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.In the library at Kelley there is a seeing machine.It uses a televisioncamera and a computer to vibrate a closely set series of metal pine.Using it,you can feel a moving picture of whatever the camera is pointed at.It's smalland light, made to be carried with the pinpricker touching your back.It costabout thirty-five thousand dollars.I found it in the corner of the library.I ran my finger over it and left agleaming 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 outof 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 levelof sophistication.But then Pink might have been uneasy in California.They left the next day,Page 24ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlunsure if they had been to an orgy or not.All that touching and no gettingdown to business, very strange.There was a nice couple from Santa Fe who acted as a sort of liaison betweenKeller and their lawyer.They had a nine-year-old boy who chattered endlesslyin handtalk to the other kids.They came up about every other week and stayed a few days, soaking up sunshineand participating in the Together every night.They spoke halting shorthandand did me the courtesy of not speaking to me in speech.Some of the Indians came around at odd intervals.Their behavior was almostaggressively chauvinistic.They stayed dressed at all times in their Levis andboots.But it was evident that they had a respect for the people, though theythought them strange.They had business dealings with the commune.It was theNavahos 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 languagespelled 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 alongfor about five months and- winter was in the offing.I had not examined mydesires as yet, not really thought about what it was I wanted to do with therest 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 upto 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 situationoutside.They were aware of the outside world at Keller.They knew thatisolation and ignoring problems that could easily be dismissed as not relevantto them was a dangerous course, so they subscribed to the Braille New YorkTimes and most of them read it.They had a television set that got plugged inabout 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 normalinflationary spiral.Jobs were opening up, money was flowing again.When Ifound myself on the outside again shortly afterward, I thought that was thereason.The real reason was more complex.It had to do with peeling off the onionlayer of shorthand and discovering another layer beneath it.I had learned handtalk in a few easy lessons.Then I became aware of shorthandand bodytalk, and of how much harder they would be to learn.Through fivemonths of constant immersion, which is the only way to learn a language, I hadattained the equivalent level of a five- or six-year-old in shorthand.I knewI could master it, given time.Bodytalk was another matter.You couldn'tmeasure progress as easily in bodytalk.It was a variable and highlyfile:///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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]