Here there be Dragons, Monsters and Spoilers (Quotes Galore)

**Warning: rife with spoilers **

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." Recently, I attended a Neil Gaiman signing, the last of his signings. I adore Gaiman’s writing, mythological and fantastic. Forever, he will be immortalized in the Sandman, weaver of stories, our age’s dreamer of marvels.  “Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” He turns the phrase, molds it, and transforms an algae filled pond, dead and swamped with reeds, into an ocean at the end of a lane.

                Certainly a number of lines within Ocean at the End of the Lane piqued my interest, or churned across my thoughts until my brain was lightly creamed. The story delved into topics of monsters, youth and adulthood, trust and sacrifice.  It is a mythos of fantastic fashion, a neatly blended nostalgia and entirely other. The main character finds himself recollecting a series of events from his youth, forcibly removed from his memories.  He’s bookish, introverted, friendless, and honest, and he encounters a monster, a devil beyond his ken.

                “Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.” There are a lot of quotes through this book that struck me, and I dare not entertain the time evaluating them all.  A monster comes into the main character’s life, intruding and catastrophically altering things for the worse, and almost getting him killed.  At one point, an ancient,  good witch, Lettie, is working with the boy to send the monstrous woman, now his sinister nanny, home, and the main character and Lettie are discussing fear. She asks him if he thinks that Ursula Monkton is scared of anything, and he replies that she’s a grown-up, and that grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of anything. Lettie replies, “Oh, monsters are scared… that’s why they’re monsters.” 

                The main character is dragged through a series of inhuman trials, and at each instance, his mettle is tested.  He drops Lettie’s hand, and absorbs a portal to an alien world in his foot in the form of a worm; he tries leaving his house and is almost drowned by his own father, and tormented by an otherworldly housekeeper; he is told, by the varmints, that his heart must be consumed and consumed.

I think what Gaiman has crafted, and often develops so precisely and perfectly, is a meta-story: a story of ideas within parables where tales are formed from the music of the universe. “A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that which people in the story change.” Throughout this story, the main character is forced into unbelievable circumstances with only three crazy ladies who might believe a word he says.  And he changes. In another of his quotes, Gaiman articulates this well: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” Gaiman has dreamt a world full of the fantastic, the implausible, and has forged it into something terrible: a dragon. And as we dive into the ocean of mystery with the character throughout his tale, we, too, battle a raging wyrm, wicked and full of mythical cunning.

And we think to ourselves, this isn't true, this is just a story. But, in truth, Gaiman answers this as well: “Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot” and when the main character says, “I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.”  These stories are truth stories, not because they happened, but because they tell us something about ourselves, about everything.

Lastly, this story is a bit about sacrifice and trust.  Into each section, the boy holds Lettie’s hand, and she promises she won’t let anything injurious happen to him.  She protects him, instructs him, cares for him, and in the end, when he fights with courage and despair, running into the very creatures that might consume him, she sacrifices herself for him.  The main character struggles with this, the surrender of a life to save his.  When he’s driving back with Lettie’s mother, he thinks to himself, “A flash of resentment. It's hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having...if not died, then having given up her life. It wasn't fair.” 

This quote is interesting because this is, in a sense, my faith.  I live each day wondering whether my actions warrant the salvation of Christ.  Was I worth that sacrifice?  Are my harsh words worthy of that death? Are my lies? My theft of another’s right to truth, peace, and joy? With every theft of mine, I must consider whether my actions are worth having a death, a gift of life, in exchange for those actions. This quote struck me as a poignant reminder of God’s grace and our spiritual marathon. 

                I’m not sure where to end this, for I’m not certain what this is.  I think I’ll finish with another quote from Gaiman, for what could one more hurt? “I suppose the point you grow up is the point you let the dreams go.” Gaiman is, in essence, dreaming the child in each of us. One of the motifs in this book is the contrast of adulthood and childhood. In one curious incident, Lettie says that there are no true adults living. Adults are just children wrapped in a shell. I think it is within me to never let dreams go, and I hope I remain that way until the very end. In one of the Sandman novels, on the topic of dreams, someone says, “Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” It’s time for beating some dragons, and time for flying.


Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
~ Langston Hughes

Pace

The previous subject of meter has drawn me into the contemplation of pace.  Where metric is measurement, pace is passing over the metric.  In writing, this is controllable through punctuation... or lengthy, drawn out, meticulous descriptions. Or concise sentences. These are, of course, the most obvious methods. More subtle patterns exist for stalling the reader in contemplation, or spurring a galloping, careening, may-day-crash of a denouement that thrills and cajoles the audience into the stomach of the tale.

Pace exists in everything. The tone, setting, rhythm, rhyme, metric - all forward the pace. And now, in this marathon, I've maintained a pace too great. I mentioned before, it is almost as if instead of simply running a race, I'm attempting to juggle flaming torches, paint the sunset, all whilst scampering barefoot along 26.2 miles. And I'm not in good shape. That analogy fails to explain that none of the parts are particularly difficult. It is more like I'm jogging ten miles while reading a book, dribbling a soccer ball, staring at the stars. On their own, each of these activities is trivial. Together, they emerge into a complicated multi-task, a juggling act. Perhaps that is the stem of my dreams.

