AN ESSAY

My great-great-grandfather’s name was Isaac or Jacob or something. And he was from one of the Eastern European countries, the ones with a lot of Jews, probably with like a hard name to pronounce. His mom had a sweet blue apron that was all faded and his dad was a butcher or something cool. This was their homeland, and in the summer there were all these warm breezes smelling faintly of lavender that would shake this tree that my great-great-grandfather would sit under with his girl, whose name was Rose, and who died of some awful disease when she was young.

Anyway Jacob or Isaac or whatever came over to the United States on a big boat, or maybe his son did, regardless it doesn’t much matter. He came over and when he got here he got off the boat and said, “yes, America! This is such a nice place that I am now, better than that place I was in before that has that name that’s hard to pronounce.” Except he said it in broken English and his hat was like they had in The Newsies. And also he was so wrong about America! It is not like those things he said it was, it was really hard. For instance he was robbed as soon as he got off the boat, like right after he said how good it is here, and the robbers hurt him real bad and he went to the hospital, but then when he got to the hospital he was robbed again by the doctors. They took the gold Star of David he wore around his neck, and he said, “no, that was given to me by my girlfriend Rose, who died of some awful disease when she was young.” And the doctors were like, “yeah, whatever,” And they put him back onto the streets, which were now dark and it was raining too.

So my great-great-grandfather did a lot of stuff including inventing some stuff and meeting my great-great-grandmother, and they had babies and the babies had babies and eventually we got my mom, Ellen. She grew up in Brooklyn in a Jewish area though she often skipped Hebrew School to play at the arcade across the street. One time she was pushing a doll in a stroller and her sister pushed her and the stroller and she fell flat on her face and her nose got a little flatter, which is actually a symbol for her malleable feelings towards tradition and culture. They were so malleable that she married my dad, Dan, who came from Troy, New York and who was a Christian and who used Miracle Whip, which is also another symbol for how gross and weird his family was to my mom, who used mayonnaise like a normal person. But anyway they got married.

I was sort of an immigrant too, like my great-great-grandfather, except my immigration was from one suburb to another suburb and it was not an immigration at all really. I mean it was from Poughkeepsie, New York to Wayne, Pennsylvania, so come on. Those cities are very different in several substantial ways, for instance in my new house we did not have an above-ground pool which I am told was awesome. I say “I am told” because I only lived in Poughkeepsie for one year, specifically until I was one. Memories then were foggy like London fog gently rolling over London, which I say in the interest of providing beautiful imagery, etc.

When I was five we moved from Wayne to Belgium for a little bit for my dad’s job. My main memories from this period was showing my class the wooden sword I had for show and tell and also the time I smashed my teeth on the hard wood of the dining room floor when my stupid babysitter let my sister and I grab hands and spin in circles. My teeth were not a symbol for anything, though, and plus they were fine. I mean I never even got braces, which was probably not a result of that accident but you never know I guess. We moved home eight months after, which was good because I got to see all my kindergarten friends again except now we were in first grade.

School went on for a while and I found it pretty boring because I was intelligent but not very hard-working, and because of this my grades were bad and my parents and I fought. Doors were slammed, cars were crashed, urine was tested. Eventually I realized how much I love my family and we stopped fighting, though in the interest of not providing too much of a cliché ending on that front my mom and I fight still very rarely in a healthy way but I love her still, or possibly we never fight but our relationship is still not perfect, or maybe she got me the wrong color car for my most recent birthday. Also in middle school once someone called me ginger-balls and it was my first encounter with the racism I would face throughout my life but eventually I learned how to be proud of my heritage from someone significant like my dad.

