It's an unscripted thing, something you've never seen before, and you want to possess it... to take it into your body, your mind, to bring it into your soul and get drunk on the rhythms therein. You're already body-drunk on the over-effects of the livingness of it, of the wild actions and the breathless spaces of perfect calm-- for no longer than a beat at a time. It almost hurts, the perfection.
You've been searching your whole life for something like it; you've climbed mountains and watched the rocks go tumbling past you, to a doom for any man. You've gone diving, seen the depths and the shallows alike, and all the wonders that play there, and you've seen the herons bowing over ponds, and the cranes in their rituals, and you've seen the eagles dive together, interlocked.
You've searched your whole life, and been everywhere, it seems. You've met, you've-- heard. It all makes sense, everything is made clear, and you are-- transcended.
It's over, just like that. And the man sitting next to you, lounging with one arm thrown carelessly over the desk, nods indifferently. He glances at his clipboard, the checklist, and makes a bit of a face.
"Yeah... I just don't think it's what we're looking for. Thanks anyway-- next!"
And just like that. Just like that, the lights go back on in your head, and the next dancer heads on up to the stage, tossing her hair coquettishly. You don't see where her predecessor went, in the darkness out of the spotlight, and the brief sound of her footsteps is lost almost immediately to the opening piano chords. The dance is trite, simple, but it's got a hypnotic sort of effect. The director nods approvingly, tapping his pen against the clipboard.
The dream is over, and the morning that life bestows you has stolen the last shreds from your mind, like a bead of dew, there and gone before the sun has risen from the haze in the East. The dream is over, and you return without a thought of reluctance or relish to the waking life.
Showing posts with label what is inspired. Show all posts
Showing posts with label what is inspired. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Unknown Caller and the Unknown Future
Laying here, under this bridge, maybe it used to be a road, I've lost the capacity to understand these things, wondering, thinking, didn't I used to be able to follow a train to its conclusion, the railways didn't change, maybe I did,
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak-- shush, now
Oh, it doesn't make sense, how did I get here, though? Not here, I remember finding this place in case it rains maybe I won't get as wet as if the streets weren't up there, above me with the cars going over them to places, other places, they go too fast, too loud, or they used to be but at night it's easier to hear and there aren't as many, but so things are quieter and the sky is brighter. No, wait. that's not right.
You know your name, so punch it in
Sold my soul for self-control, pushing for the devil's goal, not much more to reach for anymore. That was a stupid thought though, now there is less to reach for, just that broken bottle over there, but it won't look so good if I take it out of the light from the over over the bridge into the shades here even though I look better out of the light they said back then. No, not back then. Now. Near now. Yesterday or one of those days.
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
There was a reason why not to do this, except now it's just that I have no money and so it's been too long and I can feel things getting worse and is this what they warned me about? The plane ticket was supposed to not be me except it wasn't the plane ticket they warned me about it was the needle, I wasn't supposed to use the needle ever ever ever ever because things would be bad and I would be bad and friends would all go away or stop being friends or friendly or shewing himself themself itselves friendly
Password, you-- enter here; you know your name, so punch it in
Password-- you. Enter here
Password, you, enter here
password
you
enter here
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak-- shush, now
Oh, it doesn't make sense, how did I get here, though? Not here, I remember finding this place in case it rains maybe I won't get as wet as if the streets weren't up there, above me with the cars going over them to places, other places, they go too fast, too loud, or they used to be but at night it's easier to hear and there aren't as many, but so things are quieter and the sky is brighter. No, wait. that's not right.
You know your name, so punch it in
Sold my soul for self-control, pushing for the devil's goal, not much more to reach for anymore. That was a stupid thought though, now there is less to reach for, just that broken bottle over there, but it won't look so good if I take it out of the light from the over over the bridge into the shades here even though I look better out of the light they said back then. No, not back then. Now. Near now. Yesterday or one of those days.
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
There was a reason why not to do this, except now it's just that I have no money and so it's been too long and I can feel things getting worse and is this what they warned me about? The plane ticket was supposed to not be me except it wasn't the plane ticket they warned me about it was the needle, I wasn't supposed to use the needle ever ever ever ever because things would be bad and I would be bad and friends would all go away or stop being friends or friendly or shewing himself themself itselves friendly
Password, you-- enter here; you know your name, so punch it in
Password-- you. Enter here
Password, you, enter here
password
you
enter here
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
This was originally about depth perception
The skky is so three-dimensional, it's more complex than anything humans could make, except that it would probably be difficult to sculpt the sky anyway-- sculpt the sky, should be the goal of every philosophy, ever artist's dream: to sculpt the sky. It's a statement that could mean The Sky-- you change every aspect of life, to the extent that you have sculpted the way people look at everything, no one even looks at the sky the same way anymore, or you could take the easy way out and just sculpt the sky itself, or sculpt a copy of the sky, which makes more sense, potentially.
What you kind of have to wonder is what's up there in the sky, in all three dimensions and even the fourth, but the thing is there's so much to really contemplate even in the three dimensions we can perceive as humans that it's difficult to understan why people are always trying to find a fourth; what, is what we've got not good enough? I really think if you open your eyes to the world around you, to the absolutely limitless potential for shapes, static, kinetic, it's impossible not to be overwhelmed, and, perhaps, impossible to retain sanity-- which is probably why we can't, or don't, do it. Like whatever-it's-called, the eternity code or the eternity paradox or virus or the reality bug maybe? that essay that was all about how people would read this code-- and, of course, it's been confronted by literature of all kinds, in all methods-- and their minds would just shut down, because the sheer eternity of the thing would overload them. The debate, I believe, the major debate was over whether they had transcended reality into a state of pure bliss and omniscience, or whether they had just lost their mind completely, sanity wiped out-- but some people hypothesized that it all amounted to the same thing. Like the paradoxes which shut down computers, but the human brain... instead. The closest thing the author had said came was a sentence written in which a word was deleted, but the author let both the word and the deltion stand. Personally, I think if that's the best we can do, we might as well hand over the keys of reality to the birds-- ah, if only we had them.
If you sold the keys of reality, what price would they fetch, and what price would you want, and who exactly would want to buy such a thing, as though our own perceptions of reality were not enough, as if our own perceptions were too much, which, of course, they are, and that's why we can't even take those and we step out of them and we step into other perceptions either with drugs or omniscience which is shut off by sheer willpower or lack thereof because to know eternity is simply frightening as the lunatics know from their experiences with the great wonderful world of wild wonder eternity or something like that, it's like when you contemplate the sky and not just how far it goes-- limits and eternal stretching is the easy part, even when you think about the fact that the universe is (supposedly) expanding constantly, and perhaps even exponentially, but then you think about every shape that could be contained in that-- the abstract, the cubist, the natural, the sheer impossibility of it blows your mind simply because it is actually possible after all, the shapes are there-- we just don't see them because they're all the same, like if you connected every molecule of nitrogen with opaque or translucent lines and made them not transparent (except that they probably aren't, it's just that the atoms are mostly empty space, especially since the cloud of electrons is spread out and the molecules are so far apart because it's the nature of a gas-- if you compressed it to a state of solidity would it still be transparent? I think liquid nitrogen is opaque), and the shapes would utterly blow your mind, just as the shapes of clouds, except if we could perceive them in three dimensions, rather than the two which come with the lack of depth perception induced by seeing them from such a great distance, as is the natural state or so they tell us.
Maybe that's why we watch sunsets, because we can't bear the daylight sky, and it gives us such great pleasure to see it finally ending, and the imagination of our overworked minds can finally take a rest on the night sky and start contemplating stars, which are infinitely more complex than clouds unless you take eternity into account, at which point everything is equally simple and complex, and you spend hours just staring at a rock, because the rock is so interesting, infinitely more interesting than some strange philosophical doctrine (that sentence, by the way, was written that way partly because I tried to write it while Born In The USA started playing and the lyrics just carried over), even if that philosophy is about how everything is equally complex, because at some point every philosophy starts talking about actual people, and how you or they are supposed to behave, and after a while it just gets depressing-- you've got the idealists, the cynics, the Christians, the atheists, the existentialists and the nihilists (who claim, or are claimed by their critics, which makes it probably more true than the former, at least according to someone (possibly Gilbert Keith Chesterton) that they are merely the logical end of the existentialist philosophy-- though I must protest that existentialism only turns to nihilism if you're utterly cynical, which, of course, is half the point) and the optimists and the Marxists and the modernists and the postmodernists and now, you've got the pretentious sort of artists who look back at postmodernism as, somehow, not postmodern enough (or maybe just too postmodern, depending on the day of the week and trend), and turn out making things that are, honestly, just strange, which I always thought was part of the point of postmodernism (to be fair, that's only part of it-- strangeness in and of itself must be more than simply itself, or less, or only just, because if you are being strange for the sake of strange it's post-postmodernism, or maybe post-post-post-neomodernism, or neopostmodernism or something, but if you're being strange to prove that, say, life is strange, or life is not strange, or people are strange, or people are not strange but society is, then it's postmodernism, or sometimes just modernism, depending on your overall point, point of view, and whatever critic happens to be talking about your work), but I guess that's only if you really don't care what the critics think, unless you do.
What you kind of have to wonder is what's up there in the sky, in all three dimensions and even the fourth, but the thing is there's so much to really contemplate even in the three dimensions we can perceive as humans that it's difficult to understan why people are always trying to find a fourth; what, is what we've got not good enough? I really think if you open your eyes to the world around you, to the absolutely limitless potential for shapes, static, kinetic, it's impossible not to be overwhelmed, and, perhaps, impossible to retain sanity-- which is probably why we can't, or don't, do it. Like whatever-it's-called, the eternity code or the eternity paradox or virus or the reality bug maybe? that essay that was all about how people would read this code-- and, of course, it's been confronted by literature of all kinds, in all methods-- and their minds would just shut down, because the sheer eternity of the thing would overload them. The debate, I believe, the major debate was over whether they had transcended reality into a state of pure bliss and omniscience, or whether they had just lost their mind completely, sanity wiped out-- but some people hypothesized that it all amounted to the same thing. Like the paradoxes which shut down computers, but the human brain... instead. The closest thing the author had said came was a sentence written in which a word was deleted, but the author let both the word and the deltion stand. Personally, I think if that's the best we can do, we might as well hand over the keys of reality to the birds-- ah, if only we had them.
