I agree with you, a hundred percent.
So write a book about our—The Northwest: It’s All About Trees—or is it? Is it about trees? I don’t know!
What should the title be? Is that the title?
I don’t know, you tell me, you’re the writer.
Yeah, but you’re the idea woman!
Huh?
You’re the idea woman!
[sighs] Write about truth—we’re losing America all the time. What are you gonna write about America?
About truth and trees, really. Honestly.
Really!
Yeah, you’re actually right on!
I am so impressed!
Yeah.
Because trees are good guys—they’re good people—this is what makes our breathe—us breathe. And we keep cutting down our trees—guess what—I’m not sure what we’re gonna breathe! Do you?
No.
That’s right. And I’ll tell you what—with Orting—they should’ve—they should’ve never have allowed to put all those houses on prime farming soil. So what’s gonna happen when you put everything on concrete? So they’re doing all these studies: Well, if we concrete over the prime soil, how many years will it still be good—well, what the hell? Why are you doing that? Common sense tells you leave it alone! You know what I mean? We’re poisoning ourselves—but you want me to tell you what makes memad?
What’s that?
Is that the people who have the power, and the brains and the knowledge and the money—they’re the ones that don’t care, they’re gonna poison the world anyway. And nobody can stop it. I mean, I can see it—I can see it—I also can see that six years…we’re less free now than we were six years ago. I mean you gotta open up your eyes…People just say yes to everything— You don’t have to get up, sweetie! I’ll sweep around you.
Keep talking. [laughs]
You proud of your son that he’s a writer?
Yeah.
What do you do?
I’m a pastor.
Awww! How niiiiice! How sweeeet! That’s why you talk the way you talk. You’re soft-spoken, you’re nice, it’s a nice—it’s nice, for a man to be soft-spoken. Doesn’t mean you’re weak, it means you’re soft-spoken.
[laughs]
You know, you’re probably very strong. Well, how niiice! See, I almost avoided this room, because of the woman, I was thinking: Ehh, maybe I’ll leave her alone.
What woman?
The woman that was in here.
Oh, my mom.
Yeah, because you know, I wasn’t sure—see, I needed to see you—I only saw her, and I was like: Hmmmm.
Yeah, she’s great.
Well, she looked great, but. Sometimes you need to leave them alone. She’s doting on you, so, you know…Life is good.
There you go.
……………………………Well, I can’t believe it—American trees. You know, too bad you weren’t in here a week ago, there was a guy in this room, I’m trying to think of what he told me, what—it was either what Washington or Jefferson said. Something about our freedom—it was so good, I’d never heard of it before—that the people that—’cause I was telling him the same thing about six years, you know, that we’re less free now than we were six years ago—he said, No kidding—he was talking about the airports and all this other stuff and checking the luggage and checking you, and I said, It’s just crazy, I said, and he said, People that are not—are not willing to stand up, and fight, for what should be fight—for what we should fight for—don’t deserve anything. And that is so true! You know, and what are we doing—we’re in a—I never had to count things like my grandparents, you know, they were in the Depression, and neither did you, and—you probably didn’t either, did you? But you probably had it a little rougher than us. Well, we don’t know what it’s like to go without. And so we’re spoiled, and so we’re in this comfort zone—so nobody—everybody wants to—nobody wants to do anything. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean!
It’s sad… Hmmmm. So you write about American trees.
Well, trees and people, and—just what you’re talking about, honestly.
Are you married? Yeah? I was going to say, you need to go on a motorcycle and tour the country, and look at all our trees that are going away—take a good look at it, open up your eyes—I’m from Eastern Washington, and we still have a lot of open—a lot of open ground over there. When I come over here, I’m thinking: What happened? And since I’ve been over here—we bought an acre and a half in Graham—since I’ve been over here I can’t believe how bad Graham has gone now. It’s people.
It’s spreading out everywhere now.
The trees! The trees are going! It’s crazy! And the poor wildlife, they don’t have a place to go… I mean, we’re very—we’re being very selfish, because there is—one saying I do know for a truth…Over in Africa? About the elephants? They—the reason there’s a tree planted here and a tree planted there is because the birds fly over it, they drop the seed. The elephant comes over and plops it into the ground and there’s a tree! And they said because the elephants are getting depleted—they’re getting gone—pretty soon we won’t see all those trees. And so it’s very sad—and we all—and what’s sad is that we all know about this, but we’re not going to do anything about it.
