Master Fung: Dear Mastah Fung, hoo are yah, anyways, let me cut tae the chase. If it’s awrite wae yoo, I’d like to come to visit fer a week. Please reply if you hink ah should, your best student. Scottie McCrimson.

Kimiko: Scottie McCrimson? Would he by any chance be Scottish?

Or try this truly astonishing first paragraph:

It is rather strange how the Alkali Metals react to water, if one small chunk of Cesium falls into water, then the entire city can blow up. So imagine what could happen if Francium, an element much larger and more powerful then Cesium falls into water, let’s just say, good by to the state. However, Francium is radioactive, that is to say, it breaks down into smaller, less harmful elements. But what would happen if there was a way for Francium to stop its decay? What would happen if Francium, was evil, will the Alkali Metals destroy the world?

Most of this disaster is forgivable, since it probably originated as scribblings on napkins in high school cafeterias. But I, always on the lookout for ways to dismay myself, must take a tragic lesson from this, which is that there is an unfortunate lack of correspondence between perceived ability and actual skill. Self-criticism is a conundrum for any creative individual. Art must be communicated; private meaning is fine and even valuable, but our lives are brief, and our mental space is narrow. If creation is more than an exercise in self-correction, it’s the judgement of others that becomes the primary determinant of its worth. Thus, I should know whether I’m making something others might see as beautiful or ugly, a difficult task when I am unable to appreciate the work divorced from the scaffolding that I used to assemble it. Probably this is why, my friend Claudio would say, we believe the Creator wants us to worship him - surely even he is insecure about his creation without critical acclaim.

“The Maiden caught me in the Wild
   While I was dancing merrily
She put me into her Cabinet
   And Lockd me up with a golden Key”
   — William Blake, ‘The Crystal Cabinet’^*

When the downy promise of his chin had matured into golden curls, Yegor bade his mother good-bye and set out to seek his fortune. He had no possession other than the clothes he wore and his father’s sword, but he had kept the blade clean and sharp, and his wits even keener. So he whistled as he walked with the sun in his hair, sure that around the next corner the road led to treasure and fame.

But when the road turned he found instead, lying amidst a tuft of gorse along the shoulder, a corpse. It was an old bull, already many days dead. The flesh sagged down between its ribs and the white, swollen length of its tongue protruded through its teeth.

A single raven perched on its neck, preparing to feast on the glazed, nacreous orb of the bull’s eye. As Yegor drew closer it tilted its head and fixed its own dark eye upon him.

He crouched in the dust on the far side of the road with his sword across his knees. “Good morning, Brother,” he said.

The raven clacked its beak and spoke:
“Turn back, Brother!
Or meet your heart’s wound,
And the blood pours from it.”

Yegor laughed and said, “Nay, I fear nothing.”

The raven replied, “Go on then, and perish.”

So he traveled on, and the sun made the back of his neck damp with sweat, and his calves grew dusty, and his belly hollowed, but his chin was still held high. And at a crossroads, he came upon the body of a thief who had been hanged from the signpost. The blood had pooled in its fingers, and swelled and blackened its face. A dog was chewing the flesh from its foot. As Yegor passed, he said to it, “Good afternoon, Brother.”

The dog rolled its eyes at him and spoke:
“Turn back, Brother!
Or prick your thumb on poisoned thorn,
And your blood turns to ash.”

Yegor laughed and said, “Nay, I fear nothing.”

The dog replied, “Go, then, to your doom.”

And on he went, until his sword grew heavy in his hand, and his boots chafed his feet, and his shoulders bowed beneath the weight of the breeze. When the sun had fallen almost to the border of the empty sky, he reached the top of a desolate hill, crested by a low stonewall, and crowned by the naked fingers of an elm tree. And in the long shadow it cast there stood a figure in black, sharpening a scythe. The tremor of the whetstone grating against the rusted edge of the blade shivered through Yegor and chilled his marrow, and he said nothing as he passed.

But the figure turned the point of the blade towards him and spoke:
“Turn back, Brother!
Or sigh the breath from your body,
And your blood dries up in your veins.”

Yegor said sullenly, “The road is still long, and my steel is sharper than yours.”

The shadow replied, “Then I will see you anon.”

Yegor drew his sword tight against his shoulder and walked further. When the sun had kissed the horizon, and shadow and form had blended into the gloom of twilight, he came upon a young maid, outside the ruin of a church. She was not fair, and not dark, and her eyes looked neither up nor down. On her back she bore a great wooden cabinet, fastened with hinges of black iron, its borders carved by a skilled hand. Yegor caught her eye and turned his smile, and asked her, “Pretty maid, what burden do you bear through this wilderness?”