There is a part in a difficult journey that may arise where the distance remaining is uncertain, and seems eternal.  Where mistakes are made, and each footfall wonders whether it's time for stopping, resting instead of running. It is at these moments where a simple man entertains heroism and cowardice. It is the tired pace. Halfway is almost here.

Poetry Meter by Meter

I'm not as proficient as I could be. Are we ever? Everyday I discover pieces to a gigantic puzzle whose picture is still unknown to me. I suspect I'd be bored with a box-illustration of my life's adventure. Finding pieces under rugs and in book bindings and wise words - a more riveting quest. Today, I discovered just how naive my knowledge of poetic metric stands. I remember as a child struggling with syllables and stress on words. I always suspected I could stress any portion of a word depending on its placement and purpose. While this is technically true, I'd quickly sound like a fool abusing that principle.
I remember learning to clap as a child for each syllable. "Pancakes" -> *clap clap clap clap clap* 5 syllables. The more excited I get the more syllables a word contains? Fabulous! I've been reading poems, and sometimes it is obvious as in the Destruction of Sennacherib:
 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

And sometimes I struggle more finding a rhythm, or the rhythm varies for effect:
She walks in beauty, like the night
   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Reading these aloud, I feel a fight with some of the phrases. I want to emphasize certain parts, even though they are not stressed:
Meet in her aspect and her eyes -> / u u / u / u / is how it is supposed to be read, where sometimes I want to read it: u / u / u / / u
Or rarely :
u / / u u / / u
Both of which unstress the final syllable instead of stress it. Part of the problem is in the difference between this verse and all preceding metric. Each of the former lines are in iambic forms, and the fourth switches things up by starting out stressed? Tricky tricky, Lord Byron.

Then there are these:
Nor law nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

It starts out in iambic tetrameter, and finishes with a trochee and more iambic verse? That trochee so tricky! I see what you've done Yeats. Or do I? Such simple but effective techniques to alter the audience's perception and flow, focusing them or distracting them for significant, and subtle, purpose. Oh, to be a poet meister.

Thievery

"Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir." (Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini)

I've been contemplating this quote recently. One of the travesties our church has perpetuated is the concept of pride as mankind's favorite vice. The problem is that pride is exactly what many within the church are missing. Though I hesitate to embark down this road, our culture often inflicts a lack of self-confidence upon us, through media exemplars of physical and intellectual perfection, through perfectionism and spiritual guidelines with impractically set goals - I just remember that line in Howl's Moving Castle where Howl says, "I see no point in living if I can't be beautiful." It isn't that pride is a virtue, nor that pride isn't potentially harmful, but that a large population suffers from a lack of pride. Perhaps the church shouldn't preach an abstinence of pride, but a presence of pride in the right places.

So when I discovered this theory on theft, that our greatest transgression is stealing, I latched onto it immediately. Lying is theft of the right to truth, murder the theft of living and relationship, abuse the theft of freedom and joy. Patriarchy steals fullness of life as much as sexism and racism, transforming normalcy into an eternal obstacle course, a trial instead of merely living. This too is a theft.

This appeals to me, for salvation is a reclamation of what has been stolen from me: a chance of relationship with God. My sins steal away the intended goodness of creation, a little natural perfection ebbing away from this world. I feel as a devil, stealing from God's ensemble, an orchestral performance of fluid beauty stolen away by my incessant whining caterwaul.  

I pray I may steal no more. No more stealing from people who've rights to create, to live, to live, hope and dream. No more stealing from God, and no more stealing from myself. It is a time for reclamation, and a time for giving.

