Story Writing Time Approaches

Everything, unwittingly, is old.

this time especially so,

and I don’t know if it understands

what the grass is, young man,

or comprehends spring things just yet.

it weeps without tears to shed;

sleeps without dreams or rest;

it wants with nothing to expect,

and exhales without air

or even breath.

It burns, loves, without anything

inspiring such regrets,

and it moves, with nowhere to go,

and nowhere it has ever been.

The time of stories approaches, and I’m still uncertain where this one is pulling me. At first, I began with a pretty standard fantasy tale, and then realized I wanted something a tad more dramatic. I wasn’t even sure what this meant, but just that I wanted a story that might not bore me initially. Even if the end result isn’t satisfactory, that can always be fixed up. But if the concept is lacking, only so much can be done without a complete rehaul.

But what? That is always the question, no?

So I decided to scrap the original concept of a medieval “tolkein-lewis” mash that perpetuates throughout our simplistic “fantasy fiction” and twist the setting. One of the things I enjoy about Brent Week’s writing is that he doesn’t fear treading on new territory with old themes. He can maintain the semblance of an epic fantasy, but set in Mediterranean Renaissance or pre-industrial revolution era. When western society catches up with the middle east in discovering gunpowder, and warfare gets a strange boost with the discovery that no skill is needed in warfare, only a factory-produced weaponry, a swift lesson on loading, and a bunch of boys with guns.

I don’t particularly plan on joining in on this era, but I think a little branching out, or even inventing of time periods, can certainly spice up an aging genre. I am not trendsetting, mostly because I don’t plan on selling any of this writing, but it will be a bit of a stretch for me doing some of the research required to produce a reasonable and believable setting. The ease of the tolkein-esque world is that it’s been done and overdone, so now we expect every traveler to find an inn, eat some stew, drink a frothy beer in a pub, catch up on the scuttlebutt, roll some dice and head off into the wild unknown after some great reptilian beast that has stolen our gold, burninated the countryside, and needs defeat. I think there is value in these stories, as Gaiman said (after Chesterton said something similar, I believe):

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten

I believe in the merit of fairy tales, but I also believe that if the writing is done right, you can place them anywhere you like.

I’m not exactly writing a fable or fairy tale this November, but a little mythos never hurt anyone.

Binding of Laughter

Full of sacrifices, life is, and I am not complaining. Over and over again, my faith is tested, walking up the mountain with my money in tow, with responsibilities or love holding my hand, with other facets of my spirituality tested on similar slopes: patience, kindness, love, grace, mercy, hope. Moriah grass is lonely, bristly, and the wind always blows into your face abrasively, and there is no thoughtless path. I’ve tread this many times, and will continue to do so, and the place of sacrifice always looms before me, on the third day.

Behold, the fire and the wood, my heart says, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?

God himself will provide the lamb, and the lie is bitter in my throat, though a thousand times I’ve lived this story, a hundred thousand times, God has shown faithful. The binding of Isaac is heavy: lead in my footsteps, burdens on my back, scorching muscles and a tortured heart, self-inflicted and mythical, for I carry only a knife and a light for the wood that laughter carries. Laughter, joy, why do you mock me with your faith?

Up and up we go, his innocent hand so small and mine so bloody, and who is my son, this time? Do I know? Patience and you’ll always understand, my son scratches his legs and arm on a thicket, not far from a pile of stones, and I bind it, for he bleeds too soon.

How do you build an altar for your heart and joy? But you must, and bind your only son with the wood he’s carried so faithfully (oh, where is mine now? Oh, father, where art thou? He cries so plaintively). I stretch forward my hand, raising it to the heavens – it’s between me and the divine, my hand, blotting out the sky, my murderous hands – and I ignore the bleating cries of Isaac, the lamb for the slaughter.

But Christ always stays my hand, and the clouds part and a dove alights on my shoulder, sheltering my face in spiritual wing. But I’ve brought no sacrifice, ah!

Do not fear, for a ram is caught in the thicket, and my patience, faith, grace has suffered another gauntlet.

All stories are part of the Story. I am caught in the hands of grace. I am the ram, I am Isaac, I am the stones beneath which my son lies, I am Abraham and the mountain, and Adonai-Jirah is real to me now, always, and never until the right time. That is the mystery, and grace. There is always a passing over, always blood over the threshold, and always God, even in the shadow of the mountain, the trails over the brambles and briars along the way, the stiff, ragged climb, the precipitous paths, and even as I stack the stones at the solemn summit – nowhere is it my clear that the sacrifice must always be made, in good faith, before the parting of the waves of the heavens makes clear what will be gained.

There is a heavy burden on this world’s heart, forever and always now. A man has been shot; children are dying and suffering from significant trauma as rockets sound and airstrikes shriek overhead and mortars crash into the streets; and starvation, dehydration, and displacement are the monster nipping at the heels of children who, before their teens, have already felt a handful of wars. Too much retribution and not enough reconciliation, in homes, villages, cities, nations, and across the world – how can we engender justice, and walk an extra mile when our knees are so weak, and the miles keep coming.

Conductivity and, well... bears

A while back I had a dream where I'd developed a superpower. I was pretty secretive about my power, not because of any real fear of discovery for the sake of those I loved (spiderman style), but more because my ability was a wee bit embarrassing. Somehow, I'd even managed a nemesis, and one whose power was actually quite impressive.

His power was fire, and one would think that in a dualistic world, I'd probably have some really incredible water powers, able to extinguish his flames. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, my superpower was the capacity to transform into an oil slick.

I didn't have any real edge on my nemesis, or on anyone for that matter. A random nobody starts robbing a bank, and what can I do? Try and slip him up on his way out? A clever superhero might sabotage his vehicle somehow, using my magical oil powers, but really I don't think my dream self had that kind of intellectual prowess.

In truth, at the first sign of my nemesis I turned into an oil slick and slid away into the ocean.  I remember getting carried away by the current, and finding myself deep at sea, but so enamored of the endless stars, I'd never swim for land when I saw it (how do oil slicks see? magic). I didn't have to eat, because my oily self wasn't hungry, or even sleepy. So I just watched the stars, and formed a thin residue, a patina of filth on the ocean.

Recently, I started contemplating a new story about a couple of characters with reasonable superpowers, but they had a couple of huge negatives: 1, they can only tell one other person 2, if they tell anyone else, they lose the power 3, they don't know who that person is 4, their superpowers isolate them, even though no one else knows. As I started writing it, I got sidetracked and have so far written very little of the actual story, and mostly just meandered aimlessly through CS Lewis land between worlds.

I wonder if there was a grand mistake, a baddie of a bungle when someone composed the components. Ah, started the probable trainwreck of thought, usually only the finest dust, but for this one, a different strategy: sulfur. The bones will be small, the sinews crumbling, the fingers brittle like chalk. The stench, why of course! That’s unique, I think, a truly remarkable obstacle to overcome.

Eyes like a dormant volcano, hair a muddy residue, words the phantom fumarole leaking malodors from the earth indigestion.

The others, why, gold, silver and copper were more conducive for the normal, and what advantages the coinage persons had! But this blunder? Even lightning couldn’t electrocute a mouse held in the hands of sulfur – the capacitance is too high a demand. So here it is, without charge, without current to follow, merely a stench and yellow streak, a bubbly piece of stone riddled with holes like a petrified moon-rock cheese. That one science project a third-grader did alone, without help from the home, and it’s a moldy sandwich left from an old lunch, covered in mustard.

Mustard, like sulfur without energy, melted into mush.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. ~ Walden - Thoreau

A fish struggled against the current. As he watched, its scales glistened and burned with prismatic sheen, like opal armor in plaited sheets. Mighty it swam, coiling and springing each muscle in a taught waveform – the tenacity of the ocean drove it upstream, to die, to gift life.

                It leapt free from the dragging rapids, up a single terrace of stony steps, the tiny falls only an arm’s length beneath the arch of the bridge.