My family would be best explored by examining one of our yearly traditions which is Christmas. Even though we are Jewish we still celebrate Christmas because my dad grew up Christian and we like presents. We used to go to my grandmother’s house for Christmas – I mean the one on my father’s side, we used to go to her house – but eventually we stopped liking her maybe so we started celebrating Christmas with my mom’s side. They are all Jewish though so they don’t really know what to do, like for instance we usually get a tree on Christmas Eve and then get rid of it on December 26. We don’t like it sitting around my house because my cousin is allergic to pine. We should really get a fake one but we are all pretty lazy. Two years ago I got a Wii, it was so sick, but also it is about family togetherness and stuff like that.

Anyway yeah and stuff, this is all about how I'm the same as my great-great-grandfather probably. You probably need to read more into the symbols or whatever.

Setting Alarms (Rewrite)

Alex Albright, 21-year-old Anthropology/Sociology double major, contemplates the sort of paper she could publish on the monster aliens that invaded earth and killed all her loved ones.

It would be about the little things, Alex decides, her head under her desk as one of them moves around her room in the dark. Writing sticky notes, taking photographs, setting alarms. That’s the sort of edge this paper could really bring to the table – the human connection. The sort of tendencies that span galaxies and exist in spite of an urge to exterminate all other sentient life. She could watch them from afar and note them giving each other high-fives with their tentacles and playing cards.

I mean you can't blame her for staying at school up in Vermont. When word first hit the college’s online forums, when the army was still trying to get it together, people started leaving and then never came back. She called her parents; they didn't call back. The city had already been vaporized. Where was she going to go?

And they - I mean, they – hadn’t been around these parts for so long. Only a couple weeks after the touch-down they had left, and she had gotten lonely and then accustomed and then sloppy. She turned lights on at night. She played music out loud.

Mostly, though, she knows it will be her watch alarm that does her in – every midnight exactly, just to remind her to take stock of her supplies. It was eleven forty-eight when she heard the footsteps outside her room, she has been trying to count the seconds.

It touches the bed that used to belong to her roommate. Alex remembers this, mainly: that they had a fight about whose turn it was to buy the milk and cereal that week and then Alex saw her get devoured on the lawn in front of the chapel. It was to say the least an unusual start to her spring term.

She thinks about her pocket-knife, on the bedside table feet away – she knows there isn’t time; they are so quick. She thinks about her parents because she misses them a lot of the time. She thinks about her dog and her old boyfriend. She thinks about the garden she was going to start on the football field.

And then there is a quiet beeping.

It looks down, where a small electronic device wrapped around one of its appendages is glowing. It taps something. The beeping stops.

It walks out and closes the door.

The Money Cut

The riskiest play in ultimate is not the huck. People assume it is, but the fact is that if you're comfortable with a long throw and if your guy is open - and these are, of course, two prerequisites for throwing a huck - then there isn't an issue. Fake break side, wind back, step out, and put that shit up. It's not an issue.

The riskiest play in ultimate is the up-line cut - the money cut - and it goes like this. The disc is trapped on or near the line, and the dump - on stall four to six, maybe - takes a step towards the around and then busts up into the force lane diagonal to whomever has the disc.

And the throw isn't hard just because hitting someone running nearly straight away from you is tricky - it's hard because at the moment you have to let go - at the moment of release - your mark is in between you and your target. You get to see him and his defender a second before you make the throw, but for the most part you're blind. You watch the first two seconds of a five second race and have to decide who is going to win. You don't know what's on the other side - your handler could have tripped or it just could have been a fake. This has happened before - we've all seen it happen, that the disc is trapped on the line and then it gets thrown five yards up to no one because the dump changed his mind.

Worse still is that the money cut is a bailout throw - if you don't hit your money cut then you're on stall seven with a defender right in front of you in the lane and no dump at all. New players look off the up-line because it's scary and then end up getting stalled. Or maybe even the handler - a senior, the friendly and athletic captain of the team - shouldn't have made the cut. His man is tight on him and you don't know how much space he has.

So you put it up, maybe, high and sort of far because his defender has already laid out for a few d's, and he catches it and immediately throws a huck to a continuation deep. Or you don't, because, you know, sometimes you don't. The first player in the stack knows what he's doing, and you've always trusted your break throws. It might be worth a shot.

