Quiescent?

Fire smolders within the paper-thin boxes that make my being
Flames flicker with the wind winding its way in-distinct feeling
Uninspired and disenchanted I frown, growl, and glower
My power waits in its temporarily forsworn state.

 0628 13341342

Sewers and Symphony

  Overall, I like my job. Sure, it aint always pretty… sometimes I have to hang outside the windows of shady motel rooms and take pictures of cheating husbands, but every once in a while, I get a real case and I get to do some good. But you know, I think I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sometimes people ask me how I live with myself and I tell’em, “Booze and babes”… It’s what they expect to hear and I don’t bother telling’em different. What’s that you say? I should tell’em the truth? Pff… Yeah right. If people knew I spent my free time reading depressing old Russian books and playing classical tunes on the piano, I’d be out of a job. The truth… People don’t want the truth. In my line of work, I discover a lot of truths people don’t wanna hear. Like what? Well… Fer instance, you know those rumors about people living in the sewers? The ones where they come up at night and snatch babies, or some kind of crap like that? Well let me tell ya, it’s bullshit.



  This really uptight and nasty old lady had hired me to find out if her grand-son was dealing or not. Incidentally, he wasn’t. He was running away from his crazy granny to get married across the border and live in peace. Anyways, it was raining pretty hard –the weather waits for no PI-. So, I was tailing this guy through the city in the pouring rain. I had tailed him all the way to water processing plant where he worked. So I’m doing my best, but the place is a maze, it’s dark and raining like a son of a bitch... Yeah, you guessed it, I lost the fellah, worse yet, I had no idea how to get out of the maze. Next thing I know, these six big dudes are trying to lay the hurt on me and aint lissening to a word I say.



  Well I aint no prizefighter, but I’m fast and I hit hard: you gotta learn to handle yourself in my line of work. I had dropped 2 dudes. I was going to get to work on the others when one of the guys on the ground stopped holding his busted schnoz and grabbed a hold of my legs instead. Next thing I know, they’re lifting my 198lbs (90kgs) and tossing me over a handrail and into water. Yeah, l know, sounds like a rookie’s mistake, don’t it?



  Did I mention, it was raining? Yeah, so this really fast water sweeps me through a big storm drain and into pitch-black sewer tunnels. Was slammed around pretty rough too. At some point, I was going under. I felt too tired to fight my way to the top and I had no air in my lungs. I know what it’s like to get knocked out and I was getting there… that or I was about try my hand at breathin’ muddy water. But then I feel this weird clammy thing pushing me upwards like it meant business. Weirdest thing I ever touched in my life, but I was in no position to argue. So I grab a hold and quickly get pulled to the surface. It’s still pitch black, but wherever I am, the water aint rushing so fast no more.



  The fish, I figured that it what it was… I mean it felt kinda like a big guitar made out of cold soggy rubber. It pulled me for a ways, then shook me off. I don’t scare easily, but let me tell ya, I’ve had happier moments than finding myself paddling in dirty water in pitch darkness. And then I realized I could stand, barely. So I walked up the slope on the bottom until I bumped into a wall. Nearly jumped out of my skin when this dry cracked voice a few feet from my face says, “You shouldn’t be here. Go away.”



  I kept myself from swearing and said “I’d like nothing better, buddy. But I’m a bit lost... Hey you got a light?”
Then there was utter silence, I figured the dude was thinking about my question… But then it dragged on and I wondered if he had left.



  He swore in language I didn’t recognize and then in that scratchy voice of his, “Topsiders…”, he made it sound like insult. Anyways, I heard him move for the first time as he grabbed something from a bag or a pocket and then there was light. He threw what looked like a handful of shining slime onto the ceiling where it stuck fast. So I got my first good look at him. 30 to 35, under nourished male Caucasian, balding(brown?) hair. The dude was scrawny, with a high forehead and big eyes that made him look like an egghead without glasses. The overalls he wore were made of some kind brown rubber and he carried a satchel made of the same material.



  “Follow me.” He says… I still hadn’t pegged his accent.
So he hands me the end of a piece string and says “Hold onto this, if you let go, I won’t come back for you.” And off we went into the darkness of a watery tunnel.



  Well, I whistle when I’m nervous. Being led on the end of string in pitch dark tunnels by a guy I don’t know makes me nervous. So I started whistling the first thing that came to mind… the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.