If you sold the keys of reality, what price would they fetch, and what price would you want, and who exactly would want to buy such a thing, as though our own perceptions of reality were not enough, as if our own perceptions were too much, which, of course, they are, and that's why we can't even take those and we step out of them and we step into other perceptions either with drugs or omniscience which is shut off by sheer willpower or lack thereof because to know eternity is simply frightening as the lunatics know from their experiences with the great wonderful world of wild wonder eternity or something like that, it's like when you contemplate the sky and not just how far it goes-- limits and eternal stretching is the easy part, even when you think about the fact that the universe is (supposedly) expanding constantly, and perhaps even exponentially, but then you think about every shape that could be contained in that-- the abstract, the cubist, the natural, the sheer impossibility of it blows your mind simply because it is actually possible after all, the shapes are there-- we just don't see them because they're all the same, like if you connected every molecule of nitrogen with opaque or translucent lines and made them not transparent (except that they probably aren't, it's just that the atoms are mostly empty space, especially since the cloud of electrons is spread out and the molecules are so far apart because it's the nature of a gas-- if you compressed it to a state of solidity would it still be transparent? I think liquid nitrogen is opaque), and the shapes would utterly blow your mind, just as the shapes of clouds, except if we could perceive them in three dimensions, rather than the two which come with the lack of depth perception induced by seeing them from such a great distance, as is the natural state or so they tell us.
Maybe that's why we watch sunsets, because we can't bear the daylight sky, and it gives us such great pleasure to see it finally ending, and the imagination of our overworked minds can finally take a rest on the night sky and start contemplating stars, which are infinitely more complex than clouds unless you take eternity into account, at which point everything is equally simple and complex, and you spend hours just staring at a rock, because the rock is so interesting, infinitely more interesting than some strange philosophical doctrine (that sentence, by the way, was written that way partly because I tried to write it while Born In The USA started playing and the lyrics just carried over), even if that philosophy is about how everything is equally complex, because at some point every philosophy starts talking about actual people, and how you or they are supposed to behave, and after a while it just gets depressing-- you've got the idealists, the cynics, the Christians, the atheists, the existentialists and the nihilists (who claim, or are claimed by their critics, which makes it probably more true than the former, at least according to someone (possibly Gilbert Keith Chesterton) that they are merely the logical end of the existentialist philosophy-- though I must protest that existentialism only turns to nihilism if you're utterly cynical, which, of course, is half the point) and the optimists and the Marxists and the modernists and the postmodernists and now, you've got the pretentious sort of artists who look back at postmodernism as, somehow, not postmodern enough (or maybe just too postmodern, depending on the day of the week and trend), and turn out making things that are, honestly, just strange, which I always thought was part of the point of postmodernism (to be fair, that's only part of it-- strangeness in and of itself must be more than simply itself, or less, or only just, because if you are being strange for the sake of strange it's post-postmodernism, or maybe post-post-post-neomodernism, or neopostmodernism or something, but if you're being strange to prove that, say, life is strange, or life is not strange, or people are strange, or people are not strange but society is, then it's postmodernism, or sometimes just modernism, depending on your overall point, point of view, and whatever critic happens to be talking about your work), but I guess that's only if you really don't care what the critics think, unless you do.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Talkin' 'Bout My (nameless) Generation
Friend: You’re from Generation X, right?
Me: No, that’s my older sister’s generation. My generation… my generation has no name.
Friend: That is an excellent song title. You should write that song.
Me: Heh. I’ve been thinking about it for a while – it is, isn’t it?
Friend: Yes. And you are going to write it.
Me: …I am?
Friend: Yes. Tonight.
Me: …Okay.
I didn’t finish the song in one night; I started writing concepts in a bookstore café, and when I picked up my guitar that night the chords felt right, and the notes came easy, and the melody and harmony just clicked, which it never has before, but the lyrics were absolute shit, and I knew it as I was writing them, and didn’t let it bother me because I needed the songwriting practice, musically speaking. I’ve begun again this night, sans guitar (though I believe a guitar would help, I’ve no desire to wake my family, as it is currently two o’clock in the morning), and it’s… better. It’s a rough draft, instead of, well, shit.
Here’s what I’d written ahead of time; I’m typing it up here to get me past the block I’m on right now.
I’m supposed to be writing a song, My Generation Has No Name. I’ve thought about that concept so many times, it’s strange to be thinking the actual… song. And… it’s true, you know. Our generation is undefined, the unknown value that could shape the equation and, consequently, the world. Heh. We’ve got rap, and synth-pop, and death/metal/gore/scream (etc)-core, and a bit of rock, even. We’ve got a pretty strong Indie crowd. We’ve got punks, and grinning cynics, and too many of us have come onto the scene pre-destined, defined to our last little trait – our personality as good as owned by the media. When will culture start charging by the soul?
Destiny in our control / when will you begin to charge us / by the soul? (Idea tho’)
These frozen clocks all look the same
my generation has no name
CONCEPTS
culture (moves on)
potential (infinite)
implied in the name [of the song] is a certain formlessness; we are allowing the world to shape us, while our voices become hollow(s) to echo, despite their boundless range – our generation has no name.
Aha, I can be as patriotic as I damn well want to be, and that includes toward my generation. I do believe in potential, and I do believe that every generation gets a chance to change the world, and we are wasting ours.
Me: No, that’s my older sister’s generation. My generation… my generation has no name.
Friend: That is an excellent song title. You should write that song.
Me: Heh. I’ve been thinking about it for a while – it is, isn’t it?
Friend: Yes. And you are going to write it.
Me: …I am?
Friend: Yes. Tonight.
Me: …Okay.
I didn’t finish the song in one night; I started writing concepts in a bookstore café, and when I picked up my guitar that night the chords felt right, and the notes came easy, and the melody and harmony just clicked, which it never has before, but the lyrics were absolute shit, and I knew it as I was writing them, and didn’t let it bother me because I needed the songwriting practice, musically speaking. I’ve begun again this night, sans guitar (though I believe a guitar would help, I’ve no desire to wake my family, as it is currently two o’clock in the morning), and it’s… better. It’s a rough draft, instead of, well, shit.
Here’s what I’d written ahead of time; I’m typing it up here to get me past the block I’m on right now.
I’m supposed to be writing a song, My Generation Has No Name. I’ve thought about that concept so many times, it’s strange to be thinking the actual… song. And… it’s true, you know. Our generation is undefined, the unknown value that could shape the equation and, consequently, the world. Heh. We’ve got rap, and synth-pop, and death/metal/gore/scream (etc)-core, and a bit of rock, even. We’ve got a pretty strong Indie crowd. We’ve got punks, and grinning cynics, and too many of us have come onto the scene pre-destined, defined to our last little trait – our personality as good as owned by the media. When will culture start charging by the soul?
These frozen clocks all look the same
my generation has no name
CONCEPTS
culture (moves on)
potential (infinite)
implied in the name [of the song] is a certain formlessness; we are allowing the world to shape us, while our voices become hollow(s) to echo, despite their boundless range – our generation has no name.
Aha, I can be as patriotic as I damn well want to be, and that includes toward my generation. I do believe in potential, and I do believe that every generation gets a chance to change the world, and we are wasting ours.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Stories, etc.
To date, I have begun stories about a man, an old general who tried to conquer the world and was sentenced, by those who stopped him – after much bloodshed, pain, heartache, and loss – to be eternally imprisoned in a stone tower, which would move every day from place to place, at random, throughout that world, so that his followers (for even after all that he had done, there were those who wanted to go on) could never find and rescue him, and he created a companion in his mind, out of regret for all the life he’d lost and wasted and spilled on barren wasteland, a wraith of the innocence left in him, a hallucination; an old god who keeps watch over a tiny eldritch monster which lives in the bottom of a bottomless pot of soup; a guitarist who accidentally goes wandering into another world, where dreams are watched by the servants of the king there, to keep them from the daemons who seek to conquer all; a man who is cursed to die a thousand thousand deaths, and each time he wakes there is some new horror he must face, for all of eternity. I have finished none of the above, and I don’t know why.
I’m angry, and lonely, and hurt, and mostly I don’t know why. I used to really like my job, but lately work in general bothers me – I don’t mind working. I don’t mind coming home tired, and sore, late, I don’t mind dealing with people (mostly), I don’t mind doing dirty work. What gets to me is when there’s politics. When it’s tough to do my job because the boss needs to keep this or that person happy, when I can’t get things done because they need to be done by this person only, for some stupid obscure reason, when things need to be super-professional because we’re trying to impress someone higher-up-the-chain, and I want to say “Are you fucking kidding me? I just dug through three different garbage cans looking for a catalogue I threw out too early, the both of us swear like sailors when we’re working on something particularly hard, when it’s raining I come into work soaked and when it’s snowing I come into work frosted over, you barely ever wear a uniform because it’s so cold in here three layers of fleece isn’t even enough (for you, anyway, personally I couldn’t care less about the cold), there’s three different handwritings on the smaller bags because we all take turns making them up, and this business works fine because everyone who works here cares about it (I think…), and because you’re damned good at what you do, and everything works, even if it isn’t clean enough to eat off of (which, mostly, it is). Who gives a shit if my hair is frizzy as hell? I wear a hat when you tell me to… why does it matter that everything I did last night besides the drawer was off the clock? Nobody was around. The drawer comes out even nine times out of ten, or more, and customers rarely leave unsatisfied. When I tell people stuff about birds, I’m helping them. I like doing that. I… just don’t. Get it.
I don’t really care about money. This, I’ve been told, is a failing. I don’t need a lot of stuff in my life, most of the stuff I like best is beat-up and old, and as long as I have clothes on my back and enough to eat, I’m fine. Most people either don’t understand that or don’t believe it. I don’t understand them. I don’t understand why it’s okay to lie, cheat, fuck people over, as long as you’re getting paid enough, but if you’re playing guitar in the street you damn well better be collecting. I don’t understand why it’s good form to put change in your hat so it looks like you’re making money already. Will people only give to someone they think others have given to? I don’t understand why crack whores are despicable, but Artists doing crack at Parties are glorious.
I hate this life, and I think one of these days I’ll just disappear, and in retrospect, my deepest apologies to any of you whom I abandoned in the doing thereof. I hope you understand.
I’m angry, and lonely, and hurt, and mostly I don’t know why. I used to really like my job, but lately work in general bothers me – I don’t mind working. I don’t mind coming home tired, and sore, late, I don’t mind dealing with people (mostly), I don’t mind doing dirty work. What gets to me is when there’s politics. When it’s tough to do my job because the boss needs to keep this or that person happy, when I can’t get things done because they need to be done by this person only, for some stupid obscure reason, when things need to be super-professional because we’re trying to impress someone higher-up-the-chain, and I want to say “Are you fucking kidding me? I just dug through three different garbage cans looking for a catalogue I threw out too early, the both of us swear like sailors when we’re working on something particularly hard, when it’s raining I come into work soaked and when it’s snowing I come into work frosted over, you barely ever wear a uniform because it’s so cold in here three layers of fleece isn’t even enough (for you, anyway, personally I couldn’t care less about the cold), there’s three different handwritings on the smaller bags because we all take turns making them up, and this business works fine because everyone who works here cares about it (I think…), and because you’re damned good at what you do, and everything works, even if it isn’t clean enough to eat off of (which, mostly, it is). Who gives a shit if my hair is frizzy as hell? I wear a hat when you tell me to… why does it matter that everything I did last night besides the drawer was off the clock? Nobody was around. The drawer comes out even nine times out of ten, or more, and customers rarely leave unsatisfied. When I tell people stuff about birds, I’m helping them. I like doing that. I… just don’t. Get it.
