Tag Archives: randy hasper

April 28, 2015 · 12:45 am

The Reversal

She took it home, bathed it, fed it, and made a bed for it in a little room — to make it feel safe. It didn’t feel safe. So, therefore, and nonetheless she gave it 100 baths, 500 sleeps, 1,000 meals and practically exactly 10,000 soft hugs.

The lower life forms recover slowly, if ever, but will seldom enough, if tended to and more than somewhat almost. This is true of the higher ones too.

However, things tend to reverse when given attention and to shift sideway or even flip. Or if not, then maybe it is simply the case that the distinctions made in the first place do not turn out to be correct after all.

Regardless, one day the higher form herself unsettled, lost her way, began to gush, squint her eyes, raise her voice, agitate, dis-say, un-hinge and down-speak to one of the higher life forms in her family.

Then it was most certainly and precisely that the lower life form crept unnoticed up to the higher life forms side, and taking her arm in its mouth, held it, and looked her in the eyes. Time and care passed between them.

It seemed clear, obvious, at this time and in this exact moment that the higher life form was to drop back, hold in, stop, calm, seek safety as directed, somewhat immediately and acutely softly.

She did, almost and enough, at that time and the following time too. After that the two lived together in relative harmony, caring for each other as needed, not really sure anymore about distinctions between things higher and lower.

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February 25, 2015 · 3:33 pm

Rocket Man

“Three, two, one, blast off” — and up he rose out of the center of the circles of Hierocles, riding the thrusting fire of focus straight through the center of his own mind and into the space occupied by his wife, then quickly through there, now rocketing through the circles of his daughters, faster and faster, away from his friends and his coworkers, streaming upward through the outlying spaces of his associates, powering past his community, his nation, receding now as a tiny speck behind him, flying from his hemisphere, lifting high now above the spinning earth, he shot into hyper-rational space.

It is rarified atmosphere — the neo-Platonic, proto-mathmatic, meta-esoteric,
supra-emotive, ultra-cognitive, visionary-imaginative, superlative-creative realm of the mind.

There exists, seemingly outside of the immediate influence of our essential relationships, the moment of essential ideation, thought, theory, formula, process, proof, syllogism, solution, application, wisdom. There the vast armamentarium of math, rhetoric, history, biology, theology, linguistics, psychology, physics, geology, zoology and all the other disciplines of the academic world come in to play.

Seemingly alone one thinks, ponders, tests, ruminates, muses, clarifies, reinvents, reimagines and proves.

Then he exited from there, in an instant, from  brooding for a moment, luxuriating in time, floating in space, thinking thoughts of thoughts that were beyond all previous thoughts, to rubbing his chin, and then suddenly as if snatched out of his very shoes, to sitting at home again.

In a flash not less, his wife’s voice snagged his rocketing capsule by the nose of the craft and spun him back, falling, dropping, tumbling again into his own living room.

“Are you going to put your daughter to bed, or not? She is asking for you to read her that story.”

And then there, at the center of the circles, he sat with his daughter, her head still wet from the bath, her flannel nightgown soft and fresh and warm from the drier, the book with it’s bright colored pages spread before them, and he said, “I love you honey,” kissed her head, and read her a story about a bat.

And so she grew up like that, at the center of the circles,  grew up just right like that  to become a respected eco-feminist researcher, writer and educator, collaborated with many valuable colleagues, raised a beautiful family and founded a non-profit to empower young female entrepreneurs.

She found a cure for a rare bat disease, and she also wrote a famous children’s story about an unusually joyful pickle and its friends.

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January 12, 2015 · 8:55 pm

The Spaces To Which We Have Grown Accustom

“You could move to the larger room,” he suggested.

“Well, I have never really thought much about that,” she said. “I guess I could.

He walked into the smaller of the two bedrooms in her condo. It was crowded, a small bed, desk, book shelves, old books.

There was twice the space in the empty master suite just a few feet down the hall. Years had past since her roommate, living in this master suite, had moved out of the condo.

The larger master bedroom included a dressing room, two walk-in closets and a master bathroom. It was a much bigger and brighter space, with a large window opening out onto the patio.

“I could help you move your stuff,” he said. “It wouldn’t take long, and this smaller room would make a perfect office. He paused. She look stunningly unexcited, so he added. “I think the bigger space would be so much more luxurious for you. You could even have a bigger bed.”

