Author: tiphane

Creative Flow

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Throw a rock in the river. Enjoy the miniature tsunami you created, floating away and vanishing. Dare to put one foot in the river. Sink it in the very old sand, resting, cooling your blood flowing to your heart and your optic nerve observing the show in the water. H2O molecules bounce against your skin cells. They swirl like Turkish dancers around you until they rejoin in a feverish whirlpool to continue their voyage downstream. Your dancers will return. They will fly up in the sky and pass you by, then rain, somewhere upstream. They will return for your encore, or, rich of your experiment, for your new show as you let a second foot sink, then a finger, ten of them and two hands, now twisting and waltzing. The river flows, passing you by, unperturbed. Cool, you think. You are refreshed. A creative beaver blocks the river downstream, You are now dancing in a lake, making your own whirlpools with the molecules that stayed in the moment.

#dystopiasf: Networking at Sunbucks

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They had to take the stroller down the stairs every time they went out. Their landlord had said there were complaints that it was in the way when they left it parked in the lobby. So they kept it in front of their door, on the landing, not blocking anyone’s way but their own. It was a minor inconvenience added to what seemed to Jane like a bucketful of issues, what they called the price to pay for living in the city. Jane and Tim loved a lazy Sunday morning stroll, even if it meant going up and down a very steep hill. A neighbor walked by, and Jane noticed that he and Tim nodded at each other. “You know him?” she asked her husband. “He lives next door to us, in the next building.” “He’s disconnected,” she said. “My phone tagged him as unknown. What’s his name?” “I don’t know,” said Tim. “I’ve only seen him on the street.” There were still many disconnected people in San Francisco, as they had been warned before …

#dystopiasf – Mirror Oh Mirror

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Giselle had downloaded the Mir-O-Mirror App in the comfort of her home, and after trying it she was convinced she should get the bathroom extension hanger, so she could use her device without fear of having it immersed in water. The delivery robot didn’t mind how she looked when it came to her door the same day. She remembered the days of human delivery, when she would quickly change into male clothes before answering the door. Robots had been programmed, by order of the Supreme Court, not to record personal information of people while inside their homes, so whether Giselle was really an alias for John Gillespie didn’t even register in the robot’s mind, nor was it recorded – other than for quality assurance purposes – at amazing dot com headquarters. “I didn’t check the installation option,” she said to the robot, “but would you be available to install it?” “Sorry I am not an installer robot,” said the robot. “But I can put an order in for one. One second.” She saw the neighbors …

#dystopiasf – We’re Pregnant

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“Congrats!” “Congrats!” The messages kept pouring in, now that the news of Jennifer’s pregnancy were out. The Health and Happiness network had asked permission to tell all her and Josh’s friends, and perhaps that was a bit overreaching for the number of people she had never heard of who automatically had clicked the “Send Congrats!” button. Even the amount of the donations was making her uncomfortable. She had no idea how much those baby things cost, but she also had no idea formed in her head of an actual baby in her arms needing the gifts. “Congrats!” “Congrats!” She called her mother. Her parents were part of the D group, the Disconnected, who still talked on a phone that had a coil wire going to the wall in their kitchen. The MyLifeHH App had reminded her that she should contact her D group on her own, but had conveniently queued up their phone numbers for her to call, in order of importance. “That is so lovely!” her mother had said on the phone. She shouted …

#dystopiasf – a new experience

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On his way to his San Francisco home, on board the corporate bus, Tim’s Mylifewatch gave him its usual summary guidance for an optimal health and happiness. It always took the opportunity for the down time on the bus, as data showed most employees were least productive during their commute. “Bring flowers to Jennifer,” the first message said. “A bouquet of flowers, selected for her optimal happiness, will be delivered at your home when you arrive, so you can give them to her,” the details indicated. “Open your e-mail for a confidential message.” Wondering what the motive for flowers was, he pulled out his tablet from his bag. He was aware that he had not yet checked his e-mail, nearly 20 minutes after departure, and worried that it could be detected as a sign of something wrong in him, something to worry about. “Our constant data analysis designed to provide you with optimal health and happiness has shown that you are ready for a life experience,” the message started. “In order to proceed with the …

The Dream that Awoke the Dead

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In a dream, he knew he was in a dream, and forced himself to wake up. “Wake up! Wake up!” he repeated out loud until, finally, his eyes opened. They hadn’t wanted to open, but now at the end of the optic nerve was a mind that didn’t want them to slumber, didn’t want to return to the nightmare. In the dream, he knew it was only a dream, he was in bed and his brother, his older brother, had come to drag him out and punish him. For what? He wondered, his eyes still half closed. What could have provoked this dream, the presence of his older brother who had appeared in a similar situation in another dream so many years ago. One’s own archetypes, he realized, thinking his brother had represented the ideal boyscout, and in the dream his brother wore the full uniform with a big belt which was presumed to be the preferred tool of punishment. The night before, he had had a passing thought about the stern man who had …

Nina Schuyler’s The Translator: a Novel

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San Francisco author Nina Schuyler wrote a gem of a novel called The Translator. Like many who grew up acquiring more than one language, perhaps easily, the translator’s stream of consciousness feels real. And for many who have attempted to translate more than just a few tag lines, second-guessing your translations become routine. When the original Japanese author rejects Hanne’s translation of his novel, it isn’t surprising that she falls into the abyss of failure that all who have pride in their work experience when critiqued. It helps to seize the hermetic feeling of the protagonist’s mind that following a brain injury she can only speak Japanese while the rest of her consciousness can perfectly hear English. And it helps that Japanese language and culture are hermetic too. We follow Hanne as she traces the fictional Jiro (to add to the feeling of mental confusion, she had a husband called Hiro) to the real Noh theatre actor Moto, and spends a few days with him. Together they unblock each other, he in returning to acting, she …

The Earthquake Kit

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A brochure came in the mail about making an earthquake kit, and we considered it, figured that we could buy one that had all the necessities like bags you pooped in so it wouldn’t stink the place after a while, and I guessed I could use my USB-charged bicycle light as a flashlight, so the next item was water, and canned food, but we’re vegetarians, and inclined to eat healthy, so we had to make our own version of it. There would be beans and lentils and dehydrated vegetables, and let’s not forget a bit of curry powder of course. Wine, there had to be bottles of wine, because considering how pathetic the situation could be, you know, with no internet, no electricity, no cell phones, and as in The Road, nasty hooligans roaming the earth wanting your shopping cart, we might as well have something to enjoy for a couple of weeks before we die. The problem, we quickly figured out, we would raid the earthquake kit whenever we needed, or more likely, whenever …

On the Highway 17 Express

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Some Sundays the bus to Santa Cruz, the Highway 17 Express, is crowded with students returning from a week-long break, or the Holidays, towing huge suitcases behind them. Other times it’s crowded with fun-seeking people heading for the beach. But today at the San Jose Diridon Station it is a regular kind of Sunday, and the young people informally sit on the retaining wall to make an informal kind of line. Yet they don’t hesitate to jump ahead when one didn’t react quickly enough – let’s blame cell phones on that one too. The driver greets everyone of us in the way they seem to actually enjoy their job. The bus fills up, so at the one but last stop the driver warns the guy boarding that there may not be any seats left. A fair warning, considering that some people would then ask to be refunded if they found out there’s standing room only. But if your alternative to standing in the aisle for an hour is standing at a bus stop in San …