Notes

As some of you might know I'm taking an introductory fiction writing class this semester, which means obviously most of my creative efforts have been directed away from my blog. That being said I'll do my best to post what I can here - what is below this note ("VICTOR RHODES") is a mostly-finished piece for that class. I encourage you to read it and leave me some criticism!

Also of note: writing for this blog the last three years has left me virtually unable to write a story longer than 250 words.

VICTOR RHODES, PRIMARY RANDOMIZATION EDITOR

1.
The fan on his desk is the small, industrial kind – steel and gray and unreasonably loud – but Victor, like all his coworkers, keeps it on for the heat in the office. He is fairly certain someone has put in a request for quieter ones. He is also fairly certain he is starting to get another migraine.

The document in question is produced just before five o’clock.

His process is as follows: the randomization is created on a central server and sent to his desktop computer. If he determines it to be garbage (as nearly all of them are) he just deletes it. If it’s mostly comprehensible, though, he clicks advance and it goes to a higher-level analyst – one who decides if the idea itself makes any sense and to what sort of expert reader it should be passed on to if it does. Victor is averaging a little less than four documents advanced per day (out of nearly a thousand he sees), which is about right for readers at the lowest level.

This text, though, is different. Victor reads it twice and then blinks at the screen for a little bit.

He prints it out and clicks delete.

2.
The idea in the end was called Intentional Serendipity, and it went like this: let’s fake discovery. You’ll grant that most scientific advances can be expressed in a couple paragraphs, and who could imagine how valuable even a single page of a medical journal from one hundred years in the future would be to us now? So let’s fake it, let’s just fake the whole thing. Let’s make computers generate random strings of words and see if they make any sense. Sure, the ideas still need a little testing, but for every few million non-sensical paragraphs that are generated there is always that one that makes it to the real expert, who looks down his glasses at it and say, “you know, I think this would work.”

And we got our breakthroughs, that’s the thing. The nature of the process meant that a great deal of them were military – a field that was evidently lacking in creativity more than anything – but we cured a few diseases along the way, we came up with some new and innovative economic policies. According to a sociological test invented with the help of randomization number 7A4892F, we discovered that overall quality of life had improved since Intentional Serendipity had been implemented. There were even some published short stories written originally and completely by the computers – lyrical ones, flat ones, sad ones – and of course a wide range of visionary mathematical proofs. The human race had quit using what little light it had in trying to navigate the darkness of its existence, choosing instead to sprint through the night, eyes squeezed tight, hoping to bump into something that felt like it might help.

3.
TO: HUMANITY C/O VICTOR RHODES, PRIMARY RANDOMIZATION EDITOR
FROM: THE LORD YOUR GOD IN HEAVEN RULER OF THE UNIVERSE
THIS PROCESS IS FLAWED AND WILL CONSUME YOU.

On the train, Victor reads and re-reads the document, giving nervous glances to the other passengers every couple of minutes. It isn’t very long – by design, of course – but it doesn’t need to be.

Here’s the thing, though: statistically speaking something like this was bound to happen. Victor isn’t a religious man, but this - this?

At home, Victor puts the paper on his fridge and tries to put it out of his mind for a little bit. He makes a couple hot dogs and thinks about calling Hannah at her conference, but it’ll be just after midnight in Hong Kong and it’s probably not worth waking her up. If she were here she’d know what to do, he’s sure, but maybe it’s for the best that he makes this decision on his own. It’s not going to be a secret police job or anything like that, but making this public in any significant way means he loses his job for sure. With the economy the way it is and Hannah still in school he wonders if it’s worth it.

For the first time in two decades, Victor prays before he gets in bed. It’s sweaty and embarrassed and about half of it is plagiarized from movies and television, but it’s a prayer, at least.

