Read You Shall Know Our Velocity! for Free Online Page A
Authors: Dave Eggers
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Humorous, Popular American Fiction, Philanthropists, Reading Group Guide, Death, Male friendship, Loss (Psychology), Grief, Bereavement, Fiction - General, Family & Relationships, Americans, Psychological, Foreign countries, Humorous fiction, Psychological fiction, Americans - Foreign countries
face so angry and wretched I turned away.
"Tell me," I said, with a level of patience that impressed even me, "why. Mom. You are confused."
"Well, wasn't it you who didn't care about traveling? You used to raise such a fit when I wanted to take you on trips, even up to Phelps or something."
"That was different."
"It was you. It was you who sat right there, on that stool in the kitchen, in the first house, and said that you didn't need to travel anywhere, ever. I wanted us to go somewhere exotic and you said you could do all the traveling and thinking you'd ever need without ever leaving the backyard."
I sighed as loudly and ferociously as I could.
"Yes indeedy!" she went on, "Hand was the one with the plans, who wanted to be in space and all, but you said travel was a distraction for the unimaginative. It was all very moving, your speech. I wish I had it taped."
I wondered how loudly I could hang up. Maybe this was one of those phones with the actual ringer on the base. That could make quite a sound. I would just throw the thing down and --
"Will?" she asked.
"What?" I said.
"Why don't you go home and call me tonight and we can talk more about this? I think you two are making a mistake. Think about the money! Let me talk to Hand. Is this Hand's idea?"
"It's too late. We bought the tickets."
"To where again?"
"Senegal."
She scoffed. "No one goes to Senegal!"
"We do."
"You'll get AIDS!"
I hung up. Did I mention that she might be losing her mind? The last time I visited her new condo in Memphis, she'd been using conditioner on her hands, mistaking it for softsoap. Tommy and I are terrified we'll have twenty years of angry and groping senility, as we did with Granna, who half the time you wanted to care for, whose long straight grey hair you wanted to brush -- but who the other half of the time, with her barking exclamations -- Where's my baby! Where's my horse! I broke those things because they needed to be broken! - - you wanted to suffocate with a pillow.
I tried to nap, but now my head was alive, was a toddler in a room full of new guests. It jumped and squealed and threw the books off the shelves. Yes I'm one of the slowest talkers you'll ever meet but my head, when I have it and it's not asleep or being borrowed, is not slow. My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance -- this is why people tell me secrets -- my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound. These were filed near the front.
Imagine a desk. The desk is located at the top of a green hill, about two hundred feet above a soft meadow dotted with tulips and something like cotton. Winding through the meadow is a stream, narrow and quick, which rushes with the sound of shushing and sniffing. The desk has a magnificent view, and the air around the desk and on the meadow is about seventy-two degrees. It's balmy and bright, and the sky is blue but not too blue, and in all it would seem to be the perfect place to have a desk. A desk where you could observe things and do the work that had to be done. The one catch is that the desk sits above a large structure, the entrance to which is just behind and below the desk. This building extends ten stories, down. The structure has been dug down into the whole of the
"Tell me," I said, with a level of patience that impressed even me, "why. Mom. You are confused."
"Well, wasn't it you who didn't care about traveling? You used to raise such a fit when I wanted to take you on trips, even up to Phelps or something."
"That was different."
"It was you. It was you who sat right there, on that stool in the kitchen, in the first house, and said that you didn't need to travel anywhere, ever. I wanted us to go somewhere exotic and you said you could do all the traveling and thinking you'd ever need without ever leaving the backyard."
I sighed as loudly and ferociously as I could.
"Yes indeedy!" she went on, "Hand was the one with the plans, who wanted to be in space and all, but you said travel was a distraction for the unimaginative. It was all very moving, your speech. I wish I had it taped."
I wondered how loudly I could hang up. Maybe this was one of those phones with the actual ringer on the base. That could make quite a sound. I would just throw the thing down and --
"Will?" she asked.
"What?" I said.
"Why don't you go home and call me tonight and we can talk more about this? I think you two are making a mistake. Think about the money! Let me talk to Hand. Is this Hand's idea?"
"It's too late. We bought the tickets."
"To where again?"
"Senegal."
She scoffed. "No one goes to Senegal!"
"We do."
"You'll get AIDS!"
I hung up. Did I mention that she might be losing her mind? The last time I visited her new condo in Memphis, she'd been using conditioner on her hands, mistaking it for softsoap. Tommy and I are terrified we'll have twenty years of angry and groping senility, as we did with Granna, who half the time you wanted to care for, whose long straight grey hair you wanted to brush -- but who the other half of the time, with her barking exclamations -- Where's my baby! Where's my horse! I broke those things because they needed to be broken! - - you wanted to suffocate with a pillow.
I tried to nap, but now my head was alive, was a toddler in a room full of new guests. It jumped and squealed and threw the books off the shelves. Yes I'm one of the slowest talkers you'll ever meet but my head, when I have it and it's not asleep or being borrowed, is not slow. My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance -- this is why people tell me secrets -- my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound. These were filed near the front.
Imagine a desk. The desk is located at the top of a green hill, about two hundred feet above a soft meadow dotted with tulips and something like cotton. Winding through the meadow is a stream, narrow and quick, which rushes with the sound of shushing and sniffing. The desk has a magnificent view, and the air around the desk and on the meadow is about seventy-two degrees. It's balmy and bright, and the sky is blue but not too blue, and in all it would seem to be the perfect place to have a desk. A desk where you could observe things and do the work that had to be done. The one catch is that the desk sits above a large structure, the entrance to which is just behind and below the desk. This building extends ten stories, down. The structure has been dug down into the whole of the