Testing, testing, one, two, three.

Alright, it's 8.49am on one-on-one south at this kind of overpass right before St. Vincent's and it is January 28th. I'm trying to always note some quirky thing in the morning so I can recall this later. A black BMW almost veered into my lane and I gave it a little punk and as I pass it I noticed that it's left front driver's slide. The winder and hood were damaged so clearly. Who knows why but that guy needed that person needed a little reminding us to their driving habits. So anyway, I was also just listening to Anatham. It's probably the fourth time that I've listened to the first chapter. Hold on the sun's kind of bright. Looked my sunglasses on. And so yeah. The fourth chapter which still has to do with this frow who's a monk and his assistant, I forgot his name. And an artisan and I guess the artisan is repairing some piece of the ceiling, the rafters and he's installed scaffolding and I guess the subject of technology has come up in an economy and all this and so the suggestion is that I guess this monastic order is survives on no direct relationship with the current religious political economic social status quo. So they are literally inside a walled garden and so I'm still learning about that. And the old time has passed so much or I guess the regions where their language is even different than in the things that they speak up are even different. I believe the piece of technology that they're referring to is a video recorder but they don't even understand that they're talking about the same thing in their language because one language is referring to something that existed during a different technological kind of generation. And so it's interesting. I may have to listen to it again. It's got to get me in the mood. If I don't get past, if I am not, sorry, Neil Stevenson, if I'm not in the mood in your first chapter and I'm really trying here because everybody speaks so highly of it, it's going to be hard for me. I appreciate your efforts. I wish there was another way I could absorb what you're trying to say. So that being said, what... Of course I was thinking about flight of course. And what I was thinking about today was how this particular thought stem thread started with yesterday where I was trying to figure out what was so special about this book and what is it about the discovery of this book that made Rosa Alethia get on that flight that one way trip. What was it about it that made her do that? How... what was her state that she was so impulsive? Not that she was impulsive, but you know, what was the emotional state behind the impulse? Because we can't describe that, the impulse is meaningless. At first I thought perhaps it was, you know, there's two sides to this, right? There's the influence and then there's the act. The book represents the influence. Well, let's put it this way. There's the influence. There is the state and there is the act. The act of course is running away and not wishing to return. An exit from society. The state is one in which one has reached some... This is where I probably don't understand. And it's the state that is really hard for me to grasp. It is not a suicidal state. It is an extreme emotion but not a suicidal. It is a survival instinct to escape. And so perhaps I can, you know, allude to that in the story. What is that survival instinct? What are you trying to survive? And if there is an amount of regret for remorse or reconsideration, and maybe not remorse, that's a bit extreme. If in the middle of the act there is reconsideration, then perhaps there is still some rational, rational, you know, layer. Or let's put it another way. The subject is the person who is taking the act is trying to rationalize the prior state that it wasn't so bad. And that perhaps they could go back. So the act of fleeing is the survival portion. It could have survived if I had stayed as well as... So it's like a catch 22 almost. That's probably a novel I have to investigate. Definitely. And so... So... Now what is the influence? So we have the act, the state, and the influence, the catalyst. The catalyst is the book. Now so what I had... Well, I was trying to investigate or at least think through yesterday was what book can be... What books are well known influences? Now obviously we have the big ones like the Bible, the Quran. The Bhagavad, the Eta, I think that's what he said. I don't know the teachings of Confucius, Darwin. But really... So I'm playing like spoons or making too much knowledge. Somewhere else. But those have influenced millions of people. Not billions. To me, that's a common message. That's like you must be good to fellow man. And it's like a daily common sense reminder. Those are, you know, things to live by. They're not... It's like food for you. It's not even food for your brain. It's like, well... It's more like manners for your brain. I can't even describe... They're not extreme enough. So then I thought about a book like Catcher and the Rhyme. And did Catcher and the Rhyme... Was it an influencing or a catalyst type... Did it play that kind of role in... What's his name? Sorry. I drove past this park. I don't know. It was a very nice eagre. So then I started. I just passed that time flat and cold. It reminds me of Sylvia Plask. So there are these... You know, when you try to Google most influential novels, they tell you novels that will change your life. I'm going to revisit those because they're important for this book. But they may or may not be... You know... The proper catalyst or influence that I'm looking for. I mean, there are novels that will change the way you think. But I'm looking for that in the suggestion that that moment in history when... Famous person X was reading novel A as they made historical act B, or Z, whatever. Those kinds of things. Maybe it's not possible. But... And so, you know, as I was just casually going through the search results, and these are... They're very important to get the search results. So I represent what average everyday people or influencers want you to read. So in some ways it's the perfect way to find what the novel is. But again, the setting is 1965. So it has to be something published prior to that and available to a 