I don’t really care about money. This, I’ve been told, is a failing. I don’t need a lot of stuff in my life, most of the stuff I like best is beat-up and old, and as long as I have clothes on my back and enough to eat, I’m fine. Most people either don’t understand that or don’t believe it. I don’t understand them. I don’t understand why it’s okay to lie, cheat, fuck people over, as long as you’re getting paid enough, but if you’re playing guitar in the street you damn well better be collecting. I don’t understand why it’s good form to put change in your hat so it looks like you’re making money already. Will people only give to someone they think others have given to? I don’t understand why crack whores are despicable, but Artists doing crack at Parties are glorious.
I hate this life, and I think one of these days I’ll just disappear, and in retrospect, my deepest apologies to any of you whom I abandoned in the doing thereof. I hope you understand.
Monday, March 1, 2010
The Untouched, Untouchable, Intangible HORIZON
I had to take the dove feather out of my notebook to paint it.
This is what the back looks like now:
This is what the back looks like now:
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
It's Devoid of Feel
"What do you see out your window today?"
Byron frowns pensively and twitches the curtain back. "There's a flock of birds," he said. "They're all huge, built like albatrosses, smoke-blue. Like a flock, they're squabbling over motes of light in the air around them."
Damien smiled. "Is that all?"
"No -- the sky is dusky red, like the end of a sunset, around them. They're flying all around, without stopping, like hummingbirds, because there's no ground to land on."
"How many are there, Byron?"
He shrugs, watching them. "I don't know -- hundreds, it looks like. I wonder where we are."
"Look down, then -- can you see the ground?"
"It looks like we're up too high for a ground or a horizon to be visible."
Then Byron closes the window curtain again, and sits back in his chair. He looks over at Damien, who lies on his back on the thick rug. If there'd been a fireplace at the front of the scene, rather than a blank stone wall, it would've looked cozy. He was youngish, unsure of his exact age, and had a shock of black hair, which he kept in a ponytail. Sometimes, Byron wondered if he'd ever been young like that. It didn't seem likely.
"Byron, I'm not hungry." Byron glances at him. "I really wish I was."
The older man snorts. "All the physical sensations in the world to choose from, and you wish for hunger?"
Byron frowns pensively and twitches the curtain back. "There's a flock of birds," he said. "They're all huge, built like albatrosses, smoke-blue. Like a flock, they're squabbling over motes of light in the air around them."
Damien smiled. "Is that all?"
"No -- the sky is dusky red, like the end of a sunset, around them. They're flying all around, without stopping, like hummingbirds, because there's no ground to land on."
"How many are there, Byron?"
He shrugs, watching them. "I don't know -- hundreds, it looks like. I wonder where we are."
"Look down, then -- can you see the ground?"
"It looks like we're up too high for a ground or a horizon to be visible."
Then Byron closes the window curtain again, and sits back in his chair. He looks over at Damien, who lies on his back on the thick rug. If there'd been a fireplace at the front of the scene, rather than a blank stone wall, it would've looked cozy. He was youngish, unsure of his exact age, and had a shock of black hair, which he kept in a ponytail. Sometimes, Byron wondered if he'd ever been young like that. It didn't seem likely.
"Byron, I'm not hungry." Byron glances at him. "I really wish I was."
The older man snorts. "All the physical sensations in the world to choose from, and you wish for hunger?"
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Coyote's Wings
Long ago, when all the spirits that we know as animal spoke, and were brothers, Coyote and Eagle were friends, and they would hunt together, Coyote running over the ground and Eagle sighting prey from far up on the winds. Now, Eagle soared over the mountains, and because he was so closed to the Sun, he could be warm even in the winter, because in those days the Sun was very close, and even slept in the mountains at night. But Eagle felt bad for his brother Coyote, who ran over the ground, even in the winter, where the Sun could not reach down through the trees, because of their thick needles and leaves – back then, even the leafy trees grew all year round.
So Eagle said to Coyote, “Brother, aren’t you cold down there, where the Sun cannot reach? You’d better come up here with me, and fly over the trees.”
But Coyote is very proud and stubborn, and he only laughed at Eagle. “I feel just fine, brother! I have thick fur and the cold does not bother me at all.”
Eagle continued to ask his brother, each time they went out hunting, if he would not feel better up on the wind, where it was warm under the Sun. And each time, Coyote would laugh and tell Eagle to focus on his own tasks, and let Coyote worry about the ground – he was not cold, under his thick fur.
One day, Eagle and Coyote were out hunting, and they came across the Heron, who was weeping in his home by the lake, which had not yet frozen over.
“Why are you weeping, Heron?” asked Eagle, as he landed on the tree above. “It is a beautiful day, and there are plenty of fish for both of us.” It was only them, for that moment, as Coyote could not run as fast as Eagle could fly, and he was still catching up.
Heron looked up at Eagle sadly, and said “Oh, Eagle, I am weeping because I cannot catch any fish with these wings!” Back then, Heron had very dark, heavy wings, which could carry him very high but looked out of place against his light body. “They are so heavy and dark that the fish always see my silhouette and scatter before I can get to them! I cannot catch fish anymore, and I am afraid that my family will starve.”
Eagle pondered this for a moment, because he was very wise, and he saw a solution. “Heron,” he said, “What if someone were to take your wings? You could catch fish as the men do, by stabbing with your beak from the shores, and the fish would not see your wings.”
“That is a great idea, Eagle!” Heron was overjoyed, and he did a dance with his wings – the dance that all herons do, now. “But who will you give them to? They are very big and dark, and very powerful.”
“I will give them to Coyote, so that he does not have to run over the cold ground when we are hunting together,” said Eagle.
Heron clapped his beak. “Eagle, are you sure that is a good idea? Coyote can be very foolish, and he might do something stupid with these wings and hurt himself, or you.” But Eagle did not believe him, and as soon as Heron had shrugged off his wings and waded away, Coyote came running up.
“Brother!” he cried, his ears perked. “Why are we all here so still, when the day is beautiful and there is hunting to be done?” He saw the wings then, floating in the water, and stopped short. “What are those there for? Aren’t those Heron’s wings?”
Eagle stretched his own wings and smiled. “Heron doesn’t want his wings anymore,” he said. “They are yours, if you want them.” For he knew that for all Coyote’s pride in his legs and his own warm fur, he was very curious.
Coyote pretended to be disinterested in the wings, but secretly, he was immediately filled with joy at the thought of flying high, and being able to soar with Eagle above the trees. He sniffed at the big, dark wings, and then said “Oh, well, I may as well take them – I wouldn’t want them to go to waste!”
As he put them on, Eagle said from his tree branch, “Just be careful, Coyote. They are very powerful wings, and dangerous if you are not careful with them.”
“I am always careful!” Coyote was never careful, but he thought he was. He immediately took off, flying in circles over the lake and laughing for joy. Eagle was pleased at his brother’s happiness, and they went back to hunting together.
But it had not been very long when Coyote began to try to do tricks, as he had seen Eagle do with his mate. He flew straight downwards, and then straight upwards, and he began to fly with his eyes closed, despite all of Eagle’s warnings. “I am Coyote!” he cried. “I will do tricks that no bird has ever done!” And he continued to fly with his eyes closed, turning around and around.
Eagle cried warnings after him, trying to slow him down, but Coyote continued to fly until he flew straight into the Sun, knocking her out of her path. The bright heat of the Sun singed the wings to the white color they are today, and Sun fled, for she was afraid of Coyote pulling her down to the Earth. As she fled, the trees turned yellow, and then red, as the heat left them, and all their leaves dropped off. Eagle came and pulled Coyote away from the Sun by his wings, almost detaching them, and carried his brother back to land in his claws.
Coyote was still unconscious when Eagle took the wings back off of him and brought them over to Heron, who was happily stabbing his meals in the lake. “Heron,” he said, “You were right. Coyote flew into the Sun with your wings, and damaged them. Do you want them back? They are not so dark anymore, and you will be able to catch fish without scaring them.
And so Heron did his dance with his wings, as all Herons do now, and Eagle went back to hunting on the wind alone, while Coyote went back to running over land. To this day they share their kills, and Coyote runs over the ground, warm in his thick fur, while Eagle soars over the wind, and Eagle does the wise thing and does not offer Coyote power anymore, and Coyote is crazy and cheers Eagle up with his tricks.
So Eagle said to Coyote, “Brother, aren’t you cold down there, where the Sun cannot reach? You’d better come up here with me, and fly over the trees.”
But Coyote is very proud and stubborn, and he only laughed at Eagle. “I feel just fine, brother! I have thick fur and the cold does not bother me at all.”
Eagle continued to ask his brother, each time they went out hunting, if he would not feel better up on the wind, where it was warm under the Sun. And each time, Coyote would laugh and tell Eagle to focus on his own tasks, and let Coyote worry about the ground – he was not cold, under his thick fur.
One day, Eagle and Coyote were out hunting, and they came across the Heron, who was weeping in his home by the lake, which had not yet frozen over.
“Why are you weeping, Heron?” asked Eagle, as he landed on the tree above. “It is a beautiful day, and there are plenty of fish for both of us.” It was only them, for that moment, as Coyote could not run as fast as Eagle could fly, and he was still catching up.
Heron looked up at Eagle sadly, and said “Oh, Eagle, I am weeping because I cannot catch any fish with these wings!” Back then, Heron had very dark, heavy wings, which could carry him very high but looked out of place against his light body. “They are so heavy and dark that the fish always see my silhouette and scatter before I can get to them! I cannot catch fish anymore, and I am afraid that my family will starve.”
Eagle pondered this for a moment, because he was very wise, and he saw a solution. “Heron,” he said, “What if someone were to take your wings? You could catch fish as the men do, by stabbing with your beak from the shores, and the fish would not see your wings.”
“That is a great idea, Eagle!” Heron was overjoyed, and he did a dance with his wings – the dance that all herons do, now. “But who will you give them to? They are very big and dark, and very powerful.”
“I will give them to Coyote, so that he does not have to run over the cold ground when we are hunting together,” said Eagle.
Heron clapped his beak. “Eagle, are you sure that is a good idea? Coyote can be very foolish, and he might do something stupid with these wings and hurt himself, or you.” But Eagle did not believe him, and as soon as Heron had shrugged off his wings and waded away, Coyote came running up.
“Brother!” he cried, his ears perked. “Why are we all here so still, when the day is beautiful and there is hunting to be done?” He saw the wings then, floating in the water, and stopped short. “What are those there for? Aren’t those Heron’s wings?”
Eagle stretched his own wings and smiled. “Heron doesn’t want his wings anymore,” he said. “They are yours, if you want them.” For he knew that for all Coyote’s pride in his legs and his own warm fur, he was very curious.
