but really, who would I go see? And I want to use this for business, and business only. This isnt supposed to be a personal trip. Is that what your boss said? He waited for her snide answer as they got to the beach and started walking. Well, actually, no, he told me to take a break for the weekend and go somewhere. Well? Go visit someone somewhere. What, just call them and say, Can I see you tonight? Sure. You know youll regret it if you dont. I doubt that. But Ill think about it. They walked together along the water in silence. The water is beautiful, Toby said, looking out at the ocean. The ocean is such a powerful force. I mean, it covers two thirds of the planet. Just one strong wave could pull you under and kill you. And yet we humans are fascinated with it. Were over half water. We want to ride boats over it. We want to swim in it. We want to surf on it, or ski on it, or float around in it. And we just want to stare at it, listen to the waves crash into the shore, and smell the salt air. What a love affair we have with it. Sloane thought for a minute about what he said. I think youre right, she answered to him. Yeah? he asked. Yeah. she answered. Im not used to you agreeing with me. Putting in a dramatic pause, she then spoke. Ive agreed with you on many things, Toby. But for me, the beauty of this scene is more than that, more than the beauty of nature, more than the beauty of the ocean. I like looking at the water because it reminds me of my life, about human life. It shows what nature is like, and it shows what weve done with nature. Yes, even though a tide can pull us under and kill us, we are still capable of going scuba diving with sharks and maneuvering boats over it. This water is beautiful because of our involvement with it, our choice to use it to our own ends. But on some levels what I think is most beautiful about this scene, she said, moving her arm in a circle before her, is that all of this, the waves crashing, the beauty and peacefulness of nature, is sitting here right up against high-rises. You like the buildings here? It would look so much nicer if there was nothing here other than the water. What I like is the fact that weve built these buildings, right at a place where the people in them can really enjoy the water. What I like is looking at the beauty of the buildings - the steel, the glass, the functionality of the products of the human mind - poised right up against the beautiful scene from nature. I dont know if I agree with you. The best of man and the best of nature, all in one. Thats what makes this scene astonishing for me. Ive seen sunsets reflecting off of skyscrapers that were more beautiful than any sunrise at this beach. Toby looked at her and smiled. You were always a strange bird... Would you want me any other way? Of course not. Thats my story and Im sticking with it. They both smiled and continued walking. They turned around to walk back toward the hotel. During the remainder of their little trip they walked in silence. Sloane thought about all the avenues that going on the Internet had brought to her attention that morning. She thought about that list she had started writing on the airplane. Then she thought about all of the difficulties her staff had been going through trying to improve Emivir. She was beginning to feel the weight of the world upon her shoulders again. She thought about Tyler, and the lobbyists. She thought about the patients the lobbyists claimed blamed Madison Pharmaceuticals for not giving them drugs for free. Havent I done enough? she thought. What do they want from me? They got back to the hotel and Toby picked up their luggage. They shared a taxi together to the airport. Sloane, Toby said, You look like youre already dreading going back to work. Its not the work that I dread. What then? I - Sloane couldnt get the words out. I dont know what it is. I keep thinking that I do good work, but most people just want more. Are you working for them or for you? Thanks for asking that. But for me, of course, and I want more from me too, I mean, I want to accomplish more as well, but when everyone is fighting you... Believe me, I know what you mean, Toby answered. Sloane remembered his failed rain forest experiment and tried to empathize. But I know you, you love your work. Hell, you were looking into research about the rain forest while I was passed out from drinking myself into a stupor and out of a depression over this whole mess. You love this; its in your blood. The thing is, you just have to forget about the people that bother you. Theyll never truly get in your way. Starting to smile, she said, Youre right, Toby. What? Youre agreeing with me again? The taxi pulled up to the airport and Toby handed her the baggage from the trunk. When I get into town Ill send you the web site address for the rain forest pages I was reading. Thanks. And thanks for coming to help me out