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do, only without the bloodsucking. If their minds aren’t trained like a Druid’s, they gradually collect neuroses over time, like sunbathers collect wrinkles. Immortali-Tea can’t fix batshit insanity.”
“Yep. That’s why eventually I stopped offering.”
“Not soon. Need to be in a place where I can settle down. And this isn’t that place. I need to talk to you about that, actually.”
I explained to him that we needed to move out of Tempe. “I’ll have to go back to Asgard soon, and it’ll be a longer trip than the first one. It might be forever, because I might not come back, and if that’s what happens, then you need to be good to Mrs. MacDonagh. But if I do return, we’ll be leaving right away.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Heh! I never thought of it that way.” I smiled. “But now that you’ve clarified my thinking, I wonder why they don’t list those amenities in real estate ads. It seems criminally negligent.”
“I care, buddy. I believe you to be remarkably wise.”
I laughed. “Perhaps when we are safely settled elsewhere.”
“I cannot promise you, Oberon,” I said, regret tingeing my voice, and I could tell he was disappointed. “But, look, it is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream—a poodle bitch or a personal sausage chef or whatever—then you miss the felicity of your heart beating and the smell of the grass growing and the sounds lizards make when you run through the neighborhood with your friend. Your dream should be like a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contented by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sautéed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you’ve eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, when the time is right, you bite down hard. The dream is yours. And then you chew on the next one.”
Oberon chuffed, his version of human laughter.
Chapter 6
Here is how you know someone has had a good idea: Other people freely admit to their friends that said idea has changed their lives. Most people today will grant that fire and the wheel are the big two. After that, any attempts to rank the greatest ideas of all time are going to draw lots of argument. You’ll have zealots pimping this god or that on the one hand, scientists pimping Darwin on the other, and then practical people pointing at written language and saying, look, fellas, the reason those ideas have gone viral is because someone figured out how to write them down.
On Saturday night, the day after my return from Asgard, I heard about a new life-changing invention (for some): the salad spinner.
“I seriously love my salad spinner,” Granuaile confided. “It’s changed my life.” She said this in her kitchen, where she was busy making me the dinner she owed me for guessing wrong about Ratatosk’s size and the ability to enter Asgard via Yggdrasil.
“Excuse me for just a
“Yep. That’s why eventually I stopped offering.”
“Not soon. Need to be in a place where I can settle down. And this isn’t that place. I need to talk to you about that, actually.”
I explained to him that we needed to move out of Tempe. “I’ll have to go back to Asgard soon, and it’ll be a longer trip than the first one. It might be forever, because I might not come back, and if that’s what happens, then you need to be good to Mrs. MacDonagh. But if I do return, we’ll be leaving right away.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Heh! I never thought of it that way.” I smiled. “But now that you’ve clarified my thinking, I wonder why they don’t list those amenities in real estate ads. It seems criminally negligent.”
“I care, buddy. I believe you to be remarkably wise.”
I laughed. “Perhaps when we are safely settled elsewhere.”
“I cannot promise you, Oberon,” I said, regret tingeing my voice, and I could tell he was disappointed. “But, look, it is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream—a poodle bitch or a personal sausage chef or whatever—then you miss the felicity of your heart beating and the smell of the grass growing and the sounds lizards make when you run through the neighborhood with your friend. Your dream should be like a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contented by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sautéed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you’ve eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, when the time is right, you bite down hard. The dream is yours. And then you chew on the next one.”
Oberon chuffed, his version of human laughter.
Chapter 6
Here is how you know someone has had a good idea: Other people freely admit to their friends that said idea has changed their lives. Most people today will grant that fire and the wheel are the big two. After that, any attempts to rank the greatest ideas of all time are going to draw lots of argument. You’ll have zealots pimping this god or that on the one hand, scientists pimping Darwin on the other, and then practical people pointing at written language and saying, look, fellas, the reason those ideas have gone viral is because someone figured out how to write them down.
On Saturday night, the day after my return from Asgard, I heard about a new life-changing invention (for some): the salad spinner.
“I seriously love my salad spinner,” Granuaile confided. “It’s changed my life.” She said this in her kitchen, where she was busy making me the dinner she owed me for guessing wrong about Ratatosk’s size and the ability to enter Asgard via Yggdrasil.
“Excuse me for just a
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