A jaded software engineer's new, ridiculously-eccentric boss presents a future which forces him to reckon with his mishandled grief.
In the right hour, the woodland springtime metamorphic processes of the neighboring Lake Geneva suburb’s in-betweens were in a paused state – the toads again hushed; the crickets tired, and the human populace, too. In the right hour, the fickle wind and the social owls were the only sound, and nothing moved but the sparse, light-footed doe in careful segments with her fawn.
Source: "Excerpt: Blimp's Burden, Chapter VI"
The above two sentences are the best I've ever written.
All characters, places, and institutions depicted in this work of fiction are not real, nor - as far as the author knows - did any of the events actually transpire in the real world, in the same way that none of the people, places, and organizations in our lives are actually real, nor do any of the experiences we have actually happen, because nothing and nobody truly exists - including Mark Zuckerberg, who really sucks.
(The above disclaimer does not necessarily apply should a representative of one or more of the entities mentioned hereafter see fit to financially incentivize the author for the endorsement or promotion of their organization and/or service contained in the following work as the entirety of their mention(s) is(are) currently written.)
((Exceptions to the above exception could be made possible if the aforementioned financial incentive should exceed 100 [one-hundred] United States Dollars with reserved provisions by the author necessitating additional editions of the work and protecting this existing edition from recall, revision, wrath, extradition, public denouncement, or especially mean criticism.))
(((At this time, all above exceptions do not apply if said representative(s) are found to be in the employ of Facebook, Instagram, Oculus Rift, or any other property under the direct or indirect management of Mark Zuckerberg, who really sucks.)))
Given the identical struggles in both Pith and Blimp to control how they feel, a possible interpretation of the work's major argument could be, simply, that maintaining such control is extremely difficult - at least through the respective methods that each use. Though Pith maintains his control and is as yet far too deep in his far too cemented process to even begin entertaining the idea of him ever operating within any possible definition of "mental health," he is only able to do so at great cost - his level of control is impressive, but only possible because he has a very narrow emotional band, and it is confined almost entirely to amusement. Blimp, of course, is only able to control how he feels by suppressing all feeling entirely, while Lenny Lather is a personification of the incoherence of far too much hard drug use.
Lily Tharp, however, is the opposite of all of these in her contentment to live as an emotionally functional and physically sober being. Her control is not absolute (nor does she desire it to be,) and so the intensity of her feeling is preserved "healthily." She is the infallible counter-argument but the reader should note that - even in her infallibility - something within her seeks to be around these extremes instead of her own kind (if they do indeed exist, it is not within this story save for in her case.) Like all of the characters, she wants to feel more than anything, and in her harmonious relationship with herself, she is able to enjoy the energy of the extremes. Without Pith, she would certainly not be incomplete, but she would be quite bored. (Of course, it's worth noting that without Tharp, Pith's entire empire and way of life would no doubt fall apart.) She is essential to the ultimate argument about feeling which is: the bravest way to live is to accept one's vulnerability as a fact of existence and continue on allowing oneself to feel everything with one's whole being. In a way, I have hope for my ability to teach myself to better live this way through the process of its creation.
The manipulation of the unconscious, perception, and conscious threshold is a strong recurring theme (as of right now, it is even explicitly named as such in Chapter II.)
In an effort to avoid fulfilling David Foster Wallace's criteria for "books that only give pleasure to their authors" (as in "Anything by Ayn Rand,") it's worth defining and/or exploring the quantifiable function of Blimp's Burden for the reader. In relying upon the dissection of my own parts for my characters and my own inner conflicts for theirs, it would be convenient for the work to provide some conclusive process of letting some unwanted things go, and perhaps this would be shared with some of the readership, but of course I'd hope its primary value would be in simply "entertainment," whatever that may mean for any particular individual. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I am a great long way from being able to ever write humor by design through craftsmanship, but by inserting the Best Ofs from the plethora of unfinished projects for which I've note-gathered and written up until this point, I think the prospect of a funny product is within my grasp.
Despite acknowledging itself as a contemporary work set in today's world, Blimp's Burden does not handle race or gender - topics which I would be hard-pressed to find any comfortable authority in whatsoever - but it will inevitably deal with class, as Theodore Pith is a sort of class ally, if not wholly by design.
