EXCERPT #1

Joshua traveled through town in a daze, not really aware of his current surroundings, thinking of his destination. And as Joshua bounced up to the table where Bradley was sitting, he looked over Bradley’s shoulder from behind at the paper place mat on which he’d been scribbling. At the top of the placemat, he’d written a song title: A Train of Thought. Then abstract thoughts without any rhythm or rhyme, just notes. Such as: Like a train moves through the landscape, my mind moves through time; Time doesn’t move, only my thoughts through the landscape.

Bradley turned his head and said, “What the fuck gives me the pleasure? Are you going to sit down or what? No? So go ahead, stand there and drool on my shoulder. I don’t give a shit.” He went back to writing on the paper.

Joshua Cromwell sat on a chair close to Bradley and stared at the words on the placemat. He said, “New song?”

“Yeah, well, an idea for a song anyhow. I finished the song from your PlanetSpin philosophy the other night. We’ll play it this evening, second song first set.”

Since college, Joshua had a certain way of looking at the rest of humanity. He’d only shared this thought with Bradley. He had done so half-jokingly because he wasn’t sure how Bradley would react. That is why he had never told anyone else, he couldn’t take the risk. Anyhow, when he was inebriated he often repeated it to his best friend, over and over again, year after year, until finally, Bradley had written a song about it. Joshua’s philosophy went like this:

The Planet Earth at the equator is about 25,000 miles around. Dividing that by twenty-four hours gives the speed a person would be traveling if that person stood somewhere along the Equator: roughly, 1000 miles per hour.

The Planet Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. Squaring that distance and multiply it by π will equal roughly the distance the Planet Earth travels around the sun: 27.171 billion miles. Taking this number and dividing it by the number of hours in a year, will equal the speed the Plant Earth is traveling around the sun: 3.1 million miles/hr. Now add the 1 thousand miles/hour the Planet Earth is spinning.

People on Planet Earth were definitely moving very fast and didn’t even know it. And that’s without even considering how fast their galaxy was moving through the universe.

Now, taking all that into consideration, Joshua, being a mathematician, figured that if human beings can’t even tell that they are moving at such a tremendous velocity, that to expect them to notice anything at all would be unrealistic.

Nowadays when Bradley or Joshua knew someone was full of it, or opinionated because of their limited experience or awareness, they would look at each other and whisper the word: PlanetSpin. And because the concept could be reduced to just this one word, it was an inside joke between them, one that never failed to raise a smile.

Joshua looked forward to hearing the song when he asked, “What’s the title?”

“‘Keep Your Bullshit to Yourself.’ But I think it might need a different title. Who knows what? It’ll come to me eventually.”

NEXT: EXCERPT #2