Operation

Often, I read. Internet articles, interesting blogs, classic and fanciful books, short and long stories, myths and fables - all these and more, I pore over each day. Then, clambering into my writing nest, cozying beneath pyramids of blankets, I create. Leisurely, meticulously, I craft each syllable and phrase, aligning and puzzling each piece into place. Am I an artist or a surgeon? Excellent query. I'll remove these vocal cords and ask the patient's opinion when finished with this writing operation.
Weaknesses in my intellectual scribbling abound. Each article, each blog and artfully manifest bound book I flip through shames my own conceptions. My worlds are barren, theirs flowing and bright; where seas clash and thunder roars, on my world the sea gurgles and storms are but clowning clouds; animals caper, crawl, and canter in their worlds, mine only cower. Is my imagination inadequate? Are my tales lacklustre?
I've no critics, you see. If I had but one: an outspoken, violent critic of great authority and grating wit, well, then I might be great. My competitive nature might spurn me into incomprehensible heights: empty skies would fill with salty stars and perfect, argentine moon, where below pixies and satyrs prance and chant around mirror ponds where listless maidens lay, basking in fae-light, baited until dawn of day.
But I've chosen an auto-didactic trail, a road from which few prevail. The poetry pool beneath and impassioned, fiery fruit above are my Tantalus aches - I cannot reach, I cannot drink, I suffer only to wait. Wait as each classical piece draws unwittingly nearer, as each persuasive prose or poem swishes in the air overhead, as my legs strengthen to leap. The waters around my neck, the breeze brushing the branches just out of reach - it is only time, then, and patience.
I can, of course, be overcritical of my own writing. Yet, still, the ardent nature of my writing is frequently lacking. I hate being overly informal. I despise writing (not necessarily reading) evaluations and descriptions that serve only to claw sermons from nothing. I always feel as if I'm drawing analysis on credit, and eventually someone might realize I've nothing worth saying.
Still, the onomatopoeia in daily experience is rarely utilized within my writing, for I scarcely delve into my experience. I vaguely bounce around it, scuttling like a crab sideways instead of forward through my beliefs and ideas. It is a paranoid, terrified principle, and one I fear stymies my growth the most.  If only I had the guts to define my ideas in honest terms, to risk everything, and then risk everything thrice more. Sometimes, dear Ender, you must do the unbelievable to prevent the inevitable to win the impossible. In the end, you can only pray your punishment isn't Xenocide.

Timshel

I admit a certain... hesitance regarding somber stories. I'm a sucker for the fairy tale finish: happily ever after. Despite all that, Steinbeck's East of Eden struck a chord within my dissonant soul, and I'm left with a lingering "timshel" on my lips and philosophy in my mind.  There is injustice portrayed on an outrageous level in East of Eden, and, simultaneously, a craftily recipied illustration of a jihad in humanity: man's holy struggle for dominance over self.

I'm reaching a bit, but in audience absentia, I allow myself a minor fallacy or embellishment now and again. There is no greater dread than reading the line "am I supposed to look after him?" from Cal. My spirit was ravaged, my hope dashed into despair. Drawing close to the end of the book, I felt I was being shipwrecked with land in sight. I believed hope was within reach, but the distance was still too far, the waves too great. What should I have expected from such an author as Steinbeck? He cinches my soul onto an anchor and drags me along the bottom of the sea, salty tears mingling with an ocean of such.  Should have stuck to Pratchett. 

Blag

Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Even in our scientific age of enlightened logos, superstitions often interfere with our every day. The word (too long for typing again) above means a fear of a thirteenth of the month being a Friday. Superstitious much? Whether it is the concept of "beginner's luck" or knocking on wood, even our logical disbelief cannot retire these actions.  What is "luck" anyway?

I admit to a certain distrust of the concept of luck, having programmed enough to understand that "random" only means "you don't know enough to predict accurately".  Luck would have no existence in a world without misunderstandings. Not that limited knowledge is bad, yet from it we derive paranoia, anxiety, worries, terrors, fears. Many of our debilitating uncertainties stem from the mysterious unknown future.

One of the advantages of religion is the possession of faith. Everyone carries faith in some capacity, though perhaps religion possesses faith in the infinite to provide for the finite, divine providence for the weary and broken.  Hard weeks will come and go, but I know that salvation and grace exist, mercy and love are not unattainable.  I have not had hard weeks, though I suspect some are impending. Even now, I understand a bit of the words of James:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

And when I'm frustrated and tired of people and events and work and things, I always let myself turn to my favorite verse:
Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

Let the games continue. Winter must pass before spring is born.

Phantasmagoria

Pale yellow lights colored the canted theatre, stage sheathed in shadow, yet. The show was not begun.  They filtered in, first, painting the aisles in formal apparel - a full night. Fluttering fans and whispered conversation suffused the hall, the dull roar of a barely concealed excitement.
Now. The seats filled to bursting, bustling with tiny movements, impatient expectations. The lights dimmed, drowning the space in black. The click, clack of steps across the stage, and bright lights shine from behind the stage, half blinding the audience. A man in a long-tailed piano suit and top hat stands on stage, hands clasped behind his back. With careful movements, deliberate, slow, he tips his top hat to the audience and winks, all cheery cheeks and genteel smile.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Masters and Misses, the greatest wonders of this age are revealed unto you this eve. Such wonders shall greet your eyes as never before seen. You will be dazzled, astonished, nay hypnotized by the grandiose and the spectacular, the fantastic mysteries revealed this night. And so, without further ado, the show begins anon." And with a second tip of the hat, the man disappeared into the rear of the stage.
On cue, a couple of black clad, stooped figures maneuvered out a large curtain, stretched between them. This they mounted on two giant poles across the center of the stage, stretching nearly the entire distance before the stage's rim. They, too, retreated into the recesses, dissipating into the black.  As the curtain was pulled across, the lights behind the curtain became even more vivid, splashing a brilliant white light now diminished by the impeding fabric.
The crowd whispered, confused at this turn, uncertain. What play was this? With vision of players denied?
And suddenly shadows appeared, shadows dastardly and beautiful, daunting and ephemeral. Skeletons cackled, capering across the stage, a woman sensuously danced, her shadow enigmatic against the veil. Magicians charmed, ghosts haunted, spectres and satyrs sauntered amongst men, moving mortals to madness. The lights strobed and wavered in brightness.
The show horrified as it entertained, dazzled as it frightened the spectators. And the show ended too soon. As abruptly as it began, the lights behind the stage dimmed, shrouding the room once again in darkness. When the auditorium lights brightened, the curtain was absent, the theatre just a room once again.