Coyote pretended to be disinterested in the wings, but secretly, he was immediately filled with joy at the thought of flying high, and being able to soar with Eagle above the trees. He sniffed at the big, dark wings, and then said “Oh, well, I may as well take them – I wouldn’t want them to go to waste!”
As he put them on, Eagle said from his tree branch, “Just be careful, Coyote. They are very powerful wings, and dangerous if you are not careful with them.”
“I am always careful!” Coyote was never careful, but he thought he was. He immediately took off, flying in circles over the lake and laughing for joy. Eagle was pleased at his brother’s happiness, and they went back to hunting together.
But it had not been very long when Coyote began to try to do tricks, as he had seen Eagle do with his mate. He flew straight downwards, and then straight upwards, and he began to fly with his eyes closed, despite all of Eagle’s warnings. “I am Coyote!” he cried. “I will do tricks that no bird has ever done!” And he continued to fly with his eyes closed, turning around and around.
Eagle cried warnings after him, trying to slow him down, but Coyote continued to fly until he flew straight into the Sun, knocking her out of her path. The bright heat of the Sun singed the wings to the white color they are today, and Sun fled, for she was afraid of Coyote pulling her down to the Earth. As she fled, the trees turned yellow, and then red, as the heat left them, and all their leaves dropped off. Eagle came and pulled Coyote away from the Sun by his wings, almost detaching them, and carried his brother back to land in his claws.
Coyote was still unconscious when Eagle took the wings back off of him and brought them over to Heron, who was happily stabbing his meals in the lake. “Heron,” he said, “You were right. Coyote flew into the Sun with your wings, and damaged them. Do you want them back? They are not so dark anymore, and you will be able to catch fish without scaring them.
And so Heron did his dance with his wings, as all Herons do now, and Eagle went back to hunting on the wind alone, while Coyote went back to running over land. To this day they share their kills, and Coyote runs over the ground, warm in his thick fur, while Eagle soars over the wind, and Eagle does the wise thing and does not offer Coyote power anymore, and Coyote is crazy and cheers Eagle up with his tricks.
Monday, November 30, 2009
We'll See.
So I didn’t write a 50,000 word novel this month, again. It’s not the first time. I’d like to pull a Linus and close panel on the classic pose, shaking my fist at the sky – Just Wait ‘Til Next Year! But I think I’ll go one step wishy-washy on this one, and say instead, Just Wait ‘Til Some Time In The Future, Unspecified At The Moment But Definitely Inevitable In The Long Run! Because next year, I will be in school again, working my ass off to fulfill my potential as a student of journalism. And, with that in mind, I won’t just be doing homework and kind of working on studies, I will be throwing myself actively towards learning as much as I can, and, given the writing component of journalism, this means my writer’s-head will be getting plenty of exercise without novel-induced craziness.
But someday, and I don’t mean that vague “Someday,” as in, “Some Time In The Future, When I Make Time For It,” I mean someday as in “As Soon As I’m Done With College Even If It Kills Me,” I will write a novel. Fully, and working as hard as I can, and it will be a thing of beauty and I will make people laugh, and cry, the way I do reading about Harry Dresden. This is non-negotiable.
So I didn’t write a novel this year. A more cynical person than I might point out the fact that I’ve never finished a written work of any significant length. But I’m through being that person, and I’d rather dwell on the fact that I got farther into this thing than I ever have before. And if I can finish short stories (which I can, by the way), I can finish a novel. Just wait ‘til next time.
But someday, and I don’t mean that vague “Someday,” as in, “Some Time In The Future, When I Make Time For It,” I mean someday as in “As Soon As I’m Done With College Even If It Kills Me,” I will write a novel. Fully, and working as hard as I can, and it will be a thing of beauty and I will make people laugh, and cry, the way I do reading about Harry Dresden. This is non-negotiable.
So I didn’t write a novel this year. A more cynical person than I might point out the fact that I’ve never finished a written work of any significant length. But I’m through being that person, and I’d rather dwell on the fact that I got farther into this thing than I ever have before. And if I can finish short stories (which I can, by the way), I can finish a novel. Just wait ‘til next time.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
It Doesn't Have To BE This Way
There’s a website which I often fool around on called TV Tropes, which analyzes common themes found in different media; some of you may be familiar with it. One of the tropes discussed at length there is the “Crapsack World,” which is… well, exactly what it sounds like. Here’s one of the descriptions in the summary: “An immutable Crapsack World has corruption and pain Inherent In The System, both physically and metaphysically. Trying to fight this corruption will always result in it winning.”
So basically, this describes a world that is inherently unfair, a world in which good is not only useless, but often counter-productive. This is a world where the evil overlord wins. This is a world where humanity really is reduced to numbers, where the Daleks succeed because the universe doesn’t care; this is a world where a sonic screwdriver and a brilliant smile will get you killed, regardless of how clever or powerful you are, how strongly you want to save the world. This is a universe where the more unfortunate people of the world are taken into slavery to serve the whims of the culture on the other side of the world who doesn’t know or care about their plight. This is a world where an entire population can be decimated on a whim, once more to benefit a class more useful to the people in power, and no one bats an eye. This is a world where those born into poverty and disease and starvation are, more or less, thought of as deserving of such a fate; this is a world where Scrooge was right.
This is our world.
And speaking against any of that makes you a bleeding heart, an emotion-driven basket-case, and it pits you straight up against the power-driven universe, in a world where greed and oppression are rewarded and selflessness is mercilessly stamped out.
I’m not exaggerating. This isn’t hyperbole.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, and I will keep on saying it until the day I die.
THIS IS NOT RIGHT. I don’t give a used fig as to what your personal beliefs concerning the semantics and wordplay of “ethics” versus “morality,” or which political party you support, or whether you’re an independent or a moderate or on the fringes or outside altogether.
If you are supporting slavery, genocide, if you have nothing to say to this world we’re living in, if you don’t believe that there is something very, very, wrong with what’s going on in this world, get the hell off of my friends list. I don’t care if you're a conservative who believes capitalism is the only thing that will save this world from itself, or you’re an anarchist who believes capitalism is what’s killing this world. You should be fighting for the same ends right now. There are people being driven into slavery, not only in Mali and Cote d’Ivoire, but on this continent, in the cities and the suburbs and all around us. There are people dying on the streets, of malaria. A disease that was cured over a century ago. Not a lot of people know that. Mosquito bites are killing more people in this world than any other animal. Mosquito bites. Death. By. Mosquito. Death by a disease we cured. A disease that’s become a joke in this country. That doesn’t even touch the disease we haven’t cured, AIDS, which people are also dying like flies from.
That’s the one that makes me sick – people believe, somehow people allow themselves to be convinced that it’s not that important. They deserve it, right? Just like the kids born into starvation deserve to die before they reach adulthood, and the people being laid off from their jobs in this very country deserved that, and they deserve to be homeless on the streets with their families, the filthy savages. But not on our streets, no, how about the darker part of town, tucked away somewhere we don’t have to see them? This country makes me sick sometimes. I’m an American, that much is true. I believe in freedom, and I mean that literally. I believe everyone should be free. I believe that freedom is a human right, not an American right. I believe in liberty, and I believe in justice. I believe that no one should die because of a damned bug bite. I believe women who are raped are never ‘asking for it,’ I believe that in a world where there is enough food to go around, no one should starve to death. I believe that it is twisted, sick, and downright evil to refuse homeless men the basement of a church to sleep in on winter nights -- to let them freeze to death in their sleep -- because it brings them too close to the business district.
To be fair, not many people know the reality of all of this. (That's why it's important to do this. Because people don't know.) It’s mentioned in passing, occasionally, but rarely expanded on. We’re very careful, this country is, of tucking things that make our viewers uncomfortable out of sight. We wouldn’t want to lose our viewers. We wouldn’t want to make them too uncomfortable, to make them turn aside to somewhere where the view is a little more pleasant.
Don’t forget this. There is nothing – nothing – that makes you somehow innately more worthy of life than someone else on this planet. I’m a Christian, infinitely more than I am an American. That’s what I believe. I believe in unconditional love, and unconditional forgiveness. You were born (for most of you, anyway) in a wealthy country, if not a wealthy home. Your parents were able to feed you, because they’d worked hard, but also because they’d been born to a land of opportunity. That is why you are here, and not starving to death, or dying of malaria or AIDS, or being beaten to death in the cacao fields on the Gold Coast. Because you were born here, and not there. It doesn’t make you a bad person – but it doesn’t make your life worth more than theirs, either. A life is a life is a life. Please, please remember that.
This world has become a horrible, horrible place -- we don't have to leave it that way. We don't have to submit silently to what this world has become. I mentioned earlier that in this universe, morality is punished and powerlust is rewarded. I don't believe that's Just The Way It Is, I believe it's the way the human race has made it. And we can change that. It's not idealistic to believe that conscience should overrule politics.
Politics are supposed to be a way to follow your conscience; they are not supposed to subvert it for the party values.
I'll say it once again.
We don't have to take this. If you have a conscience, if you want to see this world become something other than a prison, do it. Don't wait for a signal. You ARE the signal.
So basically, this describes a world that is inherently unfair, a world in which good is not only useless, but often counter-productive. This is a world where the evil overlord wins. This is a world where humanity really is reduced to numbers, where the Daleks succeed because the universe doesn’t care; this is a world where a sonic screwdriver and a brilliant smile will get you killed, regardless of how clever or powerful you are, how strongly you want to save the world. This is a universe where the more unfortunate people of the world are taken into slavery to serve the whims of the culture on the other side of the world who doesn’t know or care about their plight. This is a world where an entire population can be decimated on a whim, once more to benefit a class more useful to the people in power, and no one bats an eye. This is a world where those born into poverty and disease and starvation are, more or less, thought of as deserving of such a fate; this is a world where Scrooge was right.
This is our world.
And speaking against any of that makes you a bleeding heart, an emotion-driven basket-case, and it pits you straight up against the power-driven universe, in a world where greed and oppression are rewarded and selflessness is mercilessly stamped out.
I’m not exaggerating. This isn’t hyperbole.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, and I will keep on saying it until the day I die.
THIS IS NOT RIGHT. I don’t give a used fig as to what your personal beliefs concerning the semantics and wordplay of “ethics” versus “morality,” or which political party you support, or whether you’re an independent or a moderate or on the fringes or outside altogether.
If you are supporting slavery, genocide, if you have nothing to say to this world we’re living in, if you don’t believe that there is something very, very, wrong with what’s going on in this world, get the hell off of my friends list. I don’t care if you're a conservative who believes capitalism is the only thing that will save this world from itself, or you’re an anarchist who believes capitalism is what’s killing this world. You should be fighting for the same ends right now. There are people being driven into slavery, not only in Mali and Cote d’Ivoire, but on this continent, in the cities and the suburbs and all around us. There are people dying on the streets, of malaria. A disease that was cured over a century ago. Not a lot of people know that. Mosquito bites are killing more people in this world than any other animal. Mosquito bites. Death. By. Mosquito. Death by a disease we cured. A disease that’s become a joke in this country. That doesn’t even touch the disease we haven’t cured, AIDS, which people are also dying like flies from.
