Know our Velocity
March 24, 2004
Slightly drunk and naked I followed Trevor into his room last Friday so he could give me one of his fantastic books. “It’s lovely,” he said picking up from his shelf Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity, and I believed him and took it with me when I left at two in the morning.
Some books whisper strange things you’ve known all along but were always afraid to acknowledge. Eggers’ book is like that — deeply meaningful and troubled by revelations…
The point is to offer yourself to death and see if you’re chosen.
Two friends start drifting through the world together, dragging with them some unbearable loss and searching for emptiness, death, love, everything. They find nothing except flickering moments of clarity and pain…
We should all have a near-death experience weekly, twice weekly — how much we’d get done! The clarity we’d know!
In the course of a week they drift from one near death experience to another, their journey a yearning for something extraordinary and beautiful. They only get close to the extraordinary through a tale they hear along the way about a tribe in Chile whose people glided off cliffs and trees, often to their death, to lessen the weight of their souls.
As the Jumping People were being exterminated by the conquistadors, they leave the following message for their conquerors: YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY. And then they fly away.
We should all learn to how to fly — we need near-death experiences weekly!
Posted by Tudor at 09:56 PM in Writing & the Media | TrackBacka fictionless death is never worth repeating
but by whose word might one deny fiction
to a leap?
rage, whimper, fly, decay, the dying of the light is a sight]
to die for
tyrant! i hate mandatory left-hand justification,,,
freedom!
Posted by: andrew on March 25, 2004 at 10:57 AMConform to the limitations of the medium, Andrew, old friend.
And as far as fictionless deaths are concerned, I want my life and death and everything between to be purely fictional — hyperreal. It’s all about convincing yourself you can fly when you can’t.
Rinse. Repeat.
Posted by: Tudor on March 25, 2004 at 01:37 PMi think it’s more a matter of distracting the universe so it won’t notice you really are flying. it’s a balancing act, to circumvent the bureaucracy of physics and perception.
Posted by: regan on March 25, 2004 at 02:37 PMsure, i beat my mind to lather,
repeat?
guilty as charged;
but substantial human matter
is something more than froth
bubbles, bubbles, popping so
you think they were never there
substantial human matter/?
nothing more than froth!
-hmm, what are you looking for,
some edifice to be our impressive
purpose?
the aesthetics of the bubble
the sparkle of the shine,
the pop
Hahaha! Did you ever think of getting your own blog, Andrew? I think you’d love it … it would be full of intense poetry, frothy lines and the like ;).
Let me know and I can set you up with something … something …
And Regan, before I fly I’ll make the universe close its eyes.
Posted by: Tudor on March 25, 2004 at 08:12 PMFrom the first few lines, I can only reach two conclusions: Either this Tudor fellow isn’t straight, or he’s GAY.
Posted by: Demon on March 25, 2004 at 11:25 PMwoah, very appropriate demon…
thanks, tudor
That interpretation is too simple, too narrow, wouldn’t you say? It fails to explain all the other stuff that’s going on.
But it is funny, that’s for sure …
Posted by: Tudor on March 25, 2004 at 11:58 PM