Travels and Travails

My most casual blag blather. 

Recently, I've engaged myself in a competition, though the only participant is myself - a trial of restraint, abstinence if you will. The adventure has several stages that I imagine may be generalized to many such odysseys, mental or physical in nature.  Though I have never run, nor even trained, for a marathon, I almost imagine the event in states.

In the first state, the runner trains. The length of this particular stage, existent or not, may significantly alter the difficulty of the others.  Enough training, and the actual trial, the marathon itself, might be softened, or annulled entirely.  For a marathon, the difficulty is exponentially more difficult without training, and, quite possibly, more unpleasant.

The second state I'm going to skip straight to the race itself. Since this is my metaphor, I can do what I want, right? While the first state is somewhat superfluous, I maintain it for explanation's sake. The next few stages all interact with the race entire.  

The race soon begins.  Spandex outfitted racers breathe in the crisp morning air and exhale in tiny clouds.  The sun glances through the trees, splitting dew into rainbows and slanting between buildings to strike the asphalt beneath your shoes. Every fiber of your being is enhanced, stretching, and goosebumps of excitement raise on your skin. In the great distance, a man with a showy pistol: a tip of the hat to traditional races, it fires no actual bullets. Still, as he raises it over his head, a shiver extends over your body, and the training sets in. It is time.

*BOOM*

Bear with me, I'm imagining this on the fly, and enjoying myself immensely in the invention. As the race begins, every muscle in your body rejoices. This is that for which you prepared, this is the glory of toil. You surge forward, perhaps with restraint, understanding the taxing nature of the trial, or perhaps knowing your full strength.  You are young, you are untethered, you are wild and free.

In the second stage of the race, several miles have passed, and the pace becomes steady, directed.  If your training was limited, perhaps already you face the punishment of short breath, lactic acid biting at your muscles with each stamping step.  Either way, the race has many miles remaining, and determination and love binds you, points you at the finish line. You race on.

These next stages, as perhaps all stages, possess aethereal boundaries.  Eventually, however, the body delves into its adrenaline and endorphin reserves, bearing off exhaustion in mental and physical faculties.  Some time, and distance, remains in the race, and each plodding pace is mechanical, exemplary of the love and dedication to the journey.  Still, it is the end of the race that drives you here, the expectation that only a couple peaks and valleys remain along the circuitous route.

Some of these states overlap, some might be spectral, or nonexistent for certain individuals, but certain aspects of these will apply in alternative adventures or instances in life perhaps.  The next stage is that last leg, the final stretch before the end. Every last reserve of energy kicks in, that idiomatic second wind, and perhaps a recursive joy from the race's beginning returns once more. There is joy, there is exhaustion, there is hope.

The last stage is the finish, the completion of the race and its aftermath. This stage I know exists, in some form or another.  There is, at least as far as I know, always an end in some capacity.  

How does this relate to me? I consider my particular trial not dissimilar to a mental marathon.  Let's evaluate my psyche, Cupid. The first stage is interesting, as my preparation was all incidental. This event was unplanned, and any training was likely a failed attempt to accomplish what I formally attempt now.  So, I don't consider myself adequately trained, though perhaps I cannot expect that any training would have been sufficient.

The second stage has past, and the nature of the beast produced interesting, and maybe minimal, quantities of joy. I almost imagine I skipped straight into the third stage, understanding the race's immense distance and dreading the difficult passage. In the third stage, I believe I may be stuck for much time. The eternity before me, only steps behind me, acid seeps into my mentality and burns at my muscles. I expect a false step might tumble me from the race.

The fourth stage is long ahead of me. I wonder if I might discover another stage as I continue my path.  Perhaps my biggest trial is that I chose too many tasks, too many trials at once.  I am not only running the marathon, but trying to learn to juggle, and learn Hebrew at the same time.  The flaming pins rotate clockwise, the letters jumble sinistral, my legs grumble forward. 

And the only thing that endures throughout all the stages is the hope. It twinkles like the stars, but always there, always bright, always guiding me in my chosen direction.  Isn't that what always drives us anyway? 

