A Snapshot Story

it isn’t a complicated machine.

For sixteen years, Reginald was an engineer, and before that he had always studied to become one. From the time he was young, his teachers said he would be a great engineer, because he could do math so well and understood constructive processes. All of that is true, and quite wonderful to boot. But, you see, the public education system that gave him these compliments taught him a process – he could work on a function, but only within the parameters that had been taught to him.

You see, Reginald was never an idea man. 

Even after years of technical training by the best university the state had to offer, he was halted in his career, constantly. For nearly two decades, he accomplished nothing of his own at the drafting and casting firm, but completed so many side projects by handling the logistics for others that they simply kept him around. In all the time it took for upper management to notice, he was slowly losing himself, strained and stressed by his ability to do, but not think; to manipulate, but not create. Finally, one day, he was sent home.

Once he arrived in his family home, Reginald parked his car in the garage. On his way to the back door, he dropped his keys, and then scraped his hand on the bottom of a fence post while picking them up. Startled, angry and stupid, he ripped the post off, nails and all. He smiled, and then did the same with four more boards of matching shape and length. He left his briefcase there on the lawn, and carried these boards into his study. Pounding the pre-driven nails into the door frame behind him, he sealed the office with only himself inside. This boarded up door is the first thing that Reginald ever builds in his entire life without direction from someone else.

Reginald fell to the floor, clawing at the desk, bringing down every scrap and sheet of paper he could find. On each he drew the machine of his own design; the one that had been in his mind his whole life. He would build it, and you would put something into it, and it would give you something better afterward. That was his understanding of machines after all this time, and he wanted to make something for himself, by himself. That, of course, was when he got stuck.

What do you put inside a machine? Gears? Pulleys? Weights? LEDs? Wires? In his time, Reginald had seen everything go inside of a case, and he’d connected each piece perfectly, just as he was instructed. Efficiency was praised, highly, and there were others who built machines to make machines based on the way that Reginald built their machines. Now it was his turn, though, and he would decide on his own what best made up the guts of making the world a better, simpler place.

Hours passed, and he ignored the pounding on the door, the pleading of his wife, and the tears of his daughter. Each sketch was more detailed than the last, but the questions still remained the same. What makes it go? What goes into this machine? What does it give you in response? Why should it exist? The passage of time made him weary, and his body began to break itself down, but he pressed on with his attempt to, for the first time ever, think on his own. Then, he cried, lamenting the broken machine he himself had become.

That is when he realized there wasn’t anything inside.

He grappled with a roll of tape, hurrying his scattered drawings all about the chalkboard on the western wall. Once they formed a perimeter, he worked inside of it, inhaling chalk dust as he scribbled, erased, and repeated. Fundamental rules had held Reginald down all his life, and in this moment, just as the door was finally being beaten down by his brother in law, he realized he could break them. He learned, in his own way, that there was a machine with many outputs in any direction and plane. Just as he finished, his rapid heartbeat betrayed him, and too much dust filled his gasping lungs. Coughing he cast aside the chalk and threw open the window, leaning out it as far as he could and taking it all in.

Just as he felt the late morning sun give its input to him, the heavy wooden door shattered off its hinges. The shock tossed him out and into the bushes below.

Being that the study was, as most are, on the first floor, this wasn’t a huge deal in the least. Reginald survived, and his brother-in-law picked him up momentarily, and brushed a combination of dust and branches off of him. Once he had been force to take in some water, he sat, smiling, until finally his wife came out to the porch with the chalkboard she had just lifted off the wall in the study.

“Oh, my machine! What do you think?”

“Reggie, I have no idea what this means, and I’m going to call a doctor. We’re going to get you the help you need.”

“No no, I don’t need help. It’s all right there, plain as day. The input and the output are exactly the same. There’s nothing special inside a machine at all!”

His brother-in-law walked away in disgust, while his wife, ever-loving, leaned closer to him, still holding up the board. “Will you explain it to me, my darling?”

“If you put negative in, you get negative out. If you put in positivity instead, you will get positive out. It isn’t a complicated machine.” He smiled, hearing himself say it.

She leaned closer. “So, what about these?” she questioned while gesturing toward the outputs.

“Oh, that’s the best part! You don’t have to give only as much positivity as you get. You can give even more! There’s actually no good reason not to, since everyone knows that positivity is better than negativity.” He paused a moment, then continued, “If you put in thinking, you’ll get someone that thinks. But if you only put in facts and equations, you’ll only ever end up with facts and equations.”

His wife suddenly relieved that her husband was not dead or permanently crazy, tossed the board on the lawn and wrapped both arms around him. “And if you put in love, that’s what you’ll get out?”

