thalio's New Writeupshttp://everything2.com/?node=New%20Writeups%20Atom%20Feed&foruser=thalio2018-09-25T20:36:35ZThe Object (fiction)http://m.everything2.com/user/thalio/writeups/The+Objectthaliohttp://m.everything2.com/user/thalio2018-09-25T20:36:35Z2018-09-25T20:36:35Z<p align="center">PROLOGUE
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Potentially the most important event in
human <a href="/title/history">history</a> unfolded that day with lightning speed. Ironic given what followed,
or more correctly, what didn’t.</p>
<p>Every nation on earth possessed of the
technology to keep track of <a href="/title/satellite">satellite</a> traffic had picked up the arrival within
minutes, if not seconds. It was literally too big to miss. You can see the <a href="/title/International+Space+Station">International Space Station</a> with your naked eye when it passes overhead just
after sunset, and this thing, speaking conservatively, was at least a hundred
times the size of the ISS. Even if every government aware of its existence had
somehow come to an agreement to keep it secret from the public, amateur
astronomers would soon have spotted it. The media, of course, would have been
alerted. The general population was destined to know about the <i>object</i>—as it came to be known. That much
was a foregone conclusion.</p>
<p>The puzzle initially was in explaining how
the same surveillance<!-- close unclosed tag --></p>…emptiness (personal)http://m.everything2.com/user/thalio/writeups/emptinessthaliohttp://m.everything2.com/user/thalio2018-08-20T02:06:46Z2018-08-20T02:06:46Z<p>Long ago on a hot summer day I walked a narrow trail behind a <a href="/title/friend">friend</a> out to the shore of a lake near his home in
Long Beach, Washington. Two jagged crinkles
in the skin marked the back of his neck with an “X," and bits of dark detritus collected in the sweat there. Weird how some memories are like photographs while others are like fog.</p>
<p>We strolled unhurried through a shady forest of tall trees. What species they were I couldn’t tell you. (A real writer
knows the names of trees. <a href="/title/Goethe">Goethe</a>, it was said, could even estimate the age of
most trees by the diameter of their trunks.) We snaked through dense underbrush,
sticking to an open path that made the going fairly easy if a bit convoluted. I
had been reading some <a href="/title/Buddhist">Buddhist</a> text recently and the trail reminded me that emptiness
isn’t useless by any meas. At times it’s absolutely the best thing you’ve got going
for you, and generally you can’t move forward without it. Emptiness <em>is</em> the path.</p>
<p>We’d been writing together that<!-- close unclosed tag --></p>…the strange case of Mr. N. (fiction)http://m.everything2.com/user/thalio/writeups/the+strange+case+of+Mr.+N.thaliohttp://m.everything2.com/user/thalio2018-08-16T21:20:50Z2018-08-16T21:20:50Z<p>I will refer to the <a href="/title/psychology">patient</a> I am about to describe for you as Mr. N. I do this not only to protect
his privacy, as is my professional responsibility, but also as a safeguard against
those whose secrets are jealously kept, and whose displeasure at any indiscretion
could risk my own life.</p>
<p>Mr. N. is diminutive
in stature despite his elevator shoes, with a capacious, balding head and a commensurately
prodigious <a href="/title/IQ">intellect</a>. His sky blue eyes and notably direct gaze strike many in
his social circles as off putting, even unnerving. I can say personally that under
his inspection one gets the sense one has been push-pinned to a cork board and is
being scrutinized by an icy intelligence indifferent to trifling matters like
an individual life or death. In public he is a noted <a href="/title/neurology">neurologist</a>,
well-respected by his peers here in England and abroad. In private he is
something considerably darker.</p>
<p>He came to my <a href="/title/London">London</a> offices a little more than one year ago and I<!-- close unclosed tag --></p>…invasion (fiction)http://m.everything2.com/user/thalio/writeups/invasionthaliohttp://m.everything2.com/user/thalio2018-07-29T20:11:31Z2018-07-29T20:11:31Z<p>This broadcast is for anyone alive
and <a href="/title/freedom">free</a> out there. If you can hear my voice, know that you’re not alone.</p>
<p>I’m recording too for the
sake of anyone in the future who may not have access to the history of all this. For those who might wonder how the <a href="/title/human">human</a> race was conquered without any real fight at all.</p>
<p>They began their pre-invasion
preparations decades before they arrived in the <a href="/title/mothership">mothership</a>s and landing craft.
They attacked our minds when we were young and impressionable. They did it with
pictures and <a href="/title/music">music</a>. They did it in the most effective and perverted way
imaginable. They made us love them.</p>
<p>We saw what they looked like, what
they would look like, daily on our <a href="/title/television">television</a> screens. We watched and laughed
and grew emotionally attached to the images of them. And we even joined them in song. The bastards.</p>
<p>When they arrived, when they
stepped out into the sunlight in DC and elsewhere, we stood there immobilized in <a href="/title/shock">shock</a>. It seemed impossible but<!-- close unclosed tag --></p>…blocked (poetry)http://m.everything2.com/user/thalio/writeups/blockedthaliohttp://m.everything2.com/user/thalio2018-07-22T22:24:29Z2018-07-22T22:24:29Z<p>Arms of <a href="/title/cigarette">cigarette</a> ash cannot connect</p>
<p>Mind to page</p>
<p>Or me to you past cold neglect</p>
<p>Of <a href="/title/muse">muse</a> and mage</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In an inch of <a href="/title/drink">drink</a> I'd drown</p>
<p>And happy too</p>
<p>When going down</p>
<p>If <a href="/title/word">word</a>s could bubble through</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But the white <a href="/title/I+didn%2527t+think+that+the+air+could+scream+in+resistance+until+you+approached+me">screams</a> off the screen</p>
<p>The space laughs off its ass</p>
<p>The blank is in-between</p>
<p>Impenetrable as <a href="/title/glass">glass</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="/title/brevity+quest+2018">58</a></p>a serial dream leads to some serious strangeness (personal)http://m.everything2.com/user/thalio/writeups/a+serial+dream+leads+to+some+serious+strangenessthaliohttp://m.everything2.com/user/thalio2018-07-22T21:13:19Z2018-07-22T21:13:19Z<p>When I was about five years old I
had a <a href="/title/dream">dream</a> that I remember clearly to this day. I was operating a little peddle
car designed to look like a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Surrey_Company#/media/File:Red_DX_Surrey.jpg">surrey carriage</a>. Peppermint striped canopy. Bench
seats. This toy car existed in the waking world, but I was peddling it in a
dream. My sister—older by a year and a half—was sitting on the front bench. I steered and cranked away happily in the back seat.</p>
<p>For no reason at all that I can
recall now I turned down a short, steep driveway maybe a block from our <a href="/title/home">home</a>. A
bad man lived there, in the dream. In the waking world no such man or driveway
existed.</p>
<p>We picked up speed going down that
steep driveway and crashed into the bad man’s garage door. My sister sustained a serious injury. I had to get home and get help right away.</p>
<p>But when I turned around, the
short, steep driveway was gone. What stretched out before me now was an<!-- close unclosed tag --></p>…