Douglas Despot and Whimsical Wednesdays

A preeminent being exists, forthwith dubbed Douglas. Douglas is a totalitarian, and his schemes likely spurned Machiavelli into a Faustian bargain ultimately producing that keen edged rubbish of despotic devilry: The Prince. Contrasted with such disreputable fellows as Mr. Hyde, or Dr. Frankenstein, or even Count Dracula, well, Douglas is found several levels beneath these monstrosities in Dante's infernal recollection, deeper even than Judas. Monster is too saintly a description for his ilk.
He's the son of Cain, and the anger of old is ever within him. He sits within, the fiery sanguine glow of the walls is dim, and grotesque shadows dance along the walls. The shadows are specters of something too awful for contemplation, an impossible savagery of chaos, and they match not the strange creatures apportioned along the walls in steel cages.  And these creatures, too, might melt the courage from the bravest of man.  Claws and protruding spines; rotting and jagged toothsome creatures with countless eyes and caustic saliva dripping from their mouths; obscene colors that assaulted the eyes: sulfur, blood-red, acid-green, void-black; and sitting over it all was Douglas, hands steepled beneath his chin, just watching as I exited the hallway into the mangled menagerie.
My heart quailed there, though my sins gave me strength I knew not.



Well, that declined quickly into a gruesome illustration. And such a beautiful evening produced this? I assure myself, no such darkness curtails my peace on this fine day. It was not sunny, not quite, though sun often graced our splendid sky. Beams of sunlight sent shafts of angular light between the clouds, dark, soaked cotton swabs of the sky.  I read, I played, I rested, I planned, and little schemed was not left undone today. Accomplishment soon gets its just reward: sleep. I'm swaddled with glee, and still Douglas and the nightmarish chamber was wrought. Happy Wednesday. I should sleep before anything even more dastardly is produced.

Per ardua ad astra

Life is full of pieces, each with eternal implications. Recently, I watched a movie where a picture on the wall says, "All you can take with you is that which you've given away." Each distinct moment of our lives touches everything - a flap of a butterfly's wings effects a tornado elsewhere.  While this aphorism hyperbolizes  cause and effect to some extent, perhaps it merely illustrates the efficacious nature of time.  One of the great conundrums and fancies of fantastic fiction revolves around time travel.  If we interfere with the past, do we alter the future? Or would we simply be accomplishing something in the past already set in place: a recursive destiny?
In truth, it matters not, since time for us mortals is quite linear. Yet, I sit here imagining each interaction and influence my life has produced in each soul surrounding me: a moment of laughter, a touch, a smile, listening ears and eyes, caring and heartfelt prayers, actions of love. Then I fret over each failure, and the consequences of my inaction, failings, cruelties, and frailties. I endeavor not to harbor long on these, as my shame increases until I am overrun.
Now, sitting here in the quiet silence, a steady breeze brushing across the leaves and a drizzle of water dripping from the eaves outside, staring at the would-be stars, imagining them sown across, skyline to hilly skyline, I connect the pieces. I draw constellations in the space of my life, stories of lions and gods, grandmothers in rocking chairs, bears with their tails still attached. Both struggles and creation have forged this sky beneath which I lie.  Each star a person, place, an identity that shews me my place in this land, and guides me home.

Somnium Caelum

Lift into skies open wide
Bright as soft blue eyes
Gentle, gently
Muse my music on the other side
passive, patient
stomach tied in stiff butterflies
frozen wings, take me
gliding into gazes lost at night
ticking time until taxi
surprise, then, and pearly smiles
arms and love embrace me.


Finity strikes the hour gently, beginning of an end begun. Chrysophrase and sardonyx, chalcedony and amethyst, gates arrayed as mirrors of an eternal splendor. I dream of eternity, and it pains my mind. Was man meant for such? The trappings too fantastic, the infinite too pronounced for conscious evaluation. Nausea strikes me as I analyze the infinite. Like staring into the milky way, hypnotized in frosty swirls. We are not at center, no, but at the outskirts of the endless, with forever to go.

I stare upon the horizon and see only clouds of charred popcorn, thunderous and vengeful.  They approach. And I am, with faith, the stronger.

Sacred Inviolable

12.5%: a notable distance traveled, and many tracks and tricks remaining. Every railroad rut yields another, in a plodding towards eternity. What travails have I consigned my weeks to? Is this slippery justice? Lines were crossed, the sacred inviolable. This is penance for a milked crime, a trail of tears in illicit motions.  It is a grotesquerie I've harbored overlong.

The doctor has long exerted his influence over my transgressions, pressuring the infested, self-inflicted wound. Bitterly, a desperate penance has driven me into quietude, a beggary for concealment of iniquities long forgot.  Only he, the conniving doctor, knew my grievances, and I bought his silence dearly. In my great manse, in the rolling, wilderness hillsides of Scotland, a monstrous basement laboratory was carved into the bedrock, an elaborate, secret catacombs.  I doled out for the construction, as per the Doctor's every desire, and the honeycombing burrowed 'neath my home unseen, unknown. I stared away as they drilled, ashamed as I was of my own illicit behavior.

And the drilling stopped, one day, and life continued.

