The Descartes Project

Note: This is a passage from a short story I wrote.  Brook is a medical intern who takes care of Descartes during the daytime.  Descartes is a man who is actually made up of organs, muscles, eyes and a brain.  He does not have any bones or skin.  He lives in a tank and communicates via a computer chip in his brain which is connected to a monitor.  Here is the snippet:

After all the visitors had left that day, Brook turned to her microphone, which used the computer chip in the brain to facilitate message input, and said, “So, what happened to make you live this way?”
            Brook, who had been interning for some three weeks, was still uncertain whether she should look at the eyes when she was talking, or whether she should look at the monitor.  And so she compensated by looking back and forth between the two, sometimes looking at the eyes on the stand and sometimes looking at the monitor that was at the center of the monitors on the wall.  Since Descartes had no skin, and since eyes without the surrounding facial structure are not apt at providing insight into emotion, it was hard for Brook to tell whether the man was amused by her question or angered, for there was a slight pause before words appeared on the monitor.
            When the answer came, it read thus: “Oh, Brook.  Are you sure you are ready for this story?  It was only a week ago that you were staring distractedly at my heart for your entire shift.”
            Miffed, she said, “Just tell me the story.  Someone wanted to know and I told them I would get the answer for them.”
            “In that case, I will comply.  Brace yourself; there’s nowhere close for you to vomit without making a mess,” read the monitor.

Brook glowered, and Descartes began.  There was no audio; soft blue words appeared on the screen when Descartes “said” them and disappeared again when the sentence was complete and he began the next.  “I was born like all humans are born.  I had a mother and a father, and my body was formed in the womb.  When I was born, I had a perfect body.  I had ten fingers and ten toes, I had vocal cords and lips.  I was sustained through my mother’s milk, and later, through proper food.  My mother’s name was Helen, and my father’s name was Phil.  I had an older brother who was named Benjamin.”

Without bothering to excuse herself, Brook left the room to fetch her crocheting.  At present she was crocheting a green and brown blanket for the homeless shelter, though it rather looked more like a potholder at the moment. When she returned, Descartes continued.

            “Some older brothers mercilessly tease their younger brothers and do not include them in their fun.  Benjamin was not one of those.  Benjamin always included me, and we had a lot of fun together.  I had blond hair back then.  Benjamin and I had a tree house to play in, with one of those communication systems which is a can connected to another can with a string so you could listen and talk from the bottom to the top.  We would spy on the neighborhood.  Ben was about three years my senior.
            “One day, the circus came to the town over the hill from our home,” Descartes was saying, and Brook muttered something to herself which the microphone did not pick up.

She checked the time and then, seeing that Descartes had paused in his story, sighed and said into the microphone, “Keep going, I’m paying attention.”

There was a long pause before Descartes continued, and Brook took her shoes off and sat cross-legged in her chair, resuming her crocheting when she was once again comfortable.  “For about a week, Ben and I begged our parents to take us, and finally they agreed and drove us over.  The circus was not only a circus; it was more like a circus connected with a fair, and besides the events, there were booths set up.  There was a strongman, and a…” Here Descartes paused for a moment, as if in thought.  Brook checked the time again.

            Then he continued. “I can’t remember everything.  I just remember that there was a man who was standing by a tub.  Benjamin and I went to see it together, because our parents wanted to go look at something else, I can’t remember what.
            “Ben and I went over there and peeped into the tub.  It was full of what looked like liquid fire.  The wind made ripples across its surface that coalesced, and the sunlight would shine off them to create the illusion of flames.  It was the most beautiful liquid I have ever seen.  The man told us that it was poison, and he had trained himself his whole life so he could withstand it when he got in the tub, but that for anyone else to get in would be disastrous.  I watched him step into the tub and step out and nothing special happened.  Benjamin and I looked at each other and I could tell we were both thinking he was playing us, that it wasn’t poison.
            “We were about to go away when Ben said to me, ‘I dare you to go step in the tub.’
            “I said ‘Naw, Ben, I don’t want to get my shoes wet.’
            “And he said ‘You’re just bein’ a chicken.’
            “I didn’t want my older brother thinking I was a chicken.”  Brook rolled her eyes at this point in his narrative, but Descartes either did not see the gesture or he chose to ignore it.  “I had always liked thinking my older brother thought I was kind of cool.  So I turned around and I walked over to the tub.  I took my shoes off, and my socks, and right then the man was busy talking to some other folks.  I looked back at Benjamin.  He gave me a thumbs-up sign.
            “I stepped into the tub and immediately fell over, because that fire was slick.  I had never imagined fire being slick before, but it felt like fire.  I bumped my head against the bottom, and I must have passed out because that is all I remember.  I heard the rest of the story later, from Benjamin, when everything had settled down a little.
            “My body floated there for a second.  The man in charge of the tub, the freak show man, the poison man, had heard the splash and he turned around and quickly pulled me out.  He was the only one who could have; no one else could have stood the harmful effects of the poison.  By that point, my body was black, and it was coming apart in his hands.”
            Brook had stopped crocheting and was staring at the monitor in dismay, her stomach the antithesis of the placid stomach in the tank.