She lowered the curtain of her lashes, and said, “Inside is a great treasure, and your heart’s desire.”

His blood quickened, his nostrils flared. “Show it to me!” he commanded.

Her eyes flashed, the tendons stood out against her neck. “What is inside you may see only once, and then never again,” she warned him.

Yegor nodded. His chest was broad and his teeth were white. “I will see it, and know it,” he said.

She made no reply, but took the cabinet down off her back. Her hands were busy across its many clasps. When the last was unbuckled she reached across it and drew open the door.

Inside

there was a girl.

Her eyes were the sky, and her hair the flowing waters, her brows heather and lavender, and the sun hid in her smile. In her hands she held a thrush, which beat its wings against the cage of her fingers.

Yegor saw her, and his thirst was quenched, his hunger ended. She turned her face to him. Her lips parted to speak. He stepped forward to hear her crystal voice -

- and at once the door sprang shut, the hinges closed over it, and the young maid moved to guard it. “Maiden, please,” he cried. “That is my heart’s desire! Open it, let me see her again.”

She gave half a smile. “Only once,” she said. “More, my mistress does not permit.”

“Permit me,” he begged. “For I love her, and I will win the world for her.”

“Only once,” she said, “and never again.” She lifted the cabinet onto her back, turned thrice widdershins, and vanished. Yegor was left alone with his beating heart.

He lingered awhile near the memory of her presence, and fell asleep against the bole of a tree. When dawn came he picked himself up, and traveled on.

The road was long, and on it he found many adventures. He crossed mountains, swam wide rivers and rode them down to the sea. He tamed strange beasts, slew others. He fought bandits, and armies, and faced mighty princes in single combat. He brought down a witch’s tower, threw a giant from the side of a mountain, broke the backs of bears with the force of his arms. His sword cut through wood and leather, tendon and bone. His legend grew, and people spoke his name, in front of fires and beneath high ceilings, with reverence.

The flesh of every feast made in his honor was like sand in his mouth, and every toast raised to him was bitter vinegar. No draught could compare to the imagined nectar of her kiss. Kings offered him their daughters, dewy beauties with bewitching eyes and narrow waists, but he only shook his head and was silent. People began to call him by other names - Yegor Stone-Heart, and Grim Yegor, and the cloud of his melancholy became his dark cloak in their stories.

And every morning he woke up from dreams of her eyes, and every day his restless steps took him in search of the maid and the cabinet that held his heart’s love.

Ten years passed. His beard grew thick, his eyes grew hard, his fingers knotted with calluses. And one day his meanderings brought him at dusk to the broken remains of an old building. He knew those stones, for he had dreamed of them every day since he had last seen them. And beside them, standing in her own shadow, was the maid he had long sought.

Joy erupted inside him, and he wept happily, rushing towards her. She recognized him at once, and shrank back against the cabinet. “O maiden,” he cried. “How I have waited for this day, how I have prepared! Now I have found you, and now you must show me what I have long desired.”

The maid shook her head, and was silent.

Yegor caught her wrist in his hand. “I am not the boy you met before. I have traveled far, and seen things, and many kings are held in my debt. Let me take your mistress as my wife, and I will build for her, here, a palace such as none have ever seen before.”

“I cannot,” she said. “I cannot! Let me go!” She twisted her arm against his iron grip.

Yegor grew angry, and his brow lowered. “Treacherous maid!” he spat, drawing his shining sword at once. “Who are you to decide? Stand aside, and I will make entreaties myself!”

She turned pale, and trembled like a leaf, and caught the wind and was carried away. But the cabinet was left behind.

He fell upon the dark box, his excitement quick. He struggled with the catches, gasping to see the lady of his dreams. But his hands could not contend with its iron locks. He cut at them, and pried them, until the blade of his sword snapped between them. Then clawed, and pounded, and struck the wooden door til his fists were bloodied, and his strength gone. Still the cabinet stood.

He sagged against it, weeping, clutching it like it was the body of his beloved. Then he began again.

When dawn came, the wood yielded at last, and he tore the door apart, howling like a wild thing, madness in his eyes. The interior was exposed, and inside - was nothing.

Not nothing - a mirror, and a burnt candle, which reflected the relief carved into the side of the cabinet, of her, his lady of undying beauty, with a face of wood and eyes of polished glass, and a small toy bird held in her immortal hands, which, through artifice, a peddler’s trick, could be made to move and beat its wings.

The cry that escaped him was his soul flying away. She never was.

^* As it often seems to happen, just after I thought of this story about a girl with a girl in a cabinet, I happened across this William Blake poem, which seemed to echo the form of my story precisely.