  So Mr.Male Caucasian 30 to 35 first slows down -I could feel him listening- then stopped altogether and started whistling counterpoints and harmony! And we were off again… Both whistling. I went through at least a dozen classics, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach, Schubert. And every time the dude made up something beautiful to go with whatever I was whistling. Let me tell ya, I was sore I didn’t have a piano. The dude was amazing. Anyways, after walking for a while, water gave way to dry stone and the absolute darkness was giving way to a less oppressive grayscale. He abruptly stopped whistling and walking.
“I go no further. Straight ahead, you will find a ladder. It will take you to street.”
So I says to him, “What? Oh! Thanks man… Dude you’re awesome! Where did you learn to whistle like that?”
He stared at me for a second as if making up his mind about something.
“There is a dry storm drain at the end of the first alley on the right walking down W 42nd street, along the library, from the 5th street intersection. Be there seven nights from now, at 3am.”, then he handed me a small driftwood carving of something that looked like a strangely proportioned manta ray without a mouth. “Show this to the person you meet, they will take you to me.” he said with an air of finality before turning on his heel and walking off into the darkness.



  Well, after arguing with myself about it, I went to that meeting… and to several others afterwards. I got into the habit of taking a keyboard with me. You would not believe the music we’ve made down there. There’s a whole community of people down, there and there all gifted musicians. They keep telepathic mutant slugs like pets -I seen ‘em-, they look like manta rays and act like dogs. Craziest thing I ever did see.



"What's that? Why am I telling you this? Well, I can trust you, right? Besides, even if you went looking for ‘em you’d never find ‘em. Besides, who’d believe you if you told anyone? Well… I got to go, I got work to do. It was good to see you again…"

Laughingly Laudanum

The hand that gives is like that hand that takes
Gantuple grins and lexy laughter fools the fakes
Time to dance or ride off into the panavision sunset
Cactus free landscape might not be the best bet
But still, I have two hands, one in each pocket
And an orange with lunar pockmarked skin
And a strong desire to let the music go, skitter skit
From clumsy fingers and dexterous dreamin’
31/03/05 13081546

Character interview blogfest

Somewhere in blogland, the seven o'clock news has run through all of the important stuff and is preparing to wind down with the obligatory human-interest story.

Onscreen, you see a mustached man with a carefully styled and spray-frozen hairdo. He is sporting a loud aubergine nylon suit with as much ease as his affected smile, trademarks of the veteran anchorman.

Ron Burgundy: "...And now lets go to our foreign correspondent, Asian reporter, Tricia Takanawa, who is in Atlanta with very special report.”

A beautiful, fair-skinned, dark haired, and clearly non-Asian young woman holding a mike appears on screen.

Ron: “Tricia, what happened? You aren’t Asian anymore!"

Ezo: "Ezo C. Mortucan here. Unfortunately Tricia Takanawa was detained in the traffic caused by madwoman getting hit as she chased a publisher across the-"

Ron’s voice, speaking loud enough to cover Ezo’s voice completely: "What happened to Tricia? Her hair looks dark and delicious, like curly delicious black chocolate I would eat with relish. What’s that you say? My name is not Mike! I am Ron! What are you-”

Someone turns Ron’s mike off.

An efficient woman’s voice: “Co-anchor Veronica Corningstone here, I’m sorry Ezo, could you repeat that, we had trouble hearing you because of technical difficulties.”

Ezo: “As I was saying, I’m here at the Philips Arena in Atlanta Georgia with a trio simply known as “the neopenguins”. The neopenguins are starring in a highly successful theatre piece called “Special Delivery For Kass” and have been kind enough to take some time off from their busy rehearsing schedule to answer some of our questions.”

The camera pans off of Ezo and onto three empty seats.

Ezo, too much of a professional to be flustered: “The Neopenguins appear to be eating gum off of the bottom of the chairs…", holding out a packet of triple fresh peppermint gum, " If you’d like to come up and answer some questions, I’ll give you some of this new gum.”

One purple mohawk followed by a pair of mirrored ray-bans appears over the backrest of one of the chairs. The neopenguin spies Ezo’s gum in her outstretched hand, and leaps over the chair in an effort to get to it first as its companions come bursting from beneath the other two chairs. The chairs go flying in a flurry of penguins hastily scrambling to get gum. Though there are only three of them, the scrabbling penguins look like a frantically writhing wave of wings and webbed feet charging toward Ezo who, with trained reflexes of an experienced field reporter, quickly tosses the packet of gum into the air and steps away. The penguins promptly start a three-way wrestling match, complete with impressions of the three stooges.