Meanwhile, Descartes’ story continued, heedless of Brook’s discomfort.  “He put me down on the grass.  They called in medics and rushed me over to the hospital.  Everyone thought I was going to die.

            “But there was a scientist in town who had been doing research, and there was a brave doctor who wasn’t going to give up on me.  So while my heart was still pumping and my brain was not dead, they decided there was nothing they could do for my skin.  When they looked past that with their x-rays and other machines, they saw that most of my bones were charred as well, and there was no way to save those, either.
            “Somehow, the man by the tub had gotten me out fast enough that my organs, heart, and lungs hadn’t been burned.  These eyes are not my real eyes.  These are from somebody else who donated their eyes to science.  For a long time, I couldn’t see.  They did what they could, and they decided this was the best way for me to keep … to keep going.  As I was unconscious, I didn’t have any choice in the matter.  And now here I am.  Took them about five years before they found some eyes for me, and I’ve been like this, ever since.”
            Brook found herself staring at the body in the tank, looking for signs of burns anywhere, any tissue that had been scarred, but it all looked perfect.  The monitor was blank, and she was trying to come up with something to say while digesting this information and fighting her stomach.  The night intern, Jake, walked in.  “Hey Brook!  Looks like it’s my turn.  Anything happen?”
            “No, just a regular day,” she said.  She put her shoes back on, gathered her things, and left with a quick “good bye” to Jake.
            She had a date set up that night with a guy who lived in her apartment complex.  She was especially glad she had not puked, because she did not have time to brush her teeth before her date showed up.  They went bowling with Brook’s roommate and her boyfriend, and Brook kept score, as she normally did.  Descartes was on her mind the entire night.
            The next day, after visiting hours were over, Brook turned to her microphone and said, “I have been thinking about what you told me yesterday, and I was wondering how often your family gets to come visit you.”
            The response she read on the screen was, “You believed me?  I didn’t think you would!  Brook, I made the whole thing up!”

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Rebecca Stead

Can I just say that When You Reach Me dramatically improved after page 16?  It actually made me stay up later than I'd planned.  This is partially because I was near the end and partially because I was that interested.  I'm a morning person who usually prefers putting the book down and going to sleep, no matter how good it is.  I just tell myself it will be there when I wake up ... and when I do wake up, I pretty much roll over and grab the book.  No one said I can't be a well-rested bookworm.

Did I see the ending coming?  Yes.  The ending was not surprising.  That did not detract from the book, though, because it was a joy to watch the main character discover the ending.  I wonder if that's how God feels.  I'll have to think on that.  Speaking of things like God, I've had a couple dreams recently which were narrated.  True story.  I was watching the people in my dream (I don't tend to be in my dreams, I usually watch other people) and there was this voice narrating what was happening.  I even stole a line from a dream-narrator and wrote it down in my ideas notebook.

When You Reach Me was an interesting story, and not hard to follow once I figured out that the narrative was switching from past to present every few chapters.  I've never lived in New York, but Stead grew up there, and it shows.  The story is set there, and the details are both authentic and sound so second nature to the character that it does not sound like the author is trying to convince me the story is real.  It just sounds natural and, if you set the time-travelling aside, real.

It's definitely a young adult novel.  It reads easily and its themes (friendship and the parent-child relationship, especially) are those characteristic of that section in the library.  A young adult novel does not necessarily mean the writing is worse than in adult literature, and this book helps to prove that.  Overall, a good book which has the power to teach without sounding at all didactic.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Rebecca Stead

The next book on my YA Lit book list is Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me.  I'm now 16 pages in, and I'm not really sure if it will be a good book or not.  The writing is good (not exceptional, but good) and the story hasn't really picked up yet, so I can't weigh in on it.  I'm not impressed, but I'm not depressed by it, either.  I guess it all comes down to a "meh" sort of feeling.