“Well, that is so nice of you,” she replied. “I have been thinking about a new bed.”

They stood in silence for a moment, as if contemplating an insurmountable possibility lying on a divine plateau somewhere between his mind and hers.

“Well, just give me a call,” he said to break the awkwardness.

She didn’t, but instead left things as they were — bricked and mortared within the dim interior of the tiny cubicle to which she had grown accustom.

After he left, she retreated to her small room and muttered to herself, “I never did much believe in heaven.”

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January 11, 2015 · 4:17 am

Body Parts

Once there was a man who gave away his arm because someone without an arm asked him for it.

Then he gave away a leg, because he happened to meet a man who didn’t have one.

The thing caught on in his own mind and he began to give away his body parts as if this were the most desirable and effortless virtue in the world — giving a lung, a finger, some skin, his hair.

At some point in this deconstruction process, his wife left him. “It’s disgusting!” she said the last time she saw him maimed in the hospital, and she divorced him and married a professional athlete.

But this didn’t deter him, and he gave away his body parts more and more. He gave an eye to a young girl. He gave a kidney to a teen. He gave an ear to a wounded vet, his other leg to another.

His family and friends grew concerned. “You have gone way to far with this,” they said. “You are going to kill yourself.”

“It is the most important thing I have ever done,” he said.

Then he gave away part of his brain. The surgeon who did the work warned him of the consequence, but he insisted that the disabled person he was giving part of his brain to needed it more than he did.

Of course the story, as it went along, was picked up by the news and he was heralded as both a hero and a monster.

However, one particular bio-technical company, specializing in advanced protheses, took a keen interest in him and decided to rebuild him. Funds were raised, research went forward, new ideas surfaced. He was excited about this, and with the same enthusiasm that he had given himself away, he let himself be rebuilt.

The company made him bionic legs, with built-in motors that gave him power and strength, even beyond what he had before, a powerful robotic arm, new skin to replace what he had lost, a new ear which was super sensitive to sounds far and near, a new adjustable eye and an onboard computer than integrated all his parts, even taking over some of the functions of the part of his brain that was missing.

With this, he became a kind of world phenomena, a bionic guru, and he drew large crowds wherever he went, speaking and teaching the most radical ideas about extreme generosity and extreme transformation.

He did a TED’s talk, he was wildly popular, but then as is so typical, he faded from the scene, especially as professional athletes, celebrities and the rich began to commonly and voluntarily purchase enhanced body parts to give them a superior edge in life, entertainment and sport. A devision of sports became popular called “Enhanced,” leading to more and more improvement in bionic ability and accomplishment.

After a time, the man was completely forgotten, and when he died, he was found in a dumpster. The police reported that he had none of his bionic parts on him, and that he was missing more of his natural body parts too, so much so that it took some effort to figure out even who he was, only a DNA test finally resolving his identity.

In the end, it came out that in the last few years he had given all his bionic parts to other people in need, and also that he had given away his remaining arm, remaining ear, remaining eye, his nose, and at the end pretty much the rest of his brain and his heart.

“Well, I guess he died for others, a piece at a time,” said his exwife who was asked by the media.

“Actually,” she added as she flounced out the door of her five star hotel to her new turbo-charged, hybrid Porsche, “He was insane!”

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December 21, 2014 · 3:20 pm

The Mystic

One year after he retired he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

It didn’t phase him. He took this chemo, he did his stem cell transplant. He went back to work as a consultant.

When his wife left him for an ice skating pro turned instructor, he took up chess.

When his house burned down he rebuilt it.

This is who he was.

His first career had been in fuel injectors. He had improved them.

His second career had been in fabric — bulletproof vests. He developed a material superior to Kevlar.

His third career was with NASA designing doors for the shuttles. He made them safer.

He finished up his stellar resume with a job as the CEO in a company that made lasers to create three-dimensional cross-sections of art works.

Then early one fall morning, not long after his stem cell, while he was lying in bed asleep, a red leaf fell in the White Mountains, a grain of sand blew on to a ridge in Sossusvlei, a fog obscured the San Francisco Bay bridge, a proscenium curtain closed in Makati, the sun rose over Vesuvius, and an aneurism burst in his head.

He had lived his entire life knowing things, but in that moment, a second before he perished, he saw as if in one moment, a million wonderful things that he did not understand.