The camera stays on the penguins.

Ezo’s voice off screen over the sounds of scuffling penguins: “Regular penguins are flightless birds that live in the southern hemisphere… But no one seems to know where the neo penguins came from; their origins are shrouded in mystery. As you can see by the way they are pulling on each other’s Mohawks, they seem real. We have first hand witnesses who report having seen them fly. They seem to be perfectly cognizant of human speech and have demonstrated high levels of intelligence and yet, they often seem to act in… Unpredictable ways. So what is the truth behind this mysterious trio? I suspect we aren’t going to find out by asking them, because speech is not one of their many skills. I for one place little stock in the theory stating that they come from outer-space and that their purpose in life is to battle moon bears and the intergalactic wizard alliance. But who knows? This was Ezo Mortucan reporting for Blogland news, back to you Ron.”

Ron: “There you have it folks, that was non-Asian Tricia Takanawa reporting about something that concerns us all.”

Veronica: “Indeed… And that concludes tonight’s 7o’clock news. For the entire Channel 4 news team, I'm Veronica Corningstone.

Ron: “You stay classy, blogland. This is Ron Burgundy?”
-
Scenes shifts to the dark control room. Veronica and Ron can be seen through the pane of sound proof glass smiling insults at one another as the credits roll.
 
Chief editor: "Dammit. Who typed a question mark on the Teleprompter?"
-
This blogfest was brought to you by Sangu, from "Echoes of a wayward mind".

Buck Rogers, lost in time

I know you've heard this all before in fiction and in movies and what not, but I have an actual gateway through time in my backyard. Before you get all excited, let me just say that it's a one way window FROM the past, and not that distant a past at that. It's from exactly six months and three weeks. Yeah, I know exactly. I've tested it, but we'll get to that later. I've tried to tell people, but no one believes me. Ok, I have a reputation of being a dreamer. In fact less charitable people have harsher epithets for me, but I digress.

It all started eight months ago.

It was five-thirty AM or maybe six, the sun was cresting the tall Tupelo tree in the yard. The cat, nominally my neighbor’s, but it lives in my house, had decided that this was a good time for me to get up and let him out. So I went to the dining room with my laptop to get some writing done. It’s a nice place to be at that hour, the sunlight comes streaming in through the big bay windows and I get to see the yard light up as the sun starts hitting it. I had been writing for something like ten or twenty minutes when movement caught my eye. A young buck, a year or a year and half old, came sauntering into the garden out of the southeast corner which connect with the woods.

I was gobsmacked. I had seen foxes and raccoons aplenty since I had moved in last year but I had never seen deer! I quickly groped on the table for my camera which I always keep with me. But swore gently to myself, I had forgotten it on my bedside table! Luckily my lover’s little point and shooter was on the table so I grabbed it and starting snapping pictures through the windows.

The whitetail buck nosed around in my vegetable patch for a while and then sauntered out towards the south west, which my neighbors have fenced in. It walked into trees’ shadow over the underbrush and scrub with its long legged gait, and abruptly disappeared! I was sure I must have imagined it, I must just have lost sight of it in the shadows, and vegetation, and that it would be coming back out of the impasse soon enough. But fifteen minutes later, it had yet to appear. I went out to investigate, found tracks soon enough, but they just stopped a few paces away from the fence!

 

Pictures all from my RI trip

Last hurrah for chivalry

The first thing that had struck me about the guy was the fact that he was wearing a brand new designer neon green tux without any shoes. For some reason the lack of shoes was what struck me the most at the time, not the fact that this filthy looking fellow was walking about in a rather ridiculously colorful and expensive looking tux in the middle of a park at 10 am. But then of course the fellow spoke and all questions as to what was the most unusual abut him vanished, it was most definitely his lack of shoes. Living in the streets had accustomed me to hearing the most unusual things, but even the crazies usually wore shoes except for those wearing saffron bathrobes offering free vegetarian dinners.

The man acknowledged my presence by saying the following words:
“Half an apple is not an apple. Although people may be fruity, they aren't fruit (though some are vegetables). They can get rid of a rotten half and become whole. This is only if two halves do maketh a whole and if a whole minus a half equals a whole and not half a hole or whole hole. Who would want such a hole? Whole where? Can you dig it?”

