Flying Saucers and Concrete Ribbons

I don’t know where to begin. I finished Anastasia and she was all over the place; I’ve been all over the place; my mind flip-flops and splatters everywhere. All of this, in the best way possible.


Anastasia talked about our primitive destructive technology and culturing microorganisms to utilize in flying saucers. I’ve copied a couple paragraphs from the book to give the general gist:

“The functioning of all your machines, every single one of them, is based on the energy of explosion. Not knowing any more efficient natural sources of energy, you resort to such primitive, awkward substitutes with incredible stubbornness. And even the destructive consequences of their use do not stop you. The range of your aeroplanes and rockets is simply laughable –according to the scale of the Universe they rise a wee tiny bit above the Earth, and now this method has practically reached its ceiling, do not you agree? But that is ridiculous! An exploding or burning substance propels some monstrous structure that you call a space ship. And the greater part of this ship is designed precisely to ‘solve’ this problem of propulsion.[…]


“…if you or your people had purer thoughts and consequently a knowledge of the functionings of Nature, you would have long ago become aware that if there is a substance capable of instant expansion and, through explosion, transformation into another state, the opposite process must also hold true. […] A microorganism smaller than the eye can see does this with fantastic speed, feeding, it would seem, on air alone. It is these same kinds of microorganisms that power flying saucers. They are like the microcells in the brain, only their operation has a very narrow focus. Their sole function is propulsion. But they carry out this function to perfection and they can accelerate a flying saucer to one-nineteenth the speed of the average modern Earth-dweller’s thought.


“ These microorganisms are located on the inner surface of the upper part of the flying saucer and positioned between its double walls, which are set approximately three centimeters apart. The upper and lower surfaces of the other walls are porous, with micro-sized pinholes. The microorganisms draw in air through these pinholes, thereby creating a vacuum ahead of the saucer. The streams of air begin to congeal even before contact with the saucer and as they pass through the microorganisms they are transformed into tiny spheres. Then these spheres are enlarged even more, to approximately half a centimeter in diameter. They lose their firmness, and slide down between the walls into the lower part of the saucer, where they again decompose into a gaseous substance. You can even eat them, if you can do this before they decompose.”

Anastasia goes on to describe how to culture them.

She comes up with a realistically feasible (both economically and socially) solution to help curb urban air pollution. She talks about raising children and how that is the most important thing. That she’ll entertain Vladimir (the author) with singing superbly, doing crazy good gymnastics, speaking different languages, discussing (in the plainest terms) the concept of hover technology---but that the most important thing is raising children because therein lies the future of human society and the key to unleash our potential.

We resort to extremely childish solutions to solve our global, most fundamental problems. The way she looks at our technology makes total sense. And our conflict resolution? We fight wars and kill people. Our waste? We dump it, bury it, burn it. Really? If two little kids were fighting in a sandbox, parents would intervene and attempt to resolve the conflict without the kids hitting each other. Nations are big kids, but who intervenes? If a little kid buried a piece of trash in the sandbox, a parent might tell them that that isn’t wear trash belongs, it belongs in the garbage…which will then be transported far away to pile up until it makes a hill, which will then be covered with dirt and grass. New landscape: an oozing, infected, pus-filled blemish on earth’s skin. Then we’ll build a public park or something like that on it. What a beautiful hill, newly discovered in Florida’s flat landscape!

Speaking of flat Florida, the drive from Naples to Miami (which, now, in the past 3 weeks I have taken 13 times…it’s 2 hours long…and, consequently, 13 times reversed) is not entirely flat. It’s flat, toll, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, Seminole Indian Casino signs, small pass over manmade canal (occasionally), flat, flat, flat, (oh look! An alligator sunbathing in the canal running parallel the whole route), flat, flat, flat, flat, toll, and then concrete slopes and curves galore! Ease to the right, curve up into the sky, sweep down under three oversized concrete ribbons, grassy triangles of unused space dip and fill with water when it rains, abandoned. Trees are banned. Humanity is banned. Six lane highways cater to my little yellow bug and she crawls along the endless roadscape.

From the sky, the curves look enticing, intriguing how they bend, ratios, calculations of turning radiuses, careful accelerations, loads…all are taken into account to produce this oversized looping concrete. From a car, it’s like I’m programmed to accept it, I don’t notice how dismal it is because I’m speeding along so quickly. I turn up the radio, weave in and out of cars to the rhythm. But if stopped on the side, if abandoned along the highway for any amount of time, it would be fucking awful. It’s ugly, hostel, and dead. Driving cars don’t scream life even though they move.

This morning I didn’t either. I woke up early, got up and into my yellow bug by eight. I don’t have a parking permit yet, so the meter must be paid, in coins, between 8 am and 6 pm. I drove her to Target to get shelves for my little studio apartment…and I had one of those overwhelming moments. Overwhelmed by my existence and conditions. I was looking at tiptoeing around parking all day (to what, save a couple dollars?). I can’t stop spending money…on this parking thing (signing the title of the car to me, opening up a bank account with this address to prove residence, buying the pass, moving to Miami, driving back and forth)…the list just collapses on my head. Curbing my defaulted student loans. Paying for this course. Online English, still not started after a month. I stopped making money and I haven’t booked one of these castings that I’m bending over backwards to go to.

I thought I was great as the sister in the Spanish KFC Breast Cancer awareness commercial, holding the fried chicken bin and saying, hopefully, ‘Por mi hermana.’ I would be a great background ‘hippy girl’ in an Italian cell phone commercial too, I thought.

Well, apparently, someone else is a better sister or more fitting hippy. And it probably doesn’t help that I don’t actually have the right materials: i.e. a 9x12 model portfolio and comp cards yet. And those prints and book all cost more money.

I could have finished school by now and had my degree. AAAaaawwwww!

On the brink of tears, well, actually, some had already escaped, my mom called. She sensed my state and said that she was proud of me for what I’m trying to do and that it isn’t easy. And I just have to put in the time. It takes time. There are a lot of ‘what if’s’ . I still found myself teary after I hung up. Over the phone, she helped me pick out a big white shelf.