Contradicta


As you read further into the past writers were more often hopeful but desperately earnest; as you come closer to the present they are more often hopeless yet desperately funny.


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To span the space between the known and the unknown begin with the gulf between the thought and the said.


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*Shadows Within Shadows* Within Shadows

I googled Tom Beckett's blog Shadows Within Shadows today and found the dreaded Blogger: 404 Page Not Found.

Hopefully, Tom will return to blogging soon. I took this opportunity to reread all the chapbooks by him that I have. They are: *Wagers of Synthesis^ (Zasterle, 1997); *Separations* (Generator, 1988) and *Vanishing Points of Resemblance* (Generator, 2004). Here is a beautiful passage from "Vanishing Points of Resemblance*:

"For years I thought I knew that the accident occurred when I was five. My parents now tell me I was more like two years old at the time. Maw-maw, my grandmother, was driving and stopped abruptly. We'd just, so it has been said, purchased a goldfish. My little head smashed against the dash. Although it wasn't immediately apparent, my brain got scrambled. Up to that point, I'd been developing normally, could do somersaults, perceived spatial relations appropriately, etc. However, one day at the dinner table I flopped forward, began having convulsions. and all that changed. This was in the mid-1950's, an era that didn't celebrate differance. Unlike our current era which pretends to. I became extremely uncoordinated, the physical trauma having created a disconnect between body and brain. All cylinders weren't firing right. My mother's perfect baby wasn't perfect anymore. the coordination problem became worse still as I became ridiculously tall, having reached six feet by sixth grade and eventually topping out at 6'7" during high school."


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