CAIN’T YOU EVER JUST LET ME GO SOMEWHERE ALONG…

“Where ya going Word?”

“What’s it to ya Well?” Wordy eyed his friend spiciously over his shovel plate of cold beans.

Well smiled.

“Might wanna come along,” Well said right neighborly.

“Gol dangit Well,” Wordy said slapping his sides so that dust swirled up offin his breeches like sawdust in a grist mill. Some of the dust settled back in his beans but Wordy didn’t notice.

“Cain’t you ever just let me go somewhere along?!”

Well was patiently quiet a moment after Wordy’s antipenchant display. As he usually was when Word went off on one of his ineffectual tangential tirades. Then Well threw his head back and finished his drink before leaning forward and spitting out the swill-mash that had settled at the bottom of his glass. After that he straightened.

“So does that mean I’m coming witcha, or not?” he finally asked.

Wordy looked at Well as sasperated as a flied walleyed rout, and then shook his head slowly as if he had just watched a hell-bent bull pull loose from his plow.

“Oh git your damn saddle Well… I ain’t totin you on my back.”

from my Western novel, The Letter Men

A LITTLE WINTER

A LITTLE WINTER

A little Winter
Mixed in his Soul
Undone by sleeping hope
When roused at dawn
By a frozen sky
Painted by the same distant
Summer sun that shone
Upon his ancient race, godlike
In its promise of a fiery
Season still to fully rise
That comes to melt away
All pressured chill
The long night freezes
To his aching frame
When nothing but the past
Is harvest cargoed
In his hold to ship away
When seasons change
And tides do turn
With wine and oils in bursting
Urns that fatten promise
Blessed with gain when
Winds do favor once again
To sail away to summer climes
Where passing hardship
Past the Straits within himself
Is but a little Winter
Mixed in the memories
Of his soul and stored
Below the vacant decks
Where day does navigate,
And wheel and rudder makes
The long and cutting wake
Towards those unmapped
Harbors he has yet
To reach on open seas…

(Verses that occurred to me today at sunrise… have a Good Day Folks)

SON OF ROME, SON OF MAN

Marsippius stood forth.

“I would speak,” he said clearly.

Many in the chamber murmured uncertainly but Jhönarlk stood suddenly upon the base of his throne and then stepped down from it and approached. Not far from the Commander he paused and spoke softly, but also clearly.

“Then I would hear you,” he said.

Marsippius turned abruptly and faced the chamber. His voice was tired and hoarse with war, and with his recent agonies, but clear and cold with resolution.

“Though I am not of your number, and a Man, I come to you with a warning.”

“What!?” shouted a voice among the Eldevens, after barely a pause, but it was not clear who had spoken or his real intent in speaking. For some among the Eldevens hated the men, and the Basilegate in particular. But some perhaps respected them, or were even secret allies. It was difficult to know, so cryptic and veiled were the motives of most Eldevens to most men.

Marsippius scanned the crowd curiously, hoping to spot the one that that had addressed him, but could not fix upon who had spoken, so he addressed them all.

FF8CA1 PRESTER JOHN. /nLegendary medieval priest and monarch of Asia or Africa. Enthroned on a map of East Africa. Detail from 16th century atlas.

“You know well that I am not one of you,” Marsippius said, and though he spoke with the stoicism of the soldier and his hands remained at his side and did not move, still the earnestness of his words was the only flourish he seemed to need. “Yet I still come from a Free People’s with a High Christian Duty,” and again many among them murmured, deeply suspicious of the man’s god, religion, and ideas about Magic and Miracle. “Thus I say this to you, as long as you all wait for someone else to begin, no one of you will dare. And even if one among you may dare,” and his eyes seemed to shift over his shoulder momentarily back towards the Samarl, “then all his efforts will also be in vain as long as no other join him. To all peoples who have ever lived, on this world, or any other, comes danger, comes hardship, comes risk, and comes war. The time between these things may be long, so that one generation forgets even the nature of what it means to be threatened, or short, so that every new generation rightfully wearies of what must be done, and sacrificed, but eventually all woes and risks return to all peoples. It is only a matter of time; great, or brief. Do not ask me why this is so, I am merely a soldier, not a priest, prophet, or philosopher, yet that is the nature of things. Whether any of you like it, or not. And even those who are not soldiers know this truth, though they are loathe to admit it aloud for lack of public courage. Which we Romans do not lack, and never have, though we lack many other things you have apparently well-mastered.”

The chamber fell silent and yet the hall was constructed in such a way that the echoes of Marsippius’ words ran thrice more around the room so that even those to the very rear of the hall heard them all clearly.

“Yet your mastery is not in dispute. Your courage and your Manhood, if such a term applies to you, and in one great sense I think it does and may even unite your people with mine, however, are indeed presently in dispute. You lack deeds of courage consummate with your mastery of other matters.”

Marsippius paused and openly surveyed the hall and those assembled before him with some obvious and unstated admiration. Even the hostile Eldevens noted it.

“Though what will it matter if all you have achieved is squandered now by shameful passivity? Brought low and ruined by your own inaction; in a day, a week, a month, a year? Disaster is upon you, you know this, and likely war, and you well know this too, and all of your almost countless achievements; your art, your music, your culture, your cities, your farms, your families, your very happiness and future are now to be wasted not by your lack of ability, but by your lack of purpose, will, and public courage? You are still a very formidable people, all with honest eyes can see this plainly, and I would gladly call you ally, and even friend, and I would gladly do whatever I can to defend and strengthen you, yet I cannot save you, and Fate cannot save you, and prophecy cannot save you, and even God will not save you if you make no real effort of any kind to save yourselves.”

The hall was still, as well as quiet, though it was obvious to all that many in attendance were angry, and many others uncertain, though some seem swayed. Or at least swayable.

It seemed also to most that Marsippius had more to say, perhaps far more, but, being the soldier he was, and disdaining much talk he simply returned to his place and turned back in the direction of the Samarl and stood lightly at attention.

Many among the Eldevens, who often by both custom and habit talked at length, found this abrupt ending confusing, even bizarre, uncanny, and unnatural. But Marsippius’ efforts were at an end. He was a simple man, used to action and planning, he looked scornfully on much debate and indecision. As eventually all real men must.

Jhönarlk however instantly understood the hopeful gap the Commander of the Basilegate had opened among his own indecisive countrymen and the various races of the Eldevens assembled there. He did not speak immediately but let the man’s words turn themselves thoroughly throughout the chamber before he acted. And then the Samarl of Samarkand spread his hands before him and looked directly at Marsippius. He spoke not to the hall, but as one old friend might to another, though neither knew the other well.

“Son of Rome, and son of man, then, let us begin…”

from, The Basilegate/The Kithariune

EYE TO THE FUTURE

THE PAST FEW DAYS IN MY SCIENCE FICTION UNIVERSE

over the past few days I have been further developing/redeveloping my Science Fiction Universe, better classifying the players involved and the better defining the systems and societies and groups and organizations and individuals operating within it, as well sketching out timelines and the major events occurring in this universe and where those events occur.

To that end I have developed the following notes and plans for the Human Navies (space and stellar) in my universe and exactly how they will operate.

Below is an improved list of these organizations and players and their ships:

Stellie – common or popular name for any crew working aboard (any type or form or class of) space and star and planetary ships

Stellarne – common or popular for anyone working aboard a military or patrol type ship

Asterisk – colloquial term for any of the risks associated with or assumed by service aboard any type of space or star or planetary craft or station, uninsurable, and except for the military rarely compensated for in case of serious injury or death

Psychoids – general term for any of the psychological disorders or psychoses common to those who operate in deep space or for prolonged periods in space. Eventually most of these dissipate in lifers and tend to be uncommon (for reasons unknown) in Frontiersmen.

Pathocoers – general term for any of the somatic or physical disorders that occur over time due to prolonged exposure to deep space or to prolonged service in space. Some bodies eventually adapt to these spatial and temporal and positional and accelerative/velocity stressors, others do not and are either forced form service, suffer lifelong chronic disorders, or die as a result of daily living in space.

Ship Forms:

Cosmeres/Spaceships – ships operating farthest from human space and in unexplored regions beyond human Frontier(s); and much later a very small number of ships that traverse different dimensions, other realities, and into different temporal epochs – Typically these are Explorer ships or sometimes, though very rarely, during wartime, that number may include Warships. Ships operating in Extra-Boundary Space, Hyper-Field Space, Protospace, or in so called Cosmic Space.

Starships – ships travelling between or operating between/for human controlled or previously explored star systems, up to the Frontier. Ships that operate in so-called “Gray Space,” or within Boundary or Inner or Intra-Frontier space. See ship classes below. *

Planetary ships – ships which move between human occupied or human dominated planets, stations, colonies, bases, and facilities along long established travel and trade routes. Ships that operate within the well-established boundaries of Human Space, or within “Safe Space.” Within Inter-Frontier Space. These ships tend to be commercial ships, police craft, patrol ships, and transport ships.

Classes of Ships:

Explorers/X-Boats/X-Craft (explorer ships involved in exploration, science, research, development, and discovery both within and sometimes outside Human Spatial Frontiers) – armed (astatic) and unarmed (silent), ships may rnage in size form mid-range to small craft and even to stealth vessels

Patrol ships – armed, but swift and light

Battle/Conflict/Warships – heavily and experimentally armed, defended, armored, and shielded: battle lightest class, in squadrons of 10 or less, or in war in dispensillas, conflict mid-range in tandem with teams of 2 or 3, or in war to support conflict and Warships, warships largest class, heavily and experimentally armed, and armored, designed to operate singly and independently on long patrols, also designed to scavenge and scoop resources from space, unoccupied bodies (like explorers), and in war operate in wargroups of 2 to 4 with support vessels.