                Only a few more stairs to go.

                El was tempted to scramble down to his knees and collect the fish from the air, depositing it at the top of the cascading stair, where the water smoothed and streamed gently – but he was enthralled. The scene seemed metaphorical, almost mythical.

                     Life in us is like the water in a river.

                The water pushed the fish down a rung, and El felt his spirit slump, and time outside the river stooped to a crawl: the doe frozen nibbling at the grass, her fawns unmoving beneath her thin-limbed legs; the birds halted in spring song; the air empty of wind. Still the fish battled, soaring back up each small waterfall, resting in an eddy, and then surging again at the next obstacle, until only one remained.

                El held his breath. You can do it.

                The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

                The fish burst into motion, swiveling its form like a snake, a lightning bolt of zigzag motion, a flash of color and then a thwip into the air, leaving its own breath behind in a beautiful struggle. A great paw swung from nowhere, smacking the fish out of the air and onto the bridge.

                Elian fell backwards in surprise with a yelp, falling onto his rump, and found himself staring into the volcano-ember eyes of a great, black bear, large as anything he’d ever seen.

                This had better be a dream.

                Come away, O human child!

                To the waters and the wild                With a faery, hand in hand,                For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

                The fish flopped and spasmed on the dry bridge planks, until the bear violently grabbed it in its teeth and slapped it against the railing.

                Wherever this metaphor is taking me, I don’t appreciate it anymore, thought El.

                As if in response, the bear smiled, a great crimson grin as wide as the wink of the moon, El imagined; as wide as the rim of the world, he suspected. All he saw was teeth.

 (Yeats, Annie Dillard, Thoreau)

Wordless Romanticism

everything just so, curtains closed
candles nipping at even's toes
tablecloth smooth as spilled milk
frozen at it falls -
food cooling on the stove
the wine plays with shadows...
just so, the bare-bones fractured
between dreary and romance
with words, as everything is arranged,
rearranged until worries are furrowed in
until all that is, is undone -
then fuss and muss
'til the moment's gone out of time,
and it's time to love or die trying,
grasping now the mystery
you've somehow always known -
the night now over, over and gone;
food cold, candles fizzled down,
love imperfectly or not at all
and such problems are never solved
in the smoothing of the linen cloth,
the music, the dim, dancing light,
or the vittles cold on the hearth
with no second, no time
or opportunity for words to work
alone, along with the silence,
fingers hover above an empty world
of keys never touched


I can't tell what it is about this one that I don't appreciate. Basically, I was having trouble writing, and, well, I wrote this instead of what I was intending to write. This is what I had been working on :
----

El woke under a tree, golden light sifting between the oaken boughs. Time had passed on, sometime. His clothes were soaked through, though the ground around him was dry enough, and that he'd managed to sleep was as mysterious as his current location.
Rolling hills stretched out at his ankles, gilded in the shafts of dawn light.
   A child said, What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full 
       hands;
   How could I answer the child? ... I do not know what it 
       is anymore than he.

A thin river carved a sinuous line in the valley of two knolls, burning its crystalline path. A brittle bridge arched over the rushing waters, the leaves dripped with the remainder of the night's deluge, the grasses thick with prismatic condensation, the butterfly with wet wings on the stone, not ready, yet, to fly.
    A butterfly with frozen wings, the early bird swooping over me; it's fly or die, and my paper lift flutters ineffectually. Out of time, yet, what have I ever lost by dying?

It was a dream; it must be a dream.
A doe nibbled at the grasses, her fawns lapping at the stream banks, thirsty as the morning trees whispering in the breeze. Wildflowers dotted the hillsides, punctuating every grassland question in colorful reply. The cotton clouds were in whimsy, wandering across the heavens with wonder, with the birds beneath singing, bringing in the spring and fashioning it into beds.
    Every morning / the world / is created. / under the orange / sticks of the sun / the heaped / ashes of the night / turn into leaves again.

El stood, shaking free the swamp attached to his being; as it fell, the droplets stopped and started in staccato, time juddering as a dying machine. The birds, too, stuttered in a broken song, and the doe raised her head in slow segments.
The world is breaking around me, in a whimper.

The bridge - a small dirt path wound around the hills, leading to the rickety bridge. El began walking.
    tread softly because you tread on my dreams

------

this is part of the free-writing I was doing this afternoon that I got stuck on.
(pieces of quotes used from Mary Oliver: Morning Poem, TS Eliot: The Hollow Men, Rumi, Robert Bly: Rumi Translation, Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, Yeats)

Story Notes

The first thing he knew was light, and the second was life. Thousands of pinpricks of it, scuttling along invisible pathways and organic circuitry. Third was sound, an echoing growl of sound, modulated and pitched with intent, though such was lost on his ears. There was a whistle, a slamming, an irritating buzz, and the voice emanating from a dark figure by the wall, whose face the orange tip of a cigar dimly lit.
The fourth sensation, as the shadow-person leaning against the wall approached and inserted a thin needle into his arm, was pain, though a dull, sharp pain. A soft touch was the fifth, a hand brushing back his hair, and another hovering hand shone a bright light into his eyes. Behind the hand was a pair of light-blue eyes, kind and concerned, and this was the sixth.
The seventh knowing, as the two figures retreated, shutting him in the darkness behind, was nothing he could name, but hurt worse than the first pain, and there were no eyes to console him.

** deceit cannot recall identity? or blind? both


cryo-1

Science Fiction Short

I'm not actually a science fiction writer, and it has actually been a month or two since I've written a story, but Matthew posted a link to a science fiction short-story (and I mean SHORT) competition, and I decided it would be fun to write something.

Guidelines: 500-600 words (no more or less)
Appropriate for radio reading (still working on this one)

I wrote this piece this afternoon and it has not been edited as yet, though I have shared it with a couple of people. The story has to be set in the future in the genre of "hard science" which apparently means that it has to be reasonable. (hopefully copying into this keeps the formatting, otherwise this is going to be a mess)

Comments appreciated, but be gentle. It's a rushed piece. I have 5 days to tweak it.

Augmented Holy War

The ungodly biotics, Isaak thought, and spat into the sink. Augmentation, that obscene convergence of man and machine, should never have reared its ugly head. Ever since the scientific breakthrough allowing easy integration of circuitry and flesh, everyone with affluence or influence crowded in line to upgrade their fragile humanity into something… superior.

                And humanity suffered. Poor children no longer dreamed the American dream; the advantages of the rich were too substantial. Rich children ran quicker, thought faster, and engaged with data at artificial, computerized speeds – how Isaak loathed the Augments.

                Isaak finished brushing his teeth and straightened his tie before his cracked mirror. Satisfied, he strolled towards his typewriter and collected his editorial with a self-satisfied grin. If all went well today, it was the dawn of a holy war, the beginning of the end of these self-wrought monsters. Humanity must prevail.

                Across the interwebs, a vast quantity of the populace had read his well-articulated complaints, and he’d amassed a large, devoted following. And Isaak wrote with venomous strength: what was the worth of a man, if it came from the quality of his implants? And: when did it become metal, and not mettle, which determined a person’s enduring merit?

And they swallowed every word.

                The sun shone through his dingy windows with a brittle, glassy glaze, filtered through dust and grime. Long had he molded the populace of this state, turning the weak against the powerful. They seethed, inwardly, but lacked direction, a distinct target for their indignation.

As Isaak walked out his door onto the street, the manuscript tucked beneath his arm itched with purpose and fury, a righteous call to arms. He’d typed everything on his typewriter, leaving no chance an Augment hacking his systems might leak his prized works prematurely. Everything was calculated precisely, Isaak thought. Today, they’d have their target.

The streets were empty today, a national holiday, and everyone’s eyes were affixed on screens of all sorts, hungering for stimuli. The railcars that lined the streets sat like vacant coffins and hearses, devoid of life.