That’s the one that makes me sick – people believe, somehow people allow themselves to be convinced that it’s not that important. They deserve it, right? Just like the kids born into starvation deserve to die before they reach adulthood, and the people being laid off from their jobs in this very country deserved that, and they deserve to be homeless on the streets with their families, the filthy savages. But not on our streets, no, how about the darker part of town, tucked away somewhere we don’t have to see them? This country makes me sick sometimes. I’m an American, that much is true. I believe in freedom, and I mean that literally. I believe everyone should be free. I believe that freedom is a human right, not an American right. I believe in liberty, and I believe in justice. I believe that no one should die because of a damned bug bite. I believe women who are raped are never ‘asking for it,’ I believe that in a world where there is enough food to go around, no one should starve to death. I believe that it is twisted, sick, and downright evil to refuse homeless men the basement of a church to sleep in on winter nights -- to let them freeze to death in their sleep -- because it brings them too close to the business district.
To be fair, not many people know the reality of all of this. (That's why it's important to do this. Because people don't know.) It’s mentioned in passing, occasionally, but rarely expanded on. We’re very careful, this country is, of tucking things that make our viewers uncomfortable out of sight. We wouldn’t want to lose our viewers. We wouldn’t want to make them too uncomfortable, to make them turn aside to somewhere where the view is a little more pleasant.
Don’t forget this. There is nothing – nothing – that makes you somehow innately more worthy of life than someone else on this planet. I’m a Christian, infinitely more than I am an American. That’s what I believe. I believe in unconditional love, and unconditional forgiveness. You were born (for most of you, anyway) in a wealthy country, if not a wealthy home. Your parents were able to feed you, because they’d worked hard, but also because they’d been born to a land of opportunity. That is why you are here, and not starving to death, or dying of malaria or AIDS, or being beaten to death in the cacao fields on the Gold Coast. Because you were born here, and not there. It doesn’t make you a bad person – but it doesn’t make your life worth more than theirs, either. A life is a life is a life. Please, please remember that.
This world has become a horrible, horrible place -- we don't have to leave it that way. We don't have to submit silently to what this world has become. I mentioned earlier that in this universe, morality is punished and powerlust is rewarded. I don't believe that's Just The Way It Is, I believe it's the way the human race has made it. And we can change that. It's not idealistic to believe that conscience should overrule politics.
Politics are supposed to be a way to follow your conscience; they are not supposed to subvert it for the party values.
I'll say it once again.
We don't have to take this. If you have a conscience, if you want to see this world become something other than a prison, do it. Don't wait for a signal. You ARE the signal.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Because I am tired of masks.
Because I grow tired of addressing different parts of my soul when I find myself with a new set of people; because I wish to be who I am, and no other; because, as I have said in other places, the inner wordsmith, the writer in me, is the most honest part of my soul. For all these reasons, and others which I cannot name even to myself, in conscious thought, I will try now to say what I feel to be the truth. Would that I had the conviction of C. S. Lewis, the wit of Terry Pratchett, the lyrical flow of Guy Kay—but that is another point altogether.
I do not, cannot, and will never be able to believe that religion, Christianity, human belief in God, is predictable, or even convenient. Again, I wish very much that I had the skill of Lewis to explain myself, but it is not given to me to speak and debate eloquently on subjects which I hold so close to my heart. My point is simply, this: how can love, belief in perfect love, in forgiveness, in redemption, be an easy thing, a convenient thing—a predictable thing? I remember, ages ago, in a long and very, very drawn-out debate, someone claiming to believe in Christianity, but not being able to accept someone else paying her debts for her. In my self-centered, unsympathetic state, I scorned her, saying loftily that that was “the whole point” of Christianity, that there was no belief if you did not accept that sacrifice. In my defense, I was only saying what I had been taught. It is so easy to put down weakness in others—so much easier when you’re trying to hide the same weakness in yourself.
It was—and is—so, so hard for me to accept the very idea of unconditional love, let alone forgiveness, redemption. For a very, very long time I went through phases of horrible, horrible guilt that would not go away. Guilt for stupid, tiny things, things I didn’t always even have control over. Friends would tell me endlessly that repentance, true repentance, was final, ended it, should end the guilt and the self-blame. What was my answer? Obviously, I had not repented fully enough. (Hah. I was about to write about how this little phase ended when I found out that one of my best friends went through the same thing, but that would be a lie. It made things a bit easier, but end? Hah.) My point is that believing in eternal forgiveness, unconditional love, is most definitely not the first leap of human consciousness.
Even leaving out that which may be an oddity in me and many I have known, that lingering guilt and self-blame, even leaving that—what human would willingly say to their enemy, “Kill me now, and you are damned, but if you repent, thirty days hence, you will be forgiven and absolved”? What woman, what man, would so easily accept the concept of eternal forgiveness, seventy times seven, towards their brother, their killer, their enemy? I cannot speak for all religion—I would never claim that responsibility, or that right. But deny me that. Tell me that unconditional forgiveness, unconditional love—the preaching of this as extended to all fellows, to be more Christlike—is predictable of humanity. Tell me that it is convenient to forgive a brother each and every betrayal he levels against you—or a sister. That is the core of Christianity—love. That is what all the Church is built on, believe it or not.
We are human, we are corruptible and predictable and prone to every conceivable weakness at some point in our lives. But the spirit within us is not. No one in this world could ever make me believe that any part of that is wrong. Perhaps it makes more scientific sense to say that enough evil could damn anyone, in the end. But a repentance of that evil? Would that balance it out—the will, the will inside to balance out any evil done? I could not say; I do not claim to understand metaphysics. But never say to me that unconditional love and forgiveness is a predictable, convenient excuse for human evils. Can it be used for such? Of course. Anything can be used and twisted for evil; someone determined enough to hurt and harm will use any excuse and reason in their power to do so. But it taints them, in the end, not the good that they have ill used. A fire cannot be evil, even if it is used to burn down a house. That’s a poor example, but the point stands, I think.
It’s been a long time since I made such an argument as this. My original intent was to tie it back to my original point about masks, and anarchism, or whatever other facets of my heart which I had at some point taken up and hence found false, but continued to follow. To any belief I have held, any philosophy I have fallen from, I say this. When a belief, a philosophy tells me that all are equal and free, I will agree, whole-heartedly. When it tells me that truth to an inner self should come before law, I will rejoice. When I am told to be angry, to hate, to betray my conscience, I will refuse. When I am told that God is dead, that religion is useful insofar as it aids that philosophy, that morality or ethics are an excuse or a weakness, that conscience is a hindrance, I will take my leave.
Why did I write this? In part, to answer a discussion and debate with a friend. In part because, as I said, I am tired of masks. I am tired of putting on my carefree anarchist face when I go to Food Not Bombs, my detatched philosopher face when someone challenges something I believe in, my selfless Christian face when I'm talking to certain friends, or on certain subjects, and God only knows how many others. I'm sick of it. This is who I am. I'm a Christian. I'm not an Anarchist, or a Republican, or a Democrat, or a Liberal, or a Conservative, or whatever other political label it's possible to wear. It is not given me to be a philosopher, or a singer, or an orator, or a philanthropist, or whatever else. I am a Christian; I believe in charity, not in the common definition of giving money to those you feel deserve and need it, but in the old definition of feeling-- or believing in-- love for all humankind, Just Because; I believe in conscience over law, but I do not believe in lawlessness; I believe in order over chaos, but that order should be just. What more shall I say? I am tired of masks. I no longer believe that I need any worldly label or face or party to hide behind. I need no excuse to be who I am.
I do not, cannot, and will never be able to believe that religion, Christianity, human belief in God, is predictable, or even convenient. Again, I wish very much that I had the skill of Lewis to explain myself, but it is not given to me to speak and debate eloquently on subjects which I hold so close to my heart. My point is simply, this: how can love, belief in perfect love, in forgiveness, in redemption, be an easy thing, a convenient thing—a predictable thing? I remember, ages ago, in a long and very, very drawn-out debate, someone claiming to believe in Christianity, but not being able to accept someone else paying her debts for her. In my self-centered, unsympathetic state, I scorned her, saying loftily that that was “the whole point” of Christianity, that there was no belief if you did not accept that sacrifice. In my defense, I was only saying what I had been taught. It is so easy to put down weakness in others—so much easier when you’re trying to hide the same weakness in yourself.
It was—and is—so, so hard for me to accept the very idea of unconditional love, let alone forgiveness, redemption. For a very, very long time I went through phases of horrible, horrible guilt that would not go away. Guilt for stupid, tiny things, things I didn’t always even have control over. Friends would tell me endlessly that repentance, true repentance, was final, ended it, should end the guilt and the self-blame. What was my answer? Obviously, I had not repented fully enough. (Hah. I was about to write about how this little phase ended when I found out that one of my best friends went through the same thing, but that would be a lie. It made things a bit easier, but end? Hah.) My point is that believing in eternal forgiveness, unconditional love, is most definitely not the first leap of human consciousness.
Even leaving out that which may be an oddity in me and many I have known, that lingering guilt and self-blame, even leaving that—what human would willingly say to their enemy, “Kill me now, and you are damned, but if you repent, thirty days hence, you will be forgiven and absolved”? What woman, what man, would so easily accept the concept of eternal forgiveness, seventy times seven, towards their brother, their killer, their enemy? I cannot speak for all religion—I would never claim that responsibility, or that right. But deny me that. Tell me that unconditional forgiveness, unconditional love—the preaching of this as extended to all fellows, to be more Christlike—is predictable of humanity. Tell me that it is convenient to forgive a brother each and every betrayal he levels against you—or a sister. That is the core of Christianity—love. That is what all the Church is built on, believe it or not.
We are human, we are corruptible and predictable and prone to every conceivable weakness at some point in our lives. But the spirit within us is not. No one in this world could ever make me believe that any part of that is wrong. Perhaps it makes more scientific sense to say that enough evil could damn anyone, in the end. But a repentance of that evil? Would that balance it out—the will, the will inside to balance out any evil done? I could not say; I do not claim to understand metaphysics. But never say to me that unconditional love and forgiveness is a predictable, convenient excuse for human evils. Can it be used for such? Of course. Anything can be used and twisted for evil; someone determined enough to hurt and harm will use any excuse and reason in their power to do so. But it taints them, in the end, not the good that they have ill used. A fire cannot be evil, even if it is used to burn down a house. That’s a poor example, but the point stands, I think.