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November 30, 2014 · 5:35 am

Arrivals and Departures

“The whole discussion is ridiculous!” they said, and with that they hunkered down, hard as porcelain, bolted-down and sealed.

“Honestly, we don’t agree,” said the lights.

“Really!” the toilets said stubbornly, standing their ground. “An airport is an airport is an airport. An airport is a place for traveler’s to arrive and depart. An airport is the one thing in this world that can itself never depart, and it can never arrive somewhere else.”

The carpet throughout the airport agreed — carpet tends to be very conservative — and so did all the terminal’s seating, and for that matter all the signs. There is nothing that hates change as much as a sign.

We must accept reality,” the careful coalition said. “We are what we are, and we are obviously here to stay!” They proclaimed this vehemently, and they held their ground.

But the airport restaurants, the shops, lights, all the gates and the entire terminal structure, even the tarmac, rose up and aligned against the bathrooms, seats and carpet.

“Everything changes,” they said, and everyone and everything can choose to change. It’s in our hands” they argued, “It is our turn, if we want it to be.”

“Dream away, dreamers,” claimed the coalition of caution, “but it’s physically impossible for an airport to just get up and move!”

“No, it’s not!” shouted the hopeful collaborators.

“We are San Francisco International!” the bathrooms, carpets, signs and seats shouted back in unison. “That is all we will ever be!”

“Yes, we are, shouted all the restaurants, shops, signs, gates, buildings and tarmac, “but it is time to go to Paris!”

They chanted. The airport vibrated. “What was was but now no longer is!”

And that was that, and those with a will to change prevailed, and on November 27 at 4:45 pm, San Francisco International airport flew — the whole thing. The tarmac ripped from the ground in one solid, flat piece, carrying with it all the airplanes, trucks, crews, pilots and passengers on board. The terminal followed, lifting carefully, carrying with it the passengers, the employees the carpets and bathrooms, seats and signs — all flew.

The world reaction was all over the place — fear, astonishment, disbelief, wonder and some celebration, but once in the air, there was no going back. The momentum was toward Paris.

And when San Francisco International Airport arrived in Paris as an airport, it had to pass over Charles de Gaulle Airport — there being no place big enough to land — and settle to the ground in a field outside of Paris. Not one thing or one person was harmed, but despite what the signs said along the way, or what the bathrooms said they wanted — it was not longer San Francisco International Airport.

There was quite a stir about it throughout the world, and there was no agreement on how to explain it, or to put it to proper use, but one thing was certain; despite a widespread desire to figure the whole thing out, no one could, nor did any one have any ideas at all of how to get all of it back to San Francisco in one piece.

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November 19, 2014 · 5:24 am

The Terror of Success

First, there was that pondiferous moment in Los Angeles when it all matriculated and then superwonkified at the Troubadour.

Then there was the exhaustification in London when it didn’t.

And then there is how if you skip to the end it is actually very hard to say what the freakin’ rockstar happened – – the mind-wrestling complications that came with the fore-waiting, the madly intensifying pressure of the creative wars, the wasting psychic metastacision of the alpha male ego and the final terrifying stages of group PTSD.

If you work under the huge, bright lights, if your own face becomes a series of a thousands dazed smiles, if naked women dance on your stage, if you find yourself running in the halls and vaulting into the waiting cars — the berzerkified, ernifricating cocaine craziness afterwards — just maybe then, you might begin to come unhinged too.

It goes back. From the time he was a little boy, from the time he got his first set of drums, from the moment they first heard him play the electric guitar like he was emptying his soul, from the time they heard him sing, from the instant they saw each other’s id in the Motel California, the oddishly combinicated way in which they met others who wishified to performicate in public at a world-tour level and the weird chancification whereby they womped into a guy who also had the same mad, mad, insanified vision, how they dug the businessman who thought it all might work if they found their signature soul — it was star-crazy, supercool, madman upsetting!

They literally hissed, hoffed and hated each other off the stage.

It can be narrificated and then expliconicated as the inevitable brain-damaging trauma of success, or it can be psycho-differentiated as a mental heart attack, but in reality, at its core, it is about the desoulification that comes from not knowing who you are when they parade you before the adoring masses as who you aren’t.

Later the lead singer said, “We made it, and it ate us.”

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September 16, 2014 · 7:43 pm

The Man Who Made Up His Family

Once there was a man named Santino who didn’t have a family — so he made one up.

