Thoughts on the Death of Aaron Swartz

I imagine you in that darkened closet
An unremarked node of imbricated data
A confluence of modulated electrons
Constrained to color-coded worms
Of deep red copper fleshed in plastic
You were picking the lock
On a box filled with light

But my mind turns from that beginning
To the moments before the end
And my thoughts have the texture of
The surface of
The wood of
The wheel on
Which they would break you
Rough, splintered, unfinished
Poorly formed
But sufficient

And in those moments
Were you hooting with woe?
Indrawing great sobs
Like a child with whooping cough?
Or were you moving surely through
That world of knife edged shadows
Making a choice that seemed
The most adult you had ever made?

Perhaps you will be reborn
In the electric clash
Of the mind of a child
Understanding something new
Or the moment of surprise
When two opposing views
Are shown to be equivalent

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Depression

your thoughts – clemmed, treacle slow, laden with seams of pit shaft dark – tread an endless groove, blinkered as a pit prop pony moithered by light your mind – dimmed, dunnock shy, cradled with songs of wind swept moors – dreams a fearless path clinkered as a wind squall diamond mantled with night your self – numbed, fossil still, layered with seals of sun starved gold – furls a nubless cloth crinkled as a sun coaxed rock rose ambered in time. by Helen Overell

Ley Lines #1

The concept of "ley lines" is generally thought of in relation to Alfred Watkins, but the stimulus and background for the concept is attributed to the English astronomer Norman Lockyer . [3] [4] [5] On 30 June 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire , and went riding a horse near some hills in the vicinity of Bredwardine , when he noted that many of the footpaths there seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. [6] He was studying a map when he noticed places in alignment. "The whole thing came to me in a flash", he later told his son. [7] It has been suggested that Watkin's experience stemmed from faint memories of an account in September 1870 by William Henry Black given to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford titled Boundaries and Landmarks , in which he speculated that "Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe". [8] Watkins believed that, in ancie

Extinct Promotion

My story "Connect" was published last year in the anthology "Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever," edited by the formidable Phoenix Sullivan. On Tuesday, January 31, you can download the entire anthology Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever free from the Kindle store. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, you can download each of the 18 single stories for free, including my story, Connect . By any reasonable measure we are dead. Unity -- slow, cold and broken -- is leaving me behind. It’s a slowly boiling mass of speckled gray now. I’m walking away from it, building, understanding, memorizing as I go. And to do these things, to tie them together, I use my memories. Of being alive, of dying, of being dead. Other authors in the anthology are participating in this promotion: Chrystalla Thoma: "The Angel Genome" Peter Dudley: "Distractions" Shona Snowden: "Blood Fruit" Scott Thomas Smith: "In Ring" Jo Antareau: "My Own

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