Commercial ships – unarmed or lightly or experimentally armed

Note: All explorers and battle/conflict/warships are of entirely unique and modular designs suited to those Actions most anticipated or expected of them (one of a kind ships), all patrol and commercial ships are of various standardized blueprints and designs with slight Captain or Commander modifications as desired or needed

The Astronautical Corp:

Astroceanic (pronounced as-troscenic by most or by civilians and civilian contractors, or astro-ce-anic by crew) – any ship or event or enterprise involving the Astronautical Corp.

Astronautical Corp – ships transported by armed explorers to worlds with oceans or liquid atmosphere where “subnautica” ships can be deployed to explore those environments. The crews of such ships are call astronauts.

The Curae:

The Curae – the Superpriests of the Future who lead the “Potter’s-Revolt” or Curare against human society

The Frontiersmen:

The Frontiersmen – explorers who operate alone or in very small teams in previously unexplored areas of the extreme Frontier (both in space and by campfall/planetfall), or well beyond the Frontier of human or known space. Such expeditions are extremely resource and capital and technology intensive and are usually funded by megacorporations or private interests or even sometimes by groups like the Curae, despite the fact that most Frontiersmen are anti-authority and hate oversight and often disobey assignments and orders and will even conceal or hide discoveries (like early American Frontiersmen, id est, Boone).

Frontiersmen tend to be highly trained (especially in science, survival, exploration, alien habitats, adaptive invention and innovation, and xenobiology) loners who learn early to forage and scavenge on their long assignments.

If a Frontiersmen is alone on assignment it is called a Soquest and he is said to be soquestered until he returns. If he goes to the same area more than once that is a Sequest and he is sequestered.

If he goes in a small team of 2 to 3 others that is a Commission and while so missioned this team is said to be committed. If it is a multiphased commitment to the same place it is called a Chartor, or Longstake.

Some Assignments can last a year or more and a few have lasted decades though the typical deployment is roughly six months, Solaterra Time (ST – seasonal conversion time adaptive to alien planets) or Solar Orbital Time (SOT – fixed) or Atomic Time (AT) or Astronomical Time (AST) which are standard Time Forms among future humans, though some Frontiersmen go Native even as to counting time.

Frontiersmen are typically deployed by Explorer Craft though some lifelongers or well-funded Frontiersmen design, develop, and have built their own delivery ships, beacons, living shelters, micro and orbital satellites, and other gear. A Frontiersman that expresses a desire to never return to human space is called an Exilean, one who goes Native is said to be “Occupied,” and one who disappears into the Frontier and whose real fate is unknown, even if suspected, is said to be “Bewildered,” or “Baffled.”

Although many other secondary and tertiary players and events are involved, and although larger issues do occur within my science fiction universe (religious, political, corporate, business, alien, military, scientific, technological, etc.) most of the stories set in my science fiction universe revolve around three main groups; the Curae, the Astronautical Corp., and the Frontiersmen. And around so-called “God Technologies.”

TODAY WHILE RUCKING

in my South-Western woods I noticed unusual trees of various kinds and, some having fallen, their remnant trunks. Often while hiking or rucking or walking in my woods (or in any forest or wilderness area) I will note things about what I encountered (animal or botanical life, geography, geology, etc.) and later convert those things into literary, poetic/song, or invention ideas.

(That is how my mind works, I see something and think, “what if that were different or altered in some way?” Also I often begin converting things like that into langauges/terms I have created or into code-forms.)

Today was sort of a combination of all three. Which also led me to 3 different literary ideas. Which I will shortly list below.

These three ideas will all go into my Kithariune novels about the Eldevens.

They also led me to another useful literary idea. The Eldevens are supposed to be considered very dangerous by men (and indeed can be) but their reputation in this regard is often overblown or misunderstood. They are dangerous, but not necessarily or intentionally malicious. But why would (some/may) men consider them so frightening and deadly? I’ve often debated why this might be.

Their appearance and abilities, of course, but today another idea occurred to me. The fleshwood example below.

Many men would consider them “flesh-wearers,” and dangerous practitioners of magic (they are) but things like “flesh-wearers” would be misunderstandings generated by things in their own language or by faulty/tricky translations in which the Eldevens wear flesh of trees, but men encountering them would mistake it for the flesh of men, or the flesh of other Eldevens. (Thus even generating tales of cannibalism.)

So men, on many occasions, fail to understand the Eldeven meaning of terms translated into human languages, or simply misunderstand what they see the Eldevens doing.

Hence the Eldevens seem extremely dangerous to men by mistranslation and by misunderstanding, and by their alien habits, customs, and culture. A “misinterpreted” lethality and reputation for being dangerous greatly exaggerated by misapprehension. Similar to human experience in misinterpreting a healing woman (folk witch) or cunning man (village wizard) for/as a demonic worshiping witch or warlock. Anyway it was extremely good to go rucking today. For the past few days I’ve been hiking because I have a ruptured disc in my lower back and the hiking and stretching outdoors is helping me to recover. Not to mention the beneficial idea-generation.

Fleshwood (Symýs) – trees with a soft, flesh-like bark that can be carefully skinned from (remove too much and the tree dies, but some of the Eldevens cultivate the trees like food-crops, but to create “flesh-goods”) some of the tree and the resulting material/skins can be used to create a hard, leather like material that can be cured and treated in different ways to make carry-bags, clothing, strips and wraps, and even light, flexible armor. The flesh of the tree cannot be eaten as it is poisonous, but, the wood underneath, which is also soft and moist, can be eaten in emergencies for short periods of time, and the leaves are sued to make teas and medicines. The Eldevens call Fleshwood Trees and the “flesh” produced by them Symys. Symys is said to be normally durable but under certain circumstances it can disintegrate unexpectedly or easily and rumors persist that in rare circumstances it can graft itself onto the user effectively becoming their own flesh when worn or handled over extended periods of time.

Doomtrees (Limvlârņ) – trees cursed by sorcery or witchcraft which when a person or beast (named in the curse) touches the tree or comes within a certain proximity the tree crashes upon the victim without warning and without any sound other than that of a soft breeze. Doomtrees are often used as traps, ambush enclosures, or to prevent approach to a protected site. The Eldevens call doomtrees Limvlarn, literally, “accursed-limbs,” or kyl-fařth (slay-roots).

Loft or Trunkposts (Heftl-Oürl) – an Eldeven habit of treating and converting tree trunks into covert or coded signposts that reveal both the direction to and the distance to a given waypoint or destination. Such trunks are used most often and most especially in thick forests (though can be established anywhere) and are recognizable to most Eldevens, regardless of race (assuming they spend time out of doors). Such trunks are subtly carven and once treated using Elturgy they stand and last without decay for centuries. Some Eldevens are said to be able to “lay hands” upon such trunks and to mentally understand messages left there for them by others or to visualize and see the way to their destination and what might lay upon that path, especially if danger lurks upon the way. The Eldevens call these posts Loft (Yearl) or (Heftl-Oürl) Trunk-posts.

TONIGHT I LOOKED AT MY LITERARY PRODUCTIONS (AGAIN)

by volume that is. For my Steinthal novel alone I’ve got 225 pages in scenes and must have a dozen different cases going at once. I’m gonna have to break em up into separate books of course. Lol. (And that’s not counting my two other detective characters.)

For my High Fantasy, The Kithariune I have over a thousand pages (maybe 1500) for my Trilogy, in scenes, chapters, research, notes, and dialogue.

About the same for my sci-fi books, and especially the Main Novel, The Curae.

For my pulp and espionage books I must have over 500 pages apiece.

Western, regional, frontier and historical novels, maybe the same.

I have written literally hundreds of articles and essays. About 500 songs or song lyrics. Thousands of poems, which I now have divided into 6 or 7 different books. Dozens of scientific papers, dozens of short stories, dozens of musical compositions, dozens of math papers, scores of mathematical formulae, coupla dozen children’s books, three young adult books, dozens of lectures and educational courses, and recently three presentations and courses for my Coaching business. Games I’ve designed, and programs, manuals and instructional works, informational books, business reports and papers, business plans, etc. Don’t even get me started.

Point is I’ve produced a shit ton of material over time.

If not for my kids and work (not blaming either, just saying they have in the past diverted or diluted my time, though my kids are worth it) and the publishing industry (which, a lot of people say they like my writings, but the publishing industry doesn’t, primarily I suspect because I am Christian and Conservative, since literally no one in any industry has ever told me I’m not a top-flight writer – but I’m tired of screwing around with that industry, and I won’t negate my own aims and morals and standards for it) I would already be hip-deep in published works.

(I mean aside from ghost-works and stuff I’ve done for clients, I mean hip-deep in my own stuff.)

But now my new businesses and investments are up and running and once they are self-operational I’m really turning full-ahead to my Literary and related careers (song-writing, invention, etc.) and in 2024 I self-publish like crazy.

I certainly have the material and with the AI I’m designing to do editing and arrangement 2024 should see me flush on the self-publishing markets.

So I’m off to the Chariot Races… like everything else from now on (business, investment, charity, science, exploration, etc.) I take the reins. Wish me Good Fortune and Godspeed.

And the same to you at whatever you tempt Fate at… or Work at to fulfill your Fate.

HUNTING IS DIFFERENT

THE ONE-MAN JOB

Maugham passed a uniform and a plainclothesman exiting as he entered Steinthal’s office. The officers and Maugham were equally surprised to see each other. Recovering from his initial shock Maugham nodded politely and the two other men, glancing up at Maugham’s enormous height returned the favor, but warily.

The plainclothesman stepped out of the way and held the door open for Maugham to pass before looking back into the room.

“This him?” the suit asked.

Steinthal, sitting at his desk raised his right hand and finger in acknowledgement. The man nodded in reply and shut the door behind him.

Maugham walked over to stand in front of Steinthal’s desk and asked, “What did they want?”

