2024.07.15
"That was special. I'll never forget this night... until I walk through the door and dissolve into the universe."
"Can I ask you something, buddy? How did you... know?"
"Look, it wasn't like a heard a bell ring or anything. I just suddenly had this calm feeling, like the air inside my lungs was the same as the air outside my body."
"For spiritual stuff, you gotta turn to the East. [...] Picture a wave... in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it pass through and it's there, and you can see it, and you know what it is, it's a wave. And then it crashes on the shore... and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. That's one conception of death, for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean... where it came from. And where it's supposed to be."
"Not bad Buddhists."
"Not bad. None of this is bad."
I really didn't realize until looking up my favorite mechanic's ("Zone Kar") that West Somerville really juts up between Arlington and Meford. (Reminds me of how New Hampshire reaches out between Mass and Maine to grab a piece of the shore, except instead of the ocean it's that piece of the Mystic River.)
"The other thing David--that's my brother--says about [author Howard Bell] is that he has the absolute perfect bestseller's name."Donald Trump is that kind of name ala Howard Bell / Steven King (and "Trump" is phonetically and metaphorically strong; I don't think we ever would have had a President Drumpf.)
"Really?" said Dirk. "In what way?"
"David says it's the first thing any publisher looks for in a new author. Not, 'Is his stuff any good?' or, 'Is his stuff any good once you get rid of all the adjectives?' but, 'Is his last name nice and short and his first name just a bit longer?' You see? The 'Bell' is done in huge silver letters, and the 'Howard' fits neatly across the top in slightly narrower ones. Instant trademark. It's publishing magic. Once you've got a name like that, then whether you can actually write or not is a minor matter."
And Trump's new running mate's name, "JD Vance", has that same energy. "JD", while it doesn't fill a book cover that well, is better than "James" would have been.
Trump knows from branding, as you can tell by his first reaction after seeing he survived being shot at is "let's make a WWE photo-op"