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feldmanA Petoskey stone looks like a grey lump of limestone until you get it wet, then the coral pattern pops out, geometric and unreal, life made into stone. Hunting them involves a lot of stooping and sorting through rocks. You can do it higher on the beach, lugging water around to splash on likely suspects. Or you can wade in if it's not too murky, feet sliding over algae as chilly waves soak your pantlegs no matter how high you roll them up. The stones you find quickly dry into unassuming chunks of rock again, waiting for that layer of glisten that allows you to see the ancient sea structure waiting inside.
Sometimes, you find one that's been pre-polished by the glaciers and the waves, so that the little corals ghost out at you from the dry rock, a glimpse of the magic.
Tentatively, I think I may be starting to find a few of these chunks in the novel, scenes where there's something discernible under the surface. I dunno what it is yet, but it's something.
"Things began to go wrong with this country when letter openers stopped being sharp."
Hugh knew that these declarations were both the tail end of a Holmesian path of rumination his father had been following as he'd pedaled around town, and the tip of a conversational iceberg working its lonely way toward the equator, heedless of whose day it might end up sinking. Hugh realized this was an unfair characterization; the bummer discussions were outweighed by the times he learned something new, sometimes even something new about his dad. That didn't change the fact that engaging was always a bit like pulling the trigger in Russian roulette. "How sharp does a letter opener need to be?"
"You wouldn't know because you use your finger to rip 'em open. And why wouldn't you? All you get is bills and ads. You might scribble a note on an envelope but it'll end up in the trash sooner rather than later."
"There you go."
"You use a letter opener when you give a shit about what's inside the envelope, when you want to be able to tuck it back in where it's safe. You slice it open nice and neat. You don't gut it like a drunk fisherman."
"Okay, I'll buy that. So you want it sharp so it doesn't tear the paper."
"It doesn't have to be knife sharp, but it needs a decent edge. If you had to, you could punch it between someone's ribs."
"I think I saw that in a movie once."
Dick narrows one eye down to a sliver. "New movie or old?"
"Old movie, but color. Hitchcock."
"Dial M for Murder, Grace Kelly. Not my favorite Hitchcock blonde, but what are you gonna do? Point being, a useful letter opener is close to a weapon. And at some point society stopped being comfortable with the people handling the correspondence having access to weapons."
Hugh ruminated on that for a moment. Fact was, his dad's theories were often plausible, but fell short of being hypotheses due to untestability. While it would be relatively simple to do a half-assed survey of the material culture over a period of several decades vis a vis the functional points and edges of letter openers, causation would be impossible to discern, and the confounding variables made his head spin. He settled for, "Okay."
"And what you end up with is a piece of crap." Dick gestured with a flange of bent pot metal that had been schooled by the creamy envelope of thick rag paper in his other hand. "Good for jack shit, but at least no one's going to freak out and kill The Man right in his own corner office."
Hugh slipped the envelope out of his dad's hand, and, taking a butter knife from the drawer, slit it open.
Sometimes, you find one that's been pre-polished by the glaciers and the waves, so that the little corals ghost out at you from the dry rock, a glimpse of the magic.
Tentatively, I think I may be starting to find a few of these chunks in the novel, scenes where there's something discernible under the surface. I dunno what it is yet, but it's something.
"Things began to go wrong with this country when letter openers stopped being sharp."
Hugh knew that these declarations were both the tail end of a Holmesian path of rumination his father had been following as he'd pedaled around town, and the tip of a conversational iceberg working its lonely way toward the equator, heedless of whose day it might end up sinking. Hugh realized this was an unfair characterization; the bummer discussions were outweighed by the times he learned something new, sometimes even something new about his dad. That didn't change the fact that engaging was always a bit like pulling the trigger in Russian roulette. "How sharp does a letter opener need to be?"
"You wouldn't know because you use your finger to rip 'em open. And why wouldn't you? All you get is bills and ads. You might scribble a note on an envelope but it'll end up in the trash sooner rather than later."
"There you go."
"You use a letter opener when you give a shit about what's inside the envelope, when you want to be able to tuck it back in where it's safe. You slice it open nice and neat. You don't gut it like a drunk fisherman."
"Okay, I'll buy that. So you want it sharp so it doesn't tear the paper."
"It doesn't have to be knife sharp, but it needs a decent edge. If you had to, you could punch it between someone's ribs."
"I think I saw that in a movie once."
Dick narrows one eye down to a sliver. "New movie or old?"
"Old movie, but color. Hitchcock."
"Dial M for Murder, Grace Kelly. Not my favorite Hitchcock blonde, but what are you gonna do? Point being, a useful letter opener is close to a weapon. And at some point society stopped being comfortable with the people handling the correspondence having access to weapons."
Hugh ruminated on that for a moment. Fact was, his dad's theories were often plausible, but fell short of being hypotheses due to untestability. While it would be relatively simple to do a half-assed survey of the material culture over a period of several decades vis a vis the functional points and edges of letter openers, causation would be impossible to discern, and the confounding variables made his head spin. He settled for, "Okay."
"And what you end up with is a piece of crap." Dick gestured with a flange of bent pot metal that had been schooled by the creamy envelope of thick rag paper in his other hand. "Good for jack shit, but at least no one's going to freak out and kill The Man right in his own corner office."
Hugh slipped the envelope out of his dad's hand, and, taking a butter knife from the drawer, slit it open.