Steinthal glanced at Maugham and said, “Calling in a favor.”

“But I thought you didn’t have good relations with the cops?” Maugham continued.

“Big place, lotta cops.” Steinthal replied. “Besides, what others don’t know can’t hurt me.”

Maugham grunted and suddenly realized there was an open file laid out in front of Steinthal. He glanced at it, and seeing this Steinthal’s eyes also dropped to the file.

It looked like a rather hastily photocopied hardcopy of a case file. Or perhaps parts of it. Maugham didn’t ask but both he and Steinthal knew he knew what had happened, and why.

“No electronic or data trace,” Steinthal said flatly. “Maybe they got something on camera but I really doubt it. Knowing them. Probably copied unrelated material just to cover. I would have.”

Maugham nodded and grunted again.

“So what is it?”

“About a vic,” Steinthal replied. “But that’s not important right now.”

Maugham looked at Steinthal quizzically.

“What’s important is the killer,” Steinthal replied to Maugham’s look.

Steinthal tended to piss off professionals when he talked that way, purposely avoiding terms like UNSUB, or subject, or even suspect when it came to violence. Just “killer” or murderer” was all he would say. Drove the feds bonkers but he didn’t care. And as he liked to say, “Screw the feds.”

“Do they know who it is,” Maugham asked, thumbing back towards the door.

Steinthal shrugged.

“Maybe, you just never know with the cops,” Steinthal said cagily.

Maugham tilted his head sideways.

“Well, what about the Dick?” he asked becoming even more curious.

“Yeah,” Steinthal said. “What I don’t know about what he don’t know can’t hurt either of us either. And that’s true vice-versa too.”

Maugham was becoming agitated at Steinthal’s evasiveness so he kept at him. Maybe out of nothing more than aggravation.

“Well, if you’re not gonna tell me anything about the vic, then what about the killer. Do you think you know who he is?”

Steinthal looked hard at Maugham, as if weighing something in his mind. Whatever it was he was weighing, it seemed to tilt this way, and that, before settling out even.

“Maugham, I’m almost certain I know who he is.”

Surprised Maugham paused a moment.

“Well, what are you gonna do about it?” Maugham asked seriously, thinking he might be finally making some headway.

Steinthal glanced down at the manila file, straightened it, and then folded the cover over to close it.

“I’m going to hunt the mutha-fucker down, and kill him,” Steinthal said without bothering to look back up.

Maugham grunted and it sounded like he had just lifted a heavy weight successfully.

“So you definitely know who he is?”

Steinthal shook his head.

“Is anything in life really definite Maugham? But if I had to lay odds at table I’d say 100 percent. Probably more. Give or take a few points.”

Maugham nodded.

“Alright, who is it then?” he asked.

Again Steinthal stared at Maugham, almost uncomfortably, as if weighing something private in his mind. And again he weighed it awhile before he replied.

“Marcus Octavio Sodworth.”

Maugham heard the name clearly enough but just couldn’t place it. It seemed familiar, and he worked at it for awhile, but then he shook his head. Steinthal waited to see if Maugham could make him but then realized he wouldn’t.

“You may know him as Sod-Spot, or Spotty,” Steinthal said finally.

A look of surprise, and probably real concern passed across Maugham’s face.

“But Spotty is an enforcer for Sinaloa. And maybe Gulf.”

“Maybe,” Steinthal said.

“And he’s a killer,” Maugham said, as if discussing a very dangerous and proficient athlete.

Steinthal stood up in a very fluid motion and leaned across his desk as if about to pounce.

“He is,” Steinthal said. “But then again so am I Maugham. The difference being I’m not just a killer, I’m also a fucking Hunter. And killers don’t live forever around a fucking hunter.”

And as he said it Steinthal seemed to change in nature, and the look in his eyes became so sharp and so clear and so cold that even Maugham froze momentarily.

So Maugham was quiet a moment, and then said, “Let me swing by the house and get a few things.”

“No,” said Steinthal flatly and without any doubt in his reply. “No, you won’t.”

Steinthal glanced up and down at his gargantuan friend as if judging him impassively from a distance. As if choosing teams, and finding no one worth choosing. But then he softened a little.

“Maugham, you’re big, and you’re strong, and you’re good. No doubt of that. But you lumber, and you’re slow. And you’re sometimes loud. And most of all you’re big, and you bore easy. And I’m going to hunt. Hunting is different. You’re not the man for this job. As a matter of fact this is purely a one-man job. And I’m that man.”

Then Steinthal picked up the file, and turned, and walked to his pack and unzipped it and put the file deep inside.

While he did so Maugham thought about what he had just said. He was offended, and a little hurt, but he knew Steinthal had called it true. Maugham was indispensable in a stand up fight, and as muscle he shook even old oaks, but an on your belly snake hunt and a knife to the side of the throat in the dark, he’d be little help at that. And likely an open liability. You had to read people for what they were, not for what you wished they were. Steinthal was right, much as Maugham hated it.

“Dammit John,” Maugham finally said in frustration. “Well then, what do you want me to do?”

Steinthal picked up his pack and threw it across one shoulder. He walked by Maugham and as he did so he said,

“Go home Maugham. If I need you I’ll call you. But I won’t need you.”

When he got to the door he opened it and left it open. Wide.

“That’s it?” Maugham asked.

“No,” Steinthal said glancing back over his shoulder. “Lock up when you leave.”

Then Steinthal continued on down the hall towards the streets.

Maugham shook his head in disgust.

Before Steinthal hit the door to exit the building Maugham called out to him.

“At least tell me where you’re going?!” he asked.

Steinthal might have said something in reply, or perhaps not. It was hard to tell at that distance. But either way he was already gone…

(Tuesday’s Tale: I wrote this scene after watching a pair of “hunters” kill a male lion and then watching them attacked by another lion while taking “trophy pics” of their kill. Was it all real? I mean it is the internet after all… but if it was real then they were killers but certainly not hunters. Like most modern people they didn’t understand the difference at all, and if it was real, they’re probably dead because they didn’t understand the difference. Which disgusts me but also tends to infuriate me. And because he/they didn’t understand the difference the man probably got his wife killed, or at least mauled. But life is what it is and modern people are what they are. Anyway it reminded me of some events in my past and while lying in a hot bath to recover from an injury this scene for Steinthal and Maugham occurred to me and I got out and wrote it. Took about an hour and a half, lot slower than normal for me, but my wife walked in in the middle of it, so I couldn’t write smooth or clean until our conversation ended. Still, don’t think our conversation scattered my thoughts or hurt the scene any but that’s up to you. Hope you enjoy it, it’s a first draft, and if you wanna comment, do so.)

Coda: I subtitled this scene, the One-Man Job. Since I wrote a scene for Denn the other day also about a One Man Job (for a Woman) I just couldn’t resist…

IN FICTION EVERY MAIN CHARACTER

Is absolutely vital. As they are the ones who inspire the Audience/Reader to attempt and to Do Great and Important Things.

Yet every Secondary Character is also of enormous import as they are the ones who inspire the Main Character to attempt and to Do Great and Important Things. So in your Own Life, and in Real Life, always be the Main Character, but in the lives of others be a necessary and outstanding Secondary Character.

from Form and Function, The Literate Man’s Guide to Real Life

STONE IN MY SIDE

(THE BLOODSTONE)

There is a Stone within my side as great as all Golgotha
A Rock of Ages, and of eons lived in exile from myself
Lithos, peltast, it assails me still
Gravestone, great rounded block that seals away my inner tomb
It lingers on within me, pangs me by means no other men may see
Milestone of all my worst misdeeds, burden of all the Good I never wrought
Wet Whetstone of my Secret Soul, grinding boulder of Sisyphus alone
Pillar of what I might have been, monument of nothing yet
Marbled within me, of form uncut
Statued still in long repose, no Master but myself at Work
And I inactive at my task,

A stone weighs within me, harder than my coldest heart
Frozen neath the whitest moon whose surface is a crystal shard
So like the flint that pierces me,
Who shall cut this bloody gem from me?
The one that heavies out my heart, and feasts my flesh as if alive
By mass of what is lost to me, by bile to gall me, stone all calcified
Of blood a stupor, dried and vain, my veins collapsed to chiseled dust
Does circulate to fix itself upon the stone that grows and harries hard in me
To hammer I should go at it, to daily ring my utmost blows,
To crack, and score, and sure reduce this thing that parasites my Inmost Man,

To split that stone of bone, sepulcher of graven lots, expose its marrow soft and withered
Grind it down as it does me and carve that rock to fractured gravel
Sledge and batter, pummel it, yet it remains and bides like bronze
Fresh cast and hardened long in unsung seas

What if I surgeoned it by razor, spliced the flesh that harbors it, and then reached in to grasp it, slick as slime, yet hard as woe?

What if I but excised this tumor all of stone and pulled it from my bleeding self? I would and yet I know it has grown vessels, arteries to feed itself, all made of me for I have fed it even though I never wished, and thus it roots there where it grows, nested, certain of its place, unruined by my surgeries,

So there malingers still deep within me the minerals of my own misdeeds, an unchipped gem acursed of undone Goods, uncaring hard, all solid sharp, it weighs there still in pain and longing, dis-ease encased like pearls envested,

uncured by nothing until I Act…

I WISH I (WE) WERE ALIVE

I WISH I (WE) WERE ALIVE

I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:

An astronaut, an engineer, a builder of cities, a frontiersman
No shadows in day, no chill at night

I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:

A physicist, a mendicant priest, explorer who wanders all unknown lands
No dark clouds at dawn, moon always full

I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:

A Greek genius, entrepreneur, a Viking sailing the blue whale road
Clear sky at morning, red skies at night

I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:

Poet to make Homer blush, Man who stepped out of Time, Fleet Captain, the Invisible One, Pilot of the Dawn at the Night of No More

I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:

Happy Apostle of Christ, a young boy at play, Grandfather Christmas, the Wizard who dared, Inventor of Futures so Bright that they shone like the Rise of the Sun on a whole different world

And what prevents me from any of this?!