4.
Victor worked in a lab before.

I mean he’s not bitter or anything because things worked out for the best – I mean, sure, he liked his old job. The thing is his mom was pretty sick so he went into research pretty much right away, but then when I.S. came around the lab shut down and his mom died, which was unrelated, he knows, but still.

And a couple months later – a couple months of Hannah waitressing to support them both – I.S. found a cure out of one of the randomization offices in the Midwest. It got passed up by a reader named Barton and in the very middle of the paragraph there was the word badger, but if you ignored that, I mean, it made sense and it was exactly right. The story got published all over, and always ended the same way, about how more low-level readers were needed. When Victor read it he cried, and then he applied for the job.

5.
In his dream, at the kitchen table with his mother and God.

Victor asks his mother: Why me?

His mother smiles and shakes her head in the way she used to.

Victor looks at God.

God clears his throat and takes a sip of water.

6.
At lunch, Victor talks with the office’s administrative assistant. Her name is Gladys and she’s like a thousand years old. Victor thinks she might have powers.

“Gladys, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, dear, what is it?”

He appreciates this term of endearment.

“If you got a letter that wasn’t addressed to you, you’d forward it to the right person, right? Or at least try to?”

“Sure, of course.”

Victor taps the table with the very tips of his fingers.

“But let’s say this letter - let’s say you read it by accident, and it had some stuff in it that you thought might be wrong. Stuff that, like, might even cause trouble. What would you do then?”

Gladys eats a thoughtful bite of her bran muffin. “Gee, that’s a toughy. The letter wasn’t addressed to me, though? Well, I guess then I would ask my husband Edwin what he would do.”

“But say you couldn’t ask him,” Victor says, “what would you do if you had to figure this out by yourself?”

“Well gosh, I just don’t know.” She sort of trails off in a way that makes Victor think she might come up with something, but then she smiles at him as if expecting another question.

He packs up his stuff. “Yeah, nevermind. Thanks, Gladys.”

7.
Disaster strikes just after lunch, when Victor moves the paper on his desk and it gets caught up in the fan’s draft - up, around, and then violently through the back of the blades. Victor sits dismayed as the holy confetti quietly settles around his cubicle. He then decides this is a good time to take a smoke break.

8.
Outside with his boss Nick, Victor lights up and looks up at the sun as if he might be able to figure out what time it is.

“Hey, Nick, you were a botanist before I.S., right?”

“Mmmhmm.” Nick nods.

“And then what’s your take on all this?” Victor asks, “How do you feel about quitting your job as a scientist for a career in middle management?”

Nick looks across the street. “I feel okay about it.”

“Yeah?” Victor says.

“Yeah,” Nick says.

There is a brief silence.

“Because I was in it for the discovery,” Nick says, “I wanted to figure out stuff about the world, and now we’re doing it this different way. I’m still helping. We’re all still helping.”

Victor squints at him. He takes a drag on his cigarette.

“If I deleted a document by accident, is there a way to get it back? If I just clicked the wrong button, I mean.”

“You clicked the wrong button? Your job is to click one of two buttons and you clicked the wrong one?”

Victor just stares.

“If you go to the server on your computer I believe there are records,” Nick says, “It’s so an employee can’t steal a good idea, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He puts out his smoke and turns to go inside.

Victor says, “Hey, Nick.”

Nick says, “What.”

Victor says, “We need new fans.”

Pets Die

I wrote this song January 2011, and this is me performing it live for the incoming freshmen on the eve of their orientation hiking trips in September 2011. Enjoy, and sorry for the mildly poor quality.

Intersection

The question is this: Show by example that the intersection of infinitely many open sets need not be open.

"The intersection of a finite number of open sets is always open," Georg explains, "but this is kind of an interesting problem. We have infinity under our fingers, isn't that kind of neat? We get to use an example that goes on forever."

Georg stares at the chalkboard for a little bit, and then he puts down his chalk and wipes his fingers on his sweater. At the table, Richard looks up from his phone. "No ideas?"

Georg shakes his head. "You?"

