Algorithmic Behavior
Tablet 4:
Ellie,
I am still writing you, though you have not responded. It is good to talk to you even when it feels like talking to myself. That’s the way it is supposed to be with good friends anyway, isn’t it?
Because we are friends, I have been working on a new theory for you.
If A divides B, A is a part of B. You divide me (with you, I feel communicative and emotional, while out in the world, I feel the opposite), and therefore you are a part of me.
The fetus, too, divides me. Part of me holds a fetus and part of me does not.
In both situations, part of me is shared, and part of me is not.
I think I will come to visit. We have not seen each other in a while.
When Tam was ten, she owned a copy of Ellie’s fifth-grade Personality Portrait. On Personality Portrait day, students brought physical manifestations of their hobbies or interests and had their pictures taken with saxophones, skateboards, scrapbooks, or Star Wars action figures.
Ellie had chosen a pencil. No one else had chosen a pencil. But no one else spent hours writing the first chapter of post-apocalyptic novel after post-apocalyptic novel.
Every night that year, Tam laid out the clothes she planned to wear the next day, putting Ellie’s picture (which she had mounted on construction paper and then laminated with contact paper) into the front pocket of her jean shorts. She continued to do so for years, though she outgrew the jean shorts, and despite the fact that she and Ellie grew up and apart. Sometimes she put her hand on her hip to feel the picture’s corner, sharp as it was the day she sealed it off.
Note to self:: How to discover the basis of a procedure: Look for the madness in the method. Look for the rhyme in the reason. Incorporate madness and rhyme into your life. Note that when you do so, you will again be following procedure. Smile: you are a little bit like them.
