Words in the Sky
The words were painted on the sky; a dream implanted in wafts of dark mingled light. To read them was to strain; to read them was to train your eyes from horizon to horizon until the jumbles of curves resolved themselves into words like fireworks for your brain. It took a mad man to let loose these hounds of war, but in an instant, an indomitable instance of thought, each person with access to the sky that day took them in and housed them for a while.
The mad man realized, just as I do now, that information will go where it can. Controlling information is like controlling thoughts, electricity, or weather; it can be done, but it requires dams, cages, and the combined work of many men.
I first met the mad man one evening during a lecture. The lecture wasnât his, and the lecturer was quite steamed when the mad man took the floor from him, but it became his. Just as he would later fill the sky, his voice and mannerisms filled the floor. He had a glass of bourbon and coke in his hand, which alone was daring in this university setting, and with each mighty blast, each wall filling word, he would gesture and move. The patterns of his movements were sinuous and stuttered, graceful and yet hiccupped. The bourbon was a storm in its own turmoil, as each movement added to the complexity of the torpid swells inside.
Of all in attendance, I think that I alone was transfixed. Although, the others in the audience may as well have been deaf, or gone, because it felt like the only people in that auditorium that day were me and him, and he was talking directly to me. He had so much energy and charisma ...