It’s been a long time since I made such an argument as this. My original intent was to tie it back to my original point about masks, and anarchism, or whatever other facets of my heart which I had at some point taken up and hence found false, but continued to follow. To any belief I have held, any philosophy I have fallen from, I say this. When a belief, a philosophy tells me that all are equal and free, I will agree, whole-heartedly. When it tells me that truth to an inner self should come before law, I will rejoice. When I am told to be angry, to hate, to betray my conscience, I will refuse. When I am told that God is dead, that religion is useful insofar as it aids that philosophy, that morality or ethics are an excuse or a weakness, that conscience is a hindrance, I will take my leave.
Why did I write this? In part, to answer a discussion and debate with a friend. In part because, as I said, I am tired of masks. I am tired of putting on my carefree anarchist face when I go to Food Not Bombs, my detatched philosopher face when someone challenges something I believe in, my selfless Christian face when I'm talking to certain friends, or on certain subjects, and God only knows how many others. I'm sick of it. This is who I am. I'm a Christian. I'm not an Anarchist, or a Republican, or a Democrat, or a Liberal, or a Conservative, or whatever other political label it's possible to wear. It is not given me to be a philosopher, or a singer, or an orator, or a philanthropist, or whatever else. I am a Christian; I believe in charity, not in the common definition of giving money to those you feel deserve and need it, but in the old definition of feeling-- or believing in-- love for all humankind, Just Because; I believe in conscience over law, but I do not believe in lawlessness; I believe in order over chaos, but that order should be just. What more shall I say? I am tired of masks. I no longer believe that I need any worldly label or face or party to hide behind. I need no excuse to be who I am.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Talkin' to my Generation
Right now, I am wondering why Mr. Kanye West – why anyone, actually – has felt the need to go on record calling themselves “the voice of a generation.” Why does this generation need a voice to speak for us? We all have minds, hearts, and voices, do we not? Why, then, are we so silent? How is it that we have opinions on fashion, on pop culture, even on petty national politics at times, yet we remain oblivious to the world outside of our lifestyles? We should not be depending on Kanye West, Barack Obama, or Rush Limbaugh to voice opinions for us. We have minds. We have hearts, we have voices. Why are we allowing ourselves to be led by the nose, like so many idle sheep? Educate yourselves! Listen to your conscience and speak out! There is slavery in Africa, upheld by the mainstream chocolate industry. There is genocide in the Sudan, upheld by the Chinese government. Peaceful protesters are being brutally put down in Iran. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent the greater part of the last twenty years under house arrest in Burma for speaking out. Here in America, there are entire families homeless and without food or shelter. In countries all over the globe, there are young children working endless hours in deplorable conditions without even enough money to live on. What are we doing about it? We depend on politicians to get things done; we elect them for their elegant promises, and then consider our duties to the world done. I am not targeting any one politician; they have all betrayed us the same. We cannot simply cast a vote on election day, and then walk home to go back to our lives as though the world had been changed. We cannot ignore the condition of this world.
You have a mind. You have a voice. You have the right to be free, to live and breathe and eat and drink and laugh; do you not have the responsibility to fight, to give that freedom to every other living person on this planet? We are born into our circumstances; we do not inherently deserve what we are given at birth any more than any other human born to any other parents in any other place. There is no reason why being born in America should give you more of a right to be free, just as being born in a village in Darfur does not mean you deserve to be raped and killed. But we’ve inherited this world, our generation has. We’ve inherited this world full of smooth-tongued, power-hungry politicians, and we’ve inherited some kind of system that tells us that on one side there are good guys, and the other side is not to be trusted. I tell you now that this is a lie. There is good and bad on both sides; both sides are labels. Stop listening to the fanatics on both sides of the system! Read the facts, from as many trustworthy places as you can, and then follow your own conscience. Stop letting others speak for you! You have a mind! You have a voice! Your voice is important, what is behind it is important; your mind, your conscience, your freedom is your birthright, as it is with every other human on this planet. Do not let it be taken from you!
Please. We’ve lain silent long enough—too long. It’s time to stop letting people speak for us, decide for us; we’re adults, or we soon will be. It’s time to start thinking about the world we’ve been born into, it’s time to step up. We’ve been born to this Earth, for better or worse—how will we leave it?
You have a mind. You have a voice. You have the right to be free, to live and breathe and eat and drink and laugh; do you not have the responsibility to fight, to give that freedom to every other living person on this planet? We are born into our circumstances; we do not inherently deserve what we are given at birth any more than any other human born to any other parents in any other place. There is no reason why being born in America should give you more of a right to be free, just as being born in a village in Darfur does not mean you deserve to be raped and killed. But we’ve inherited this world, our generation has. We’ve inherited this world full of smooth-tongued, power-hungry politicians, and we’ve inherited some kind of system that tells us that on one side there are good guys, and the other side is not to be trusted. I tell you now that this is a lie. There is good and bad on both sides; both sides are labels. Stop listening to the fanatics on both sides of the system! Read the facts, from as many trustworthy places as you can, and then follow your own conscience. Stop letting others speak for you! You have a mind! You have a voice! Your voice is important, what is behind it is important; your mind, your conscience, your freedom is your birthright, as it is with every other human on this planet. Do not let it be taken from you!
Please. We’ve lain silent long enough—too long. It’s time to stop letting people speak for us, decide for us; we’re adults, or we soon will be. It’s time to start thinking about the world we’ve been born into, it’s time to step up. We’ve been born to this Earth, for better or worse—how will we leave it?
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
I have been wandering
I have been wandering, as is my wont, at night, in the dark streets, under the orange streetlights, under the pale stars, the waning moon, down paths that have been mine for so long. Down into the woods I go, when dusk is beginning to scatter in the face of the darkness of night, and I find a place, and I sit, and think, and look, and wonder. In this place, these woods, this pond, I have found sanctuary, I have found reason, I have found peace. I have seen the great birds and the small birds soar, I have heard the song of the bullfrogs like living violins and teeming bass drums, I have seen beaver, and possum, and hawk, and heron. I have gone and watched the night glitter and shine in the light of thousands of fireflies, wherever you look a sparkling light, orange and yellow and green, a little different in each flash, which becomes apparent when they fly past your face, two inches away. I have been lost in the trails when it began to rain, in the dark—that was years ago, I could not be lost there now if I tried. I have found peace, and hope, and despair, and hurt, and love in that place, I have seen snow-covered trees lit by only the moon’s blue light, I have gone to the path for solace and been confronted by my own shadow and more. I have found myself on my knees in the mud, ice touching the bare skin of my legs as I cried aloud in a voice I did not know I had. I have sung, in the dark night, in the pitch between the trees and the dusk in the sky, I have whistled in the day, I have prayed for a thunderstorm, I have reveled in the mist; I have laid flat on my back, and seen the sky, framed by trees, gilt by the sunset, glorious.
Often, I have been convinced that such a place is all I need in this world. It is a place for peace, one of the few in my life. I am still convinced that I could spend the rest of my life wandering the wilderness, at peace, without seeing another office building ever. I am probably not alone in this view.
I do think that peace and restlessness are not incompatible. I think that true peace needs more than tranquility, I think that a balance is necessary. I remember running out of the house, down the driveway, angry and hurt and barefoot in the full moon, and walking far on sidewalks that seemed better than the alternative. I remember crying aloud, punching telephone poles bare-fisted, full force, in the dark, because I did not know where to turn. I remember standing for long, long moments on the street before a church, watching, wondering, wishing, more alone than anything. I remember nights of shadows, masks in the dark behind me, figures that haunted the corners of my eye, impossible, terrifying.
Restlessness is a part of me. Peace is a part of restlessness, something unattainable, something impossibly beautiful, a moment that surprises by being real, after all. Peace cannot be taken, it cannot be bought, it cannot be sought out. Restlessness is a part of me, and peace is a part of restlessness, and this does not strike me as impossible, because life is made up of paradoxes.
Often, I have been convinced that such a place is all I need in this world. It is a place for peace, one of the few in my life. I am still convinced that I could spend the rest of my life wandering the wilderness, at peace, without seeing another office building ever. I am probably not alone in this view.
I do think that peace and restlessness are not incompatible. I think that true peace needs more than tranquility, I think that a balance is necessary. I remember running out of the house, down the driveway, angry and hurt and barefoot in the full moon, and walking far on sidewalks that seemed better than the alternative. I remember crying aloud, punching telephone poles bare-fisted, full force, in the dark, because I did not know where to turn. I remember standing for long, long moments on the street before a church, watching, wondering, wishing, more alone than anything. I remember nights of shadows, masks in the dark behind me, figures that haunted the corners of my eye, impossible, terrifying.
Restlessness is a part of me. Peace is a part of restlessness, something unattainable, something impossibly beautiful, a moment that surprises by being real, after all. Peace cannot be taken, it cannot be bought, it cannot be sought out. Restlessness is a part of me, and peace is a part of restlessness, and this does not strike me as impossible, because life is made up of paradoxes.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Stories
the thing is, i don't know if i want a normal life. i don't think i even want a normal job. i don't want to get rich selling juice-- or even sharing juice. i don't want an excellent business opportunity, i don't want to have a LIFE, in any sense of the word. i don't. want. anything. at least, not anything like that. and yet, you people continue to tell me that it is Necessary, and that i should Compromise, or at least look beyond whatever stupid world i'm living in in my head (okay, you haven't said it like that, but i think you want to, at least a few of you, a few times), and try to get some kind of stability before i try to be an Artist. here's the thing though.
I don't WANT to be an Artist. Or, really, a Writer. (I want to meet a very specific writer sometimes, but that's different.)
I want to tell stories. That's all, in one way. In another way, I want to LIVE, to feel the salt on my face in every way possible, to climb mountains like a goat like i did when i was young, to see forever the dappled sunlight on the forest floor, to hear forever the brook singing over rocks, to lose myself in the thunderstorms, spontaneous and forever. but mostly, i want to tell stories. I want to take all the characters floating around in my head, and all the landscapes that exist a thousand worlds over, and all the meadows and flowers and faires and sprites and genies and gargoyles and assassins and thieves and shepherds and everything. i want to live, live all of it forever, and then come back and tell people.
and that's often why i don't mingle well, or why i can't be coaxed to dinners and parties and things, and why you meet me in the mist and the dark, with no good reason for being there, and why i might choose a notebook over a car. because mingling, gossip about folks who aren't there, laughter, light, takes me away from the Stories, mine or someone else's, and life as it should be pales in contrast with life i want to live.
there is a part of a book i read that says something like "The thing about stories is, they don't mean a damn if there's nobody listening," which sometimes i kind of agree with. I want to go to the edge of the world, the end of life, and then come back and tell the stories to people who want to hear them. And it seems like that's not an acceptable goal, these days. And that saddens me.
I don't WANT to be an Artist. Or, really, a Writer. (I want to meet a very specific writer sometimes, but that's different.)
