Read Online Persistence of Vision by John Varley - Free Book Online
Authors: John Varley
finger over it and left a gleaming streak behind as the thick dust came away.
Other people came and went, and I stayed on.
Keller didn't get as many visitors as the other places I had been. It was out of the way.
One man showed up at noon, looked around, and left without a word.
Two girls, sixteen-year-old runaways from California, showed up one night. They undressed for dinner and were shocked when they found out I could see. Pink scared the hell out of them.
Those poor kids had a lot of living to do before they approached Pink's level of sophistication.
But then Pink might have been uneasy in California. They left the next day, unsure if they had been to an orgy or not. All that touching and no getting down to business, very strange.
Page 23
There was a nice couple from Santa Fe who acted as a sort of liaison between Keller and their lawyer. They had a nine-year-old boy who chattered endlessly in handtalk to the other kids.
They came up about every other week and stayed a few days, soaking up sunshine and participating in the Together every night. They spoke halting shorthand and did me the courtesy of not speaking to me in speech.
Some of the Indians came around at odd intervals. Their behavior was almost aggressively chauvinistic. They stayed dressed at all times in their Levis and boots. But it was evident that they had a respect for the people, though they thought them strange. They had business dealings with the commune. It was the Navahos who trucked away the produce that was taken to the gate every day, sold it, and took a percentage. They would sit and powwow in sign language spelled into hands. Pink said they were scrupulously honest in their dealings.
And about once a week all the parents went out in the field and ***ed.
* *
I got better and better at shorthand and bodytaik. I had been breezing along for about five months and- winter was in the offing. I had not examined my desires as yet, not really thought about what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I guess the habit of letting myself drift was too ingrained. I was there, and constitutionally unable to decide whether to go or to face up to the problem if I wanted to stay for a long, long time.
Then I got a push.
For a long time I thought it had something to do with the economic situation outside. They were aware of the outside world at Keller. They knew that isolation and ignoring problems that could easily be dismissed as not relevant to them was a dangerous course, so they subscribed to the Braille New York Times and most of them read it. They had a television set that got plugged in about once a month. The kids would watch it and translate for their parents.
So I was aware that the non-depression was moving slowly into a more normal inflationary spiral. Jobs were opening up, money was flowing again. When I found myself on the outside again shortly afterward, I thought that was the reason.
The real reason was more complex. It had to do with peeling off the onion layer of shorthand and discovering another layer beneath it.
I had learned handtalk in a few easy lessons. Then I became aware of shorthand and bodytalk, and of how much harder they would be to learn. Through five months of constant immersion, which is the only way to learn a language, I had attained the equivalent level of a five- or six-year-old in shorthand. I knew I could master it, given time. Bodytalk was another matter.
You couldn't measure progress as easily in bodytalk. It was a variable and highly file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Persistence%20Of%20Vision.txt (19 of 24)
[2/17/2004 11:43:30 AM]
file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Persistence%20Of%20Vision.txt interpersonal language that evolved according to the person, the time, the mood. But I was learning.
Then I became aware of Touch. That's the best I can describe it in a single, unforced English noun. What they called this fourth-stage language varied from day to day, as I will try to explain.
I first
Other people came and went, and I stayed on.
Keller didn't get as many visitors as the other places I had been. It was out of the way.
One man showed up at noon, looked around, and left without a word.
Two girls, sixteen-year-old runaways from California, showed up one night. They undressed for dinner and were shocked when they found out I could see. Pink scared the hell out of them.
Those poor kids had a lot of living to do before they approached Pink's level of sophistication.
But then Pink might have been uneasy in California. They left the next day, unsure if they had been to an orgy or not. All that touching and no getting down to business, very strange.
Page 23
There was a nice couple from Santa Fe who acted as a sort of liaison between Keller and their lawyer. They had a nine-year-old boy who chattered endlessly in handtalk to the other kids.
They came up about every other week and stayed a few days, soaking up sunshine and participating in the Together every night. They spoke halting shorthand and did me the courtesy of not speaking to me in speech.
Some of the Indians came around at odd intervals. Their behavior was almost aggressively chauvinistic. They stayed dressed at all times in their Levis and boots. But it was evident that they had a respect for the people, though they thought them strange. They had business dealings with the commune. It was the Navahos who trucked away the produce that was taken to the gate every day, sold it, and took a percentage. They would sit and powwow in sign language spelled into hands. Pink said they were scrupulously honest in their dealings.
And about once a week all the parents went out in the field and ***ed.
* *
I got better and better at shorthand and bodytaik. I had been breezing along for about five months and- winter was in the offing. I had not examined my desires as yet, not really thought about what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I guess the habit of letting myself drift was too ingrained. I was there, and constitutionally unable to decide whether to go or to face up to the problem if I wanted to stay for a long, long time.
Then I got a push.
For a long time I thought it had something to do with the economic situation outside. They were aware of the outside world at Keller. They knew that isolation and ignoring problems that could easily be dismissed as not relevant to them was a dangerous course, so they subscribed to the Braille New York Times and most of them read it. They had a television set that got plugged in about once a month. The kids would watch it and translate for their parents.
So I was aware that the non-depression was moving slowly into a more normal inflationary spiral. Jobs were opening up, money was flowing again. When I found myself on the outside again shortly afterward, I thought that was the reason.
The real reason was more complex. It had to do with peeling off the onion layer of shorthand and discovering another layer beneath it.
I had learned handtalk in a few easy lessons. Then I became aware of shorthand and bodytalk, and of how much harder they would be to learn. Through five months of constant immersion, which is the only way to learn a language, I had attained the equivalent level of a five- or six-year-old in shorthand. I knew I could master it, given time. Bodytalk was another matter.
You couldn't measure progress as easily in bodytalk. It was a variable and highly file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Persistence%20Of%20Vision.txt (19 of 24)
[2/17/2004 11:43:30 AM]
file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Persistence%20Of%20Vision.txt interpersonal language that evolved according to the person, the time, the mood. But I was learning.
Then I became aware of Touch. That's the best I can describe it in a single, unforced English noun. What they called this fourth-stage language varied from day to day, as I will try to explain.
I first
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