He concluded with a solemn nod as he sat on the bench opposite to me. I answered with a brief smile, a curt nod, and a “Hello.” as I set my case in front of me and started tuning my acoustic guitar. I then noticed he was sitting cross legged with the palms of his feet facing the sky, a quaint picture indeed, but at the time I didn’t give it much thought… I had to get to work so as to be able to eat lunch: my stomach was already demanding sustenance.

So I started playing… one of my own melodies as usual. I had yet to put words on this one, but the man sang to the tune in a strange voice, not unpleasantly, but with something in his tone that was soft yet carried far, just beneath cognition of the ear and to that of the mind, and he was singing the song as if it was his story, making the words his own… His singing was fine by me and people were coming. The bottom of my case filled with coins, drawn it seemed by his singing. The only thing was that as he sung he stared at me unnervingly as if the song were nothing more than his personal soliloquy to me. I didn’t realize that he was making up the lyrics as I played up until he started his third couplet. I was so surprised I nearly stopped playing but curiosity made me play the tune to it’s end, I wanted to hear the end of what the fellow was telling me…
He was saying goodbye.

 








Willie Nelson's Guitar "Trigger" found online

Mourning Dew

The wind caresses these plains of green
There in the morn is silver dew
The dew remaining from fair maiden’s spleen
Are pearls of forgotten loves, lost, I knew.
'Though their tears remain, the maidens have long gone away
And to their health these tears I drink everyday.
Among the fruits of their sadness briar rabbits play
Thus unknowing we live our lives merry and gay
And forget the wars that trample the ground
With all of it's lost riches that we have found.
Let us live our lives as we would,
And remember the lost ones as we should;
Let us live our lives as if we could...
1997

 

Peony in RI from recent trip.

Elayin Awakens

The sunbeams have dissipated the darkness from the horizon, just as they have dispelled sleep from the form of the person tucked under the comforter. Elayin celebrates the new day by pretending to be asleep for just a few moments more... If only to savor the soft warmth of her bed a little longer. If only to fully make her way back from her dreams and to recall as much of her journey as possible.

The moment passes. Elayin knows that it is time to get dressed and to go fetch water at the river for breakfast as well as for the morning's ablutions. As ever, before attaching the knife Saskia gave her so long ago to her belt, she pauses to reflect over the drawn blade.

"What are you doing? Where are you now? Do you still have this knife's twin sister? Does dawn glitter in your blade's garnet as brightly as it does in mine?"

The flight of thoughts like swallows, swoop, scatter, and vanish like the reflection of her eyes as she sheathes the blade.

The air outside is just cool enough to chill Elayin's cheeks, and so she hastens to warm up. Along the way she looks at the trees, the wild grass, the leaves, and flowers that have all been filigreed with silvery frozen dew that is quickly changing to vanishing bronze as the dawn gathers momentum. It's as if the forest's nightly dreaming experienced evanescence every morning.
The river, which is sheltered by the trees, is still shrouded in twilight... a moment bridging two worlds.

Elayin drops the water bag to drink from the tranquility that surrounds her and to feast on the beauty of the mirror black water that contrasts with the leafy tree tops that are quickly beginning to reflect the morning's fiery red light. Movement draws her gaze: a gray kingfisher, perched on a middle branch of a nearby tree is scanning the waters below with short nervy movements of its head. It vanishes from her sight as it takes flight and reappears seconds later. It has just flown up past the line of shadows and has burst into iridescent colors: it's throat is awash in crimson and copper that seems to color the air through which it flies. A moment's weightlessness as the climbing flame reaches its apex and changes into a bright shooting star, an azure arrow streaking towards the black mirror of the water's surface. Splash, the sapphire streak strikes the water!

Picture by Jiri Bohdal

Time holds its breath and the victorious kingfisher's beak emerges from the waters with a squirming silver fish in its beak. With a beat of its wings, it tears itself from the waters that seem to explode upwards around it as a giant emerald pike fish blasts upwards out of the darkness of the deeper waters. Drops of water sparkle in the air. The snap of the aquatic carnivores teeth, the sound of a giant fish regaining its world.

Elayin sighs, reminds herself to fill the waterbag and makes her way home.
____________________________
Le soleil perce l’horizon et, comme à l’accoutumée, le sommeil de la personne blottie sous la couette. Elayin fête ce réveil en faisant mine de dormir encore… histoire savourer un peu plus longtemps la douce tiédeur du lit… histoire de se donner le temps de revenir entièrement du monde des rêves et d’en garder le maximum.