As Isaak stepped gingerly onto the street, he imagined how he’d celebrate with his lover tonight:  wines, cheeses, and perhaps a relaxing walk beneath stars. He’d earned that. A day of relaxation, for a change.

Lost in his reverie, he completely missed the midnight-black railcar that slid around the corner, accelerating in his direction, and because the streets were empty, no one was around to see the accident.

Isaak woke in a dark, dimly lit room, and he was not alone. His arms and legs were cuffed to his chair, and his mangled manuscript was piled on a rusty, iron table beside him. Across the table stood two dark figures, a male and female.

“What do you want from me?” Isaak asked.

The two figures glanced at each other, and the female responded while the male approached Isaak, pulling a scalpel from his cloak.

“We want you to see with eyes unclouded,” she replied.

Isaak squirmed in his chair. “You won’t gain anything by torturing me!” He saw the gleam in her eyes: augmented, the both of them.

“We will not torture you.”

                “Traitors! Augments!” Isaak screamed as the man began his surgery on Isaak’s arm.

                “It doesn’t hurt,” the female whispered.

                Isaak continued to scream, wrenching his body in his chair, until the man forced Isaak’s head down to look at his own arm. Isaak saw the incision, bloodless, and beneath the pallid flap of exposed skin, Isaak saw glittering lights, blinking circuitry.

                Isaak yelled again, in loud anguish, and he felt nothing.

Candle

candle

match struck, then a burst of flame, 

will this candle chase why away? 

a riddle at night, now 

a morning mystery, 

I see how this ends

in week disarray. 

when you are west, east is far; 

moving north, the south I'm missing 

disappears. winter: warmth removes, 

summer sun's no closer. 

flicker, please, vanilla star -
wish this distance near.

dreams just tiny highways

ideas our little cars

drive with me awhile.
wind rustles your beautiful 

hair, touches your lovely

grey-sky eyes I'll never see

voice your love

songs, the radio plays 

hand me your heart-

felt emotions. I'll listen, listen

as we are one

distant dream.

NaNoWriMo

Entrance the Doctor

“Doctor!”

The doctor was not sleeping; he never slept these days. But waking? That was another trial entirely, and he felt his days. And his nights were plagued with dreams.

“Doctor!” the voice shouted again, banging loudly against the front door.

                Who could it be at this hour of the morning? The doctor grumbled and rolled into a sitting position. And where was his butler?

                “Who’s there?”

                “Simon Temple,” the voice called. “There’s an emergency at the central dome. You’ve been summoned!”

                Simon Temple? Who was that? That new guy in town, was it? What was he being summoned for – how could he help in an emergency? What time was it?

                “I’ll be right down,” the doctor called, groaning and rubbing at his eyes. He picked up a slice of the tree-fruit he’d left at his bedside, cure for aching limbs. Though his limbs did not ache, he felt they should, and took the necessary precautions. Age thrived more in his head than his flesh.

                If they needed a doctor, then the prophetic utterance had held true. A murder then, two.  

                Lighting a candle in the saucer near his bedside, the doctor slipped on his slippers. Shadows danced against the wall in the flickering flame, turning ghoulish simple shapes, and inane items into nightmares.

A perfect garden with a poisoned pool; an unblemished faun dying, suddenly, from some uncaught sickness; an eternal lush field, flower-full and yellow-green with luxurious grasses, suddenly bursting into flame, a volcanic maw opening and gorging on the meadow.

The stuff of dreams danced along the walls in sinister shadows, and the doctor sat motionless as a mouse struck by the screeching owl, muscles deaf to motion.

“Doctor? Are you coming?”

                “I’ll be there shortly. Run on ahead and let them know I’ll be coming. I need to collect a few things first.”

                The doctor rummaged through his closet, picking out his whites and surgeon’s mask. 

This is actually a passage that I'm not writing. So it won't actually be in the story. 

Inspector

What so false as truth is,

False to thee?

Where the serpent's tooth is

Shun the tree---

Where the apple reddens

Never pry---

Lest we lose our Edens,

Eve and I.

~Robert Browning - A Woman's Last Word

The city bled an efflorescence, golden on the blur of night - a phoenix death, embers until the resurrection of morn, where new creation begins, and begins again. It was a strange thing, a death in undying lands, and the city's edenic appearance burned with a burr of color, a drop of poison dye in crystal water.

The inspector rolled into the city on a stagecoach hearse-black in the funereal palette of night. A land of shadows, everything flickering in surreal beauty: even in darkness the city emit an elegance, a face of perfection.  But the inspector was locked deep in thought, irregular in his introspective ignorance of the passing scene: dewy, white limestone streets; glass and rose-chalcedony architecture, purple saffron exuding a metallic honey scent. 

What were his thoughts, then, the dark-clad man in the long cloak and navy wool scarf, bundled, despite the balmy morning – what were his thoughts? He took a deep drag on a thin-brown cigarette, a relic of the distant past, and considered.

I haven't written a story for some weeks, and certainly not a longer story for some time. I'm excited to get back into the swing of things. I just finished the last of the Sylvia Plath I was given: Ariel. She's quite astounding, and I truly wish I could write half so well - a third so well. I started and finished one of Mary Oliver's poetry books, and wow! She's amazing, too! I guess there's a reason she won the pulitzer, huh? Maybe if I live to be as old, I could write such fascinating things. 



Shell
Still the ships passing, seas overhead
Here I hear no waves
Whine of whales, clamp of clams
Sunlight bleeds the deep sea red
Swim near, rescue me
I'm a man, not an oyster
Believe.
Bolstered are my emotions when
Strange though it seemed
Divers dove down closer
Rescue, rescue me!
I'm in truth a man, you see.
Their gentle hands brushed the sands
Lifting me from the deeps
Oh, you've come, I'm saved, I'm saved!
But lifting me from the sea,
they pried my mouth I'd clammed up tight
wresting, divesting my pride
lobbed me back into the deeps
I don't mind, though
my soul they keep
As long as they left
my humanity.

Books, Names, Things

I've encompassed myself with literature. I'm double stacking my bookshelves because, until I own a house, it makes little sense buying more bookcases without anywhere worth putting them. Actually, this is one of my favorite and least favorite aspects of Oregon. Powells is awesome. For the last several weekends, I've invested a little time in visiting the Beaverton branch and studying, reading, researching. Powells is a magnificent beast, though beast it is. With such a marvelous new and used bookstore stamping its colossal footprint into the valley, how can smaller bookstores compete? Countless customers flood into the Portland Powells every day, and, though quantitatively less, Beaverton Powells exhibits the same draw (without the intimidating city aspects of parking and entry/exit).
But in the surrounding cities and towns, the quantity and quality of everyday bookstores feels almost non-existent. This is one of the draws of Washington. Half-Price Books was nearly a second home for me, and the Redmond and Sammamish libraries offered vast collections of books for perusal, and an incredible system for inter-library requests in the greater King County region (Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and a whole host of great libraries besides - though Seattle eventually decided to be lame). Where I am situated in Oregon, counties are bordering on all sides, and each neighboring town seems to claim its own library system. It makes for a miserable me when wanting access to all the vastness of literature immediately.

Erhem. Anyway...

