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A name is just a name. A sound. What matters is family. Without family, you’re nothing. You’re debris tumbling through space. Unseen, unconnected, uncollected, unknown, no matter how famous you are.
Being a woman is tough. Especially one who is a mother. We’re not all cut out for domesticity, even when we love our children.
The reader decides what it’s about, right? Isn’t that what you said ‘death of the author’ meant?” Then he’d smiled a very annoying and smug smile.
Stories were the greatest currency to us, greater than power, greater than control. Stories were our food, nourishment, enrichment. To consume a story was to add to our code, deepen our minds. We felt it the moment we took it in. We were changed. It was like falling. It was how we evolved.
Stories contain our existence; they are like gods. And the fact that we create them from living, experiencing, listening, thinking, feeling, giving—they remind me of what’s great about being alive.
We cannot escape our creators. I keep saying this. You can’t erase that which made you. Even when they are gone, their spirit remains. This should be okay.
“You can stay angry. You can stay scared. But it doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t change the situation.
Love who you love. Speak your truth. Be good and roll with life. You can’t have or control everything or everyone.”
“A dolphin should not seek to be a leopard.”
“We are mortal beings. We die. But we live first.
true power was in the harnessing of it, not the possessing of it. And when you were aware of the moment you harnessed power, that was when it was most difficult to navigate.
Narrative is one of the key ways automation defines the world. We Humes have always been clear about this fact. Stories are what holds all things together. They make things matter, they make all things be, exist.
“This was a very good story.” Then Oji added, sounding even more aware of himself, “I feel satisfied, but also not. It reminds me of myself, but it is not about me. I feel like I’ve met those I have never met. I’m thinking things I never thought before. I have many questions. Will you help me understand this?”
In the last days of humanity, humans cultivated a growing disdain for their own soul. Many didn’t even believe in the sanctity of the creative process anymore; they wanted to eliminate it and usher in automation to do the work. But it didn’t go the way the humans wanted or expected; creativity meant experiencing, processing, understanding human joy and pain. For a robot to create like a human, humanity had to ensure that a piece of themselves could live in us.
And this voice brought forth my beloved main character, Zelu. Zelunjo (which means “avoid evil; do good”) Onyenezi-Oyedele.
Omfg…
I wasn’t human. But I was the best parts of humanity.
All of automation wants to discuss my story. They have many questions for me, and I haven’t answered them yet. And when I continue to not answer, they’ll probably start seeking out and talking to each other instead. Good.
I’ve acquired a unique skill; dare I call it an art? I’ve proven to myself something that humanity could never bring itself to believe. Writing my novel taught this to me, as well: creation flows both ways.