Only me, and

Me Alone

It is time I arose and became my True Self.

It is time I were alive in the ways I should Always Have Been… join me and we both shall Live

sunrise-over-mountain-range-and-clear-skiesDownload

THE BEAR, THE BOAT, THE SEA, AND MAN

THE BEAR AT THE BOAT OF THE VANQUISHED SEA

The bear found the boat of the new vanquished sea
The bed of the foam unplowed by the keel
No anchor was thrown, no motor did turn
No need to steer waters with waters all gone

The bear wondered hard how the strange ship had come
To a beach of slick sandings where seas were no more,
And what of the crew – abandoned like flotsam
Or shippage to somewhere the Oceans still roared?

The bear turned the hull and pressed on the timbers, but
The boat could not move on such sure vanquished seas
Yet still the bear stood there, aft of the port
That the boat could not make on now vanquished seas

Wond’ring too if men had all vanished
Deserting their Works like long vanquished seas…

WOULD THAT IN CONSUMING

“Drink this!” she said gaily, and perhaps a little too loudly. She handed him a fine-wrought yet small cup of some unknown metal. It seemed to flow into his hand as if it too were made of liquid, yet it also felt smooth, hard, and warm.

“He took the cup not unenthusiastically, for he had previously partaken of Eldeven wines on other occasions and knew them to be excellent and comforting. Even to the disheartened. Perhaps more potion than mere drink.

He sipped, and then drank more vigorously.

Then he help the cup in the palm of his hand, still feeling the peculiar warmth it seemed to radiate through the cup, or because of it, and stared at the remaining draught. It was almost weightless in his hand.

“Would that in consuming I would always far better account for that which most oft consumes me…”

She laughed. “Is that verse?” she asked good-naturedly.

He frowned quickly. “If you wish.”

Then he added somewhat moodily, “However do not mistake the report of a thing for the thing itself.”

He paused a short while before speaking again, still puzzling at the fine and almost arcane work upon the Eldeven cup from which he drank.

“I think rather it the philosopher, mystic, and metaphysician in me,” he finally admitted. “Or perhaps I am but a frustrated soldier. Or priest.”

The latter remark may have been the more truthful he thought to himself, or perhaps they all were.

She smiled pleasantly, but also somewhat craftily and perhaps even knowingly.

“Is it not enough then to be a Master Poet among men?” she teased him.

Larmaegeon placed his cup upon the heavy, large feasting table with its unspun cloth of gold and dark silver filigree for needleless embroidery. He smiled in his own turn but it seemed more an inner musing than a pleasantry.

“Poetry is Mastery of Nothing. Except mere words. And words are absolutely nothing without a Mastery of Life to birth them. Otherwise words and verse both are but whispers upon the winds. Perhaps they go here, perhaps there, seen to bend this limb, displace that grain of sand, but other wise no one knows from whence they came or where they go. If they go. Otherwise they catch the ear of this wandering man, or that pleased lady, or travel out in time to light upon the fancy of some child yet unborn. But poetry is not mastery, so much as its echo. Art, without Manhood, is neither master of anything, nor does it master anything. And clever words are not achievements or Life, they are at best, and most often, the mere reflection of both.”

This seemed to both disturb and yet curiously satisfy the Russian Witch. Larmaegeon watched her eyes momentarily as they adjudged him, and then noticed that her reddish-blonde hair, though it shifted in colour and aspect often in the day, appeared as smooth and flowing and shimmering gold in the strangely steady glow of the surreal fires of the Eldeven hall.

Klura picked up her own cup and drank lightly from it, her eyes and quizzical brows peeking above the lip of her drink as if they looked at the Bard from a great distance, or from another time. She finished, lowered her drink, and spoke again.

“Do you then think so little of what you do, while so many others think so well of it?” she asked, but not teasingly this time.

“I do,” Larmaegeon replied instantly and without any hesitation. “I do think little of it.” Then he raised his cup again, saluted her and hers, and said without any irony at all, “And yet, my dear, I excel at it…”

Then he made a small bow and rose fluidly from his chair and having stood looked down at her.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I will indeed be poor company tonight. And that is entirely my own fault.”

Then he turned and walked away and towards the hall’s great doors and swung them open unaided by the guards, who watched him warily but without movement, as he silently departed the room.

Klura watched him go, his simple green wardrobe seeming to darken almost into a glistening black as he left. And then he was gone, and not even his restless shadow seemed a lingering memory at that moment to her. And yet, somehow, his words remained…

(This is a first-draft bare-sketch I wrote of a scene between the Welsh Bard Larmaegeon and the Russian Witch Klura as they were being entertained at the hall of the Samarl of Samarkand by the Sidh and Prester John [Jhönarlk]. It came to me this morning as I have been writing and working on several of my novels much of late. Even been composing a fair amount of poetry. I guess to be occupied of mind is to be occupied, if you’ll act on it that is. Anyway I have edited it once, for spelling so far but no farther. It concerns what Larmaegeon thinks of Poetry and his profession as a Bard, especially given recent events in the novel, and what Klura thinks of him [to a degree]. In one way you could call it a scene of Romance and in another a criticism and critique of both Verse and Romance sans Action. Or, yet another of my criticisms of the State of the modern World in the West. Which effeminately thinks that mere thoughts and words and wishes [filigrees and embroideries and pedigrees, or in modern terms information/journalism and memes and talk] fix or resolve the world. Or that those things alone ever amplify the true Good, or protect anyone or anything from actual evil…)

From the second novel in my High/Mythological Fantasy Trilogy The Kithariad (The Doom of Kitharia)

#novel #fiction #writing #literature #HighFantasy #poetry

THE REAL ILLUSION

THE REAL ILLUSION

The World is both Illusion and Real my boy. Yet more the Illusory Reality, I think, than the Real Illusion…

Alternaeus the Wizard to the Boy

from Alternaeus the Wizard

OLDEST ODYSSEY

Homer Odyssey: Oldest extract discovered on clay tablet

• 10 July 2018

Image copyrightEPA

A clay tablet discovered during an archaeological dig may be the oldest written record of Homer’s epic tale, the Odyssey, ever found in Greece, the country’s culture ministry has said.

Found near the ruined Temple of Zeus in the ancient city of Olympia, the tablet has been dated to Roman times.

It is engraved with 13 verses from the poem recounting the adventures of the hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy.

The tale was probably composed by Homer in the late 8th Century BC.

It would have been handed down in an oral tradition for hundreds of years before the tablet was inscribed.

The exact date of the tablet still needed to be confirmed, but its discovery was “a great archaeological, epigraphic, literary and historical exhibit”, the Greek culture ministry said in a statement.

Excavations to uncover the tablet took three years.

The Odyssey is widely considered to be a seminal work in Western literature.

The poem, spanning some 12,000 lines, tells the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who spends 10 years trying to get home after participating in the fall of the kingdom of Troy.

The tablet, discovered by Greek and German researchers, contains 13 verses from the Odyssey’s 14th Rhapsody, in which Odysseus addresses his lifelong friend Eumaeus.

THE VANIR

I love to hear Jackson Crawford speak about such subjects (the Nordic peoples, the Vikings, the sagas, the Eddas, the Norse gods, etc.). He is a superb lecturer, and one of my very favorite modern professors.

 

THE SPOOK

THE SPOOK

Dark and tattered
Grey and grim
A Spook now moves
Among these men
For what he sees, and
What they can’t
He cannot leave
To fate and chance

(Chorus)

The Spook is lonely
Wind is cold
The creatures creep, and
They are bold
He sees them stalking
Hears the ghosts
Can he find them
With their hosts
Tonight?

Wet and weathered
Weary too
The Spook among them
Moon so blue
The clouds are heavy
Stars are dim
What awaits him
What within
The empty tombs
He haunts?

(Chorus)

The Spook is shadowed
Darkness holds
Things come crawling
As was told
He hears them whisper
Feels their shades
Do you know them
What they’ve made
This night?

Witches weaving
Wolves all howl
Demons laughing
Warlock’s cowl,
The Earth all bloodied
Churned like mud
The Spook encircled
Cloak and hood
Torn like flesh, and
Dead to Life
Numb and senseless
Endless strife

(Chorus)

The Spook is haunted
Nothing’s changed
The Old World’s coming
Bones and chains
He feels them waiting
Smells their lusts
Do you see them
What they must
Again attempt
Tonight?

The Locus Eaters
Watch him pass
The future written
In the past
Spirits silent
Faint and bent
The coven hovers
Black intent
The Spook will hunt them
They bite back
All have vanished
Men lose track

Another World
Has opened here
The prophets spoke it
Song of Seers,
The Spook has found them
Restless Dead
Sleep uneasy
In their beds

The Sea will swallow
Cities sink
The Locus Eaters
Sit and drink,
The Grael – their table
Where they dream
Dreading nothing
So it seems

The spook ignores them
Passes on
A world beyond them
All alone

(Chorus)

The Spook is lonely
Tired and cold
But he tracks them
He is bold
He comes stalking
Hunting ghosts
Can he kill them
Nethermost
Tonight?

I wish him Fortune
Pray him well
Men know nothing
Like his hell, yet
Still he haunts them
Monsters all
Through the Heavens
Down the Halls
Where witches weaving
Charm the Beasts, and
Locus Eaters
Sit like Priests
To drink the drink
That measures out
The moment’s passing
When the doubt
Of Life, and Death,
Or endless dread,
Is just the path
We all must tread…

__________________________________________________________________

Last night, around midnight, I was up and reading The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun by Tolkien, which I had recently obtained. Many of the stanzas or lines were kind of clunky and even awkward (especially for Tolkien), and you could tell it was an early work, but much of the verse was simply superb. Despite it’s somewhat unpolished style I highly recommend it for it’s narrative pulse and tale. (Too bad, that aside from songs, the narrative poem has practically disappeared from the West replaced by that self-indulgent, mostly illiterate modern shit.)