Richard puts down his phone and regards the board for a minute. They do their problem set on Wednesday nights in the small study room on the third floor of the library. It's the Western facing corner, and they always get there right after dinner - just in time for the sunset. It's kind of a centering experience.

Richard: "I've been thinking about signing up for the swim class."

Georg: "You don't know how to swim?"

Richard: "No, I do, but what if I just showed up and pretended I didn't know how to and then acted like I was the fastest learner ever? The swim girls teach that class to raise money for the team."

Georg looks back at the board. "Yeah, I guess."

The Remote: Part III

Wide shot of the interior of the office. Suddenly, JOHNSON emerges from his cubicle carrying his monitor and yelling as he runs for the window.

2 - Ext. Office - Day - 2

The monitor explodes out from the window.

3 - Int. Office - Day - 3

JOHNSON turns from the hole in the window to face his co-workers, all staring from their offices and cubicles.

A beat. JOHNSON catches his breath, lifts the remote, and...

Suddenly, we're back inside JOHNSON's cubicle. His monitor is returned to its normal spot, and JOHNSON is sitting, still holding the remote like he was before.

Short montage here: JOHNSON smacks his attractive female co-worker's rear in passing, JOHNSON dances on his desk, JOHNSON watches his building burn from the parking lot.

4 - Int. BOSS's Office - Day - 4

Inside the BOSS's office, the BOSS at his desk. The inside of this office is just as the rest of the setting - gray, mostly. We see photographs on the BOSS's desk, but, instead of his family, there are pictures of his car and of him at the pool with babes. Also on the desk: a protein shake, several empty Red Bulls, and a bodybuilding magazine.

The BOSS himself is blonde, good-looking, and wearing an expensive suit. He works at his computer, until JOHNSON enters.

The BOSS stands up upon seeing JOHNSON, who strolls straight up to his superior and, before either one has time to say anything, punches him straight in the nose. There's an audible crack at connection.

BOSS (enraged)
Johnson, what the fuck is your problem?

JOHNSON pulls out the remote smoothly.

JOHNSON
Oh, no problem, boss.

He clicks the remote.

Nothing happens.

He clicks at again, and then again. His BOSS is still in front of him, dripping blood from a broken nose. JOHNSON, meanwhile, is at a loss for words - his remote is suddenly broken.

Cut to JOHNSON, still clutching the remote, then to the BOSS, his reddening face clearly showing his rage. The BOSS inhales and prepares to scream.

Freeze.

On-screen: THE REMOTE.

The Remote: Part II

Back inside the cubicle, JOHNSON's phone rings. He reaches for it as he peruses a piece of paper from the stack, and, as he does so, he accidentally knocks all of the files and the remote onto the floor. He swears and picks up the phone.

JOHNSON (flustered)
Hello? Hello? No, I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number.

He hangs up, frustrated, and leans down to pick up what he dropped. He picks up the remote first and tosses it on the desk, button-side down.

Insert: the remote hitting the desk with enough force to press the button.

JOHNSON leans back down to get the rest of the papers.

They aren't there.

He leans back up towards his desk, and, there they are - exactly how they were before he dropped them. He looks at the ground again, then back up at the papers.

A beat. JOHNSON continues to stare around. Was this a trick? Did anyone see? He back at his papers, and then notices, finally: the remote.

Another beat.

JOHNSON, now starting to understand what we've realized from the beginning, picks a pen from a mug on his desk and puts it carefully on the desk in front of him.

JOHNSON regards the pen. The pen regards JOHNSON. JOHNSON blinks, and then he presses the remote.

The pen is back in the mug.

JOHNSON stares. He stares for a while, I mean, because what do you do when you figure this kind of thing out, and then JOHNSON - God have mercy on his soul - JOHNSON smiles.

The Remote: Part I

1 - Int. Office - Day - 1

Close-up of a small package neatly wrapped in brown paper.