But I'm only 16 pages in.  It might get better.

It's won a John Newberry Medal, so that's supposed to be a good sign, right?  I'm hoping so, because I'm slowly learning that the New York Times bestseller thing is a joke.  Hoping I turn out to be wrong about that, too.  Especially if I ever write something that makes that particular list.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Roddy Doyle. Also, a glimpse into my homework.

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I'm not writing a Valentine's Day post.  If you want something Valentines-y, see "Plato in Love."

I wanted to show you something (you can click on the photo and it will enlarge):














It's called a Deep Dive, and it was my homework for my Advanced Fiction class (for those of you confused by the words in the upper right corner).  A deep dive is an analysis of a text, in this case the short story Blood by Roddy Doyle, from a writer's standpoint, using annotations.  We are reading an anthology of short stories in my Fiction class and were allowed to choose whichever story we wanted for this deep dive.

It was the first story in the anthology.  I chose it because it was a good length and I didn't have anything against it.  Of course, analyzing a story this intensely makes you either love or hate the story.  Luckily for me, I was impressed by Doyle's intricate narration of the story.

I just scanned another blogger's post about this story, and their review showed a lack of understanding for what Doyle did.  So, in case you run across this story in the future, let me explain the narration style to you.

Blood is written using the third person, whom I'll refer to as the narrator.  I don't know how well you can see this in the photo, but things which are highlighted in blue or are not highlighted at all are either dialogue or this third person narrator talking.  This narrator gives the facts, with little to no flowery detail.  Here is a larger picture of two of the pages of the short story:

I'm assuming you are familiar with first, second, and third person narration.  There is another type of narration, a sub-type of third person, called free-indirect discourse.  This is when the narrator gives insight into the emotions or opinions of the protagonist.  It is easiest to spot when the narrator uses a word the protagonist would use.  Authors use this type of narration all the time, and you'll see it nearly everywhere if you start to pay attention.

An example from the picture above (I doubt you can see it, but it's highlighted in pink if you want to try) in the sentence whose beginning was on the previous page, is "and grabbed a packet of chicken breasts, one of those polystyrene trays, wrapped in cling-film."  While the first part of this is the third person narrator, the part which describes the tray is free-indirect discourse.  If the character had tried to describe the tray, he would have used this wording.  It is much too colloquial and loose for the narrator's voice.

This story does not just showcase one layer of free-indirect discourse.  There are two.  This character is changing, being overtaken by "an urge" to drink blood, usually from raw meat in his refrigerator.  Through his narration, Doyle brilliantly gives this "urge" a voice, as well.  In the picture above, the character's voice is highlighted in pink, and the urge's voice is highlighted in orange.

One good place to give you an example of this is on the second page of the picture above, in the middle of the page.  At the start, the urge is talking, but then the character takes over.

He took a fillet steak into the gents' toilet at work, demolished it, and tried to flush the plastic bag down the toilet. But it stayed there like a parachute, on top of the water.

 The urge is characterized by his animal desire for the meat, here visible in how casually this situation is discussed and in the use of the word "demolished."  The character steps back in when the plastic bag won't flush down the toilet and he feels incriminated by its refusal to disappear.

So in all, there are three people telling this story: the narrator, the character, and the urge.  They interact, which can be amusing to the alert reader.  An obvious example of their interaction is this (on the page after the one in the picture, my apologies if you could actually read the page in the picture):

But a light went on -- and he bit. Downstairs, right in front of him -- and the head came clean off. There was no blood, not really, just...

Here the urge, characteristically, interrupts the narrator, and then the character tries to justify what just happened. There is a marvelous back-and-forth that goes on between the three voices in this story.  The review I scanned said there was a "noticeable voice shift" in portions of the story (and they did not like it).  Can I just say that the voice shift is half the story?  I mean, without the voice shift, all we know as a reader is the character is fighting the desire to eat meat and finally gives in.  We don't realize that the character is struggling (and so is the narrator, actually) with an urge totally foreign to him and which eventually pushes him out and inhabits his body.  The voice shift is the story.

Oh, the nuances.  They are great.  Narration is sometimes everything, if we look closely enough.