Le moment passe et Elayin sait qu’il est temps de s’habiller afin d’aller à la rivière chercher l’eau pour le petit déjeuner et les ablutions matinales… comme tous les matins
en ceignant le couteau que Saskia lui avait donné jadis, un moment de réflexion.

« Que fais-tu ? Où es-tu ? Tu as gardé le jumeau de cette lame… L’aube brûle-t-elle dans le grenat de ton pommeau comme dans le mien ? »

Une volée de pensées comme des hirondelles, s’éparpillent et s’évanouissent comme le reflet de ses yeux lorsqu’elle rengaine la lame.

Dehors, air est juste assez frais pour piquer la peau du visage d’Elayin qui s’active pour se réchauffer. En chemin, son regard observe les arbres, l’herbe, les feuilles et fleurs qui sont touts argentés de rosée qui tourne au cuivre avec l’aube avant de s’évaporer. C’est comme si l’esprit de la forêt vivait, chaque matin, un automne chimérique, l’été de la chimère étant la nuit.
La rivière, abritée par les arbres, demeure pour un moment encore, au crépuscule… à l’automne de la chimère… un moment à la frontière de plusieurs mondes.

Elayin pose un instant le sac à eau encore vide afin de se repaître de la tranquillité et de la beauté des eaux noires qui contrastent avec les hauts des arbres qui s’empourprent avec les rayons du matin. Un mouvement attire son regarde : un martin pécheur gris, perché dans un arbre à mi-hauteur, scrute les eaux noires en bougeant la tête de droite à gauche. En un éclair, il disparaît de sa vue en prenant son envol. Subitement il réapparaît en pleine accession en traversant la ligne d’ombre et semble incandescent : les couleurs de feu de son ventre déteignant même sur l’air qu’il traverse. Un instant de suspension, la flamme à son paroxysme s’évanouit pour devenir une brillante étoile filante, un trait azur filant vers le miroir noir de l’eau et la frappant violemment avec une gerbe d’eau.

Le temps retient son haleine et le Martin-pécheur émerge de l’eau victorieux, un alevin au bec. D’un battement, il s’arrache à l’étreinte glacée de l’eau- qui semble exploser autour de lui tandis qu’un énorme brochet tigré d’émeraude surgit des ombres. Les gouttes d’eau étincellent dans l’air. Le claquement de la mâchoire du carnassier aquatique, le bruit d’un poisson géant réintégrant son monde.

Elayin soupire, se rappelle de se remplir le sac à eau et s’en retourne à la maison.

The bitter boy

The bitter boy cursed the morning sun, unwilling for another day to come.
He shrugged and stepped back, or perhaps it was more of a step off at that,
And let the spinning whirling planet make its way through space without him.

Alone at last, he gazed for a while at the busy vastness of the galaxy and beyond that into the depths of the universe. Old old light told him tales of things long gone and forgotten, of treasure earned and ill gotten, of sad scintillating stars, of crazed comets touring near and far, and of places where reality frays and where dreams are free to stray.

The bitter boy is better now. He closes his eyes, looks within, and folds the sheets of many hued paper he finds there into fantastical creatures that live love and dream.

See how the feet of the boy, one year older, gently alight.
He is home.

04.06.10 21292141

"Orchestra" 
by Robert Lang

Dance dance dance

As a child, I danced amidst hate filled faces.
I danced to the top and ignored feigned social graces.
I brushed barriers aside and broke away from the dark places.

I was dancer by nature and definition and thus did I shape my mind and body.

The wheel of time spun its frantically lazy pirouette; with its revolutions came realization that there was no place in the world for a drop-forged dancer... at least none that I could morally accept or intellectually bear.

So I changed scenes.
I am still a dancer.
I am no longer a child, but I am still dancer.
Maybe not the dancer I once was, but I am still a dancer.

I just express the dance differently... sometimes in writing, sometimes in music; but in full truth and truthfully in all that I do.

I am dancer carried by the music of life, as such the rhythm is always
easier to find.

Come! Dance with me.


Spun off from a comment 03.06.2010 09020920

Sylvie Guillem

Scaterlings

Hearts join, part, or shatter with ease or with hardship, emotions adrift in a sea of potential.

Two vivid rainbows, arcing over and through a turquoise sky, can never touch.

A still damp leaf twirls as it falls and meets the embrace of the drying earth.

A word like an arrow in flight that has yet to alight.

The humbled bow.

And exit.

02.06.2010 11081112