I've little time left. November approaches in tumultuous bounds and my frozen fingers fret over story strings, but my rhythm's off-beat and my prose's pitch poorly sings - my muse's gut requires replacing and a fine-tuned vacation. The only reliable aspect is the metronome clicking in my head, reminding me that time ticks forward inexorably. It's the names, there are too many. Characters dreaming and flying in season, capturing a magic and the mystery of life unto their own. My creativity insufficiently breathes their dusty ink into life. Then the trees: the sugar maples and japanese hedge, the round-lobed leaves of oaks and gyro-copter seeds of maples, the rust hues of cedar and the deceptive camouflage of shaking aspens among the birch - how can I ever remember their names, Old Man Willow?
The flowers, oh so many flowers. Gallant sunflowers, fragile snowdrops, intrepid trilliums, dichotomous roses, delicate daises, gentle germaniums and fragrant violets, lurid and voluptuous tulips, splayed lilies. Would that I might taste with my toes like the butterflies, and see in so many colors that the flowers are a forest, a coral sea of colorful creativity, where each flower paints an invitation to sensory ecstasy.  Would I were a bumbling bee, capturing the world in ultraviolet, where whites are blues and nectar ambrosia is a visually euphoric entreaty of blooming delicacy.
And what of the stars stories and names? Of Cassiopeia vainly boasting in her chair, or ursa major, glancing at his cousins below, bafflingly bereft of tail, or Orion shaking his shield and sword, or bow, and hunting the with the likes of Nimrod. The wind shivers and drags us into the mountains whose names I cannot recall, their silvery peaks smiling as the gods teeth, as a fiery chariot drags that unnamed beacon across the blue vastness of the heavens.
I cannot even remember the animals: the black-tailed deer, the sly bobcat, the eager raccoon, sly as a burglar, the mountain jay and the vexatious starlings tunneling into roof slats, the cougar, the crafty coyote, the industrious beaver, the scampering squirrel, the chattering chipmunks, praying with their hands cutely clasped, the mantis, praying a different prayer of predatory efficiency, the dragonfly with rainbow wings.
Hopefully, if nothing else, I can remember the name of wisdom.

Adventures are coming, distant and many, and I'll be seeking the intricate naming of many things: the touch-smell of the grey wolves racing through alpine woods, the graceful wings of the nighttime sky on the tops of mountains, the coinage of the sun on the steppe, the shifting of the seas of crimson sands.
I'm full of half-thoughts, now and always.

Sanctified (beginnings)

Sanctified (beginnings):

The canter clap of the horses’ hooves and the thunder of the wheels grinding against the cobbles drowned out the deathly melancholy of the marketplace.  Except in Elisa’s ears, the market’s disquieting murmurs were more deafening than the chariot and the horses combined.  The chauffeur screamed and cracked his crop, clearing a path before the carriage.  This was not how marketplaces should be: muffled, strangled.  It felt sterile, like a physiker’s ward.  No, more like a funeral.  The colors carried that motif like death’s pendant.  A musty, sad scent wafted through the districts outside the wall, accentuating the stygian overture.

Here, in the sanct’s marketplace, only one in twenty even wore any semblance of color.  Those that did scurried quickly about their business, eager for escape out of this bleak place. 

                It always aggrieved her eyes, like watching her city slowly bleeding to death.  It was an uncanny sense of despair. Yet, contrary to the funereal  aspect, the citizens living here did not trudge as though time were a paste.  As the chariot bolted down the center of the street, without concern for those hapless citizens too slow to escape its path, the black-robed and cowled Sancts danced out of its path with predacious grace.  

This is vaguely cheating. I'm considering writing this story for nanowrimo this year. The other option is part two of Crestalcoatl, which I also want to write at some point. It would be fun having a series of sequential nanowrimo novels.  I'm not sure whether I'll name the story Sanctified or something else, but I suppose I have a month.

Heart of the City

In the time of our grandfather's grandfathers, a time few remember still, child–

            :What?: The boy said, snidely. :No one can be that ancient, Grandfather. And I’m not a-:

            :Silence, boy: Grandfather frowned darkly, and a glint of wrath entered his eyes briefly which the boy had never witnessed.  :This is a true story of long ago, and I will not have your insolence tonight: The boy hushed as his grandfather began once more.

            Many summers ago, in the land of our forebears, a beautiful city overlooked Parrin Pass, on the Harmonah waterfall ridge, the most beautiful city this world has known. Before the death of the river, a great waterfall tumbled over the precipice on which the town was built, and the mighty Harmonah river split the city.  It was a city of magic, the pinnacle of all the ages.

            Every structure was built not of stone, nor even of regal cedar, but of glimmer-strands, the light magic lost aeons ago.  Bridges spanning the river and its eddies through the town were as the roots of rainbows, twisting and spinning across the waters in a dazzling display.  Homes were opalescent and veined in many colors, colors not even remembered. They were lovers of fountains, the dwellers of that town. River sprites and water kami dwelt in font-shrines across every square, and man-high trees with silver-veined leaves that smelled of cedar and cherrywood, pine and sugar maple and whose colors reflected everything nearby like tiny mirrors.

            The homes were open and cheery, and you could part the wall-colors to enter any home you liked if you knew the way. Around the city, a wall of colors flowed with rivers of every color swimming in chaotic swirls. When you walked through that wall into the city, it felt as if you were being split into a thousand colors and spit out into a new dimensionality of beauty. The entire city smelled of roses and violets, apples and first-rain, hints of flowers and a heady smell that overwhelmed even the most stalwart of travelers, turning them slightly tipsy.

            As the river tumbled over the precipice over Parrin Pass, the river prismed into countless tiny snakes of color, spinning in a helical aura as the waterfall poured into the crystal waters below. Travelers approaching the pass often watched for hours -until near sunset when the pass was no longer safe - hurrying between the mountains before nightfall.

            From miles away, even before the city’s glowing ambience illuminated the sky and mountainsides, an eastward breeze might waft the scents of the city and lighten the loads of the weary. Smells of rosewood and plums, sandalwood and pine, incense, myrrh, and eucalyptus, sweet lemon and cranberries wash across the coastal mountains into the valleys and hills on the other side. Even the barest hint of its aroma is enough that many a strong man broke down into joyous sobs at a whiff.

            But to describe the city itself? Ah, it is impossible! The dazzling display of nacreous streets, iridescent walkways, and the light-weave boats that float idly down the Harmonah like bobbing, circular lanterns; the ever-shifting structures striated in resplendence, sometimes miming the architectures of the cultures: pagodas, pyramidal ziggurats, colossal cathedrals of color, or just simple yurts, while other times, the city’s structures mimicked nothing culturally recognizable: swirling minarets with a smoky-pearl aura; gold-obsidian towers coated in clouds of silver; floating cerulean spheres; a tropical forest, where lampposts shimmered and waved like trees or undersea kelp, and the houses appeared as coral in a bizarre, alien reef; or, manses like in the southern kingdoms, with yards of pristine greens, silver-leafed hedges, fonts and glimmering limestone streets.

            In the night, ah, what a sight! The stars are magnified, as though brought nearer, gazing with a greater intensity into the city – and none shy away from sight. The moon is always broad and round, and of the brightest golden yellow. The Harmonah carries its own stars as the river fills with the half-spherical boats made of light, forming almost a complete walkway across the water of bobbing boats, and the fae flit across the surface of the waters.  A dullness of light affects the outer buildings, leaving the central heart as a beacon of fiery energy.

            A delicate resinous smell with a hint of citrus and lavender wafts across the waters, and incense is burnt in tiny lanterns hung on lines over the river. A dance begins, though who starts it each night, none can say, and a sweet music as of a harp, or a flute, or a melancholic violin orchestrates the wind and the slowest of dreams drapes over the living. Sometimes, on the darkest of nights where storms rage outside the walls and the rumors of war break through even these stolid walls, a thin, vibrant falsetto floats across the city. The music briefly pauses and every movement ceases, as every ear strains to catch the words, though even those who understand the pensive and plaintive words remember them not in the morning, only as a distant wisp of a dream.

            Whatever shape and style the city, they say that from the tallest mountains looking down, the city always has a heart at its center, vibrant and pulsing with life, and the roads and canals are its arteries, carrying the lifeblood throughout the city. The heart’s shape and hues transform, also, but it remains the city centerpiece, in form and function. And this heart, the ventricles of town, was where the Avov stayed, the creator-creatures of Zevah Nuahr, city of liquid color.

