Onion Cap

I love books, and I have a lot of them.  In the past few years, an increasing number of my books reside in The Cloud and appear when I ask for them on an electronic device connected to The Cloud.  The rest of my books are in boxes in storage or on shelves in my study.  I read more from The Cloud than from the printed page because I can read in the middle of the night without turning on a light, and I can carry an entire library with me on an airplane.  I spend a lot of time on airplanes.

A few years back when digital readers were becoming more common, I had a lengthy discussion with a group of very smart friends, who read as much or more than I do, about digital readers.  We were divided on the future of digital text.  Some of us thought it would become the dominant form, and others thought it would never really replace ink and paper.  I won’t say what side I was on, but digital text has almost completely taken over my world since that day some six or seven years ago.  I read on my computer screen, on my phone, and on my handheld digital reader.  I do still read every day, with great local interest, a newspaper that arrives on my lawn at about 5:30 each morning.  I feel like the newspaper connects me with my place and time and physicality in a way that digital reading cannot.  And besides, no one is commenting on the stories except my wife.

But mostly, my reading is shaped like a cloud.  Today I bought a more advanced digital reader that is charging and connecting with The Cloud as I write this.  It has a better lighting system, so I think, that provides a more even backlighting for middle of the night reading.  I look forward to waking at 1:30 am when I will pick it up from the bed stand and see if what was promised is delivered.

Election Day is the only poll that matters.  It’s not a binary choice since you have the choice of voting this way or that way (and maybe another way) and you also have the choice of not voting.  Trinary at least.  When the polls close and votes are counted, the choice is made, revealing what was going on all along, regardless what narratives has been created, solidified, and believed in.  Nothing actually changes with a vote; it is a reveal, not a confirmation of narrative.  We learn from it insofar as it conflicts with our narrative, just as we experience cognitive dissonance when new information emerges.

My Uncle used to pop his teeth out, just to be funny.  I thought it was horrifying, since I couldn’t imagine how a person could pop his teeth out.  Of course I learned that he had false teeth, and the sound of popping them out was more of a plastic on plastic rattle than a cracking of bone.

So Trump was elected.  Did I hear the popping of firecrackers and noisey whistles or cracking bones and dry screams?