Anyway, when I put the book down for some reason it immediately reminded me (in atmosphere, ambiance, and tone) of The Spook’s Apprentice, sometimes called The Last Apprentice, one of the finest set of children’s books I’ve ever read.

And that gave me the idea of writing a song about such a Spook. So I did.

Now this song is not truly about the character from the set of books of the same name. Rather it is about a literary allusion to such a Spook – as in the song my Spook is also a monster-hunter, but he is also a metaphor for Man himself, and as to whether the monsters he hunts are supernatural creatures (like those the book character hunts) or other men, or Life and Death themselves, or all of these things, well, I leave that up to the listener to decide for himself.

After I began writing the song however it occurred to me that it would be a perfect fit my my album of songs, the Locus Eater. So I wrote it in such a way that some of the Locus Eaters appear as secondary and passive characters in the song, observing the Spook (or he them) as he proceeds at his tasks. So I am going to make place form the Spook to appear as one of the songs on the album. It is, after all, a concept album.

As for some of the other songs on the album and how well the Spook should fit among them I’ll include some of my earlier posts on the album below.

Locus Eater: see the following – Lotus Eater, Cave of the Unknown Prophet, Baba Yaga, Guild of the Golden Door, etc.

I plan to find a composing partner (though I have already sketched out some themes and motifs for myself to use as a basic musical framework for some of the songs) and finish Locus Eater(s) this year. It is one of my projects to complete for 2018. I had planned to finish it earlier but so many other projects and things interfered I had to put it on the back burner.

As for this song (The Spook) I envision it as a weird and eerie song,a  throwback to the best weird and eerie type songs of the height of 70s rock, and it will of course be a very long and involved and complicated song, with several instrumental solo and group sections (free of the lyrics) as I wish to make the song both psychedelic and almost transcendental in nature. As well as seeming metaphysical and mythical in nature. For much of this song is inspired both by myth and by literature, and has several such allusions contained within it.

As for the album itself you can read about the nature of it in the other associated links.

If you have any comments you’d like to make on the song then feel free to do so. Look forward to your observations.

I apologize for having been absent for so long but I’ve been working like a madman at any number of projects and I’ve also had to attend to many personal matters. That’s life I reckon. Still I plan to post more regularly this year.

Now, it is such a beautiful and sunny day that I think I’ll go outside and work awhile. Clear some land maybe.

By the way, if you are a composer or a band or a band member or individual musician who can write music and would be interested in writing full and complete songs with me (for you to play and for us to publish) then contact me. We’ll see if we can work together.

If you are an agent looking to represent a writer, poet, songwriter, and screenwriter then contact me. You can find links to my works throughout this site.

If you are an investor then contact me. I also have a couple of start-ups and inventions underway.

THE NECESSARY MAN

THE NECESSARY MAN

Vlachus laughed at his commander and freely drank of the dark wine.

“Spoken as a true soldier. But let me speak as a former farmer and a monk of God. There is much pleasure, my friend, in the creation of new life. That is indeed true. Yet there is an even greater joy in the fostering of it.

Any man may plow the field, and enjoy the swift and sweet sweat of that labor. Yet only the True Husbandman labors long at the profit and the produce of the fruit. Sow where you can commander, but gather where you may. And if you see another field untended and the crops therein languishing to fail then are you not lawfully allowed to step into it that field and harvest what was already planted so that they are wasted not? Indeed, are you not obligated to do so?”

Marsippius looked at Vlachus in consideration of his speech, but then opened his hands as if in supplication or supposition to the priest.

“And what of you?” Marsippius asked. “Are you unfit to reap what others have sown? Are you not also obligated?”

Vlachus handed Marsippius the wineskin. Marsippius immediately noticed how much emptier it seemed. Then Vlachus wiped his mouth upon his long decorated sleeve, rubbed his hands briskly together, placed them closer to the fire and glanced admiringly upwards at the bright alien stars. Finally he looked back across the flames and drifting smoke at his friend.

“Oh, I am certainly fit to reap and even still to sow,” Vlachus said, his long untended beard casting weird shadows in the firelight and making his face seem momentarily made more of ethereal questions than earthly answers. “Nevertheless I am a monk. I would make a far better grandfather I think than a sire. This child though needs a father. A real father, truly known and knowing. You are an excellent, if sometimes uneven commander of men, Marsippius Nicea. Furthermore I suspect that you are already a fine father as well. And would be so again if necessary. The question you must ask yourself is this: are you now the necessary man?”

Marsippius sighed and rubbed his scarred sword hand through his now lengthening hair. Vlachus’ gaze seemed to him extraordinarily bright and perceptive in the uneven light of the struggling fire.

“You are also, I have seen, an unfailingly honest man,” Vlachus said. “So, if I have spoken in error of you then correct me now.”

Marsippius studied the monk’s face for a long while, and then his gaze fell back into the fire. He would not say what he saw there, and he did not answer his friend.

Vlachus of Armenia (The Myrelaion Monk) to Marsippius Nicea, Commander of the Basilegate

From the Kithariune

YEAH, I EAT THAT AS WELL

YEAH, I EAT THAT AS WELL

“I do not simply ‘let things go as they will’ my friend. That is not my way. That has never been my way. Rather, I gnaw at things until they crack and I can reach the marrow. Then I eat that as well.”

Alternaeus the Wizard

from The Wizard and the Wyrdpack

ALL THE SURFEIT EMPIRES OF THE EARTH!

TO OUR FULL MEASURE:

“Now nearly at an end are these, our feckless days of famished feasting, and hard upon us now is come an hopeful age of high and happy labor that shall rightly crown our approaching enterprise with gilded glories still to swell the ceaseless vaulted realms of heaven, and mark for all time this yet unimagined era, when we, fit with industry prodigious and unknown to long sleeping history, sure o’erwhelmed all the surfeit empires of the Earth!“

A COUPLE OF NEW THINGS

I’ve started a new literary short story entitled, The Long Lonely Estate of Daniel J. Despair, and a new children’s book called, Tea and Ticklebiscuits.

BOB DYLAN’S TREASURES

A very unusual choice, but well deserved from my point of view. As a musical lyricist and poet Dylan is superb. Almost unmatched. A throwback, and a modern Bard really.

Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize in literature

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan performs in Carhaix, western France. Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature, which was announced Thursday. (David Vincent/AP)

By Ron Charles October 13 at 7:56 AM

Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for work that the Swedish Academy described as “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

He is the first American to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993, and a groundbreaking choice by the Nobel committee to select the first literature laureate whose career has primarily been as a musician.

Although long rumored as a contender for the prize, Dylan was far down the list of predicted winners, which included such renown writers as Haruki Murakami and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.

[5 myths about Bob Dylan]

This is the second year in a row that the academy has turned away from fiction writers for the literature prize. And it’s possibly the first year that the prize has gone to someone who is primarily a musician, not a writer.

‘Greatest living poet’ Bob Dylan wins Nobel literature prize

Play Video0:24

Bob Dylan, regarded as the voice of a generation for his influential songs from the 1960s onwards, won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature Oct. 13. (Reuters)

The permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, made the announcement in Stockholm. In a televised interview afterward, Danius said that Dylan “embodies the tradition. And for 54 years, he’s been at it, reinventing himself, creating a new identity.” She suggested that people unfamiliar with his work start with “Blonde on Blonde,” his album from 1966.

“Bob Dylan writes poetry for the ear,” she said. “But it’s perfectly fine to read his works as poetry.”

She drew parallels between Dylan’s work and poets as far back as Greek antiquity.

“It’s an extraordinary example of his brilliant way of rhyming and his pictorial thinking,” Danius said. “If you look back, far back, you discover Homer and Sappho, and they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to. They were meant to be performed. It’s the same way with Bob Dylan. But we still read Homer and Sappho. He can be read and should be read. He is a great poet in the grand English tradition. I know the music, and I’ve started to appreciate him much more now. Today, I’m a lover of Bob Dylan.

[Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos awarded 2016 Nobel Peace Prize]

Dylan will receive an 18-karat gold medal and a check for about $$925,000.

Dylan, the son of a Minnesota appliance-store owner, began as a folk singer but soon established himself as one of the voices of political protest and cultural reshaping in the 1960s.

Dylan’s songs — driven by his distinctive nasal-twang vocals — are often seen as dense prose poems packed with flamboyant, surreal images. Rolling Stone magazine once called him “the most influential American musician rock and roll has ever produced.”

He first gained notice with ringing protest songs that served as anthems for the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements with such songs as “Masters of War,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.”

Then he moved on to feverish rock-and-roll drenched in stream-of-consciousness lyrics that evoked the hallucinatory visions of William Blake, the romanticism of Mary Shelley and John Keats and the postmodern pessimism of Allen Ginsberg and other beat poets.

Dylan recalled listening to country music each evening from distant Midwestern stations and taking up the guitar himself at age 10.

He briefly attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where folk music, rather than rock-and-roll, was the abiding musical idiom.

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“Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open,” Dylan once wrote. “He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that.”

Dylan sang at the 1963 March on Washington, the massive civil rights procession presided over by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Later, at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, he stunned many fans — and began a new musical direction — by putting aside his acoustic guitar and playing a Fender sunburst Stratocaster electric guitar.

His next albums — “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde” — ventured further into the surreal long-form songs and dizzying array of characters that were now his trademark. They are considered by many critics to be his creative peak.