Reginald smiled and kissed his wife on the cheek. “It isn’t a complicated machine.”

//

story, sketches, and photo all by me, @faccavitti3. I came up with the quote a few days before, and decided to build everything from there.

Let’s be people.

Careful Planning.

Thinking too hard.

What we both want to see is paradise. Before you stop to think about what you’re seeing instead, do yourself a favor: don’t.

Nope.

I don’t want you to do what I would and over-think the beauty of the world. When you slow your mind down, rather than allowing it to compare the models of the three extraordinarily similar silver cars on the left —

Dammit. I got caught up again. Exactly as I am trying to encourage you not to do, I’m overly-focused on small details. Yes, we look for patterns, leading lines, and the brightest part of the photo, but I would prefer if, for the remainder of the lesson, you not follow my mismanaged direction.

Now, between the trees. You know, the palm on the left, and the intricately overgrown ginsu on the right, which must live in an amazing soil that could be drastically different from the one just across the way, nurturing palms. I wonder—

Rats. Again, eh? My mind is just too tangled to stare at a sky so blue above an ocean so vast, and so I fail at appreciating the simple, inspiring, perfect world in which we live.

I wonder what it takes to slow down. Oh… I did? Well, I wish I wrote down the steps, because there’s got to be a way to see things. 

photo credit: @alisonavocado (a.k.a. my lovely wife)

57 on 1/31

A melted snowman is not the visage of Ozymandias, but they mean the same thing. Who were we to be so arrogant that we tried to make a man of this miracle that fell from the sky? These crystal, individualistic as they are fragile, came from above preformed and perfect, and our response was to shape them into a bastardization of our own image? Shame on us.

We must always believe that we can immortalize ourselves with items we simply did not appreciate in their own form, despite its overall ability to be perceived as perfect. Nothing we make can be as great as the original elements, can they? But we try it anyway. Sure, a painted picture is more beautiful than the individual tubes of acrylic, but is it as beautiful as the woman crushing flowers and water to create the first version of that violent, crimson paint that catches your eye first? A professor instruction on the manner in which it pops from the page would do well to think of her centuries-old contribution to the canvas.

You’re great, trust me. But you’re still a collection of elements, forged in a star that could liquefy you the same way it did your creation. Appreciate it, appreciate yourself, and try and see the world by itself, and not your mirror. Not every electron was made to spin the same way. 

photo credit: @hemogoblins

5 of the 8 cylinders.

We’re going to have to wait until it’s warmer.

They did not, for the record, say when that would occur. I don’t expect that I live with, er, used to live with meteorologists, but generally, the climate of this whole area works in a relatively consistent cycle. There are days that you don’t wear a coat, then there are days where you bring a coat, then there are days when you put on a coat but take it off, and finally there are days when you need a coat. It was during part three of four when the aforementioned quote graced my ears, and I cannot for the life of me seem to figure out why I didn’t ask them to be more specific. I get caught up in this, and nobody comes back for me. 

Perhaps if I got past this first error, with time put out of the way, I’d be considering the more pressing of questions — why does weather have to decide so much of one’s life? Yes, I absolutely agree that weather is a changing pattern, as I cleared up with the coat analogy, but how can waiting for the eventuality that you don’t need a heavy coat to walk downtown, or even to that park with the rusty swings, have any true impact on the way you live your life? As long as your heart beats and your system stays optimal, you’re going to warm back up no matter how cold you get. Well, unless … nevermind, I’m not a doctor and I can’t spell hypothermia. 

When will it be warmer? What will that change? How will I know when they’re coming back to get me? 

I can’t stop coughing. It hasn’t been as easy for me to get around as of late, and I know that I won’t feel much better when things do… “warm up.” But they’ll try to feel better about me, after waiting, and I’ll try to see if I can forgive and forget and move forward (and backward) again. I know that you might find my attitude a tad melodramatic, but if half of your heart stopped working and your friends told you to wait out in the snow for a while until it was warm enough for them to come out and take you in for surgery, you’d probably make more of a fuss. You’d scream and shout, I’m sure. Why? Because I would do the same, if I could stop coughing for a moment to do so. 

I hope I’m here when it’s warmer. 

photo credit: self.

scattered papers

It’s only a day off that I am frantically trying to figure out what I’m good at. Don’t get me wrong — I’m good at lots of things. I can dry a pair of pants and a shirt for just the right amount of time, then toss them on a hanging rack with such perfect creases, you’d swear my wife ironed them for me. She would if I asked, and they are non-iron wrinkle-resistant to begin with, but none the less, I consider it something that I’m good at. It isn’t a marketable skill, aside from the assistance with marketing myself. That’s the way of things. 