              If Zevah Nuahr’s resplendence was unmatched, its people were more so, carved from a different plane of existence. The first time anyone saw a Rhuach, it almost overwhelmed the senses. They contained a presence that tore apart the senses: smelling of nearly cloying sweetness, as of honey and wine; they appeared as ghostly figures of spinning colors, spirits of spiraling threads and a copper fire that billowed behind each color, giving substance to a plasma ghost: bipedal, lean, tall. You almost believed you could pass through them, and it might be akin to walking through the prismatic wall, a spiritual passing. Stranger yet were the other feelings assaulting your senses in the presence of a Rhuach: a taste of cloves and cinnamon; a tingling sensation as of arrows of cool wind passing across your skin, fletched with a fine mist; the sounds of a keening voice, high of pitch and ever somber. Those who spoke of it after always described its being a lament of unbearable loss, but one borne mightily.

Sunday Night Dreams: August Lands

Rumors drifted as a cool breeze across the burning hearts of the sore dwellers. They stood there, as every eventide, entranced in the prehistoric cannibalism of night, consuming the fire of the heavens. When the sun was swallowed, the thousand-eyed monster would open its eyes, and with countless teeth gnashing from the sea, it stared hungrily down, and the tribe would soon scamper into the hiding places, the caves of the coast, until the angry burning was reborn.

Their backs were stooped, scraggly hairs and hirsute faces merging into chest and arms, like patchy animals with ragged nails and teeth. Dull their eyes, but something, deep in those wells, shone a knowing, a spell of survival that surpassed simple savagery. And this knowing despised something of the searing heats, and their childlike thoughts savored myths of the temperate lands like sweetness on the lips. I remember. There are few of us who remain, when the prophet came, telling of the land behind these tooth-tipped waves and beyond this dome of the sky. He appeared from the wind, and his words invented magic and music these creatures understood not. Still, to this day, the distant children of this people cry, knowing not why, missing pieces of their soul. Listen: his songs fill those holes.

"A distant land beyond these waves, with peaceful nights and cautious days, whose maples sway and leaves gold turn, turn, an endless fall. You've sought it long, and know not for what you're made. These lands call your names. Golden trees with silver leaves, a pleasant breeze and fearless eves, and a love worth taxing days."

Some were bought, some stayed, though the sea was fierce and broad. I, for one, must see this fall land, this endless summer burnt me bronze and black, eyes dark as night and no joy, no joy left for this living fire. So I ran across the waters, we were stronger then, faster, and we chased the sun at night. So fast, so fleet, it never escaped into the monster's maw, we pursued it endlessly. At least, the shores of silver greeted our endless sunset race, and golden trees and singing birds whistled as we landed, the deer grazed unafraid. Even the sky cried in joy, and we cried in fright at its falling tears, hiding under those honeyed boughs.

We stood taller, eyes shone brighter, and we paid the price for fall, and gained a strange knowledge in return.



Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes when you fall, you fly.
~ Neil Gaiman

Apple Juice Dreams?

A week ago, I discovered that drinking apple juice immediately prior to sleeping induces incredibly vivid dreams. Supposedly, it increases the production of acetylcholine which enhances memory and, potentially, dreams in brain activity.

This fascination with dreams, it is my roommates' faults. I thought it might be worth trying, as I love apple juice and I love dreams. I've had absurd dreams this past week, and last night's was no exception. It is worth repeating, however silly.

We were on a cruising ship on the outskirts of an island full of bridges that leaped into the ocean, falling into the sea. Our ship's engine was loud, though we had a sail raised also, and the wind pressed strongly into the cloth. The purpose of our voyage was simple whale-watching, and the boat was shaped as an extraordinarily large metal canoe, a tiny ironclad bobbing atop the waves.  As we sailed beneath the overhanging bridges, a giant humpbacked whale breached and soared into the air nearby, spouting as its entire length soared over the sea not twenty meters distant from our boat. Our captain was in shock at the proximity of the whales, and ordered our vessel slow, as traveling so close to whales is prohibited by law, he said.

More whales began leaping all around is, sailing through the air like flying fish, and striking poses as tourists snapped pictures madly. Then the captain panicked and said we must race for shore, because so many whales meant an attack, and we had to make it to shore before they ensnared our vessel in their clutches. So, with the wind surging behind us and our motors chugging, we steamed towards the nearest island. Then, as we passed beneath the arches of several majestic bridges, the whales began leaping beneath the ship, lifting it into the air on their backs so that the ship veritably flew over the waters.

We were running shy on time. The whales almost had us within the grasp, the captain cried.

Still, we could go no faster, as we now rode atop the whales' backs. And, soon enough, the captain was correct in his assessment. They lifted their flukes around our vessel, anchoring it in location just off the coast of a giant, temperate island.  Then, with a swish of movement, they flipped the vessel, and suddenly, somehow, we all stood atop the belly of the ship, trying to maintain our balance as the whales rocked the sinking ship. Those who could not maintain their balance fell into the water and swiftly swam for the safety of shore.  I managed to discover a technique that easily left me the last man standing on the boat, whereupon I leapt into the water, victor of a ridiculous game. 

Once on shore, we had a tiny canoe that appeared from nowhere and everyone thought was our original ship (though a canoe of that size would have held only 3 people, and we had ten or fifteen on shore). It quickly became apparent that night was coming, and if we did not find shelter soon, we would all freeze to death in the arctic temperatures of night. We began looking around for shelter, and I hurriedly let everyone know that I did not remember to bring my blanket. I would die once night fell, for I would freeze to death. I asked Matthew if he would share a blanket, and he said he had but one, and it was a tiny blanket.  The captain decided we should hasten and visit the hotel on the hill, and ask for blankets there. We ran up the hill and entered into the hotel, and a lady was cleaning the floors with a large brush. 

"Can we have some blankets?" Matthew and the Captain asked the girl. She looked at them gravely, angrily, and said, "No, I will not give you blankets. You'll have to freeze to death."

We implored her for blankets, knowing she had extras as the inn appeared empty. We even asked her for a room at her inn, and she refused us everything, even when we offered money for our stay. We decided that we were going to have to steal blankets, and left the hotel to formulate our mischief.

Then I woke up, just as we were about to return into the cold of night.

Edge of the World Thursdays

It may have taken a year, a season, it may have taken only minutes, but the boy decided, eventually, the string was to be pulled. It was not fear that stayed his hands, not precisely, but the mysticism. Was it better imagining what might happen? If the stars might fall behind a curtain of night, or the sky itself collapse; or if the earth would become the heavens, the heavens the earth, and they might all traipse along island clouds. Would the angels corral in chorus to this world on the rings of a bell, or demons rise from the gaping maws of hell?  Would the world curl into a ball, like a giant rolypoly? Or would the world's edge be drawn back, and whole new lands unveiled to explore? What stayed the boy's hand equally was the disappointing outcomes he conjured in his imagination. What if nothing happened? Or what if the string itself fell, and disappeared off the edge of the world, and he could no longer gaze upon its illustrious glamour? What if it crumbled to ash in his hands? Perhaps it was a fear of a sort, but not of his fellow's punishment.

-----

Today was an odd day. Working at home invites a certain freedom, and a certain punishment. If you have roommates, they immediately assume you are free for discussions, for chores, for having your workspace waltzed in upon - today, a general house-cleaning took place while I worked, and my work environ was encompassed by sweeping, a roommate walking in and boasting at having cleaned another room, with each room cleaned, bathrooms that had to be used between-cleans. I alternated between music and audio-books, and, thankfully, today was not filled with difficult problem-solving (put-out-fires-thursdays). I did get some good reading and writing in (are all my friends gone this week?) after work until I was passively booted from the house when that same roommate invited a girl over for dinner.
Needless to say, I'm thankful it's nearly Friday. I'm visiting the family soon, and I could not be more excited.