Then the screaming began.  I ignored it as best I could, the hellish wails beneath each inch of my estate.  What devilry was this? But I suspected my sin unpaid, and allowed the Doctor his work. It was the cruelest of purgatories. My servants disappeared, unsettled, for who can bear such nightmarish shrieks? Six months, I lived within that house torn asunder by devilry beneath.  Seven months I could take no more.
Within the center of the house sat a room like a disease, a monster at the heart of the earth. It was a dank room, musty, claustrophobic, and pitch. Dead center in the room, a tiny swivel-trapdoor opened into the complex beneath the manse. I'd never set foot here, not even in the room itself.
I rolled the stone trapdoor back, and a sulfuric smog rose into the room.  Lowering myself down, the smell strengthened, and an additional odor chafed at the edge of my nostrils, something organic, ghastly, and long dead. A dim light pulsated from the corridor beyond, casting a sickly glow. A low, ugly growl filled the basement dark, eerie and bestial.
What devilry was borne in this hellish place?

Au Rêveur

An ancient ruin looms along a seaside cliff. Salty spray strikes stone; the cliff solid sits, turning not its face. Music, a percussive swash slaps and spumes while flurried winds flute and harp of warmer climes. The lighthouse atop the outcrop beams back at the moon and silvery sea. Pixie shapes likes shadow flames caper here, amongst the fairy lanterns and footsteps of spring, the poppy and the pimpernel, a lilting aria almost audible, or do the grasses simply swish?

High and low crest the tides below, faintly distinguished against the night owl's saxophone, the cricket violin. Everything is familiar and not, and you wonder if it's all real, knowing it's more than real, it is a truth. And the shooting stars above contemplate those below, a love ne'er brighter shone.

Celestial, empyrean domain, beatifically displayed in the overlapping waves, the churning brine that clasps tight those behemoths of the deeps, the lantern fish and bovine manatees, or those angled beasts of jagged teeth, fins. Ionized particles charge along the horizon, patterning the world's edge in crimson and green. This is only a night, only a dance of dreams.

new times, old places

2010:
The last time I tried to write, this, like everything else, appeared to be fruitless in the end. Much of my life's multifarious goals appear to end up wallowing in the mud, like pigs finally realizing they never were adorable lambs. I tried writing, but got lost in the words. I never could find enough to say to keep myself, or others had they discovered my journey, interested. I get sidetracked, ramble, use poor choices of diction all for the sake of colloquial and formal experimentation. I alliterate, consonate, and attempt to make my prose poetry, and my poetry music. In the end, it turns out to be just poor prose, with limping poetic meter and rhyme with the rhythm of a badly sprung horse. Grammar never was my strongest point either, as can be clearly seen.

I tried art, but couldn't keep the musical muses happy, and every attempt at a studio art appeared to be an accidental conglomeration of color, and the shade of a third grader pretending they have a coloring book, but not knowing quite where the lines would be in their imagination.

Someday, I hope to be like Trapis. Broken feet, dying legs, endless love, and a perfect heart. I just hope that I have better stories.

Day #3: Cache of a Lonely Dragon

For the road often wanders
as feet are want to do
while valuable thoughts it squanders
what 'long the road we knew


I've long grappled with my introversion and its debilitating charm that strangles me, comforts me, tethers and kindles my anger aflame.  It asphyxiates and cossets in equal portions, a mercurial dichotomy that oft leaves me incensed or blessedly at ease.  Is it only or is it lonely? Not lonely, I suspect, for my companions are many. No, it is more diabolical, an infernal poison seeping into my joints with a casual familiarity and a caustic finale.
Loneliness? No. I am a dragon, sitting atop a hoarded mountain of gold, capable of shifting into human form. Entering town, I stare agog at the destitution, the starvation and beggary. I ponderously place a half-penny into a mendicant's empty cup, trundling along the city square.  I speak with them, dine with them, and subsequently align with their thoughts, falling desperately in love with them. Yet I cannot share what I hoard alone.

Tired Two

The purpose of all this is, perhaps, misdirection - a dialectic in smoke and mirrors, if you will. Though likely this soliloquy will flounder on invisibly, its vague anonymity serves sufficient, all the same.  Day two draws nigh as night  washes over this countryside, climbing from deep in the valley, up the hillsides, until a cloak of twilight floods across the earth entire.  And I have arrived victorious, though vici not alone.
Today is a tired day, and tomorrow will compound the effect doubly, I'm sure. Yet though the path still stretches on towards forever, I pray my accountability is kept, my planted seeds carefully parceled over yielding, fertile ground.
I'm drawing near, as sunlight for tomorrow, and I pray you see the gold around the mountaintops and praise the Lord the morning draws ever nigh. For this is a tired two, and I can't bear the shame without hope, or the hope without pain.