In the late 1970s, he stunned admirers again by declaring himself a Christian and releasing three albums of religiously inspired songs. The singing and musicianship were passionate and professional — Dylan earned his first Grammy Award, for best rock male vocal performance — but the harsh, born-again lyrics puzzled and alienated many of his longtime fans.

In 2005, he released a long-awaited memoir, “Chronicles Vol. 1,” which won him more accolades for its candor and originality. He also appeared in director Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home,” a documentary that summed up the triumphs and turmoil of his early years as a performer. In 2008, he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for his profound effect on popular music and American culture, “marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

Read more:

Svetlana Alexievich wins 2015 Nobel Prize in literature

HELP A BROTHER OUT IF YOU CAN…

I am somewhat sad and would like your help. Over my lifetime, and since I was a little kid, I have read literature. At this point a great deal of literature.

Every month I read new books in particular categories of study which interest me such as science, religion, art, philosophy, etc. and Literature is one of those categories. Because I have read so much literature over time my choices now wear thin. Very thin.

Recently I got a book called the Literature Book to give me new ideas for novels, books of poetry, etc. to read. To my dismay I found that I have read (at least once and sometimes multiple times) almost all of the works listed in the book including the more obscure works, including most of the great literature in some foreign cultures such as German, French, Italian, Russian, Greek, Indian (India,), Chinese, and Japanese.

I am growing tired of re-reading literature I have already read. (For instance I not long ago finished re-reading Beowulf, the Aeneid, and the short stories of Victor Hugo.)

Therefore I am open to suggestions, even if the work is obscure (such as the Confessions of an English Opium Eater – I’ve read it, it’s in my library, or the Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci – also read and in my personal library) or foreign I’d still be happy to entertain the recommendation. I really like Medieval and Ancient literature (although I will read modern literature of it is actual literature and not just pop culture crap) but I’m growing kind of desperate to put my hands on good literature that I’ve never read before.

If you can help a brother out then I’d really appreciate it…

Just leave your recommendations below in the comments section.

YEAH, SO EXACTLY HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

YEAH, SO EXACTLY HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

“It’s a question of precisely what is the most ethical possible practice,” Termkin said, apparently annoyed by Steinthal’s relentless and unswerving line of inquiry.

Steinthal stared at him intently, but unreadably.

“Is it?” asked Steinthal.

Termkin seemed puzzled by the question.

“What do you mean?” Termkin said.

“See,” said Steinthal twirling the brim of his hat in his hand, “that’s where I think we both know you’re wrong.”

Termkin furrowed his brow, his expression a mixture of ongoing annoyance and a genuine struggle to understand.

“I still don’t perceive your exact meaning?”

“No, I don’t think you do,” said Steinthal. “And I really didn’t expect that you could. But let me simplify the matter for you. You see I have this theory that everything is always really about morality. And that ethics is just something that lawyers and other no count types like you employ as a cheap legal substitute.”

Termkin seemed to follow Steinthal’s explanation at a slightly slower pace than it had been enunciated. But when he finally caught up he suddenly flushed red and showed his ire.

“Why you smart mouthed son of a bitch!”

Steinthal laughed good humoredly.

“Probably,” he said. “But I noticed you didn’t bother to refute me.”

Termkin mulled on that for a moment before his snappy comeback finally came to him.

“Oh yeah, well exactly how is one supposed to refute you smartass types?” Termkin demanded. “You think you’re always right.”

Steinthal stood up and put his hat on his head. He smiled to himself as if Termkin wasn’t even in the room though he was still staring right at him.

“See, that’s the part about this whole thing that’s easiest to resolve,” said Steinthal. “We are always right. Even when no one else knows it yet. Like you. As for the thinking part, well now, if you ever really bothered with that then I presume you could figure it out for yourself.”

Steinthal tipped his hat at Termkin in a peculiar gesture. “But I’m not gonna lay real money on it.”

Steinthal walked across the room, opened the door and then looked back at Termkin.

“I’d like to say it was nice to meet you Termkin. But, we met anyway. So at least we’ll always have that.”

The he left.

Still full of questions, but certain he finally crossed the right man.

______________________________________________

A bit of dialogue involving my Detective Character Steinthal. I didn’t really get a chance to do a Tuesday’s Tale this week. Too busy. So I’m posting this today instead.

My youngest daughter read it and I asked her what she thought of it and she said, “Dad, Steinthal talks pretty much just like you.”

Which made me laugh.

“Yeah, funny how that works, ain’t it?” I told her…

I FORGOT TO REMEMBER – FIRST VERSE

I started these two things, the first the beginning of a poem, the second part of a set of song lyrics, over the weekend. Don’t know what I’m gonna do with either in the end but since it is Monday this is my post for First Verse.

 

I FORGOT TO REMEMBER

I forgot to remember when nothing was right
How all that we tendered was twisted and trite
I begot a dismembered, ephemeral sight
When divided in terror, Theatron of Rites

The devices, the chorus, the Odeion of Scene
A tyrant all bloodied his thralldom most keen
Our vices within us a kingdom of dreams
Grown pregnant and studied, still starving and lean

A Opera of Staging, performed and preformed
Dispelled in the aging distempered and worn
Our union engaging our spectacle torn
Redundant, abundant, of meaning all shorn…

JUST A MAN

Gonna ditch my damned phone, then ditch my car
I’m gonna hitch my wagon to the brightest star
I’m gonna find the person that I’m looking for
Just gonna keep on walking til I reach the shore
Of somewhere I’ve never been before,
To see what lies beyond this land
To see what happens when a man
Is just a man…

If You Leave – I’m going to try again and link to the daily post. I have no idea if it will actually work.

HIGH AND LOW FORTUNE – HAMMER, TONG, AND TOOLS

HIGH AND LOW FORTUNE

“You ask me how I know this and I can only tell you what I’ve seen.

High Fortune came upon me like a silent serpent, slithering from behind in such a stealthy manner as to conceal his true intent and to scarcely warrant my attention.

Low Fortune approached me like a titled lord, resplendent all in showy pomp and decorative circumstance, attired in the lofty regalia of finely whispered shadows spun from venomous spider silks.

Low Fortune is, you see my friend, the King of Seeming and the Prince of Cunning Craft yet I advise you eschew his long seducing and ever seductive company. For his court is all fantastic façade and fraudulent fashion and his manner and his manor are both estates of ruin.

High Fortune, on the other hand, wears no glittered crown of kingship nor rankish robes of high office nor encrusted jewels of state, he is as plain of face, as rough-built by effort, and as quiet in nature as if stable bred. Yet if on turning round by chance or calculation you find him standing nearby then reach out your hand quickly and grasp him in so firm a hold that he cannot escape, and never let him go until he promises to bless you as his friend.

Leave Low Fortune, brother, where he dwells, even if he home in temple renown or palace grand, for he is the sure slum-lord of soon-to-be sad misdeeds and the master of all unenviable fools.

Instead set your watch and wait patiently for High Fortune, for one day he will approach you in sly disguise, silent and unannounced, to see what can be made of you if you will ever dare. For he is your steadfast, stalwart, and subtle Friend and the Maker of that Fortune you truly seek.

Low Fortune churns like stormy waves, he ebbs and flows and never settles ought. High Fortune stands alone and trembles not, he shelters and secures all Men of Enterprise.”

from the Kithariune  (link)

________________________________________________

Since the beginning of this year I have been in one of the most productive periods/phases of my entire life as far as the creation of poems, songs, short stories, novels, scripts, and other literary works are concerned. I have recently produced hundreds of pages of new works.

 

Above is a section of my novel series the Kithariune. In this passage the Welsh Bard Larmaegeon is trying to explain the difference(s) between High and Low Fortune to his friend and companion, the Spanish Paladin Edimios. And why he should wait upon the one and avoid the other.

 

Anyone is welcome to comment upon it, of course.

THE LAST TRUE MAN – HIGHMOOT

THE LAST TRUE MAN

Over the weekend I started a new fictional short story. A fantasy of sorts, you might say. This is the first draft. I have made no editorial corrections at all. I thought it would make an interesting experiment for others to see regarding how a short story develops over time and is edited, corrected, revised, etc.

I did not type this by the way. Because of my previously broken wrist my youngest daughter now does most of my typing. (My oldest daughter is already in college.) I write in longhand, she types. I owe her much for that, and I pay her, though it is also part of the life and practical and market skills development section of her homeschooling studies.

Since this story involves a mysterious stranger that the main character entertains and travels with from time to time (I had plotted that into the story from the beginning of my sketches for the work) and a Journey I decided to also link this to the Daily Prompt on WordPress for today

Journey

I will not be posting the entire story here, once it is completed, because I plan to publish it. But the section included here, when I make the necessary editorial corrections and revisions, that I will post later.

The story will also contain within it the poem, He Who Goes Alone. Which I actually wrote for a different purpose but last night I realized fit this story so acutely that I decided to include it as part of the story.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you The Last True Man. (And although he is not really a man, he is True to the end.)

___________________________________

THE LAST TRUE MAN

He lived alone. Once he had a wife, and a son and two daughters. Only one daughter had survived his thirty-third birthday. By that time he was too badly wounded to care for her and had been made permanently lame. Being unable to care for her properly, and his recuperation taking years, he had given her over to the care of his former wife’s sister. He still saw his daughter and her children occasionally, and treated her kindly though she was often in awe and afraid of him. But she did not know who he truly was. To her, as to everyone else, he was simply the old hermit who almost never spoke.

Now he was eighty-seven. Though he did not appear so, nor did he move like an old man. Nevertheless he was still partially lame from the wounds he had received as a young man. For even in his heart, as in his body, some wounds remained and never fully closed such as those injuries and wrongs that claimed the life of his wife, son, and oldest daughter.