Precipice

Before the strength of man's conviction twisted the earth into a sphere, there was a village at the end of the world. Built into the basalt cliffs on the shores of earth's edge, it sat and watched and waited until such time as it was needed no more. The village had long past been named Rope, for that is what it guarded and waited upon.

Waves still washed up against the shore from an ocean only paces wide, and a blackness lay beyond, deep and dark as before-time. At the furthest point of the beach against the precipice of the world, an arm's length over the water into the great void, there was a rope, or perhaps a string. It hung from the heavens, falling between the stars, and in neither night nor day could you see its end, but it shimmered as gossamer in the daylight, and as opals in the night, an ever-shifting glimmer of light. It was a single strand, and none in the village knew its purpose, many thinking it was simply a portion of the frayed edge of the world. Beneath the rope, on the barest edge of the shore, sat a boy. He was from the village, though it had been some time since he was of the village. He was forbidden to approach the string, but no matter the punishment or the confinement, the next morning he was always discovered on the beach once more, staring up at the gossamer thread.

Well, that needs some editing. I shouldn't have written stream of consciousness when I'm this sleepy. Shikata ga nai. Today was an odd day, and one whose conclusion has left me more exhausted than feels warranted. There are some days where, when working, you simply do not know what to do. No projects are given, no direction is pointed out, no tasks are available, but you cannot go anywhere. I read a graphic novel (Endless Nights) and a little bit of Everything is Illuminated and wrote some journal while hours of uneasy nothingness teetered on by. Less than a week until I visit...home? Whatever it is, I'm excited to see my parents and siblings. It's been too long.

I also wrote a crazy essay on feminism after loving Scalzi's post, and agonized over whether I can be Christ's hands of healing. Not always, it seems. Not always, I'm afraid.

Jig is up

Sometimes you pray for a window, hope for a door, and receive a concrete wall. Glancing right and left, you pace alongside its flat façade, and no cracks are found.  Desperate, you lean close, pressing your ear against the cold surface, knuckling the wall in a silent supplication for a hollow echo, a whisper of direction from opposite this obstacle unjustly impeding your earned, deserved path. It says nothing; it's a wall.
Shortly, you discover your tantrum solves nothing, your whining echoes irritatingly off that haughty wall. You settle your back against a door opposite the wall, fixating your gaze on that inconsiderate slab - if it moves, you'll know. Why is it there? Won't you please move it, Lord?
If walls could smirk, especially plain grey walls, this one's smugly blank expression was enough to drive one mad. The wind sighs through the door at your back, the autumnal smell bringing to mind thoughts of fallen leaves, golden, orange and crimson, and mountain pines with a trickling burn meandering down in a gully, joyful fish leaping out and catching water-skippers. You hear a blue-jay whistling the song of the hills. What is with this abysmal wall? Just. Let. Me. Through. This is my dream!
The sound behind assumes a dull ambiance, and the fragrance melts into the backdrop of your mind. The jig is up. Is that a ram caught in the thicket on that mountainside?


I have an old, old, yellow-leaved copy of a Kierkegaard book that contains two distinct essays he wrote: Fear and Trembling and That Sickness Unto Death. The latter is an assay into the contemplation of despair, beginning with a reference to the story about Lazarus. It discusses different forms despair may take, three in particular, with the conclusion that faith is the opposite of despair. The other story is, to me in concept, more intriguing. Fear and Trembling embarks on a journey into the mentality of Abraham on his journey of sacrifice and faith. Kierkegaard travels through the stages of Abraham's resignation and hope and inner dilemma. It is a fascinating question. What was Abraham thinking as he climbed the mountain towards the sacrifice of his beloved son. There's a metaphorical connection to Christ's own sacrifice, and the faith requisite of the son. I remember a sermon that I heard as a child where the pastor discussed how Abraham had faith, despite the grim outlook, and what he never knew was that a ram climbed the other side of the mountain, a ram destined for a thicket. Seems a grim end for a ram - I'm uncomfortable with the death of anything - but the ramifications are worthy of contemplation (I made that pun un-sheepishly. I apologize to ewe).
Now I'm bashing my head into walls, and maybe I'm not seeing the mountainside, maybe I'm not seeing the Autumn, maybe this obstacle is still too concrete in my tunnel-vision. You have to back away, sometimes, from your tunnel-vision or microscope vision, where a tiny fiasco looks like the whole of things.

Ragnorak Part Trois

The incessant sound of a doorbell ringing in his flat awakened Jak into a grumpy stupor. He tumbled a while, willing the noise to disappear through neglect, burrowing deeper into his blankets and covering his head with a pillow. Dingdingdingding. What manner of cruelty brought visitors at this ungodly hour?
    "Go away!" he attempted, though his voice was greatly muffled beneath the blankets. The ruckus persevered, undeterred. For a few minutes longer, Jak, through sheer force of will, pulled all the blankets over his head, trying to drown out the invasive noise. It didn't seem to help any, but Jak refused to let this doorbell ruin his morning.
   Two minutes more, the doorbell chimed, and finally he could stand it no longer, sitting up in bed, fully awake and angry. And the doorbell stopped. Now, fully awake, Jak realized two things almost simultaneously. First, he possessed no doorbell; second, his flat had no door.
   This realization was punctuated with a loud crash erupting behind Jak, showering him with plaster, insulation, and splinters of wood. He leapt out of bed and turned to see the gaping hole in the wall behind his bed.
   "Jak! Why Did You Not Come Out To Greet Us!" bellowed a booming bass. The bed frame was still in the way, and Jak could not see the owner of the voice through the cloud of dusty white from the imploded wall.
   "I was resting! Can't a man get some-"
   Another series of thunderclap smashes, and Jak's bed was reduced to a smoldering pile of scraps smelling vaguely of ozone.  Jak winced. "Well? Aren't you going to invite us in?" said another voice, this one hard and cold.
   "Before you what? Break the rest of my home? Come in, come in. Make yourselves at home," Jak said with a sigh. "Or what's left of it...." he grumbled under his breath.
   Two figures poked their way through the hole in the wall, stepping across the smoldering remains of Jak's bed, and into the flat. The first was enormous, giant as a bear and heavily muscled. His hair was golden, and flowing down his back like a mane, and his beard was braided with beads and he smelled of mead and meat. In his left hand, he held a hammer that easily fit his palm - a carpenter's hammer, though Jak suspected a mere carpenter's hammer could not have broken into his apartment so easily.
   The second was taller, thinner, and he wore a large, wide-brimmed hat. An eyepatch covered one eye, though Jak later could not recall which eye, and his gnarled, grey beard looked like a nest against his chest. He held a staff, a twisted branch of oak, and the intensity of his gaze caused Jak to shudder involuntarily.

edit me please.
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This morning, I was reading Psalms and stumbled again across Psalm 42. I could wish that I was alive, then, listening to the Sons of Korah composing, or David passionately strumming out his anguish and angst in plaintive string movements. Yet, even without knowing the tune, this Psalm, I feel it.

First, the writer sings (in King James, because it's prettier today):
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

Later he/she sings:
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

These are a little out of context, as they make this Psalm seem like a seeking, when it is a Psalm of lament, of weeping for God's presence in time of trouble and trial. I'm not currently suffering from painful trials (my time will come, I'm certain), but I wonder if my soul pants for God as a thirsty deer? I pray it be so.

Other  Notes:
- need to plot out ragnorak (saying it that way sounds epic)
- finish harold's story
- update eternity story
- make list of all currently open stories

Narrative - myths and frogs (snippets)

Two different characters at different points of existential angst. In one of the stories, the character may or may not be somewhat... magical? The first character is a bit unsettled, and oscillating between... well... ideas.