By the way, this deep dive took me a few hours.  It's something I would suggest trying ... if you have that much time to spare.  It didn't feel like that long, if that's any help in persuading you to give it a try.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Lemony Snicket

A winter storm is hitting the U.S. East Coast particularly hard right now, and I think the same one decided to stop by Utah today.  I was looking out the window of my Fiction class today and it looked like the scene outside was graced by static.  I walked home from work a little bit ago and hopped in the shower when I got here just to warm up.  Whoever invented the mechanism(s) that allow us to have hot running water is an unsung hero.  On a side note, the Weather Channel has named the winter storm "Nemo."  I saw this while I was at work and mentioned it to the person next to me.  She thought of the movie Finding Nemo, but I said the storm was more likely named Nemo because of Captain Nemo, which is where I'm pretty sure that clownfish got its name.  Then we looked it up and saw they chose the name because it means "nobody" in Latin.  Really, weather people?  (It also means "from the valley" in Greek, which makes even less sense.)

For the second time in my life, I have read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning.  I remember when I first read this in ...middle school? I read this first one and then the next one, possibly the third, before I put it down.  I just wasn't entertained by it enough to keep going.  The movie, by the way, was abysmal (a word which here means not good at all).

I was going to do my usual one post to introduce and give my first impressions, then a second post to give my overall thoughts, but I accidentally read the book too fast.  As of yesterday, I had read 20 pages or so.  This morning, I sat down for an hour and read 100 pages.  I had the book finished before noon, all 162 pages of it plus the oh-so-interesting About the Author.  This is a good sign.

There are three reasons why books might take a little longer to read than is normal for me.  The first is that the subject is dense, like with Plato's Republic, which I've been reading for my philosophy class.  The second reason for slow reading is that the writing is absolutely beautiful and I take my time to soak it in and read passages over and over again for the sheer joy of reading the words.  Yeah, I'm a nerd like that.  The last reason is that the writing is so terrible I have to wade through it, if I decide it's worth finishing at all.

This book was a fast read not only because the language was easy to read, but because the narrator had so much voice, and an amusing voice at that.  The most obvious example of this is that Snicket gives definitions throughout the book.  While this would normally be annoying, Snicket gets away with it because his definitions are humorous and the characters get annoyed by the definitions.  It's the kind of self-awareness in characters that made the latest Muppet movie funny.  Let me give you an example of what I mean:

"It's called Nuptial Law," Klaus said, "and I learned many interesting things while reading it." Count Olaf had taken out a bottle of wine to pour himself some breakfast, but when he saw the book he stopped, and sat down. "The word 'nuptial,'" Klaus said, "means 'relating to marriage.'" "I know what the word means," Count Olaf growled. "Where did you get that book?" (pg. 96).

Not only does the author define words now and then, he also has the narrator interpret Sunny's baby talk.

For instance, this morning she was saying, "Gack!" over and over, which probably meant, "Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!" (pg. 4)

While the story actually is a sad one, it is told in a way which had me mentally smiling the entire way through.  I say "mentally smiling" because I was reading in public and only something absolutely hilarious can make me break my public poker face.  I think.

I liked the characters and the story, but I do think it was the narrator who stole the show.  Maybe that's what the movie was missing.  The characters were supposed to act all sad and the narrator was supposed to be the silly, sassy one, not Jim Carrey.  The aura was ruined!  (I add an exclamation point here because the sentence reminded me of the line in Shrek II about the Fairy Godmother's diet.)

P.S. - I just noticed this is my 13th post.  How fitting.

Plato in Love

I had never really realized that I didn’t understand why love is supposedly powerful.  It took down Voldemort, led Dorothy home, propelled Achilles into battle (and to his eventual death), and brought Westley back from the dead.  Love in literature is just one of those things you accept.  Someone evil was brought down?  Well, Love probably did it.

Interestingly, it was only when Plato himself answered the unasked question that I realized it was even there.  I will allow Plato himself to explain it:

“Imagine a man in love having some disgraceful action of his discovered … Being found out by (his lover) would cause him more distress than being found out by his father, his friends, or anyone else … The best conceivable organization (supposing it were somehow possible) for a community or a battalion would be for it to consist of lovers … since they’d compete with one another in avoiding any kind of shameful act.  It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that a handful of such men, fighting side by side, could conquer the whole world … Possession by Love would infuse even utter cowards with courage and make them indistinguishable from those to whom bravery comes most easily.  The effect that Love has on lovers is exactly what Homer described, when he talked about a god ‘breathing might’ into some hero or other … Moreover, only lovers are prepared to sacrifice themselves.” – a smattering of lines between 178d and 179c in Plato’s Symposium

Maybe it’s just me, but I think we are organized by Love.  Or at least, we all want to be.  Isn’t that what dating is all about?  Everyone wants to live with, fight the world and life with, someone they love.  And the people who win, the people who we think succeed, are the ones who find a lasting love.