So he lived alone. Alone among a set of ancient weathered, discolored, wan stone and marble ruins. Ruins left by a long dead and vanquished race, all of their works toppled and reclaimed by the forest, all except those he kept as a forlorn home and temple of remembrance. Yet to him it was not forlorn or even a ruin. It was the wreckage of another age he had reclaimed for himself. He who went alone.

The ruins stood beyond the horizon of the village in which his daughter dwelt. Though not far. They did not have to stand afar off for all manner of men shunned those ruins and the surrounding landscape, considering them accursed and haunted. None ventured there and aside from young boys filled with that spirit of adventure and exploration that sometimes overwhelms and possesses them view ever came within close sight, to almost all it was a place more imagined than ever observed.

Except to him. Despite the many pitfalls and the shifting rot and the persistent decay that nature worked upon the ancient place he knew it well and almost completely. He even knew of most of the most desolate and new long buried areas. He also dwelt at peace with all but a few of the surrounding creatures, be they large, small, tame, wild, fierce, or gigantic and fearsome.

His means were simple, his desires few, his quaint and modest satisfactions many in his deserted home, and his dwelling austere. He spent his days wandering, exploring and mapping the wide ruins in which he lived, drawing, sketching, mapping, writing and cataloging all he discovered. Many days he would also explore the nearby forest, visiting or entertaining creatures as they would accommodate him, or he they. At dawn he would pray, at sunset sing. At night he would take the telescope he had fashioned for himself and watch the moon and stars.

Sometimes at night he would also sit long in meditation, contemplation, or within the various memory palaces he had created in his own mind so that he could commiserate with the ghosts of his dead family and friends. In this way he would sometimes slip happily into dream and melancholy would leave him until he again awoke. When it might or might not return to him like an unreliable and unpredictable friend.

Or was friend the right word? Maybe Melancholy was his interrogator of habit, like Death was the companion of his more somber dreams and troubled visions. He was never really sure where he actually stood with the steady companions of his loneliness and exile. He only knew that he knew them well, and that they knew him as he truly was. In the center of his inmost soul.

His most steady companion however was his huge dog which so resembled a small bear in size and shape and appearance that some men took it for a strangely colored and tame bear and nicknamed him “Uroldas” or “Bear-Father.”

He built a dwelling of the old stones of what he surmised to have been the still standing remains of an ancient tower attached to the ruins of what was possibly an old wall or gate mount. Indeed he called it his tower and it was there stories tall, consisting of four levels all together, including the level he had dug underground for storage. His tower was part home, part hermitage, part-forge, (for he also worked his own metals and artifacts) and part observatory, and he named it Caerloron, after his dead son.

Occasionally he was visited at dusk, at dawn, or late at night by a mysterious figure in simple robes and a deep blue prayer shawl who would entertain him, or who he would entertain, and often during such visits they would talk long and in a familiar, friendly fashion. Though none else saw this odd visitor for two reasons; he would never approach if the man was otherwise occupied, and secondly due to the isolation and uncanniness of the old man’s dwelling. Which kept almost everyone else at bay in any case.

The man possessed a strange drinking vessel as well. An almost eerily peculiar cup he had recovered from a trove deep in the city, craftily contrived, decorated with bizarre devices and the cryptic letters of a long dead language. For in the future, many centuries hence it was whispered this cup never went dry, but that was just a rumor yet to be born. As for the man when he had first found the cup he had inscribed it with his name, Aelone. St that time he was still a young man and called himself by his name. in the years that followed everyone else forgot his name, and even who he had once been and so he took to himself, “me.” Or “I.”

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MY WIFE’S BODY

My wife arrived home from a trip to the beach on July the First. The next morning we had get home sex. She went to sleep afterwards but I got up and wrote the following poem.

I like the poem a lot but I am having difficulty naming it. I like these potential names/titles: Rich Everafter, Those Treasures Within, The Labors of Love, The Harvest of Human Labors, or Sweat of Our Love. 

If you have a preference among those or would like to make your own suggestion then feel free to do so. I look forward to reading your ideas.

Here is the poem. Let me know what you think, and what you would call it.

My wife’s body is naked and soft like broken ground
My wife’s body smells rich like fertile soil
My wife’s body is dark and moist like morning loam the restless Meander has watered at sunrise

I think that I shall plow her deeply again when she wakes and see what treasures within us both lie hid

Like the open fields of tended Pharos or the silty banks of the flooded Nile we shall suddenly sprout silver and salt and bare fecund Earth overflowing with milk and honey and blood dark wine and rampant wild oats and thus shall we feed ourselves a lifetime on the harvest of our human labors and the sweat of our love

My wife’s body is naked

My body is naked

Now shall we again labor in earnest, produce in abundance, and be rich everafter…

ON POETRY – TUESDAY’S TALE

Well, it ain’t really a Tale for Tuesday, but it is a tale about how you should tell what you can’t really tell when you try. Not in words, anyway…

ON POETRY

Poetry involves the minute manipulation of words in such a way that they are constantly and subtly altered in definition, either so that they take on a broader and more flexible implication than they have ever possessed before, or so that they take on a more narrow and peculiar resolution in terminology than they have ever before possessed.

Do this wisely and well and with patient and practiced craft and you will be considered a master of phrasing and sound, perhaps even possessed of real poetic genius. Do this sloppily or shoddily and in haste and without regard for the demands of true meaning in language and you will be considered a mere dilettante or perhaps even a hapless hack.

from my book, On Poetry

 

WHO DEPRIVES US?

“And who, my father, deprives us of our better selves that when account is finally made of our inner and truest natures any other than we alone may be said to be the author of our tale and the shape-makers of our very souls?

Seek not to deprive me of my deeds and I will not deprive you of the Just outcome of your every act, for Zeus you are a god all told, but I am Fate Itself. You hold me no more in thrall and now all your thunderbolts are spent yet here I stand uncowed to judge you as you are.

Shall we then commence? Lay naked upon the altar of the autocrat all your countless sins and offenses dark?

Well then all we need do is look into the dim mirrors of your eyes and there we will find all you thought you might hide from Justice, Truth, and Time, but never will.

You can deprive mortal men for an untold age of what is most Just, but no one rightly can deprive the world of what must yet come. And what comes now is your judgment, and your overthrow!”

Herakles to Zeus, from my play Herakles and Aphrodyte

HARD THE HAMMERSMITH – FIRST VERSE

HARD THE HAMMERSMITH

I conceived of the idea for this poem about a week and a half ago but was unable to work on it due to other business and work demands. On Sunday night (the 26th of June) about an hour before the Game of Thrones finale I began work on it. It shall be a long, narrative poem with what I hope is an unanticipated and unusual conclusion, and a twisting storyline. At this point of course it is in its infancy and is far from complete.

Aside from being a long narrative poem I am also thinking very seriously of turning it into a Graphic Novel which will also serve as a de-facto manual on ancient Mnemonic Techniques. I am already sketching out possible illustrations or old woodcut designs for the Work.

Hope you enjoy it thus far.

 

HARD THE HAMMERSMITH

Hard the Hammersmith worked all day
Hard the Hammersmith would not say
What his toiling would produce
Or why he labored so profuse

Hard the Hammersmith worked all night
Hard the Hammersmith knew delight
For his hammers truly rang
Fire, metal, sturm und drang

Hard the Hammersmith took no rest
Hard the Hammersmith did his best
For he always set his task
Above whatever weakness asks

Hard the Hammersmith took no bread
Hard the Hammersmith shunned his bed
For the Work to which he bent
He would master, or be spent

Hard the Hammersmith took no drink
Hard the Hammersmith did not think
Yet on he drove himself to act
With anguish was his body wracked…

BOGEY ON YOUR SIX

My very first remembered dream, from when I was a young child was of a giant, bright-red, fire-breathing dragon raging from the sky down upon my grandfather’s house (my paternal father’s father) and burning and razing his house to the ground. At the time we lived underneath my grandfather’s house. I was very, very young at the time, barely past being a babe and probably still in diapers (though I was walking) and I do not at that time recall ever even having heard tale of a dragon. Yet I have recalled that dream for my entire life. The dragon both terrified me (at first) and infuriated me (after I saw what it had done). Though in the dream I was very young and had no way to combat it.

 

“FAIRY TALES, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

“Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

~G.K. Chesterton: “The Red Angel.”
http://bit.ly/1d5pVS2

G.K. Chesterton: The Red Angel

GKCDAILY.BLOGSPOT.COM

TO PORT OUR HOME, TO STARBOARD STILL UNKNOWN

I began this poem around noon as a response to today’s Daily Post prompt on Voyage. I got two stanzas in and then my daughters needed my help and then someone working with me on one of my start-ups demanded my attention and so therefore I have had to leave it at this point. I apologize but that kinda thing happens in life.

I intend to finish it but cannot do so at the moment. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless, and have a good day folks…

 

TO PORT OUR HOME, TO STARBOARD STILL UNKNOWN

To port was home, to starboard unknown foreign seas, and
Lands bespoken of in dream, where endless roam great beasts
Not seen since man was in the cradle of his mother’s shore
The stars still young and uncertain in their unfixed course
Across the skies of night still bright with constellated myth
Prodigious like the unseen figures which grappled in the dark
Around the moon’s white lantern in desperate search of a world
So new, so full of wonder, that no other home would do,
Not, at least, to the Daring

To port is home but on every other course the waves break
Upon a soil unsown with the tares and tears that common habit
Bestrew along the Earth we know so well by mundane states
Unchallenged in their broad decay and rush to ruin
Across the fields of ancient countries whose ground is salted
With the misery of crawling empires and rotting kingdoms
Made of man beneath the shadow of what is most foul within him
So old, so full of apathy, that no such home can seem true
Not, at least, to the Wise…

EMPTY

I was working on a short story when I happened across the Daily Post whose prompt-subject matter was Empty. Now I’ve had a lot of personal experience with Empty over the course of my life, both the good kind, and the bad kind. So I thought I’d make a post about that and turned out this poem at lunch. Hope you enjoy it.