24-year-old. So... Yeah. Now... I'm going to try and get out of the way of this person, because they're clearly... Now of course he's speeding up. I'm just going to drive it sometimes. But anyway, don't get distracted by the road. Focus back on this note. So then finally I landed on this one page that listed novels such as Revolutionary Road, Infinite Jast, you know, those were all good, but again, later they occurred later. So... Plus, I want to captivate the reader right from the very start. So I want to introduce them to the Act. I don't want there to be a... a build-up. I want the moment of reconsideration to be there. Immediately. I want to introduce the reader at that moment. I think it's quite powerful. Here we have someone who appears to be a very rational person. She's... She's actually upset at her because her rational self has... has kicked in and said, what was so bad about where you were? Why are you chasing something that you cannot confirm exists? And so... But several events happened prior to her actually in the state of reconsideration. You know, I believe Horace will need to remind her of their meeting. And we'll have to slowly let it be known to the reader that... Horace extremely calculating after she had met Horace. So... So... We're going to follow her from the bathroom of the airplane. To the... Last row. So in the bathroom of the airplane, she's actually... recalling her encounter with the travel agent. And so the reader is immediately taken to an experience that is quite unsavory. An awkward experience. The first encounter of this whole escapade is... disorient. And that's the whole point. It's that emotional state where you are trying to... But at the same time, it's telling you to stay. And your emotions and your rationale are fighting each other. And that's what I want to highlight that struggle, that inner... That struggle within the self to try and justify staying and leaving at the same time. And of course the... I think it's a perfect setting to be in that shady travel agent office where... She had seen Horace just moments maybe... 15, 20 minutes before had just left. And she had locked in only two... She had... She was trying to get a number on the sky. Trying to understand what Horace is doing. Who is he? Why does he have this last name? And... Why does... Why does he share the last name of this man that Florence ran away with? Is he real? And so... It's a bit of a mystery she is trying to, you know, at this point, simply solve the mystery. But in her attempt to solve the mystery she is going deeper and deeper into that, you know, rabbit hole. And so that moment where she is literally sitting on the toilet with tissues covering her face, wet, soggy tissues covering her face, blowing her nose, her eyes stinging from the salty tears. And she cannot believe what she's done. She's not trying to get off the plane, but she cannot believe what she's done. She... Is at that moment where her rationale... She is trying to coach her own rationale into a redirected. Because it's telling her to get off the plane, but she needs to redirect it and tell her just calm down. But she can't. She cannot believe what she did. She thinks what she did was wrong. She should not have gotten on this plane. And so... Now does Horace calm her down? See, what I had originally suggested was that the plane is about to take off. But maybe the plane has already taken off. And yeah, the plane has to have taken off. There's no point in boarding. And Horace has to notice her. And he has to be at the back of the plane. And he will normally have been in first class and not the back of the plane. Will he though be in first class? That's what I need to know. What not? Yeah. And so... And he has to be willing to give up his seat in first class and sit with her. That's how important this is. So... Yeah. Let's see what happens if we try this out. The fastened seat belt sign has just... It's gotten off. Oh, let's put it this way. The fastened seat belt sign is still on. Horace...well, then that means the first class bathroom would be open. The fastened seat belt sign has just gotten off. Horace woke up to obviously a bathroom break urge. And he noticed the bathrooms were all full in first class so he walked to the back of the plane. And that's when he could hear crying. And the flight attendants were noticing awkward leave. They didn't know if they should help or not. And they tried and all she did was scream at them. So they gave up. And after what seemed like an eternity she finally came out, clearly looking like she had been crying for a long time. Now, what we have to do is construct the scene so that Rosalithia is crying in the bathroom. The fastened seat belt sign has gone off. She's crying in the bathroom. So the suggestion is that she went in there. And the flight attendants will be like, well, I don't even know how she got in there. So she will have somehow snuck into the bathroom. She has a ticket and everything but she snuck into the bathroom before the fastened seat belt sign could go off. Now, what happens after that? Well, we look at her. She could see her reflection in one of the door handles. There was a mirror on the door, a convenience mirror. And she could see her reflection through it. And she saw how pathetic she looked. Sitting there in that red dress. With her watery eyes, bits of tissue still on her face. And nose running. She looked a mess. Now, and in the middle of all that, it was her rational self is not asking herself. It's not criticising the fact that she wanted to go to Egypt. It's not criticising the fact that she wanted to chase Horus. She wanted to find out where he was going. It's not criticising the fact that she was trying to figure out where that book came from. She was simply criticising how she accepted the offer of the one-way ticket when she knew she had no money to get home. That is what she's criticising. She's criticising her rational self is saying, don't think that it's wonderful to go to Egypt, but you have to be ready to go to Egypt. It's wonderful to find out, to chase this mystery, to try and solve this mystery, but you have to be ready to solve it. If you're not ready, you won't solve it. Done for now, because I parked.