Well, what is it about Americans today that—they’re not willing, or don’t care, or…
I think we’re so caught up in our own work—in our own life that…we’re in our comfort zone. I don’t know if it’s so much not caring, but we’re just not willing to open up our eyes, and see that if we don’t do something…we’re gonna lose it all. We’re gonna lose it all…And I’m not so sure what your children, or my nephew’s children, are going to inherit…Do you know what I mean?
KIM FORBES
Earth
4.6 billion years old
OLDEST ROCK 3.96 BILLIONYRS.
NW Territories Canada
OLDEST EVIDENCE OF LIFE 3.3 B.Years
Africa
Australia
600 million yrs ago “explosion” of life in oceans
150 million DINOSAURS
GONE BY 65 million years ago
current ice age—began 4.5 million yrs ago
East Africa—upright hominids
4.5 million
15000 years ago—SEATTLE COVERED BY ICE
Saturday, November 8, 2003—SEATTLE
[The plot thickens.]
Now a young man wakes up late.
He makes coffee.
He drinks it in front of the TV,
flipping between college football games.
He chews a piece of nicotine gum.
He chews another.
He chews another.
He chews another.
He makes a sandwich for lunch.
His young wife—
two years married
—is still asleep.
She wakes around two in the afternoon.
She comes out and tells him he kept her awake all night with his drunken snoring. He really should think about cutting down.
The young man reads for a while on the couch
then turns on the TV again.
In the early evening
his young wife asks him to take her around to the thrift stores
so they can go hunting for Pyrex.
> User record for Kim Forbes. Kim Forbes. Number of items user has in repository: 127
They get in the Bronco and drive to the Lake City Value Village where once he found her a rare opal Pyrex mixing bowl.
> Posted by: Kim Forbes September 19, 2007 - 10:08AM Chicago. I want to echo Mark’s comments and
thank Brooke for pressing the point that any connection made ...
She has boxes of Pyrex bowls in the pantry.
She has boxes of Pyrex bowls in the basement.
And cupboards filled to the brim.
All the many colors and sizes are beautiful…
The forms are
many,
And they stack
one into another so concentrically…
the reality
relics of an American Past;
is one;
Pyrex
only from Corning
they are not rivals but
relics of an America Passed: Pyrex glass was made for railroad signal lights, then beakers and bottles for scientific laboratories,
aspects of a single principle.
then the domestic line for cooking and food storage took off during the Great Depression. The old ladies were given sets as wedding presents and when they die their children pack up everything they’ve left behind in boxes, including the Pyrex dishes, load the boxes into the trunks of their cars and drive them down to the nearest thrift store, where they unload in the rear, and drive away.
She has quite possibly the largest collection of Pyrex bowls on the planet.
All the colors and shapes and designs.
aspects of a single principle.
Inside the store, she calls him over.
She is holding what they call a Cinderella bowl, elliptical with two short spouts.
Exclaims she: This one they only made for one year in the ’50s as a demo!
She found this out on the web recently.
The sticker says $2.99 but she knows it’s worth more than twenty dollars.
She never sells, just buys to use and show and give away, and what she doesn’t use or show or give away, she wraps in newspaper and puts away in boxes.
He leaves her and wanders through rows after rows of books…Ten copies each of bestseller after bestseller…
But in the adjoining room (Lighting & Electronics) she finds him an old desk lamp for his office, brown and silver chrome, and in the shape of an egg/bullet; very small with a swiveling head, and a telescoping neck. HAMILTON INDUSTRIES, CHICAGO ILL.
MODEL NO. 60.
REPLACE WITH NO. 93 BULB ONLY. USE OF ANY OTHER BULB MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE LAMP.
MADE IN JAPAN. 116 Volt 60 Cycle 26 Watt A.C. Only
He plugs it into the test outlet and the light comes on.
$2.99 for the bowl and five bucks for the lamp.
They pay and leave—back to the truck. And backing out of the parking spot, the young wife cries out suddenly!
Because just over the roof of the store the moon hangs eclipsed, the bottom edge a white-lit sliver. The rest is covered by the earth’s dark shadow.
LOOK AT THAT! OMG SO BEEEYOOOTIFULLL!!!
Continue driving north and around the edge of Lake Washington to the St. Vincent de Paul
(We should strive to keep our hearts open to the sufferings and wretchedness of other people, and pray continually that God may grant us that spirit of compassion which is truly the spirit of God)
thrift store where he once, more than a year ago, found her a large brown bowl with a white rim, very rare. Around the top of the lake, the moon comes into view again…now they’re driving toward it.
