By Paul Ford
Breaking Up
Dear Reader,
I'm very unhappy with this entry, but don't know where to go with it. Please send me an edited, improved, or totally different
version, and I'll post that, too. I'll post it with your name attached, or not--totally up to you.
pef
When I was sixteen or seventeen I believed a woman had spoken to me psychically. I was stretched out to the sky, atop the
West Chester Municipal Garage, home from Milton Hershey School on Christmas break.
I was desolate, and a voice came to me. She spoke in emotions, not words, and asked me to stop weeping. She said I would grow
up and out of my condition. She would wait for me, and watch over me.
I was full of shamanism, and felt convinced the voice was real, a person somewhere who knew me through time and across state
lines. I vowed to keep my virginity for this invisible woman. I kept this vow for two years, but more because women didn't
like me than for my chasteness. I waited and believed in the voice. I asked myself: is this her? when I yearned after a woman.
Four years later, I turned 21, and realized: I was crazy, and that woman was purely from my own mind.
It was hard to let her go, but she left peacefully, no longer at home.
PEEK
Ftrain.com is the website of Paul Ford and his pseudonyms. It is showing its age. I'm rewriting the code but it's taking some
time.
FACEBOOK
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TWITTER
You will regret following me on Twitter here.
EMAIL
About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit
things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.
If you have any questions for me, I am very accessible by email. You can email me at ford@ftrain.com and ask me things and I will try to answer. Especially if you want to clarify something or write something critical. I am
glad to clarify things so that you can disagree more effectively.
POKE
Syndicate: RSS1.0, RSS2.0
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Contact
© 1974-2011 Paul Ford
Recent
@20, by Paul Ford.
Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either.
(October 15)
Recent Offsite Work: Code and Prose.
As a hobby I write.
(January 14)
Rotary Dial.
(August 21)
10 Timeframes.
(June 20)
Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out.
(April 10)
Why I Am Leaving the People of the Red Valley.
(April 7)
Welcome to the Company.
(September 21)
“Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?”.
Forgot to tell you about this.
(July 20)
“The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.
An essay for TheMorningNews.org.
(July 11)
Woods+.
People call me a lot and say: What is this new thing? You're a nerd. Explain it immediately.
(July 10)
Reading Tonight.
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(May 25)
Recorded Entertainment #2, by Paul Ford.
(May 18)
Recorded Entertainment #1, by Paul Ford.
(May 17)
Nanolaw with Daughter.
Why privacy mattered.
(May 16)
0h30m w/Photoshop, by Paul Ford.
It's immediately clear to me now that I'm writing again that I need to come up with some new forms in order to have fun here—so
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Fridays, write for 30 minutes; edit for 20 minutes max; and go whip up some images if necessary, like the big crappy hand
below that's all meaningful and evocative because it's retro and zoomed-in. Post it, and leave it alone. Can I do that every
Friday? Yes! Will I? Maybe! But I crave that simple continuity. For today, for absolutely no reason other than that it came
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(May 13)
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(May 12)
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Tickler File Forever, by Paul Ford.
I'll have no one to blame but future me.
(May 10)
Time's Inverted Index, by Paul Ford.
(1) When robots write history we can get in trouble with our past selves. (2) Search-generated, "false" chrestomathies and
the historical fallacy.
(May 9)
Bantha Tracks.
(May 5)
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