Archive for July, 2007
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007
[by Richard]
Once, in a land very far from here, a man crawled from the desert into the wreckage that had once been a town. The only sign of life he found in that town, aside from the amebic dysentery he caught from the well, was an infant wrapped in newspapers, with a strange birthmark on its back.
That infant was in no way related to Santos. But it makes for an interesting hook.
The first thing I noticed about Santos was probably his hair, and it sort of defined how I saw him for a long time. It was the sort of hair in which the combs of lesser men are doomed, and it probably granted him some of his powers. He seems to have calmed it down somewhat in the intervening years, which is probably best for the safety of those around him.
Santos struck me on occasion as being wary when it comes to people, and that’s still the case. Perhaps it’s just around me that he gets that way, or perhaps his eyes just seemed to be hiding behind the power of his hair. I was somewhat startled when he made contact after a couple years’ time to let me know he’d written a thing about me. It was even more surprising to see the impression I’d left.
Santos is the sort of guy who will say a lot of things that are very interesting but are different from what’s on his mind. His manner is both brusque and bashful. His conversation is both piquant and pixilated. He’s better with people than he thinks he is, better with words than most visual artists can ever hope to be, and a better man than many other men and almost all women. He thinks about people a lot because he cares about people a lot, but one gets the feeling that he doesn’t quite know what to do about them. I think I saw a girl hurt him once and this was the first time I realized how scary girls really are.
Santos has been nudging me for several days, somewhat nonchalantly but not very subtly at all, to write a blurb about him for his site. Really, though, the things he says about other people can tell you far more about him than any observations I might have made. If I had to leave you with a single metaphor, it would go like this:
The saber, from an epee point of view, is a weapon that is 90% flash and 10% substance. And Santos is really nothing like a saber.
Category: People I Know
Monday, July 23rd, 2007
[by Chuck]
Santos was in the fencing club before I joined. At the time, the club had an abundance of people named Matt. Rather than designate me “protastant Matt” or “short Matt,” Santos pointed at me and said, “You’re Chuck.” His words had a profound effect on the rest of the team. Everyone else instantly forgot my real name.
He was soft-spoken and rather painful. Every soft punch, gentle poke and sardonic stare had a tendency to hurt more if Santos was doing it. Unlike Greg, who took joy in hitting people and causing them pain, Santos just couldn’t help it. Greg forged his body into a punching machine while Santos was simply born with sharp knuckles and a knack for hitting sensitive areas.
Santos liked to alter his workspace in subtle ways to resemble himself. He drew pictures of angry, toothy faces under innocent things like stress balls and pads of sticky notes. Everything looked normal on the surface, but once you started poking around you would make interesting discoveries. Santos was like that. If you didn’t pay attention and put in some effort, you were going to miss out on the Santos experience.
He took great delight in showing me what he had altered within his office. He probably took even greater delight watching me overturn everything on his desk just to find something else he had altered. I used to visit Santos’s office for just that reason. He was a good sport about it.
Category: People I Know
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
I’m off to California as of Monday afternoon. I received a total of five submissions for the “about Santos” thing. I’ve set one to post each day at midnight each day this week, starting with Monday. The weekend will be empty, and I should be back in Houston late Sunday night. Bye~!
Category: Life, Website
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
Her hair was once very long, but now it isn’t.
Helen found me. She always said that she knew me from Summer Orientation, though I’ve never been able to recall her. It wasn’t until about a year later that she culled my e-mail address from the roll sheet in an Honors Political Science class and began contacting me. We talked a lot through Messenger programs, but almost never actually saw each other.
I can probably count on my hands the number of times we’ve been around one another, though for a few months at least we were up until 2am every night having completely stream-of-conscious text-based conversations. She even took note of a lot of my more delirious ramblings and collected them on a quotes page on her website.
The first time I visited her apartment she stabbed me in the back every time I turned around. She also became upset with me for perfectly straightening every twist tie I found in the room. It’s a bad habit of mine. We made a midnight trip to Hermann Park and were kicked out by a policeman that told us the unfenced, open-air park was “closed.” Laws confuse me.
She was a psychology major, worked at a bookstore for the longest time, and read a lot. Her mind was always on a dozen million things, causing her to only say very random things. Occasionally she had moments of clarity, but they were always fleeting. She got into grad school and wrote a letter to all her friends saying she didn’t have time for friends anymore. I only hear from her rarely, and she’s usually quite burdened.
Category: People I Know
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
I added a little bar to the left side that shows everyone’s name with a link to their article. It was getting to be a hassle for me to jump around to different ones just using plain page-to-page navigation, so I thought that it would be helpful.
Category: Website