In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.
I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.
"Nobunaga."
He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.
"Perfect. Banana, party of one."
Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.
Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.
I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.
It woke.
It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.
He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.
"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"
A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.
All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"
So tell me honestly.
For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.
When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?
Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.
In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.
I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.
"Nobunaga."
He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.
"Perfect. Banana, party of one."
Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.
Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.
I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.
It woke.
It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.
He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.
"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"
A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.
All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"
So tell me honestly.
For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.
When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?
Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.
I think we need to build this.
I designed this below image, representing Lewis and Clark on the Mississippi in the style of Argonath.
At $1 Billion or more, I think it can be done.
The fractal symmetry of a honey bee under an electron microscope is unreal, microscopic geometry layered with near-mathematical precision. A creature once thought to “defy physics” in flight turns out to be engineered by physics at every scale.
"That Others May Live"
US Air Force Pararescuemen (PJs) with the 129th Rescue Wing conducting a rescue operation to save a fisherman 750 miles off the coast of Costa Rica in 2023.
The PJs parachuted in from a C-130 to reach the vessel and render aid to the man.
Everyone is always rooting for you. Your parents want you to be a great son. Wife wants you to be a great husband. Your boss wants you to be a slam dunk hire. Every first date you’ve ever been on they’ve been rooting for you to get laid. Every time you started to tell a joke people hoped it would have a hilarious punch line. Your proximity to anyone is a reflection of themself, meaning the deck is never stacked against you, and your failures are completely your own
The story of young Alexander taming his horse Bucephalus is one of my favorite because it reveals so much about the future king's character and why he'll be called the Great.
“My son, you must seek out a kingdom equal to yourself—Macedonia is not big enough for you!”
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”
― Terence McKenna
Mencius said, "When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent." (Mn. 6B.15)