I haven’t gotten personal with this blog before because I want to always assume a character. I have too many that need a voice to waste any time, and I loved crafting stories from the work of others for the time that I did. But I’m going to make a change to the formula today. Step one was borrowing someone else’s paper picture to ensure that I’m emphasizing my scattered pages metaphor appropriately as I describe how addled my brain has been getting. Step two is to put more meaning in my life. 

It isn’t anything personal I’m going through, but it is, in a way. My wife and I are happy, and she is happy in her own way with her dream job. Her aside, I am not always happy as simply myself, and I can’t always depend on her to bring me up. I love her dearly, but that is a lot of pressure to put on a person. She is my happiness, but she should not be solely responsible for said happiness. Therefore, I’m going to jump start this blog to give myself a bit more meaning, and it’s now going to involve something else — my own photos, with their own stories.

I still want your photo submissions. I’m just done waiting for them to show up at all hours of the day. I haven’t had much of a hit in four months, and if I’m going to get something going for me again, I’ll have to be my own jumping off point. Therefore, as of today, I’m going to also include my own photos along with the others so that I can actually make something for people to read. Or not read. You’ve always got that decision in your own hands, friends. 

Anyway, if you were here before this post, now you know the difference. If you are just joining us, here we are. Cool. I’ll move on to something more creative now, because I’d hate to be boring. Cheers.

photo credit: a google search, likely stock. if it’s yours, let me know and i’ll link you here.

superbia (latin)

There was a thick crowd the day that I finally learned a lesson from the mistakes I’d been making most of my life. I’m sure they all saw it, and by now have told you what their eyes witnessed. Let me explain to you what really occurred the day of my fall.

You see, it is well known that anything you can do I can do better. Since the age of thirteen, when I finally stopped crying all the time and gained an enormous sense of self (see also: overbearing ego), I have set forth on a nearly daily basis to prove to everyone in my realm, from school to career, that I am better than them at all the things that we can both do. I won’t get specific, because the list of things I have become excellent at is simply too long to go through. I barely remember what my hobbies and interests are anymore.

I don’t challenge others out of some disgusting need for approval — I get plenty of approval. I do it because they are attempting to come against me first. You may not agree (many who have shamed me do not), but when someone walks out and acts in such a way as to postulate themselves toward the general public, it falls to someone else in that room to respond in kind. If you don’t agree, I understand; you simply do not live by the same rules as I do, as they are an ancient set in which I have long since placed my complete faith. It is the way that I act, because if I do not…

Well, that’s the thought that makes the day that I fell different. You see, a week before, I had been challenged to a logic contest with a man who was sharing his beliefs at the side of a fire. While the lively debate clearly fell to me by his act of rescinding a point, the way in which this withdraw occurred made me think about his side. You see, he did not care to lose to a superior man such as I, for he felt that nothing could be further from important than winning. As a man who wins everyday, I took offense, but then meditated upon it for several hours.

I noted, for the first time, what my drive to do good was — I couldn’t think of a name for it, but thoughtful hours drove me to know that for twenty years, I had vowed to be the best in order to keep from losing my inflated sense of self, fearful of returning to a crying child. But, now that I considered it, I realized that I had come so far from that pain using my arrogance as a crutch, that there could be no way that I would ever return to such a place! I may be in a corner from time to time if I do not always win, but simply being in a corner does not mean that I have to cry.

I resolved to lose the next time I found the opportunity. Such an occasion awaited me outside the door, where the crowd I referenced earlier had gathered for high jumping. I made eye contact with the group, one after another, until I felt the look of challenge returned by a casually hopping man. We stood, facing one another, and leapt vigorously. I outdid him each time, and as he began to tire of it, I knew I would have to decide to take myself out of this. I strained hard to try and keep myself from reaching my maximum, and to further the act, spun my right ankle to its side as I came down, bracing for the pain. It was awful, and as I crumpled to the ground, I heard far more bursts of laughter than gasps of pain. However, I held back tears, and smiled, for by allowing myself to be defeated, I could move on without having to challenge each person, without leaning on a crutch of arrogance, and without needing to be the best.

The story that you heard, from what I understand, is that I, a man filled with pride (a good word, why didn’t I think of that in my meditation!?), finally met his match by playing with children and toppling over with a broken foot. I can see exactly why your story is more believable, but either way, lesson learned.

Now, help me up.

Photo credit: Angie T.

living in the slums

It isn’t that different from your life, I’m sure. When you get home from school in the afternoon, you turn a key in a lock and push open a door. I spin a combination, unwrap the chain, move the cinderblock and pull open a door. That’s basically the same thing.