Cheshire cat, she says, smiling.
Park at the store and walk through the doors, past a line of hunched people standing behind miniature shopping carts, waiting to pay.
The sign on the door says the store closes at 6.
The watch on the arm says: 5:45.
The clock on the wall says: 5:45.
The kid at the register says:
We’re closed.
But they continue on anyway, just to take a look.
Cheshire smile spreads wider, beaming, smiling down.
Old man in pajamas, using his shopping cart to prop himself up, cries:
They’re closed! Look at the hours on the door if you don’t believe him!
as the two walk by.
They ignore the old man, but now he begins to loudly chant:
They’re closed!
They’re closed!
They’re closed!
his face and eyes turned down to the floor.
Looking back, as he makes his way forth, to the rear of the store, the young man asks:
Why are you talking to me, dude?
Respect your elders, young man! old man shouts.
They check the shelves for Pyrex but there’s nothing, so they leave, walk out past the register, past the line of people, past the old man in pajamas, who says:
Nothing more.
Then drive off, back west, toward Aurora, which is called Pacific Highway farther south.
Fucking old-timer, young man says, watching carefully the dark road before them, and the white and yellow lines, trying very diligently to keep the Bronco inside. Respect your elders, young man!
W: That’s my husband you’re talking to, dude!
10 (a) Simulating objects of antiquity, etc.—A person commits
11 a misdemeanor of the first degree if, with intent to defraud
12 anyone or with knowledge that he is facilitating a fraud to be
13 perpetrated by anyone, he makes, alters or utters any object so
14 that it appears to have value because of antiquity, rarity,
15 source, or authorship which it does not possess.
Young man pops another piece of nicotine gum.
> Kim Forbes x x iS 4 iF i LiKe YoU hello thomas!! how hav u been all these years? hav u still got the swimming pool????!!!! kim x x x. 17 weeks ago ...
Open eyes these neon signs that never blink.
THIS WAY THIS WAY IN HERE
That used to be an ice cream parlor, she says—that dark, abandoned storefront.
Pass a Home Depot, a Wal★Mart, a Warehouse Grocery Store.
All looks the same everywhere these days.
They could be driving down a street in No. New York or No. St. Louis or No. Salt Lake.
The Satellite, looking down, says:
“They’re there in No. Seattle now, headed So., @ approx. 47 mph.”
Find an open thrift store, Deseret Industries, they go in.
Young man looks for a while at the dishes with his wife, then goes off to look at the books.
He’s looking for Book Three of The Divine Comedy. But all he sees is
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
A terrible vibe to the place makes him feel uneasy.
Any moment, someone will walk into the store with a jacket full of explosives, pull a cord, and blow them all away.
He looks to see where she is—there—across the store—picking up dishes, looking at the undersides for the Pyrex stamp, them setting them down.
And with a kind of spiritual heaviness, with a shortness of breath, a strange mild pain in his chest, the young man goes to stand guard beside his wife.
And when she turns to him he turns to her and she sees him. See her.
Why not just leave now, instead?
Let’s go.
They race out through the doors, across the parking lot, and jump into the truck!
M(an): That place has got some bad juju.
W(oman): I felt it too.
Heading south again, he’s sure the evening news will tell him: All those people left behind you were found dead (a police spokesman says).
Earth’s shadow has almost relinquished entirely the Bright and Shining Moon.<
br />
BASIC FACTS
1. World is made of plates—
giant slabs of rocks
60 miles thick—100km
rocks that do not deform “internally”
2. Edges of plates deform - break, crumple,
melt
3. Plates move 1-2" per year
> “forbes”
Back driving home.
Everytime rock breaks -
earthquakes happen
Around Green Lake.
crumples -
mountains
formed
> From: Kim Forbes <[log in to unmask]>. Re: new to authorware, need advice
Merge onto Stone Way.
melt -
volcanos
At a red…
light…
stop.
A pickup truck in the lane beside them towing a trailer of rowing shells, stacked up on rails. The trailer has a flat tire.
The driver gets out, wearing a cowboy hat, and walks up to the young man’s window.
“I gotta get over so I can take care of this,” the Cowboy says.
“I’ll set a screen for you.”
Cowboy nods; tips his hat to the young man’s wife.
Then winks & smiles & whispers in your ear:
> “forbes”
When the light turns green, the young man moves the Bronco into place, blocking the right two lanes.
theMystery.doc Page 13