I love the story of Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter.  While I don’t like that Johnny cheated on his first wife, I think he found true love with June.  And look what it did for them – June was able to get Johnny off of drugs, they were able to lead a happy life together, they died happily, within months of one another.

The Walt Disney Company had it right in Hercules when they say, “A man will do crazy things for the woman he loves.”  It works either way, and it’s so true.  Love, as Plato said, could conquer the world.  I wish it would, to be honest.  The world needs more love.  If everyone was in love, many problems would probably disappear.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Michael Scott

I have not been getting enough sleep lately, so today I told myself that I would go to bed by 10 p.m.  Then I decided to make blueberry muffins.  And crush Oreo's (had to write that correctly, the red squiggly line was bugging me into compliance) for truffles for that nice man who fixed my computer for free.  All while listening to 80s music.  It's 11:14 p.m. now, and obviously I'm not in bed yet.  Whoops.

Finished Michael Scott's The Alchemyst today.  It sure was a page-turner near the end ... because I couldn't wait for it to be over.  This guy had a necromancer bring not only human zombies into the picture, but animal zombies, too, and I had to hold myself back from skimming it to find something more interesting to read.  I really wish I had something nice to say, so I'm going to try the marriage saying.

Something Old: It was your classic hero story, a tried-and-true story line.  To be honest, I have little to complain about when it comes to the story line.  The twins bugged me, but that's about it.  I loved how Scott swirled myths and legends into his story; it was interesting how everything connected.

Something New: These people used their auras to create magic, which was new for me, at least.  I like that it was grounded in something real (some people don't, but I happen to believe in auras.  I had a high school teacher who could see them).  I'm a fan of believable magic in books.  Yeah, I can stretch my mind and accept something totally off the wall, but it had better follow its own rules.  Rule-breaking magic is totally unbelievable and I don't like it.

Something Borrowed: The elements...again, Scott?  Isn't that what everyone has used?  Magical energy comes through your aura, but the types of magic follow the elements.  Then again, maybe that means the elements are reliable.  Or maybe they're some literary archetype of some sort.  Speaking of archetypes, I have to use this book in a presentation for my YA Lit class a week from tomorrow, and I'll be talking about the Seeker archetype.  This book has some interesting developments, if looked at in that light.  I'll get to that after my next marriage category.

Something Blue: I'm going to pretend this is a symbolic blue, meaning something sad.  Did the book tear at my heartstrings?  Umm...no.  Not at all.  It did make me want to live inside this tree it describes (a descendant of Yggdrasil), but that's only a slight tinge of imaginary sadness begotten of jealousy.  I'm honestly trying to think of something remotely sad, but I'm coming up dry.  Sorry.

... And a silver sixpence in her shoe.  No money here; in fact, one character's wallet even gets sucked up in a void.  The seeker archetype is when a character spends their time searching for something, some meaning in life or some higher form of existence.  All characters are seekers in some way.  In The Alchemyst, there are two main characters, Josh and Sophie, and they're twins.  Scott makes this point perfectly clear, since he says it over and over again.  Throughout the entire novel.  It was annoying, to put it mildly.  There are three stages to being a seeker, and by the end of the novel, Josh is one level lower than Sophie, which splits them up and makes Josh jealous.  The first level is your basic research level.  Second level is when they get some ambition about it all.  Josh is to the point where he is ambitiously wishing for his magical powers to be "awakened," but they haven't gotten to doing that yet.  Third level is when the seeker is transformed and starts searching for spiritual enlightenment or a higher plane.  Sophie's magical powers have been awakened and she is learning to use them, placing her firmly on the third level.

Throughout the novel, Josh and Sophie's biggest motivator is a desire to take care of each other and protect each other.  So Scott's move to separate them by giving Sophie powers and pushing her forward on the path and leaving Josh behind was some unexpected brilliance on his part.  The story did not leave me hanging enough to push me on to the next book, and I'd rather not wade through Scott's writing anymore, so I won't be continuing with the series in my own, plentiful (cough cough) spare time.

11:38.  Past time for bed.  Good night, Michael Jackson and whoever is reading this.