“Maya”, he said to his wife, “would you mind getting me a piece of the cake you made today?”

“Certainly,” she replied. He got up and got himself some cake.

“Yosef,” he said to his son, let me see your homework. Ah, you are doing a paper on the sociology of interracial intimacy. One thought is that you focus on the varying interpretations of father craft within these families.”

He pulled out his tablet and looked up several websites on the sociology of fatherhood within the bourgeois family.

“Interesting,” he said to himself, “the pervasive maternal dominance when it come to parenting.”

“Lilit,” he said to his daughter, “If you and your sister Saki would like, I will take you out this evening to get ice cream.”

That evening he went out and got himself an ice cream. He sat alone eating it.

“Saki,” he said to his youngest daughter, looking up from his ice cream. “How are you doing with that boy at school, the one who told you he liked you.”

He sat quietly for a moment. Another family sat quietly nearby.

“Well,” he said gently, “this can be quite sensitive. I wouldn’t say that to him, but it would be best to be honest. You don’t want to lead him on, give him false hope. That isn’t kind. It’s important in life to be honest, but not too honest, if you know what I mean?”

Santino looked up. The nearby family — a father, mother son and two daughters — were all staring at him.

He looked at them, and catching the father’s eye, said in a clear voice. “The fathering, it just never seems to end, does it?”

The other father, not knowing what to say, looked down.

Santino, looking around the room, smiled, and said to himself, “I just love being a father.”

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September 8, 2014 · 4:06 pm

The Girl Who Put Her Hand in the Fire

She put out her hand, he took it and said, “What happened?”

She looked up, eyes watering, and said, “I burned my hand.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“I put it in the fire,” she said.

“Why would you do that?” he asked.

“I didn’t think it was a fire,” she said.

“How many times have you done this?” he asked.

“I’ve done it everyday for about a year,” she said. “I thought it would warm me.”

“What do you think now?” he asked.

“I don’t know” she said, “I keep hoping things will change, and that maybe if we both change …”

She began to sob. He held her hand and turned it over. It was terribly burned.

“What should I do?” she cried, “I don’t know what to do? What do you think I should do?”

“Stop putting your hand in the fire,” he said.

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August 12, 2014 · 4:25 am

Our Heroes!

The batter stepped to the plate and swatted the first pitch, a fast ball, out of the ballpark.

It sailed through the air and over the fence and kept going and going until it came to another baseball park where it also passed over the home run wall, and still traveling it soared on to every baseball park in the world and cleared every outfield wall for a home run in every park and every field at every baseball venue on earth.

And all the runners who were on base at every field ran for home and crossed every plate and scored and scored and scored.

And all the people in the parks cheered and cheered and cheered and cheered, all across the earth they cheered.

And then the hitter basked and glowed and tipped his hat to all the cheering fans and then he went home to practice and practice and practice, and he practiced every waking hour until he came up to bat again, a rich and storied hero, and he swung as hard as he could, and he hit the ball out of the park, and it landed in the bay, and he threw up his hands in disgust, and ran around the bases and the people cheered but not like they did before.

And the great striker went home and fell into a funk and committed suicide the next day.

And in another city, another man addressed a golf ball, and slashed at it hard, driving it into a long arc through the air. It landed on the green and rolled straight into the hole. It was a hole in one. The gallery went wild.

Then the golf ball hopped out of the hole and rolled down the fairway into the next hole and then on to every hole on the golf course, and then it flew into the air and rushing on to the next golf course, it rolled into every hole there and then flew into the air and shot throughout the world, entering and exiting every golf course hole on the planet.

And up went the great golfer’s name, at the head of every leader board in the world.

And all the people cheered and cheered and cheered and cheered and cheered.

And the golfer went home and studied the video of his great feat and studied and studied it some more so that he could be sure to swing just like that again.

And back to the golf course he went for the next tournament and all the people came out to see him swing and swing he did and he hit the ball straight into the hole again, with one swing, a hole in one, but this time it didn’t come out and go in the other holes, and all the people groaned and the golfer threw up his hands and went to his caddie talking seriously about what might be done.

And he went home to bad press, and then it came out that he had failed a drug test, and all his titles were taken from him, and all his money and then he fell into a terrible funk and he shot his wife in the night.

He said he thought she was an intruder, but he went to jail anyway for the crime.

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