here. If you need it, Ill fly across the country for you. Thanks, Toby, she said, smiling and starting to walk away. And thats a big deal, because Id actually have to pay for my ticket. She laughed as she turned back toward her terminal and Toby walked toward his. Sloane met up with Jim at the end of the terminal and he walked her to the plane. Im surprised you dont want to stay here, or go somewhere else. Youve got me for the weekend, you know. She stood outside in front of the plane. She thought for a moment, pulling out her cellular phone. If I wanted to change our destination, could we do it? Where were you thinking? New York. There shouldnt be a problem. He looked at the phone in her hand. Do you need to call someone first? Can you give me a minute? Sure. Come up when youre ready - I can confirm where we can land in New York from the plane, so let me know where were going, okay? Thanks, Jim, she said as she watched Jim walk up the stairs and duck his head as he got into the plane. She looked at the phone. She planned to make two calls; the first one was to the phone number that was left on her answering machine. A young man answered the phone, and didnt seem very alert when he answered the phone. Hello? he answered. Hello, is Steve there? This is he. Who is this? This is Sloane Emerson, I work with Kyle, I was returning your call, but did I wake you up? I didnt mean to - Steve interrupted her so she didnt have to explain. Im wide awake. I thought you were ignoring me by not calling me back. How are you? Im about to fly from Miami to New York, I think... I got your message during my trip, but I didnt have much of a chance to call you until now. Dont worry about it. And why Miami and New York? Miami for business, and New York for social reasons. I am trying to not think about work all the time. I know you dont know me very well, but if you are trying to be more social, I can be a good listener. Listener? she asked. Sounding board, conversation friend - I work for the newspaper and do have a good command over the English language... Sloane smiled at his remark and noted that this is what she had to learn to do more of. Im not very good at being social, I am usually doing research at home or at work, so youll have to forgive me. Should I wait for you to call when you get back in to town then? Steve asked. Knowing this call would cost her money on the cellular phone, she agreed and said she would talk to him later. Then she dialed New York. She heard a voice answer. Hello? She didnt bother with a formal hello. Carter? Yes, who is this? Im having a hard time hearing you. Carter, its Sloane, Sloane Emerson. Im standing next to an airplane getting ready to go. Where are you? Carter asked. Miami. Were about to take off. Where are you going? Thats why Im calling. Ive got the company plane for the weekend, and everyone has been begging me to take time off, and I was wondering if you - Tell me what time I should pick you up and Ill be waiting for you. You dont have any plans? Im not interrupting anything? Just call when you know where youre going to be and when. No arguing. Thanks, Carter. Ill call you in about an hour. Ill see you soon. After they said goodbye, she looked at the phone in her hand for a moment, glancing up at the plane. She pushed the antenna back into the phone and made her way up the stairs. She walked to the cockpit while men closed the airplane door behind her. She could hear the stairs being rolled away from the side of the plane. Where are we going, Ms. Emerson? I have a first name! she said, laughing at how cordial he was trying to be. She smiled at him. Jim repeated, Sloane, where are we going? We could go home... but then again, its Saturday afternoon. We could make it to New York in just a few hours. New York it is, Jim proudly said as he turned back toward the controls. Anything in particular youre going to do while youre there? Visit a friend, she answered. Someone who can bring my spirit back to me.
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PHILOSOPHY MONTHLY JUSTIFY YOUR EXISTENCE
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A NOTE ON EMBRACING OFFICERS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT Matthew Lee Bain
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A Brief Defense of Free Will By Tibor Machan The Importance of having Free Will
This is not a common topic of discussion outside the discipline of philosophy and some other fields.
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Protein and Calcium Myths
People are increasingly concerned about adopting healthier diets. However, many are prevented from necessary changes because of myths about certain nutrients. For example, it is the common wisdom that one should eat ample amounts of meat in order to get adequate protein and large amounts of dairy products in order to get adequate calcium to avoid osteoporosis.