A Poetry of Prose

The best of narrative drunkenly stumbles along the fence of poetry and prose.  Wavering, wobbling, whiskey clasped with nostalgia as, staggering along railroad ruts, the ghastly trees sift only whistles from breeze, and stanza and sentence collide in eager autumn strides. Gilded leaves from maple trees spindle around pastel dreams of August.
And Summer sings, spinning what Spring brings into sunflower smiles. Mountains and valley streams observe with nature, as butterflies decide, as fog, and snow, hail and life hide, in only plain sight. Afraid? Afraid of opening your eyes and clasping hands with the drunken man, for in dreams who cannot fly? Tarry along this precipice, behold the waterfall. Valleys stretched out beneath in scarlet flame. Luxurious?
It is the poetry of prose.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I'm not much of a television person, and I suspect visual media mattered little in my psychological bloom.  What captured my interest most was literature.  As a child, my heroes were not like Disney princes or Star Wars' jedi, but characters like Ender Wiggin, King David, Benny from the Boxcar Children, and the Stainless Steel Rat.  I wanted the kindness and loyalty of Sam, or the wizard powers of Gandalf; the bravery of Peter Pevensie, or the charismatic wisdom of Ged. I expected, given my literary earnestness, I'd develop into a hero, not vapid like the beast-slaying princes of movies, but honest and true, as Taran Wanderer or Peter Pan.

I was wrong.

Biblical literature is full of fantastic stories, many of which may surprise the most conventional, conservative Christian.  One of my favorites is the story of David and Michal.  King Saul requests that David produce a hundred Philistine foreskins as dowry for Michal's hand in marriage.  David, pleased with the arrangement, kills two-hundred Philistines and returns with double the endowment. I'm not even certain whether I should be impressed, or disgusted, surely.

Would that I were such a hero! (Though I suspect such a prize, currently, would not garner much approval in American households) David's faithfulness to God is astounding - why is mine not so?  As such, I've dedicated fifty days towards a fast of my own, a fast in faithfulness and, perhaps, a desperate prayer. Let the games begin - or, as Sherlock might say, the game is afoot.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
~Yeats

As the sun rises, and my journey ambles from night into day, perhaps this is the tale of:
Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

First World Problems

  A while back I heard a story about Christian living in dangerous country.  The speaker had visited a missionary in a persecution zone, and asked, "How do you remain faithful against such opposition?" The missionary appeared shocked, replying to his American visitor, "How do you remain faithful without it?"

I think this is indicative of Christianity in our American culture. We've a persistent idolatry that is so embedded in our cultural proclivities, that we scarcely realize we worship American Gods (I'm not in the slightest embarrassed by my Gaiman cultural reference, here).  Gods of money, prestige, the internet, individualism, capitalism - the subtle, prevalent gods that eke worship from our daily desires. It isn't even always a materialistic tendency, though sometimes that's easiest to pinpoint.  

As Christians, we are called to be giving, loving.  Yeshua initiated the ultimate sacrifice and gift, and we are called to live Christ-like.  As givers, we are called to surrender portions of our resources: time, money, talents, for furthering the kingdom of God.  If I personified gods as Gaiman so adeptly has, would I consider my sacrifices to God as many as my sacrifices to the god of money, the god of media, the god of culture?

Sometimes I believe I write from a very philosophical standpoint rather than a existential or practical.  This means that I analyze, and fail to exact change within my own experience.  Speculative dreaming without any positive changing. I suspect I devolve into a cyclical, recursion, wherein I see a problem, analyze, and then progress into more living, without appropriately transitioning from knowledge into wisdom.  Knowledge is easy; wisdom: the more valuable, and difficult, goal. Knowledge without wisdom is holding a sword that wrong way: knowing a sword is a weapon, but not how to use it, is more harmful to self than anyone else.

Time

Time is inexorable, our defined perpetual machine.  Animals care not, nature takes not note.  A perpetual machine not harnessed, but which, perhaps, tethers us.  We are bound to it, bound through it. Our world is not dualistic, though we phrase it so. Darkness is not equal and opposite light; good is not equal and opposite evil; cold is not heat's antithesis.  Aristotle posited a third option we oft forget: the Aristotelian Golden Means.  While this concept existed prior, Aristotle phrased it with clarity: everything in moderation, including moderation.
Yet, this ideal does not preclude dualistic scenarios. Sometimes, there's no twilight between night and dark; no middle tide between high and low, and our choices entertain only two antithetical trails.  But time is an interesting quandary, a quantity that relatively feels both quick and drawn.  A youth in love frets at fleeting moments; while the destitute in trial languishes as each moment passes in excruciating sluggishness.
Then there are those moments which pass with equal disdain for each, moments racing by in slow motion. Where seconds effortlessly pass, too slow, too fast. We are cursed, we are blessed, and many things in between.
So, as intermittent time sweeps on by, in drifting dreams and midnight tides, join the sweeping chorus of creation as it sighs and sings, sleeps and dreams, in endless, shifting time.

