You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers Page B
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
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Their bulbs were fucking great, I said. Then I gave them the routing number for the $80,000, their cash offer and apparently the going rate for people transformed into silhouettes to sell things. I felt briefly, mistakenly, powerful: My outline burned into the minds of millions! But then came back down, crashing. It was an outline, it was reductive. It was nothing.
Last year was the strangest year I'd ever been involved in, it was the most brutal and bizarre -- I'd lost Jack and been given more money than I'd ever seen in one place, and I'd been fainting more, falling more. I was feeling everything much too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools. I sat on terraces and stared for afternoons at mediocre views. I was feeling overjoyed for happy couples. I would see or hear about people, usually people I hardly knew or didn't even like, getting together, finding each other after so much groping, and I would feel bliss. I was being blindsided by familiar things. I was pulling over to the side of the road, my head resting on the side window, trying to understand why things could be so green. Songs were knocking me from wall to wall, certain songs in certain progressions strained my eyes, roughed up my throat, brought me near tears without delivering me to any kind of catharsis. I was shaking my head at how perfect some song was, and then I was in the car, on the way to Kmart to buy a lesson kit, convinced I could teach myself piano and with my exceptional taste, make an album and then I would double-back and think Fuck, I should learn to fly airplanes. That's the thing I really want to do. Fly planes. But it would take years, and I needed it quicker. What I wanted to do was take a course in the bar, take it and then practice law, all without having done law school at all. It was possible. Or maybe I should just open the police souvenir store, as planned in eighth grade, or the general store in New Mexico with the local handicrafts. And marry a woman cop. She would be huge and strong and named Heather and would be such a good woman.
I'd had my ass handed to me in a storage unit in Oconomowoc and now, two full weeks after the last breaths of that wretched year, I still felt flayed, skinned and burned.
I put the checks away and went back to sleep and dreamt of a rainstorm where the drops were as big as cars. I was watching the storm, full of burgundies and blues, from a bunker and was safe, but people were getting killed, and I was feeling terrible because it was all so beautiful, the drops perfectly and roundly reflecting and distorting the world below before crashing atop those expecting life from rain.
WEDNESDAY
The light was screaming through the windows, intent and wild, and I opened my portal's eyelid a quick few inches and we were coming at Africa at 300 mph, the ocean below striking the coast of Dakar with desperation. The neat shadow of the plane jumbled over the city's shoreline, the buildings glowing in tan and white and standing still as the water and wind came to them with all the world's fury -- and then died. We were somewhere else. What were we doing here? We had no idea. Hand was awake.
"Senegal," I said.
"Senegal," Hand said.
We had pictured Senegal green but this was tan.
"West Africa I guess is tan," he said.
"I really figured on green for Senegal."
There was no gangway to the terminal, just a stairway to the tarmac. The air was warm and the wind was warm; the sky was clear, blue but bleached, and the sun hung still, bored and unchallenged. The baggage handlers, with green kneepads, watched us through their goggles, hands resting on their heads.
"We're in Africa," Hand said.
We stepped
Last year was the strangest year I'd ever been involved in, it was the most brutal and bizarre -- I'd lost Jack and been given more money than I'd ever seen in one place, and I'd been fainting more, falling more. I was feeling everything much too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools. I sat on terraces and stared for afternoons at mediocre views. I was feeling overjoyed for happy couples. I would see or hear about people, usually people I hardly knew or didn't even like, getting together, finding each other after so much groping, and I would feel bliss. I was being blindsided by familiar things. I was pulling over to the side of the road, my head resting on the side window, trying to understand why things could be so green. Songs were knocking me from wall to wall, certain songs in certain progressions strained my eyes, roughed up my throat, brought me near tears without delivering me to any kind of catharsis. I was shaking my head at how perfect some song was, and then I was in the car, on the way to Kmart to buy a lesson kit, convinced I could teach myself piano and with my exceptional taste, make an album and then I would double-back and think Fuck, I should learn to fly airplanes. That's the thing I really want to do. Fly planes. But it would take years, and I needed it quicker. What I wanted to do was take a course in the bar, take it and then practice law, all without having done law school at all. It was possible. Or maybe I should just open the police souvenir store, as planned in eighth grade, or the general store in New Mexico with the local handicrafts. And marry a woman cop. She would be huge and strong and named Heather and would be such a good woman.
I'd had my ass handed to me in a storage unit in Oconomowoc and now, two full weeks after the last breaths of that wretched year, I still felt flayed, skinned and burned.
I put the checks away and went back to sleep and dreamt of a rainstorm where the drops were as big as cars. I was watching the storm, full of burgundies and blues, from a bunker and was safe, but people were getting killed, and I was feeling terrible because it was all so beautiful, the drops perfectly and roundly reflecting and distorting the world below before crashing atop those expecting life from rain.
WEDNESDAY
The light was screaming through the windows, intent and wild, and I opened my portal's eyelid a quick few inches and we were coming at Africa at 300 mph, the ocean below striking the coast of Dakar with desperation. The neat shadow of the plane jumbled over the city's shoreline, the buildings glowing in tan and white and standing still as the water and wind came to them with all the world's fury -- and then died. We were somewhere else. What were we doing here? We had no idea. Hand was awake.
"Senegal," I said.
"Senegal," Hand said.
We had pictured Senegal green but this was tan.
"West Africa I guess is tan," he said.
"I really figured on green for Senegal."
There was no gangway to the terminal, just a stairway to the tarmac. The air was warm and the wind was warm; the sky was clear, blue but bleached, and the sun hung still, bored and unchallenged. The baggage handlers, with green kneepads, watched us through their goggles, hands resting on their heads.
"We're in Africa," Hand said.
We stepped
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