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Religion and Objectivism Diana Mertz Brickell The question was posed as to whether Objectivism and any form of religion is compatible. Perhaps I am not the best person to answer this question, since I have never believed in God, nor have I ever had an affinity for any form of religion. Thus I am not terribly sympathetic with attempts to reconcile any form of religion with Objectivism, although I hope to be able to coherently explain why they are incompatible. To start our with, we need to be sure exactly what we mean when we speak of religion. Being that religions and their tenets make claims about most (if not all) branches of philosophy, it seems reasonable to classify religions as a type of philosophy. But we refer to Christianity and Paganism and Islam as religions per se because of the added element of belief in the supernatural, which will give rise to their claims about (mainly) epistemology and ethics. Certainly numerous philosophies entail some supernatural element, but this tenet does not effect the rest of the philosophy in a significant fashion, whereas some philosophies (i.e. religions) are based almost entirely on their conception of the supernatural. In epistemology, the result of reliance upon the supernatural is that the system is not justifiable with reference to reality, and so faith must be considered a valid means of knowledge. Faith becomes an integral part of any religion, because there is simply no reason and sense-based means of knowing the supernatural. I would define religion as a philosophical system which justifies its tenets with respect to the supernatural and which requires faith from its adherents. This definition isn't too far off from those given in Webster's, which include: the service and worship of God or the supernatural, commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance, a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith. So is Objectivism at all compatible with religion? Very simply, no. Faith is a completely invalid means to knowledge and consistently undermines the use of reason. The supernatural is also out of the bounds of Objectivism, since claims about the supernatural generally involve a mind/body dichotomy, primacy of consciousness, and a rejection of the law of identity, not to mention the sheer lack of evidence for the existence of the entities involved. Even the derivative tenets of Objectivism significantly conflict with religion. The emphasis of religions on duty, sacrifice, the value of suffering and martyrdom, the mind/body dichotomy, altruism, etc. are simply incapable of being reconciled with Objectivism. Now, I don't know a whole lot about Zen Buddhism, and if the religion is in some way exempt from the above criticism, then I do apologize. But from what I understand, there is an emphasis on the inadequacy of logic and language, a rejection of the law of non-contradiction, and the existence of some source of pure wisdom. Certainly none of these ideas are even remotely compatible with Objectivism. But before I finish up here I want to caution you not to take me to mean that there is no truth in any religious system. There are true and useful ideas in almost any philosophy, and we should not reject those ideas because the philosophy as a whole is rejected. At the very least, we should maintain a willingness to delve into other philosophical and religious systems in order to understand them better, as well as to test the validity of our own beliefs.
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The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
The traditional history of Christianity is hopelessly inadequate to the facts. From our research into ancient spirituality it has become obvious that we must fundamentally revise our understanding of Christian origins in the most shocking of ways. Our conclusion, supported by a considerable body of evidence in our book is that Christianity was not a new revelation. It was a continuation of Paganism by another name. The gospel story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah. It is a Jewish reworking of ancient Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman Osiris-Dionysus, which had been popular for centuries throughout the ancient Mediterranean. The stories told about Osiris-Dionysus will no doubt sound familiar. He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a saviour who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood. The Jesus story is a synthesis of the Jewish myth of the Messiah Joshua (in Greek Jesus) with these Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman.
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The Essentials of Objectivism My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. -- Ayn Rand Ayn Rand named her philosophy Objectivism and described it as a philosophy for living on earth. Objectivism is an integrated system of thought that defines the abstract principles by which a man must think and act if he is to live the life proper to man. Ayn Rand first portrayed her philosophy in the form of the heroes of her best-selling novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). She later expressed her philosophy in non-fiction form.
Ayn Rand was once asked if she could present the essence of Objectivism while standing on one foot. Her answer was:
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Human Nature
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cd inclusion from torture and triumph
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cd collection book listing: track, author, title 01, mom's favorite vase, what we need in life, an original song from the acoustic band to start the CD. 02, pointless orchestra, people's rights misunderstood , jk vocals, mike hovancsek recorder, phil kester assorted percussion 03, janine canan, blossom 04, cheryl townsend, and d.a. levy's still waiting and , for that perfect cup of coffee 05, penn kemp, night orchestra 06, the voice of john yotko, there i sit 07, jason pettus, i will not use your damn pc 08, krystal, i like to dress in pvc 09, seeing things differently CD, he told me his dreams one 10, janine canan, changing woman 11, cheryl townsend, lost in 12, seeing things differently CD, new to chicago, 13, penn kemp, cogito ergo sum 14, tom henkey, live poetry reading 15, janine canan, mira and krishna 16, david rubin, live poetry reading 17, scars/alexantria rand, once wanted you as my friend 18, janine canan, passion of georgia o'keefe 19, penn kemp, SinTax 20, kate cullen, taffeta dress 21, seeing things differently CD, last before extinction 22, janine canan, the only readon 23, cheryl townsend, melt in your mouth 24, the voice of john yotko, lambs to heaven's gate 25, penn kemp, when the art starts 26, lisa hemminger, exhumation 27, janine canan, what woman wants 28, pointless orchestra, japanese television , k vocals, mike hovancsek koto & bowed cymbal, kalim el-dabh piano 29, cheryl townsend, sharing 30, mom's favorite vase, vintage wine, a cover of a song from the guitarist brian hosey's previous band "feedback", from the acoustic band to complete the CD.
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