The stakes are high for our citizens and for our economy, and with gasoline running at more than four bucks a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians.

This, from a speech McCain is to give on the subject of opening up offshore drilling. Some of you may recall that when last we left it, the question had been broached and approved in the House, which voted 232-187 in favor of allowing offshore drilling beyond 50 miles from any coast (with an option to ban in the 50-100 mile range by individual states). Subsequently it languished in the Senate, and has now been reintroduced as the “Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2008″ (with exceptions for Florida and California, the most beach-dependent and therefore most recalcitrant).

Bush has done McCain one better and also proposes opening up a bit of ANWR for exploration and development. Politically this is a good time to propose these things, because the price of gas is absurdly high (round these parts nearing $5/gallon) by American standards. It’s a moment for feel-good solutions, even if they won’t manage to actually stave off the high prices for the next few years. Oil companies still rely on exploration, and exploratory drilling, all of which takes quite a while even before you get to the point of setting up a well. So charitably speaking, even if we manage to pass this bill and open up the outer continental shelf for exploration by 2009, it won’t make a lick of difference to oil prices for, minimally, the next few years, and realistically the next few decades. As campaign rhetoric goes, this is merely, well, campaign rhetoric.

The department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service estimates that there are about 86 billion barrels of technically recoverable reserves waiting for us in the US outer continental shelf. To put this in perspective, current US total reserves amount to less than 21 billion barrels. This represents quite a bit of oil, and at current prices of $136/bbl, it’s also a lot of money ($11.7 trillion). Ostensibly, of course, the goal of this effort is to reduce that bloated figure, but it’s not necessarily the case that it will do so. All other US reserves are in terminal decline. Oil production follows a more-or-less bell-shaped distribution, as once a region is open for discovery it is methodically explored and exploited. US productivity history looks like this:

In about thirty years we’ll be bone-dry if we don’t develop our offshore resources. Most of the rest of the world is in the same situation. So by the time we do get those offshore fields into production, it’s probable they won’t be able to make up for the intervening aggregate loss in production.

This isn’t necessarily catastrophic, if we ignore our various environmental concerns. Developing our energy infrastructure need not be a zero-sum game, and we can certainly imagine that this offshore exploration might continue apace with the development of other technologies that obsolesce it before it even becomes problematic. Political will, however, is definitely no better than a zero-sum game, and probably has diminishing returns over time. Adopting more oil production as our forward-thinking energy model doesn’t set the stage for the kind of century I had in mind.

ADDENDUM: For some typical commentary, see this one by Charles Krauthammer (presumably so named because he is the scion of a family of cabbage-beaters), where he excoriates McCain for not going far enough with his oil-exploration madness, but ignores the fact that the exploration he is touting won’t actually earn us any energy independence, especially as compared to, say, developing alternative energy sources. I will never understand why, when you are discussing questions that depend on fundamentals of geology, you ignore the fundamentals of geology.

“You’ve just gotta wait,” I say. “Just time it.”

“It’s all about the timing,” he agrees. I see a movement to my right - a third bicyclist is cutting through the grass, attempting to circumvent the gantlet of sprinklers.

“That’s an awfully long jet,” I remark, queasily. “Is it coming towards us? It is coming towards us!” We edge backwards. Then, “Fuck it!” I declare, and charge forward. The first spray is not so bad - I slip through the least of it. The second hits me full on, drenching my jeans. The wind immediately cuts into my wet hands, chilling them.

“Oh - that’s cold!” I hear from behind.

We are now officially headquartered in San Francisco.

This song perfectly captures my current mood. In the unlikely case that you’ve never heard it before, I beseech you: if you start, you must keep listening till the halfway point.

Sometimes I lose patience with people assuming what my next course will be - employment, marriage, stability. Should I continue to play my life out by rote? Can others truly bear to live their entire lives that way? Is it possible to never leave the boundaries of the maze, and to follow its familiar, monotonous walls back and forth in perpetuity? Other times I fear their assumption is correct. Only a fool ventures off into the unknown in pursuit of fabled treasures - the sort of romantic idiot who likens life to a fantastic voyage.

This is not how I imagined adulthood - learning to accept that you are a bug, and dreams are false, and heroes do not exist (or at least: you will never be one).

I am riding my bike from the bookbindery, to deliver my two copies of the document, and these dark thoughts cast a veil over the sunlit day. I lift my head to shake it away, to catch a glimpse of blue sky. A light rain strikes my face, just a kiss of descending mist. I’m gladdened by this bit of fairy magic. I look around me for the inevitable rainbow, but it cannot be seen. Its arch descends from directly above me. I am the pot of gold.

(Via ATR)