Mar 16

four functions

i) ⨍ ꙮ  ϟ  ⟿  ℰ⊕

from weeks of self-imposed solitude at the top of the very best western in florida — a place with surprisingly good amenities and an infinite horizon — i finished a term paper on what happened to humanity after widespread extraterrestrial contact. my thesis: discovering we weren't the most intelligent species in the universe humbled us, and in that humility, we became more open-minded and compassionate. there was something even deeper but i forget.

when i finally descended and crossed the parking lot to the irish pub, an old friend (codename: oatley) spotted me from across the way — unmistakable in her barney the dinosaur suit — and ran to embrace me. something lightened. my father arrived to say my mother had prepared lunch and had come to collect me, which he had neglected to mention beforehand. after some gentle haggling, i told him i'd stop by later. inside, another friend, taurine, was already waiting in the booth. the restaurant had a new payment system called "warmer" — which sounded like some fintech bullshit but turned out to be something simpler and saner: a communal protocol where anyone could leave money alongside their name to cover a stranger's meal, so no one went hungry.

ii) ℰ⊕/𝔏☽ ⊸ ⟨ ϖ ⟩

i found myself in a universal library built in conjunction with the arcturians, pleiadeans, and some other species i can't quite pronounce — at once monumental and intimate. my brother and sister were with me. my brother and i got into an argument about the origins of a tiny, ancient, hooded species — starfish-like creatures, soft-limbed and radial, who liked to roll about in the grass and play peek-a-boo from holes in the ground. i walked away feeling smug, squidward-adjacent. i knew immediately i was wrong to be that way.

through the window, a gray and rainy field stretched before me, and there they were — the little starbies, doing cartwheels in the wet grass. the argument dissolved when i understood that my role was not to best my brother in knowledge, but to supplement his peace.

iii) ⟨ ϖ ⟩ ⊗ ꝏ ↦ ℜ∞

outside in my grandmother's backyard, late afternoon light made everything golden and strange. the starbies were living long and prospering again, laughing and dancing, their starfish arms splayed wide as they spun. two friends were with me — carlie and someone who seemed to be a composite of hamish nant and prince nokia — and i was telling them about a video game i was building. hamkia was skeptical i'd ever finish it, to which i replied that it was like restoring an old car: you fix this, then that, without a care or an end in sight, abandoning all hope for ye who engineer.

i surprised myself with how freely i spoke, how genuinely excited i was by my own ideas and zest for life. my enthusiasm seemed to animate the air around me. carlie pulled me aside to view a small rectangular tank of water — maybe eighteen by twenty-four inches — full of enormous, sharp-toothed blobfish. she explained they fed on snapping turtles, and showed me the technique: the fish would rise from the water and hover in the air, and you had to lay the turtle on its back before the fish gulped it from your hand. i was nervous, but i trusted the process. when i held the turtle out, an especially large blobfish rose from the tank, its mouth wide and gelatinous, its eyes dull and untroubled, and it swallowed the turtle cleanly from my palm — its body schlumping against mine as it passed. i realized: this wasn't cruelty. it was just nature.

iv) ℜ∞ ⦱ ⁀⟷⁀

somewhere beyond a golden dawn, two salmon-colored ping pong paddles perpetually volleyed a ball back and forth across a net. "opera?" one said to the other. "i hardly know her!"