I wrote this today:<\/p>\n
Time travel can be like this: it fractures cause and effect, confuses the linear patterns that seem to govern our lives, and makes a patchwork of our memories, ripped and torn at unexpected seams. You remember things that never happened; you get a life you never lived. Take Abraham, for instance.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to write a story about a time machine,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Abraham says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mechanical device for traveling to the past that will become its own blueprint when future generations read it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to get it published first,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Laura says. She likes Abraham but doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know when or where this talk of writing and time machines started. He still hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even graduated high school. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hand me that mop,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Somebody broke a jar of pickles in aisle six.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a problem,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Abraham says, meaning the story of the time machine, of course. Laura has to reach past him to grab the mop. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I just have to write the right story and the time machine will exist. It will always have existed. And they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll send it back to meet me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Laura likes Abraham. When he first started working here at the start of summer, she thought he was kind of cute. But he has some pretty weird notions, and this time travel business is just the latest.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is that important to you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asks. She heads back out to the front of the store, toting the bucket and mop, and Abraham follows. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A visit from the future?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to know how the story ends,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he tells her.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Black holes are basically time machines,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something she read, maybe for class, maybe not, she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember. She knows she probably shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be humoring him, adding fuel to this fire, but the night shifts are long, and dull except for broken jars of pickles, so she says it. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Maybe your time machine should be built out of a black hole.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m not exactly pleased with it, but sometimes that’s the nature of the beast: you struggle through forty minutes of free-writing only to have nothing much at all to show for it. I’m not saying there isn’t the start of some kind of story buried in this somewhere, just that, if there is, it’s well buried indeed. But in writing, even the wrong words are better than no words.<\/p>\n
I’m not watching the Oscars this evening, though I can’t claim to have made a better choice by watching A Good Day to Die Hard<\/i>. It’s easily the worst movie in the series, rarely even rising to the level of interesting, and I can only imagine how ridiculous any sixth<\/i> movie in the Die Hard<\/i> franchise would have to be.<\/p>\n
\nA violent mega-storm threatens to wipe out the entire east coast, but it didn't count one NYC cop in…A Die Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall.<\/p>\n
— Fred Coppersmith (@unrealfred) March 3, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n