Nobody, not even the rain

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
 and opens;only something in me understands
 the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
e.e. cummings

There is something sinister in infinity, and magnificent. The stars cease their winking charade and stare: cold, incessant, pitiless in eternal surround.  Space is not a sea in which we float amongst the heavens, but a hole, an absence, crushing ever inwards.  The fragile veil between us and without: beautiful; the journey into the void: fraught.

            Lost stared vacantly behind as his home, all their homes, receded into a glowing point in space.  He didn’t know why, but watching the digital streams of their departure made him feel… something.  Maudlin? Solemn?  It was getting more difficult to do that these days: feel.  The echoing thrum and whirr of magical machinery whined behind Lost as a counterpoint to the numbing silence of the stars.  The control room faintly glowed with nurturing light, a laughable counterfeit sun.  Overhead, a glass dome glimpsed into forever as the vessel drifted through space.  Lost paced his rounds throughout the control room: watering the hydrangeas, rhododendrons, roses and disparate vegetation that survived the apocalypse to accompany the journey to a new home world.  Numbly, he noticed once more that the peas produced nicely, but the tomatoes seemed reluctant to produce under the fraudulent light, the squash curled inwards, strangely subdued, and none of the flowers, save the poppy, ever bloomed any more. 

            The ship was enormous, far larger than the simple requirements of its occupants.  The control room itself was a large, circular room illuminated by ambient light and filled with diverse flora in maze-like rows and obscure patterns: flowers yonder, vegetables by that edge, fruits and trees collected by half-fence over there - a semblance of composition.   

            The room contained an unpleasant quality of contradiction: light, yet lacking in sunny disposition; full of fruit-bearing trees, a garden, and a trickling creek, and, somehow, still devoid of life; silent, serene, yet deafening with incompatible whirrings and clammerings of machines;  and, of course, the faux skylight above a thaumaturgically sealed semi-sphere of glass revealing a sky without sun, and unblinking stars.  Esoteric machines lined the arced walls and mounted screens detailed different portions of the ship and outlying space.  Inside, no breeze stirred the trees, no sunlight graced those leaves, and no animals nested within their solemn branches.

            But the grief of the trees and the melancholy dirge of the creek were naught compared with the pathos of the man as he numbly walked the ritual of tending the garden, a mindless machine.  There was no décor in his dance – though a strange dance it remained. A faint trace of emotion occasionally flickered across his face as he glanced upwards, furtively, towards the monitors on the far wall, but no more than a glimmer. 

            Mounted slightly above the arcane machinery that sparkled on the far wall from the entrance were monitors where every motionless sector of the entire ship was revealed: the kitchen with its giant cupboards, plastic counters and quasi-marble floor tiles; the storeroom crammed tightly with miscellaneous “everythings” for conceived eventualities: tools, wood, fittings and bolts, rope and thousands of constructive materials and machinery. There were many rooms emptily displayed: the bathrooms, bedrooms which doubled as pods for emergencies, hallways, the leisure and exercise room.  Each empty, isolated, and pathetically morose in their vacancy.  Only one other room contained occupants: the infirmary.

            It was to this monitor that Lost’s gaze periodically returned.  Clean, and staggeringly so (as infirmaries are want to be), the too-white room contained eight cocoon-shaped vessels like organic sarcophagi.  Arranged in an octagon with slabs at corners, each vessel rose from the floor by a single, slender metal bar - almost unnaturally. At the focus of the circle, a giant IV drip suspended from the ceiling, drizzling a purple liquid through an octopus of slender feeds into the compartments.  Tiny ice crystals formed on the outside of the feeding tube as each appendage conjoined with the capsules.  An aura of argentine light shimmered around each of the sarcophagi, and in all save one of the vessels laid a comatose male or female: three males and four females total. Magically sealed, they slept as beauties for the journey through space, interred as they were in their separate sepulchers. 

            A careful inspection of Lost’s face when viewing this screen revealed nothing spectacular: no magnificent revelation regarding the logic behind these furtive glances.  And after each tiny distraction, his attention shortly returned, and nary a glimmer of that curious look remained.

Patterns on the Wall

The venue both ancient and inexplicable, tenuous and transient; it caters to whimsy and adventure, but bides not long. It is an exhibition, mysteries shrouded in smoke and mirrors. The distinguishing characters blend naturally, no seam divides reality and chimera, but it exists, you know it must. And sitting in the audience, you grasp at each hint, until you realize you are only someone else's performance, the performers examining you in return, marveling at the mundane.

Married to Words

A leaf in autumn watches it fellows fly, fly away and wonders where it shall fall. As they land jobs, or seed families, planting trees, my leaf gazes solemnly. The wind brushes by, soft as kissing butterflies, and still my leaf sticks on branches thick, rooted. When doth its chance come nigh, that it may join to spinning life or journey lands far and wide, afore it lose all leaves beside?
A baby bird must someday try - else married to the words, at least invent a life. And on these winds and in these times, I sigh and s'pose, I'm married to the words.