Further out: the package is sitting on a gray desk in a gray cubicle. The cubicle itself is overwhelmingly non-descript - a computer, a stapler, a few file folders.

Further out once more, now from the outside of the cubicle looking in. The package remains visible.

ON-SCREEN: THE REMOTE

Enter JOHNSON, young, with dark hair, in a short-sleeved white shirt and a gray plaid tie. He glances at his watch to find he’s a little late. He puts his briefcase down next to his desk and then, as he goes to sit down, notices a massive stack of papers on his chair. He picks a sticky note off the top.

Insert: the note, which reads, “I needed these yesterday!!! Get them to me ASAP!”

JOHNSON sighs and crinkles up the note.

He picks up the papers and put them all on his desk, and then, sitting, turns to his computer.

Then he notices the package.

He examines it briefly, turning it over in his hands - it’s clear he doesn’t know what or from whom it is. He tears into it with his letter opener.

Inside the paper lies a remote, dark, with one small replay button and nothing else.

JOHNSON inspects the remote for a moment. We see him examining it from outside his cubicle, where a woman walks by in a dark pantsuit.

From inside the cubicle again: JOHNSON, finding nothing else to do with it, presses the replay button.

Nothing seems to have happened. He puts down the remote on his desk and turns to the stack of papers.

From outside the cubicle, though, we see the woman in the pantsuit walk by again - from the same direction as last time.

Jeremy Silverberg, 37, Upon His Graduation From Life

Ah, er- I was just walking my dog in town, and the truck lost control, and I assume, well- I'm dead, aren't I? This is it?

[Laughter]

This is it. Wow.

[A beat, more laughter]

I'm just saying that it's the kind of thing you always hear about happening, but here I am. Does everyone get this? Is this heaven? What's even going on?

[The speaker leans from the microphone, some inaudible discussion between him and someone backstage]

Oh, I see. Well, like, don't take life for granted, spend more time with your family, and, uh-

[Last Pause]

Look, I just died or whatever, can I at least get a minute to make some notes?

Powers

Something's coming, and I know you can feel it just as well as I can - in the way your top sheet is fitting so perfectly, in the bread that you've had for a month that won't run out or grow stale, in the electricity you feel under your fingers. You can pretend not to notice it all you want, but the fact is plain: science is dying and we're making out like bandits in the will. You have powers, friend. It might be time you decide how you're going to use them.

Easy Furniture

The post office in is small; I remember you drove by it the first time you went to pick up stamps - the single-lane road it sits on (speed limit 50, cops strict and swift and frequent), houses a hundred yards apart and with driveways twice that length. Take McGuire Hill past the cemetery to US-1 and bear right. Mark your odometer. Six miles and on the left, just after the sign for strawberries. It has white vinyl siding, and the postmaster wears the same sort of boat shoes as your dad.

Lists: Camp Edition

1. Sadness of the foreign, sadness of gossip, sadness of rusty nails, sadness of early mornings, sadness of cold nights, sadness of being left out, sadness of unanswered questions, sadness of lice, sadness of tradition, sadness of medication, sadness of rain, sadness of chicken pot pie.

2. Toilet, sink/mirror, trash/outside, box benches, porch (x2), sweep (x2), shades/shelves.

3. Ice cream, a normal sleep schedule, letters.

Herbert Dainer Knows The World is Ending Tomorrow

Herbert Dainer knows the world is ending tomorrow.

I mean the guy isn't crazy. He's gone through life up to this point feeling sad for all those who prophesied about the apocalypse - feeling sad in a kind of superior way, but feeling sad none-the-less, I think. Regardless, though, the point stands: Herb knows the world will end tomorrow. He doesn't know how and he doesn't know why, but he knows. He knows for sure.

And what do you do about that? Knowing he's surrounded by reasonable and scientific people, what do you do? How do you make your son stay home from his sleep-over so you can spend the last hours you have as a family? How do you get your wife to come home early from a business trip?

Herbert takes a drive and thinks it over.