In a Chapter on America Was Written...

"It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself."

-G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

An Object in Motion Will Stay in Motion -- A Short Story

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An Object in Motion Will Stay in Motion

By D. Araujo

I’m always so close, yet he always eludes me; he vanishes into the heat-blurred Arizona horizon like a lightning ghost. I’ve hunted him my whole life, just as my father did before me and his father before him. My superior intellect—IQ, two hundred and seven: super genius—has allowed me to transcend the worn-out methods of my ancestors. That was the age of tooth and claw. This is the age of mail-order catalogues.

Today I got closer than usual. I spent the morning with my usual traps. I painted a strip on the road with instant glue and hid behind a cactus with a giant wooden mallet. In the past, I tried the glue and the mallet individually to no effect. My prey zipped across the glue like it was cast-iron skillet. And I always time my mallet swings wrong; I usually end up hitting myself. But I see no reason why they shouldn’t work in combination. Even if the glue slows him only a few milliseconds, that should be enough time for me to strike. At any rate, I routinely try a new twist on an old trap before breakfast.

Seconds after I hid, a cone of dust approached like a spear up the road. I stifled a laugh at the thought of my nemesis glued and smashed. I counted down and leapt, wielding my mallet. My timing was impeccable. After the dust settled, I saw that he stood beside me; he had stopped before the glued strip. I also found myself standing in the instant glue and my mallet glued to the road after my great swing. The fiend stuck his tongue out at me and dashed away. Then I got hit by a mover’s truck.

After scraping myself off the pavement and breakfasting on large insects, I worked on my mid-morning attack. I had drawn plans for a trap which called for TNT. I strung a trip wire across the road and packed the steep hill by the road with explosives. The plan, of course, was that he would collide with the trip wire and throw an avalanche of rocks upon himself. Engrossed in my task, I failed to notice the familiar cone of dust rocketing along on the road: the soon-to-be avalanchee at its point. When I heard his cries, I jumped and turned in horror to see him dashing toward the wire. Rocks exploded around me; I was weightless, I was deaf, I was blind. I was also on fire.

After the defeats of the morning, I welcomed the arrival of a new apparatus in the mail, namely, a molecular projector. This machine has two settings: it either copies an object or dissolves it, projecting the object’s molecules and reassembling it at a distance. It closely resembles a teleportation device, except that this apparatus can cast objects high in the air. I’m sure you are asking yourself why I would want to cast myself in the air—have I got a pair of wings, perhaps? No, of course not! But uncommon innovation separates us super geniuses from the ranks of common folk. No, I shall not cast myself, but anvils. It will rain anvils, I told myself.

I dragged the machine to a hill overlooking the road. I set the dial to “duplication”—I have only one anvil—and practiced dropping anvils out of the clouds. Soon, I could hit any cactus I wanted with as many anvils as I pleased. Or I could spray anvils over a region. Then, with the sun sinking toward the horizon, I readied myself for the last attack of the day. I put a large bowl of birdseed in the road. I even stuck a sign in it: FREE BIRDSEED. Then I returned to my spot on the hill behind the machine and waited.

I waited for an hour. The sun was as red as the cliffs and the air still and silent. I could almost hear the ground cooling under my feet. Suddenly, a trail of dust appeared in the distance. He was coming.

My timing was perfect. Just as I expected, he halted at the birdseed. A great cloud of anvils crashed on the road. When the dust blew away, there was no trace of him. I hurried down to where the anvils lay like a black blanket over the road. It was all anvil black and dust red, till at length I spied a spot of color, a blue splotch against the red earth—a wing. At last! I had captured him. I had crushed him. I chuckled with glee. After years of pain (road rash, dramatic falls, third degree burns) and hundreds of traps, tons of explosives, rocket skates and even earthquake pills, I had won. Now I could taste this mythic delicacy.

The wing twitched; I stopped laughing. What was I without him? The pursuit was over. What had I left to pursue? Without him, I had no epic struggle, and nothing stretched before me but the petty trials of mere survival. If I destroyed him, I destroyed myself.

I tipped the anvil up. Flat as a pancake, he looked at me cross-eyed and dazed. Then, waddling away, he stuck his tongue out. I stared back at him and smiled. WHAM—something hit me in the head and drove me into the ground. I guess that earlier an anvil had gotten stuck in the sky. I heard him waddle closer and put his head by my flattened body.

BEEP! BEEP!

And he was gone.

The Club of Good Cents

EDIT 21/07/2010: My post is now up.

A small intellectual club, of which I am a part, has just begun a blog. Check it out here. We will be posting weekly. I'm a little bit behind on my contribution (the first installment of a series on the great weaknesses of atheism), but it'll be up by the end of next week.

Check us out! Go read the current article on religious freedom and persecution.

Peace,

To Be--That is the Answer

Text for an art song I wrote this spring. I was writing my senior thesis (on madness in Chesterton's fiction) during the same period, so this lyric was heavily influenced by my good friend G.K. At any rate, I thought I'd share it because I've wanted to post for a while, but I have absolutely nothing to say. Ah well, cheers.

To Be--That is the Answer

The million windows of the midnight air
Shut in the world's lunacies and sins,
But light drips down to catch our tired eyes
And shed the warmth of heaven's feasting fires.

On winter nights spent staring into fires,
I'm madly pricked to joy in both my eyes
And curse with love the sickness of my sins--
That I forgot to praise my God for air.