today's bit of writing...
just because I haven't posted anything in a couple of days. Saw Hellboy. Loved the creatures. That's about it, been a boring couple of days. Part of a longer thingy
When he's working his surroundings fall away, everything discarded but the problem in front of him. It's always been this way, as far back as he can remember; the one constant variable threading through his fucked up, chaotic life. Even when he was little his tendency to slip into single-minded focus had weirded out nannies and teachers and the few kids his age he'd known. Not his parents, though. Not his dad, who encouraged it, or his mother, who rarely noticed it because she was the same way.
It's the same here in the wilds of Afghanistan, or it is eventually. At first, though, he might as well have had a stroke, everything is so difficult. He actually has to think about the math - has to work some of it out on paper, even. And almost as if he's developed a mental stutter, he can't get the numbers out of his head and onto the page. It could be the periodic games of bobbing for apples with the apple part left out, or the constant ache in his chest, or the way his fingers cramp up from the cold, or the maybe just the little fact that he's locked in a cave and watched constantly by men crazy enough to believe he can build an advanced weapons system like the Jericho by hand from spare parts; but whatever the cause the frustration is not something he's used to dealing with and as unlikely as it may seem, that wears on him more than anything else about his current circumstances.
It takes time, but the flow comes back to him in fits and starts. Even after it returns his mind will still go blank in the middle of a problem and he'll have to start over, unable to remember where he was. The third time it happens he loses two hours worth of calculations and hurls a wrench across the room. It lands with a very satisfying crash in a pile of (equipment) and the man he'll later know as Yinsen only turns from his tattered copy of the Koran long enough to glance at Tony over the top of his glasses with a raised eyebrow.
Later, after he calms down and his fellow prisoner asks him what he's working on, Tony can't answer him. And it's not because he doesn't want to answer, though that's part of it at first, but because he can't seem to translate what he sees in his head into words. His hands know, his hands can assemble the circuits and locate the right parts and put it all together in a way that he knows without question will work; but his ability to communicate this knowing, honed over years of selling himself and his creations to non-engineers, has left him. He's been stripped of everything but numbers and equations and circuits and words fall by the wayside.
The other man never takes offense, and after awhile he gives up trying to get Tony to explain.
When he's working his surroundings fall away, everything discarded but the problem in front of him. It's always been this way, as far back as he can remember; the one constant variable threading through his fucked up, chaotic life. Even when he was little his tendency to slip into single-minded focus had weirded out nannies and teachers and the few kids his age he'd known. Not his parents, though. Not his dad, who encouraged it, or his mother, who rarely noticed it because she was the same way.
It's the same here in the wilds of Afghanistan, or it is eventually. At first, though, he might as well have had a stroke, everything is so difficult. He actually has to think about the math - has to work some of it out on paper, even. And almost as if he's developed a mental stutter, he can't get the numbers out of his head and onto the page. It could be the periodic games of bobbing for apples with the apple part left out, or the constant ache in his chest, or the way his fingers cramp up from the cold, or the maybe just the little fact that he's locked in a cave and watched constantly by men crazy enough to believe he can build an advanced weapons system like the Jericho by hand from spare parts; but whatever the cause the frustration is not something he's used to dealing with and as unlikely as it may seem, that wears on him more than anything else about his current circumstances.
It takes time, but the flow comes back to him in fits and starts. Even after it returns his mind will still go blank in the middle of a problem and he'll have to start over, unable to remember where he was. The third time it happens he loses two hours worth of calculations and hurls a wrench across the room. It lands with a very satisfying crash in a pile of (equipment) and the man he'll later know as Yinsen only turns from his tattered copy of the Koran long enough to glance at Tony over the top of his glasses with a raised eyebrow.
Later, after he calms down and his fellow prisoner asks him what he's working on, Tony can't answer him. And it's not because he doesn't want to answer, though that's part of it at first, but because he can't seem to translate what he sees in his head into words. His hands know, his hands can assemble the circuits and locate the right parts and put it all together in a way that he knows without question will work; but his ability to communicate this knowing, honed over years of selling himself and his creations to non-engineers, has left him. He's been stripped of everything but numbers and equations and circuits and words fall by the wayside.
The other man never takes offense, and after awhile he gives up trying to get Tony to explain.