I want to tell stories. That's all, in one way. In another way, I want to LIVE, to feel the salt on my face in every way possible, to climb mountains like a goat like i did when i was young, to see forever the dappled sunlight on the forest floor, to hear forever the brook singing over rocks, to lose myself in the thunderstorms, spontaneous and forever. but mostly, i want to tell stories. I want to take all the characters floating around in my head, and all the landscapes that exist a thousand worlds over, and all the meadows and flowers and faires and sprites and genies and gargoyles and assassins and thieves and shepherds and everything. i want to live, live all of it forever, and then come back and tell people.
and that's often why i don't mingle well, or why i can't be coaxed to dinners and parties and things, and why you meet me in the mist and the dark, with no good reason for being there, and why i might choose a notebook over a car. because mingling, gossip about folks who aren't there, laughter, light, takes me away from the Stories, mine or someone else's, and life as it should be pales in contrast with life i want to live.
there is a part of a book i read that says something like "The thing about stories is, they don't mean a damn if there's nobody listening," which sometimes i kind of agree with. I want to go to the edge of the world, the end of life, and then come back and tell the stories to people who want to hear them. And it seems like that's not an acceptable goal, these days. And that saddens me.
Monday, July 6, 2009
So it turns out Neil Gaiman really is that amazing.
Sometimes, my life feels like something out of a nightmare. I came home from food-not-bombs yesterday to find three lawnmowers at random places in the backyard, the shed door open, and the light inside on. Sighing, I went into the house to find corn kernels drying to the floor and counter in the kitchen, living room, hallway, and bathroom—only, in the bathroom they were accompanied by a fist-sized ball of crushed up hotdog roll in the sink, also slowly drying to the surface. In the kitchen and parts of the living room, they were accompanied by sparse handfuls of cheerios. On the kitchen counter, where there were no dishes, there was a plastic bag of taco shells, a container of cheerios, an open bag of hotdog rolls, a nearly empty jug of iced tea, and other unidentified debris. In an attempt to clean some of this up, I started by taking out the over-full garbage under the sink, rescuing two glass bottles and an empty milk jug in the process, and found that, outside, there was a smashed glass all over the patch of pavement behind the steps. The irony to all this is that, that very morning, my brother, who is one-and-a-half years younger than me, had called telling me that my father had agreed to lend him twenty dollars through me if he mowed the lawn and did the dishes (which entails cleaning the kitchen to some extent). When I had left the house, the only messes were that the lawn was a bit shaggy, and the sink was full of dishes (with some overspill on the counter, I’ll admit).
It is scenes like this which make me chant under my breath, “I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life,” as though verbalizing it somehow makes it a little easier to bear. (When my brother came home, at seven-thirty, demanding twenty-five dollars, as he had mowed the lawn, he applied the very excellent method of asking me to babysit two eight-week-old kittens, smaller than my head, as a surprise for his girlfriend, so I really couldn’t say no, because they were SO CUTE.)
Anyway, I soon gave up on the mess, went into my room, and wrote something on my other journal about Neil Gaiman, and his super-inspiring powers which bring me back to the passion of writing that I had so many years ago. And, being a little curious about this amazing writer who pretty much is a huge part of why my life is bearable, I looked him up on TV Tropes, which told me that he is One Of Us, which is pretty obvious, and linked me to an interview with Stephen Colbert (which made me first smile, and then laugh aloud), and also told me that he has remained kind and very nice to his fans, which was… not surprising, but kind of surprising to read. Know what I mean? It wasn’t that he was nice that surprised me, but that he was so nice that it was a mentionable fact. Curious, I checked Wikipedia, and found that he had his own blog, which I immediately headed over to, and started poking through.
About six hours of reading through his blogs (after the first three entries or so, I went back to the start of the archives, where he’d begun it as a project for American Gods, and started reading chronologically, which is a bit of a hassle with the scrolling, but definitely worth it), Neil Gaiman has skyrocketed to the very head of my list of Awesome Dudes, about even with Bono/U2 (they’re awesome, but they’re not geeks; also, they’re awesome, but they’re rock stars. I will never be a rock star, lacking as I do any real skill in that area). Seriously. As though his amazing writing wasn’t enough (and, I’d bet my last dollar and a whole lot more than that), the guy is basically the sweetest, most personable, amazing person imaginable. And he feeds birds. And loves his kids, and his dog. I am now even more determined to go buy a copy of Sandman, or at least Coraline, or one other of his books or WHATEVER. He’s freaking amazing. I am determined to meet him one day, and after I found myself too tired to continue reading, laid in bed and wrote him a fan letter, which I may or may not be too embarrassed to send, written as it was at about three in the morning, and thus lacking any kind of self-censor. (Not in the area of crudeness, but… squeeing and generally rambling. And stuff.)
So yeah. Neil Gaiman? Awesome Dude.
It is scenes like this which make me chant under my breath, “I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life,” as though verbalizing it somehow makes it a little easier to bear. (When my brother came home, at seven-thirty, demanding twenty-five dollars, as he had mowed the lawn, he applied the very excellent method of asking me to babysit two eight-week-old kittens, smaller than my head, as a surprise for his girlfriend, so I really couldn’t say no, because they were SO CUTE.)
Anyway, I soon gave up on the mess, went into my room, and wrote something on my other journal about Neil Gaiman, and his super-inspiring powers which bring me back to the passion of writing that I had so many years ago. And, being a little curious about this amazing writer who pretty much is a huge part of why my life is bearable, I looked him up on TV Tropes, which told me that he is One Of Us, which is pretty obvious, and linked me to an interview with Stephen Colbert (which made me first smile, and then laugh aloud), and also told me that he has remained kind and very nice to his fans, which was… not surprising, but kind of surprising to read. Know what I mean? It wasn’t that he was nice that surprised me, but that he was so nice that it was a mentionable fact. Curious, I checked Wikipedia, and found that he had his own blog, which I immediately headed over to, and started poking through.
About six hours of reading through his blogs (after the first three entries or so, I went back to the start of the archives, where he’d begun it as a project for American Gods, and started reading chronologically, which is a bit of a hassle with the scrolling, but definitely worth it), Neil Gaiman has skyrocketed to the very head of my list of Awesome Dudes, about even with Bono/U2 (they’re awesome, but they’re not geeks; also, they’re awesome, but they’re rock stars. I will never be a rock star, lacking as I do any real skill in that area). Seriously. As though his amazing writing wasn’t enough (and, I’d bet my last dollar and a whole lot more than that), the guy is basically the sweetest, most personable, amazing person imaginable. And he feeds birds. And loves his kids, and his dog. I am now even more determined to go buy a copy of Sandman, or at least Coraline, or one other of his books or WHATEVER. He’s freaking amazing. I am determined to meet him one day, and after I found myself too tired to continue reading, laid in bed and wrote him a fan letter, which I may or may not be too embarrassed to send, written as it was at about three in the morning, and thus lacking any kind of self-censor. (Not in the area of crudeness, but… squeeing and generally rambling. And stuff.)
So yeah. Neil Gaiman? Awesome Dude.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Life and Love
Life, measured in summers, in moments of laughter, in breezes that fill the lungs and skin and hair, and leave you with memories of something beyond sight, touch, hearing, life fills your eyes and seeps into your bones and the days are full. Life, measured in scraps of poetry found in old, long-forgotten corners, in magazine pictures, glossy and over-edited and full of a longing for something that doesn’t quite exist, in the many smells of paper, of the powdery, reincarnated souls of numerous trees, life gets into your blood and lends your skin a glow that’s more than natural. Life steals, it takes of your heart like a poison, and before you can grasp it, you are addicted, and you need it, and you cannot ever be without it, and you will fight and struggle and kill to keep just a tiny drop, too little to taste or even see, just to know you have it still. It doesn’t register that you don’t have it anymore, if ever you did; life cannot be had; it has you.
Life is a lot like love, in that regard. You meet a person, and the next day you see them and you smile, and later, you are talking, laughing, and then before you know it you look forward to seeing them, and the image of their eyes—so unlike anyone else’s— settles, like dust, in the recesses of your memory, the places the wall of protection, the brush of indifference, cannot touch. And when the day comes when you will not see them again, and when you can never look forward to seeing them again, you reach hungrily, painfully, desperately for that brush of indifference to protect you, to make it so that their laughter, their voice, their way of talking and the things they say does not matter to you. But there are things that cannot be forgotten, and love does not care for your pain. Love does not need your consent to take root in your mind, in your heart, and is a force greater than anything, even than the ever-consuming need that is life.
Life flourishes in the most unlikely of places; in high places of rocky crags, where the winds tear anything loose away and the clouds freeze if they venture too close, there are small things growing, in the cracks and the crevasses. In the desert, where the sand is all and end and start and all, and heat rules the day without mercy, and cold rules the night without give, life survives.
And where there is life, there is love, and both are the most necessary thing, the one thing that makes you human, or more than human, or less, and neither are kind, and what can you do but give in?
Life is a lot like love, in that regard. You meet a person, and the next day you see them and you smile, and later, you are talking, laughing, and then before you know it you look forward to seeing them, and the image of their eyes—so unlike anyone else’s— settles, like dust, in the recesses of your memory, the places the wall of protection, the brush of indifference, cannot touch. And when the day comes when you will not see them again, and when you can never look forward to seeing them again, you reach hungrily, painfully, desperately for that brush of indifference to protect you, to make it so that their laughter, their voice, their way of talking and the things they say does not matter to you. But there are things that cannot be forgotten, and love does not care for your pain. Love does not need your consent to take root in your mind, in your heart, and is a force greater than anything, even than the ever-consuming need that is life.
Life flourishes in the most unlikely of places; in high places of rocky crags, where the winds tear anything loose away and the clouds freeze if they venture too close, there are small things growing, in the cracks and the crevasses. In the desert, where the sand is all and end and start and all, and heat rules the day without mercy, and cold rules the night without give, life survives.
And where there is life, there is love, and both are the most necessary thing, the one thing that makes you human, or more than human, or less, and neither are kind, and what can you do but give in?
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
An Introduction
It occurred to me today that I could use this laptop, now it’s mine, to store all the information about Mohan and his world and Drake and whatnot that I have, and record more! It will be amazing. I will start to write little excerpts from his life as they come to me, too. But in the meantime I should introduce this mysterious friend of mine, and his world.
Mohan is about nine feet tall, and covered in light brown fur, very sleek (most of the time). He has a tail, about ¾ as long as the rest of his spine, the last few inches of which widen and flatten, resembling a hand made up of palm, but a little more flexible. His spine is a little more flexible than a human’s, possibly because it’s so long, but also because that’s how his species is designed. His arms are three-segmented, or nearly so—from the shoulder, they have an upper arm/bicep segment, proportionally the size of ours, and then a forearm, a little bit longer proportionally than ours, and then their wrists are little under one foot in length, and very flexible, almost tail-like until they turn into hands. Their hands only have four fingers, two with three joints, and two with two joints like ours, but they are in pairs of both, on either side of the palm, positioned a bit like ours but opposing each other.