(written in a stream of consciousness style - apologies for typos. I was house-sitting and enjoying the air-conditioned house and just kept typing. Both are, of course, unfinished)

Story #1 Excerpt:
It could not have been worse for me, had she died. No. Dying is closure: an comprehensible finality. Death is easier. The reason I surrendered my comfortable existence grew from that nervous uncertainty, that fear stranger yet than the afterlife.
There is a land, they say, worse by far than death. A place to where a person once removed is forgotten. They become holes within the memories of lovers and friends and family. Like phantom limb itches, those fleeting memories cannot be dredged to the surface, yet eternally yearn to be remembered. Within this deathly limbo of pale fog, those taken wander aimlessly, screaming to be remembered, until they no longer know even themselves. They begin to lose their faces, turning grey and transparent, indistinguishable from ashes and mists swirling in that misty region. I could not bear the thought of her ending there.
Sometimes, I wish – no, believe, that life revolves around miracles like punch lines. The divine weaves elaborate victories from traumatic, climactic swellings. Life always seems to involve treacherous climbs up impossible and unlikely hills or mountains, a trying task, to find saving grace caught in the thicket at the summit, and the most gorgeous panorama of sky and trees and rivers and the journey taken: a journey worth the ending. I argue life without climbing through trials and tribulations towards heaven is like living in grey rooms with grey cushioned walls: safe, yet slowly suicidal.
For these very reasons and stranger subconscious beckonings, I sold my serenity for a battlefield. You’ll never find an oasis without a desert, or a summit without a mountain. And you’ll certainly never find true love in only introspection.

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-- following story would be 60% better with pictures. Matthew: draw some on paint and send them my way --

In the middle of a vast forest sat a walrus, and he was lost. So lost, in fact, was this walrus that he knew it not, but it itched behind his whiskers something fierce. As he sat beside his frog-filled pond, he couldn't but imagine this was not his lot. Harold's Pond, he called it, for he was Harold, and it was his pond. As the sun belly-crawled its way into the sky, Harold still couldn't divest the feeling that he belonged elsewhere.
Croaakck the frogs and toads garbled, hopping on their lily-pads and puffing out their chests in morning greeting.
"Good Morning, Fellows," bellowed Harold in his bluskery voice. Peering at his face in the pond, he brushed back his whiskers and wrinkled his nose, staring wistfully at the rippling sky.
"Top of the morning, Harold," the frogs ribbitted in reply.
They sat quietly, slowly contemplating the sun flickering through the breezy trees. Harold felt a new feeling surging through him, a movement, and even his whiskers hummed in expectation.
"Has Any Of You Ever Believed In Anything... More?" Harold rumbled, his voice echoing across the waters.
The frogs kvakked, berping in confusing.
"Thought Not," Harold grumbled. But Harold knew, in his ample gut, there was more, and today, he wanted to see it. And so, with considerable girth, Harold gathered a sack of his things and set off for the sage of the forest. If anyone knew what life was missing, surely the sage would know.
Harold had never seen the sage. Harold had never even left his glade. But everyone in the forest knew the sage had answers, and answers were what Harold needed.

(continued tomorrow?)

zen and not-zen words. mostly not.
don't walk when you should run
or jog when laying down
sometimes close your eyes to remember
the color of the sun
shut the blinds and realize the beauty outside home
stomp through puddles, 
or barefoot through muddy meadows
and cleanse your heart anon
fall in love, it may only offer once
dance the dares of distant dreams
until your end, the adventure's ne'er done
follow me, truly we are better two than one
and listen, closely dear, 
to the waves of a life begun



I missed two days of blog-writing on this most hectic of weekends. Thankfully my journal suffered not. On Thursday night, I was notified that a bachelor party would be taking place at my house, and one of my roommates was hosting. J was already leaving for Idaho with his girlfriend, so that meant I was stuck entertaining myself. Thankfully, soccer exists. Even then, arriving home at ten meant that I was arriving just as the roommates decided to step it up a notch in alcohol. I said my hellos and then sequestered myself away in my room. I did steal some pico de gallo and chips first. The revelry on the other side of my door was vaguely obnoxious, and managed to make both reading and writing difficult. I don't know how I managed sleep; I suspect it was divine providence.
The next morning, I picked blackberries and then scampered to a wedding, and another, and then returned home to bake a swift cobbler before crashing. Sunday I enjoyed a leisurely morning, went to church, and then went to A's Oregon reception. The wedding reception lasted from 1-3 according to the invite. I got back home at 10pm. I love those people.

Legos

Many days, the outdoors captivated my attention: sweet smells of pine, maple and wet earth in the darker seasons; sunlight, hills, and fields of green in the sunny seasons. But, of course, some days were too cold, wintry and with a bone-chilling wind that sliced through any jacket. "Cat in the Hat" days, these were, though the insides of houses contain their own expeditions and adventures: building extravagant blanket forts or racing cars with epic gear-shifting noises, multi-floor golf with ping-pong balls and duplos goals, spider soccer, cards, and, of course, legos.

Downstairs, in a crotchety closet, board games are stacked from floor to ceiling, and, even better, building toys. Linkin logs, duplos, knex, legos, all labelled in their respective bins, bulging with colorful happiness awaiting design. Phil and I would clear space, a great, empty expanse in the floor, and lug out the giant plastic bin of legos, grunting with the effort. Then, all gleeful smiles and excitement, rain pattering at the windows and glupping from the eaves and gutters, we tipped over the bin, dumping all the legos into the clear. Phil would start constructing a racecar, all giant wheels and aerodynamic prospect. I'd daydream a castle, a spaceship, an underwater cavern, or a raid on a dragon's lair - a short story captured in a still of legos, beginning in the heat of battle before broiling to a swift, possibly bloody, resolution.

Today, I would think to myself, I'll build a spaceship. Oh, it would be magnificent! Sharp wings angling backwards like a fly, giving a sleek and speedy design, countless lasers arrayed in a deadly composition, a chaotic design making it difficult to disable all these neon weapons. It would have a glassy pilots den, a steering wheel driving system with several strange joysticks nearby, four giant, metallic engines in the rear, like an x-wing, only closer together, escape pods along the side, dangerous looking pirate-astronauts piloting the ship like true rebels, scoundrels each one.

Then, scarcely as I'd begun imagining, I'd dive into the pile, picking out every piece matching some ideal struct in my spaceship daydream.  This silver triangle might make a magnificent wing or this underwater piece might serve as an excellent escape-pod front-cover, and on and on. The problem was, this didn't stop. I'd find another piece that made the wing design more fantastic, a sleek-black piece more acutely angled and ideal for the shape of my wings, or a different color scheme of lasers that might make an excellent addition to the ship's underbelly, or 5 more possible designs for the escape pods, some with magnets or spinning parts, so the pirate-astronauts might man an escape pod and shoot lasers to ward off enemy fighters, or launch the escape pods as short-term ships in a small dog-fight. And, wow, this piece allows me to swivel my cockpit open in case I want a parachute-escape in space, or in an atmosphere - totally useful! I definitely want that piece. 

This continued until I'd developed quite a stockpile of pieces, all intrinsic portions of a tree of daydreams, branching out into the most epic of spaceships. So what if I built it it would have 10 wings, 50 lasers, a command center, two cockpits, seven engines, and a small fleet of escape pods. It was magnificent. Once I'd gathered all my prospective pieces, I'd glance over them with pride, a happy creator of the greatest spaceship of all time. Magnificent.

Then, I'd calmly place all my pieces back into the pile and be finished, having never built, nor even started, the spaceship at all. Often I might build a racecar with Phil and race away, never once looking back or considering my time wasted or my endeavor a failure. Why would I? I'd constructed the greatest spaceship of all time, even if it only existed within my head.

It was a long time until I discovered I've the same process with writing.  When I was a child, I read everything I could. When we were not playing games as a family, I was holing myself up in a corner under some blankets, listening to the rain and journeying into the worlds of imagination.  As a child, whenever I could, I constructed my own little worlds created from words, and invented phrases different characters might say, or clever plot twists. While every other child wanted to be a sports legend, an astronaut, a mad scientist, I wanted to be an author, right from the beginning. 