When you go inside, you leave your shoes on the rug by the door. I don’t own a rug, or any shoes, so I’m all set. We both set down our school bags, but when you pick up a tv remote, I pick up my little brother, and cradle him for a little while until he calms down, since the light from opening the door awoke him. You tend to notice the light from an open door a lot more when you have no windows. Or electricity. We’re pretty similar, though.

Dinner is being cooked by my family, so I’ll do my chores in the meantime. I know you sweep the floor or vacuum the couches sometimes, but I don’t really… well, my chores are different. I take care of animals. You feed the cat? I feed the goats, chickens, and a few others. They’re dirty, and I have a few marks and sores from it, but it’s okay. I’ll get stronger to that stuff as I get older. 

I go outside to eat with my family, which is bigger than your family, because it is my whole village. We tell stories around a great cooking fire and try to fill our bellies, but it doesn’t always happen. Maybe we should eat stories, since we have so many of them to tell. I learn a lot that way, but it still leaves me hungry. 

I try to do my schoolwork before the dark is completely over us, because once it is dark, there is nothing left to do but sleep. If I do all my schoolwork, then maybe I can get a job outside the village. It’s dangerous, though, to venture out from your society. That’s why I stay where I am. It’s kind of a cycle.

Before I leave you, so that I can spin my combination chain, and you can turn your shiny silver key, can I ask you a strange question? Are we on a video chat across the world, or on a bus? Are you my neighbor, or just a distant pen-pal? Are we from the same town, using a set of tracks to divide what is your life and mine?

Are we so different?

Photo credit: Angie T.

Fraternal, of course. Why would you ask?

My brother and I haven’t ever really gotten along. This seems cliche, I’m certain,    but my relationship with my brother hasn’t been one that qualifies as normal. It was not then, and is not now give-and-take, push-and-pull, or anything else along those typical lines. The truth is, he has always taken what he wants, and I have simply stood in his way.

Yes, we’re twins, and I came out first. That is something that comes up in conversation much more often than you would think. Most people know at least one set of twins from when they were growing up, and are aware of this strange controversy over who managed to plow out of a womb first. I wasn’t trying, and I had help from a trained professional, but I don’t mind taking the credit. It is the very first victory point I ever earned, and the only one dear Ricky can’t take away from me.

Oh, he’s going to hate that I called him that.

Anyway, throughout life, Rick has had the qualities people notice. He’s the better looking one, he’s the more athletic, and he can shout the loudest. The first one was discovered before we consciously knew we were more than bags of meat, when we both cried for milk and he got fed first. I know most people don’t have memories back that far, but when you get ripped off, it embeds into your squishy little mind even when the danger of soft spots still lurks. The competition started for me that day, but it had been going since our first breath for my brother.

Front seat on the way to the grocery store? Rick. Sip of mom’s milkshake from McDonalds? Rick. Sure, there was plenty left for me, but did I want that straw after his bite marks plunged into it? No thank you. Conscious of this effort, I decided to fight back one day by stopping my quest to win, and simply attempting to keep him from doing so.

To my child-like mind (because I was a child), the church fair seemed as good a place as any for an evil plot to hatch and thicken. Dad took Rick on the Tilt-A-Whirl. I watched. We both went on the Ferris Wheel. Dad and I got loaded after Mom and Rick, and let off before. But then, oh then, the bumper cars. I knew from the look in his eye that Rick wanted to get into a car and bump me so hard my teeth would fall out. This is where my plan came to fruition.

“Mom, I want to ride with my brother because he’s so great!” I squealed and whined, and if I remember right, I think I batted my eyelashes.

Rick, having already selected his electric blue racer, looked stunned. His eyes were huge, and his blood was boiling. I bounded over to him with my mother’s approval, and stood by the driver side. He didn’t budge.

“Let your sister in, boy!” my father commanded. It was time to keep victory away from him by taking what he wanted most — that steering wheel. I wrestled my way in, certain that dad’s words would get through, but he kept fighting me! There was a struggle, and as I put my weight into, he finally boiled over and struck out with a considerable elbow to my chin. The pain!

It didn’t hurt at all, but we both had to get off the bumper cars, and I got an ice cream while Ricky-boy didn’t.

Thirty years later, at Mom and Dad’s anniversary party, Rick told the story, having long since figured out that I had played him like a sap when I was only four years old. As he was applauded and made me the deceptive villain of a sister, I smirked and made my way to the podium for my speech. Looking right at him, I said with a wink, “I also got out of that bumper car first.”

Photo credit: Karin O’Brien, as submitted by her sister (who was right there too), @kmayer