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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Parisian Bars
Thursday. 1.10.13 8:31 am
An excerpt from my most recent Nanowrimo novel (that is to say, only half true):

He invited me to a bar. I resigned myself to spending the night pretending that I drank alcohol. Like all Parisian bars, it was small and crowded and authentic. Authentic Parisian bars had unbalanced my conception of authentic American bars. I started to realized that all of our authentic bars and restaurants and interior decor were actually imperfect European facsimiles. Not knowing what they had been based on, I had accepted the copies as originals, and only now was I discovering that the originals existed. For this reason it always shocked me to see wooden tables that were not artificially distressed, paper that was yellowed at the edges from time instead of tea, old magnifying glasses that were really made out of brass, and cast iron candelabras that were actually made out of cast iron. Thatched roofs that were actually made of thatch. The authenticity of everything shocked me. I had discovered everything in the world backwards, from the streets of the Paris: Las Vegas to the streets of Paris, France. This bar was no different. It was built of crumbling brick with low wooden beams. The whole building leaned slightly to the side over a small alleyway. If I had been a giant I would have straightened it out like a deck of cards. If I were a giant I would fix everything, and never knock anything down. As a kid I used to build towers out of blocks. Other kids used to always knock them over, but I would patiently collect all of the blocks back together and start building again. When I was really small they had a wall as school that was made of bricks. They had a bunch of big paintbrushes and a bucket full of water. I remember painting the wall with the water, painting and painting and painting, and when I reached the end of the wall the beginning of the wall would be dry again and I would have to start all over again. I guess that�s why I do so much computer programming.

He met me out front and kissed me quickly on each cheek. I was still getting used to that� I was afraid that one day I would lose all control over myself and accidentally kiss somebody full on the mouth. Probably my boss, knowing me. Blushing, I followed him into the bar. He led me down an impossibly narrow staircase to a large brick cellar with arched pillars. A band was playing. The lead girl was playing the accordion. A young, unshaven boy behind her was playing bass, and a guy sitting on her right hand side was playing some kind of incredibly ethnic African percussion instrument. A reddish orange light on the stage bathed everything with a warm glow. The place was crowded and everyone was feeling the music. I always liked to squint my eyes when I was at concerts. Each light would become an eight-pointed star, and I would pretend like I was partying so hard that I was about to pass out. I called this exercise �Youth�. At least, this is what I imagined Youth was supposed to be like. A little blurry, lights flashing everywhere, the heat of other young bodies pressing in from every direction, music so loud that it filled your mind to the exclusion of everything else. Claude bought me a cider. I smiled brightly, glad to see that it was something that I would be able to choke down without too much awkward grimacing. I returned to my exercise of Youth, but he tapped me on the arm. He wanted to talk. If speaking a foreign language had a Master�s championship, this would be it. Low light, overwhelming background noise, a conversation that could go in any direction. I reeled my brain back from its rock-and-roll vacation and placed it back into its gears. We had to stand very close�of course we did. We had to speak directly into each others� ears, which required leaning towards each other just so. Occasionally his lips would brush the side of my face while he was speaking, and while it was all so contrived I could suddenly understand why other people did it. Whenever he looked away I squinted my eyes until he was blurry. If I looked at him like that he could be anyone. That was part of Youth, too, wasn�t it? I grabbed a straw from behind the bar and put it in my cider. With the straw in the back of my throat I could pull back most of the cider without actually tasting it. I took a long pull and turned back to Claude. The girl playing the accordion was sexiest accordion player I had ever seen. The fellow playing the African drum wasn�t so bad either. Everyone in the bar was getting sexier and sexier the blurrier they became.

I don�t remember leaving the bar. One moment we were in the bar, my feet aching from standing for so long, awash with orange light and accordion music, Claude�s lips brushing my ear as he spoke in unintelligible French, and the next we were out in the blue night, walking along the maze of uneven cobble stones next to the marina of the Bastille. I dragged Claude to the locks on the canal. They were silent for the night, and I tried to explain how they worked but I did not have sufficient vocabulary. Instead we passed quickly through the tunnel from the canal to the edge of the Seine. No one ever came here; it was the one place along the Seine that was always deserted. We sat and looked out over the Seine. One time Abigail and I had seen a turtle in the river. I always told people about it but they never believed me. I told Claude, but he couldn�t understand what I was saying. He kissed me. He kissed me... and for the first time in my life, I didn�t feel anything. I had always heard people claim that this kiss or that kiss didn�t mean anything, and I never believed it could be true�after all, it was a kiss! But then there was Claude, and Claude could have been any boy in the world. But I kissed him back, poor fellow, I kissed him back and I kissed him all along the edge of the Seine until we reached the street again. �Here�s my metro station,� I said, as if I hadn�t known that it would be there. He kissed me goodnight. I knew it would be the last time. Is this how hearts get broken? Did French hearts break like American hearts? Could I have been any girl in the world to Claude? Did it matter to him? Was any girl in the world exactly what he was looking for?

The metro home was blurry, but not for the same reason as before.
1 Comments.


One day, I will find out what an authentic bar looks like so that I know how to differentiate between that and an "authentic" American bar.
» LostSoul13 on 2013-01-12 12:18:42

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