My greatest obstacle, which I found out later, was my legos mentality. I imagined all these great worlds, these deep, clever personas, fantastic settings of all types and colors, and even some crazy, unique stories, but I never wrote them down. I didn't have to, right? I knew what the story was, full of surprises and twists and witty repartee. Wrong.

Throughout high school, I wrote almost nothing of creative merit. I wrote my essays, lousy though they were, and never even bothered listening to teacher's criticism on my work. I got A's, didn't I? What could be wrong with my homework if I was still managing A's? It is a common mistake of teachers not granting the grades deserved, or marking down more for consistent errors not fixed, perhaps, but really it was my fault for not trying to improve. I disliked high school, because my preppy, tiny school contained cliques of friendships where I never felt I belonged. I had a few friends, but none I felt strongly attached to on leaving home for college. In fact, I maintained contact with almost none of them save through the barest of technological means. That's a rabbit hole.

So when I got to college, I received a rude awakening: I didn't know how to write. I had a magnificent vocabulary and enough credit from my SAT scores and AP scores to cover all of my general education classes, so I dove right into upper level courses. And got slaughtered on my first essays. "Where is your thesis?" "What is this paragraph structure?" "Where is the constancy in this philosophical assay?"  I had to start from scratch. Fortunately, I had a wealth of knowledge built up, so I wasn't dead in the water, but I was far behind expectations, and already suffering a brutal series of essay grades (B's - grades in this world are ridiculous.. do some professors feel bad about failing students?)

It took some time, but I harnessed my competitive nature and started collecting knowledge. I read every essay I could find, from celebrated authors like Orwell and Twain, or Swift and Nietzche, or Lewis and Thoreau. I read essays from my fellow students, asking them to share with me if they'd received stellar grades, and learning from their styles and patterns of thoughts. I consumed knowledge, and, before long, it paid off. All my essays began receiving exquisite marks, no longer suffering from significant grammar mistakes or syntactic and semantic holes.
Once again, I returned into my legos mentality, this time with a wealth of production knowledge backing it up - now it was useful. Not only could I imagine all the fantastic conceptions I might place into a story, but I could nurture my ideas into fruition. A seed of thought blossomed into a flowering essay, simple and effective. I've a lot of learning to go; I didn't learn everything there was to know in that short period, but at least I was no longer producing literary failures. I still have a long way to go, but I'm learning so many fantastic ways of arranging lego tiles that every new day is enlightening.

Time to invent some spaceships.

All over the place and nowhere useful (+Ragnorak Editing)

It was a silent weekend, perhaps a necessary one. I went on a walk, biked around a while, wrote at a small park where a small stream ran past a couple of picnic tables and a candy purple playground. Every other weekend until early September contains at least one wedding event, so the relaxation should compose me - but all I wanted was another delightful wedding.
I woke up early, wrote later into twilight than desired, played soccer with a boisterous bunch, visited some coffee shops for tea, writing, and reading, went to church, talked on the phone to distant friends, talked on skype to other distant friends, watched a show with roommates, picked roommate and his girlfriend up at the airport - all this, and I felt like nothing happened. I'm ready for a weekend adventure: backpacking, hiking in the woods, weddings, climbing a mountain, kayaking down a river with friends, canoeing on a lake, more soccer. Sometimes it feels like, what with the weddings and general busyness, everyone's lives are leaving me behind, so they've no time for stories anymore. I always want time for stories.

Today's sermon was on the topic of fear, something which everyone, at some juncture, interacts with: anxiety, stress, panic attacks and so on. With the amount of times God says: "do not be afraid" or "be anxious for nothing", one might expect Christians would possess greater skill against these debilitating psychological foes. Often, we do not. I don't consider myself an anxious person. Work is friendly, my friends are kind, even intense social situations often don't stress me out so much as making me step back, and evaluate from a different vantage.
There are some things that I do fear, one of which I even ran away from this very weekend. I'm still working those out. I remember as a kid dealing with fear as though I was a protagonist in a fairy tale. Nothing could really hurt me (this is not a Game of Thrones tale), as I knew the hero of the story would prevail in the end. You'd think I'd be a fearless child with that, but I was quite shy of people. I felt like it wasn't the hero's lot to die, but he could be tortured by uncomfortable scenarios. I suppose it is safe to say that once in a trial, I felt less fear than before. That's often the truth of things though, isn't it? Sometimes, the unknowing is the most intimidating portion. It's amazing how mystery can be both unnerving and fantastic. In the case of the northern lights, which I saw just a while past, I find myself more fascinated by the mystery of the event than the knowing. But other things, darkness, public speaking, spiders under the bed - the unnerving unknowing can be more frightening than the thing itself.

Just another throwaway post, huh? I'm well beyond the tl;dr portion of this mental surgery. I'm in that stupor before sleep, that unsleeping dreamy territory well before true unconsciousness. I should stop, while I'm behind.

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Mid-height and not a penny more, with a penny-colored nest of hair, and penny eyes, and he wasn't worth scarce a penny in a fight.  Yet it was this man who threatened the world with apocalypse. This man, with eyeglasses precariously perched on nose, fingertips pattering as raindrops across a keyboard, was about to destroy the world in a flood, a flood of media silence.  Discarded pizza boxes and crumpled soda cans carpeted, and stained, the floor.  Jak’s only focus was the computer screens, the array of eight screens, on which highlighted code scrolled in tropical-candy colors on a black background as Jak prepared his worm, the greatest worm of all time. He called the program Jörmungandr, and tonight it was ready.

                It was genius, he suspected, a titanic achievement.  It systematically destroyed media outlets from the highest level down, leaving all vital functionality until the end such that each increasing level of chaos was captured perfectly as phones, television, radio, and eventually the internet itself disappeared in a whisper, and the world erupted in a bang.  His finger hovered over the button from whence Armageddon would commence. It was the ultimate prank, he thought with a wicked grin, his ultimate prank.  The world would remember him for this, oh certainly, if they ever found out who did it.

                He pressed the button.

               

                An ancient wood hides from searching eyes, under the sea.  Eldritch and petrified, it still silent sits, shamelessly pacified. Before Atlantis was even dreamed, a glade formed inside spherical reef, a punishment, eternal grief. The water hung at neck level, always neck level, clear as a mirror.  Grapes and ambrosia hovered scarcely out of reach, his fingertips brushing the leaves on his highest leaps.  The glade  was edenic, full of crystal waters and abundant fruits, though he despised its… tantalizing, elusive deceit.

                The almost god still reached when the branches swooped close, still dipped his head for a drink, and the fruit and waters receded. Famished, agonizingly parched, the ab-god waited, not patient, not passively.  The bowels of the earth, hell and hades, were not his alone.  Another’s anguish resonated from the deeps, troubling the earth in violent sweeps.

                But today, while the fire in his gut seethed in unremitting pain, a great power hurricaned through the glade, blasting the ab-god from his feet.  A great light, an aura of flashing pain struck him in his temples, and he saw:

                A cavern, pitch and drab, pockmarked with caustic holes.  Around a great stalactite was wrapped an eternal serpent, mouth hissing wide and dripping with sizzling venom.  Beneath, on a circular platform lay a god on an altar, bound in entrails beneath the serpent. From above, the serpent’s venom dripped towards his face, only impeded by a tiny, ceramic bowl, held by a silent, patient woman.  The god cursed the woman, and still she faithfully protected his face, until the bowl was filled and she carried it to the edge and spilled it into the vast, cavern depths. 

                And suddenly, the cave rippled with power, and the god’s eyes widened with surprise.  In a sudden feat of strength, the entrails were snapped apart, and the god was in the cavern no more.

                When the ab-god awoke in his glade, he was not alone. Another stood in the water beside him, bowl in hand.  The god proffered him the bowl with a broad, mischievous smile. The bowl was filled with water, and for a bowl of water, the ab-god would have sold his very soul.