Their heads are slightly more elongated, their foreheads a little more sloping back, their cheekbones a little higher, and their chins a little more pointed, most of the time. Their ears hang down almost to the base of the skull, and are shaped a little like elongated dogs’ ears. Their noses are very complex, consisting of tendrils which can be wriggled a bit, each of which has its own nostril. Their sense of smell isn’t as strong as a dog’s, but it’s as sophisticated—they can learn and identify more smells than we can, but are only a little better at picking them up. The nose design, I think, is less about smell, more about breathing. Their eyes are a little wider, the irises a bit larger and the pupils more narrow. They wear the fur on top of their heads longer, like we do; it resembles hair, a bit.
I think the gravity on their world is a little less than ours, which is why they’re so tall. A lot of things there are elongated.
Anyway, Mohan’s my friend; he found my mind more than a year ago when I was thinking about starting a comic strip entitled “Space Pirates!” The idea was a bust, mainly because one of the characters eased his way into my mind, showed me his name, and told me to write a story about his world instead. I obliged. I guess the ‘pirates’ thing is what attracted him. See, he left home to be a pirate with his cousin Drake, but the bloody life was too much for him, and he deserted after a dispute with the first mate, who was an exceedingly bloodthirsty jerk. My job is to write on his adventures, but the problem is that the nature of his world is just so that first, I have to figure out a way to tell that without… well, without too much of an infodump. I wonder, sometimes, if this is what happened to Professor Tolkien. Did something from that world just take root in his mind and demand to be written, and the stories followed? That’s what it seems like, only with him it was the language. And he was a much better writer than I am. Hopefully, I will do my friend’s tale justice, when someday I write it all down. In the meantime, he and Drake contact me through the haze of Risperidone when they can, giving me maps and charts and cultural notes and customs and traditions and religions.
They’re living at a house of their cousin’s (their family is a very extended clan from the mountains, so they’ve got a lot of cousins. They were raised together, they’re like brothers) now, and somehow that helps them contact me; I guess there’s a fair bit of arcane paraphernalia lying around for the use. Somehow, a few of the kittens that live there got through, too, but the Risperidone put a stop to that. I kind of miss them sometimes, but they’re probably big by now, anyway. I have a drawing of the house somewhere, and a bit of a map… kind of. It’s a little muddled, because I think it breaks the rules of physics in a few places.
Is this all real? I don’t know. Part of me wants so badly to believe it is, and part of me says that’s ridiculous, but the larger part of me says it doesn’t matter, in a way. I mean, it does. But not very much. The part that counts is the story, right? Mohan wants me to tell the story. Drake wants me to know the world. (Drake also wants me to learn the language, but I’m pretty certain that it can’t be fully communicated by the human tongue—we communicate by thoughts. I think our thoughts go through in pure thought form, and our respective brains translate them as best we can.)
Someday, I will do both.
Mohan is about nine feet tall, and covered in light brown fur, very sleek (most of the time). He has a tail, about ¾ as long as the rest of his spine, the last few inches of which widen and flatten, resembling a hand made up of palm, but a little more flexible. His spine is a little more flexible than a human’s, possibly because it’s so long, but also because that’s how his species is designed. His arms are three-segmented, or nearly so—from the shoulder, they have an upper arm/bicep segment, proportionally the size of ours, and then a forearm, a little bit longer proportionally than ours, and then their wrists are little under one foot in length, and very flexible, almost tail-like until they turn into hands. Their hands only have four fingers, two with three joints, and two with two joints like ours, but they are in pairs of both, on either side of the palm, positioned a bit like ours but opposing each other.
Their heads are slightly more elongated, their foreheads a little more sloping back, their cheekbones a little higher, and their chins a little more pointed, most of the time. Their ears hang down almost to the base of the skull, and are shaped a little like elongated dogs’ ears. Their noses are very complex, consisting of tendrils which can be wriggled a bit, each of which has its own nostril. Their sense of smell isn’t as strong as a dog’s, but it’s as sophisticated—they can learn and identify more smells than we can, but are only a little better at picking them up. The nose design, I think, is less about smell, more about breathing. Their eyes are a little wider, the irises a bit larger and the pupils more narrow. They wear the fur on top of their heads longer, like we do; it resembles hair, a bit.
I think the gravity on their world is a little less than ours, which is why they’re so tall. A lot of things there are elongated.
Anyway, Mohan’s my friend; he found my mind more than a year ago when I was thinking about starting a comic strip entitled “Space Pirates!” The idea was a bust, mainly because one of the characters eased his way into my mind, showed me his name, and told me to write a story about his world instead. I obliged. I guess the ‘pirates’ thing is what attracted him. See, he left home to be a pirate with his cousin Drake, but the bloody life was too much for him, and he deserted after a dispute with the first mate, who was an exceedingly bloodthirsty jerk. My job is to write on his adventures, but the problem is that the nature of his world is just so that first, I have to figure out a way to tell that without… well, without too much of an infodump. I wonder, sometimes, if this is what happened to Professor Tolkien. Did something from that world just take root in his mind and demand to be written, and the stories followed? That’s what it seems like, only with him it was the language. And he was a much better writer than I am. Hopefully, I will do my friend’s tale justice, when someday I write it all down. In the meantime, he and Drake contact me through the haze of Risperidone when they can, giving me maps and charts and cultural notes and customs and traditions and religions.
They’re living at a house of their cousin’s (their family is a very extended clan from the mountains, so they’ve got a lot of cousins. They were raised together, they’re like brothers) now, and somehow that helps them contact me; I guess there’s a fair bit of arcane paraphernalia lying around for the use. Somehow, a few of the kittens that live there got through, too, but the Risperidone put a stop to that. I kind of miss them sometimes, but they’re probably big by now, anyway. I have a drawing of the house somewhere, and a bit of a map… kind of. It’s a little muddled, because I think it breaks the rules of physics in a few places.
Is this all real? I don’t know. Part of me wants so badly to believe it is, and part of me says that’s ridiculous, but the larger part of me says it doesn’t matter, in a way. I mean, it does. But not very much. The part that counts is the story, right? Mohan wants me to tell the story. Drake wants me to know the world. (Drake also wants me to learn the language, but I’m pretty certain that it can’t be fully communicated by the human tongue—we communicate by thoughts. I think our thoughts go through in pure thought form, and our respective brains translate them as best we can.)
Someday, I will do both.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
But hopefully I'm not really a witch
You know, if I ever found myself being accused of a witch, I think I would wait for a moment when I was alone, probably on Death Row, and sing either Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah—and the whole thing, too, every single verse he wrote—or, or possibly and, U2’s Yahweh. They would both fit, though Hallelujah has a certain hopelessness to it… well, not a hopelessness. A futility. Like Johnny Cash singing Hurt, kind of, he’s run his course, “did my best – it wasn’t much,” and now it’s done, and what can you do but sing? Yahweh is more along the lines of “I walked this road, I know it was the wrong one, please show me where to go from here, I’m lost and all I can see is You now, and I’m scared but still full of love.” …or something.
Anyway. With any luck I’ll never be accused of witchcraft, which is just as well because my voice rather sucks. With any luck, I’ll figure out just what it is I want to do, pretty soon. I don’t have the drive or the inspiration that I used to. It’s strange, it seems almost like my heart has closed itself. I can’t touch that part of me, the deep well of something resembling sadness, something touching pain, and something a bit like ecstasy. It was where I reached for words, for the flow behind the words, and sometimes it gave me tears. Now I laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and the worse life gets the harder that laughter comes, the more it hurts, the more I need it. Like someone replaced a drug I needed with some other drug that I’m now addicted to.
The thing is, now I’ve got no direction. I don’t need a career, I don’t need money, I don’t need a nice home and a car. I did fairly well without them for a fair portion of my life, ne? But I do need a direction. I want to just take to the road, live every Anarchist’s dream and one of mine—spend the rest of my life in a cabin in the woods with no one bothering me ever (maybe decades later someone will find it and be really, really confused), or bike around the continent until I find a place to rest. But I also want to help people, in a major way; I also want to write, and to express in words what this life has taught me, because I need to; I also want to sing, but that’s something I can do anyway from a bike. It’s not easy, or at least not as easy as singing normally, but I can and have done it, for miles at a time. Gives your lungs quite the stretch.
And then there’s the song “Lemon,” also by U2. This song makes more sense if you know the back-story, but it’s beautiful even if you don’t. The first time I heard it, it touched my heartstrings in that way that only Bono really can—I mean the rest of the band too, but it’s his lyrics, the rawness beneath the words, kind of, and his voice singing them—and I nearly cried. Maybe I did. I don’t remember now. I remember the video, Mr. MacPhisto, the devil in a rock-star with a microphone, clinging to that last strand of humanity, he doesn’t know why anymore, drifting from the shore… I don’t know how to put it into words. Maybe only Bono can. Maybe death is an easier loss than insanity.
Remind me never to have a family.
Anyway. With any luck I’ll never be accused of witchcraft, which is just as well because my voice rather sucks. With any luck, I’ll figure out just what it is I want to do, pretty soon. I don’t have the drive or the inspiration that I used to. It’s strange, it seems almost like my heart has closed itself. I can’t touch that part of me, the deep well of something resembling sadness, something touching pain, and something a bit like ecstasy. It was where I reached for words, for the flow behind the words, and sometimes it gave me tears. Now I laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and the worse life gets the harder that laughter comes, the more it hurts, the more I need it. Like someone replaced a drug I needed with some other drug that I’m now addicted to.
The thing is, now I’ve got no direction. I don’t need a career, I don’t need money, I don’t need a nice home and a car. I did fairly well without them for a fair portion of my life, ne? But I do need a direction. I want to just take to the road, live every Anarchist’s dream and one of mine—spend the rest of my life in a cabin in the woods with no one bothering me ever (maybe decades later someone will find it and be really, really confused), or bike around the continent until I find a place to rest. But I also want to help people, in a major way; I also want to write, and to express in words what this life has taught me, because I need to; I also want to sing, but that’s something I can do anyway from a bike. It’s not easy, or at least not as easy as singing normally, but I can and have done it, for miles at a time. Gives your lungs quite the stretch.
And then there’s the song “Lemon,” also by U2. This song makes more sense if you know the back-story, but it’s beautiful even if you don’t. The first time I heard it, it touched my heartstrings in that way that only Bono really can—I mean the rest of the band too, but it’s his lyrics, the rawness beneath the words, kind of, and his voice singing them—and I nearly cried. Maybe I did. I don’t remember now. I remember the video, Mr. MacPhisto, the devil in a rock-star with a microphone, clinging to that last strand of humanity, he doesn’t know why anymore, drifting from the shore… I don’t know how to put it into words. Maybe only Bono can. Maybe death is an easier loss than insanity.
Remind me never to have a family.
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