Have a good day folks.

 

EMPTY

I once was empty, full of naught
By calculation, mind and thought

I once was empty, hollowed out
Melancholy, heart in doubt

I once was empty, fearless, cold
My fury made me endless bold

I once was empty, cast alone
It sharpened me so I was honed

I once was empty, bleak despair
My atmosphere a poisoned air

I once was empty, of myself
That was joy I could regale

I once was empty, God was gone
Why had He left me all alone?

I know of empty, made and true
I know of empty, me and you
I know of empty, blessed, good
I know of empty, as I should

For Empty is a Friend of mine
That gives me all, and then sometimes
Relieves me of all I have known
So I am ever forced to roam

In search of what is not…

So empty anymore.

CROSSING OVER – HIGHMOOT

CROSS OVER WORK

Lately I have been doing a lot of what I call Cross-Over Work.

In this case I mean by saying that I have been doing a lot of work that cross-fertilizes itself in other works I am simultaneously creating. For instance I might be writing one novel and a particular scene or bit of dialogue I create will inspire another scene or piece of dialogue in another book or novel I am working on.

Though such things are not necessarily related to or limited to my various fiction writings. I might be drawing a map or making a sketch, designing something, working on a start-up project, developing an invention, writing a poem or song lyrics, or writing a novel or a non-fiction book and all of these things, or others, might give me an idea for another work I’m currently pursuing.

So today, and below (and in allusion to my previous post on actors), I am posting some of my latest Cross-Over Work. Little vignettes, or to be more accurate, often just little snippets (bits of dialogue, sections of scenes, sketch notes, etc.) of various Works I am creating and pursuing at this time.

Does your Work cross over in this way, from one work to another?

If so then feel free to comment below.

___________________________________________

 

NOT A FAIR FIGHT

“Again I don’t get it. Take one shot at your actual target and three at yourself… don’t seem like much of a fair fight to me.”

From my Western The Lettered Men

 

A CLUE

“Not every possibility is true, that’s certainly true, but every possibility is always a clue – to something other than itself. If you keep forgetting that then it’s very possible the Truth will entirely escape you. And if it does then what other possibilities really matter?”

From The Detective Steinthal

 

TRUE DARKNESS

“True darkness obscures. Few things can thrive in perpetual shade but those things that can definitely always wish to remain hidden. That is, until they are ready to be discovered. For reasons of their own.”

From The Detective Steinthal

 

ALWAYS BEST

“It is always best to hunt in silence.”

The Detective Steinthal

 

YOUR TRAINING IS OVER

“What are you training for kid? To train forever? Now who wants that kinda shit anyway? Only officers and politicians, that’s who. No, you get your ass in the fight. You’ve trained long enough. Time to be somebody.”

From Snyder’s Spiders

 

IT BLEEDS

“And how now is your wound?”

“It itches fiercely, it hurts mightily, it swells darkly, but it bleeds freely and cleanly. It is good that it bleeds so and thus I will not complain of the other things. But if you have any more of that strange brew you drink then I will not complain of a skin full of that either.”

“I have not a skin, but I can manage a cup.”

“Then so can I…”

Suegenius describing to Fhe Fhissegrim the condition of his wound

From my fantasy The Kithariune (The Basilegate)

 

A RARE AND WONDROUS FEAT

“If you cannot stand up to your own old man then you will never stand up to anyone. If you can stand up to your own old man then you can stand up to anyone else, and everyone else.

If your old man ever forces you to rebel against him then do not hate him for it, respect him for it. He has done more for you in that regard, as regards the development of your actual manhood, than any other thing anyone else could ever do for you in the world. That man who forces his son into rebellion has bred a man. You owe such a father an enormous and generous debt.

That father who always insists his son obey him, right or wrong, has bred a mere and helpless and fearful slave. You owe that father your utter disdain and yourself nothing but shame for your own endless submission.

Drink to your father Edomios. Drink long and deep. He has bred a man in you. A man who can stand upright and unafraid. A rare and wondrous feat in our age.

Maybe in any age.”

Marsippius Nicea the Byzantine Commander of the Basilegate explaining to Edomios the Spanish Paladin why he owes his father a debt of manhood

From The Kithariune

 

THAT WAY YOU SPEAK

When Michael first lands in Thaumaturgis he is met by Harmonius Hippostatic
who makes fun of the way he speaks and tries to explain to Michael where he is, and what life is like in the Lands. Michael does not at first speak in verse, but speaks in prose, but as he stays longer and longer in the land of Thaumaturgis he also comes to speak in metered, rhyming verse.

Harmonius: That way you speak, it’s quite a feat
But it will never do,
No meter, rhyme or rhythm,
It’s really quite obtuse.

Michael: Where am I?

Harmonius: Why this is Thaumaturgis,
Don’t you know your lands?
It’s one of the three countries,
Not earth, not stone, not sand.
No one’s ever figured
How it got this way
Tomorrow is the same as now
It’s always been that way.
If want you life miraculous
Or supernatural,
It’s really quite so marvelous
And never, ever dull.
But one thing in this country
You really must avoid
Speaking words in plain old prose
Is what will most annoy,
So put on your best rhyming
Your metered rhythm too
Don’t dally up a worthwhile speech
Without so much ado,
Be mannered in your speaking
Poetic when you talk
Or everyone will soon declare
Your words taste just like chalk

From my children’s book, Three Lands

THINGS LONG UNSEEN – FIRST VERSE

This morning, right after waking, I began this poem.

I wrote the first two stanzas in bed, in my bedside notebook, went downstairs, fed the animals, made breakfast for the wife and kids, and then sat down at my desk and hammered out the third stanza. It wasn’t hard. It flowed as if I had taken no break in between.

I started in on the fourth stanza which to me was absolutely brilliant (the best part of the entire work) and right as I got to the third line of the fourth stanza the power went out at the house, and for some reason my backup power fluctuated as well so that my computer shut down. By the time I rebooted I had lost the entire fourth stanza.

I tried reconstructing the stanza from memory but I was so pissed off and taken off guard by the unexpected power failure (why should that happen at the start of summer with not a cloud in the sky I ask you?) and by the delay in reboot time that I ended up producing a mere shadow of my original effort.

I’m still satisfied by the stanza, and the poem overall so far, and it is far from finished, but just to be honest the fourth stanza isn’t nearly what I produced the first time around. So I apologize for that. This is yet another valuable lesson in why I should never compose at my computer, but only in my notebooks.

Nevertheless I am pleased with the poem and when it is finally finished I suspect I will name it, Things Long Unseen.

That is, at least, the place-holder name I am giving it for now. Enjoy and have an excellent and productive and profitable week my friends.

 

THINGS LONG UNSEEN

I shall exceed all things, and having so excelled all things
Shall bow to me, not as brutish, mindless slaves but as one man
Instinctively declines his head to yet another in whom he recognizes
His equal.

The loss of me is not the less of me, and the lending of me
To another is no lack of either thing made true in itself,
For pushed on by High Labour where can I go but where
I am, and where I Am dwells a still fairer land than I may truly
Ever know, though God knows, how much I wish for such
Things long unseen

I shall excel all things, and having thus exceeded nothing
Shall bow to me, nor find an alien compass with which to navigate
That Long Frontier that I so long ago remembered in myself
Unequaled

The less of me is what is left of me, for the debt of me
To another is both the loss and gain in ourselves untrue,
Subsumed in Reckless Profits, destined where I know not that
We are, or when, or how, or why it is that we know these things
Improper in themselves, though we all know how much we wish for
Things Long unforeseen…

 

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM

“Ethan, I see our Lord…”

Damn. The finale of Penny Dreadful was incredibly good. Like a Greek Tragedy.

And once again Dorian Gray was declaimed, by himself, the most depraved and degenerate character of them all (and he always has been), and John Clare (Frankenstein’s Monster) proven the most humane and human of them all. By far.

Though finally Frankenstein himself, and Chandler, both came close…

I hope this is not the end of that show (the world needs more of that kind of thing), but if it is, it could have concluded no better.

So goodnight my friends, and I leave you with Wordsworth, and with an ode on the Imitations of Immortality. 

(By the way, we also need more poetry of this calibre. Far more.)

Our world is far too much with modern and superficial self-indulgence.

 

 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look’d upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother’s mind, 80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 85

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes! 90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; 95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul’s immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o’er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind; 185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, 190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish’d one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

I WENT TO YOUR GRAVES

I WENT TO YOUR GRAVES

I went to your graves to speak with you dead
You answered with nary a sound, but
The echoes of stone, and the blood and the bones
Still in the air they redound
Someone must live, and someone must die
I’ve seen my share of those things, yet
You know them all well in your marrow and flesh
For the shroud is the shield that still clings
To the toil that you wore, to the deeds that you bore
To the future and past you present
When I see countrymen free, and the grass
Green overseas that otherwise death would have spent
If you could arise, recall how you died
Who then could discharge the debt?
That we owe in our souls, but don’t really know
In the war and the wound that beset
About you in harm, the wrong, the alarm
As you struggled the catch your last breath
Yet it fled far away, like your soul on that day
By demand, or command, or request,
What can I say, much less best relay
Of what your great efforts have earned?
You’ve written in blood, in anguish, in mud
We’ll honor, and then we’ll adjourn, oh
The tombs that we’ll build, of marble and steel
Carved with your names and your stars
Will pass with the times as the ages unwind
As you fade into memories afar, yet
The world that you built, the anger, the guilt
Of your blood on the altar of Mars
These will live on, and not just in song, but
In the hope and the home of my heart…

in memoriam, 2016

PACKAGES, SAMPLES, AND STOCKWORK – HIGHMOOT

Going to attend an author’s conference and seminar tomorrow.

Already have my packages, seminar samples, and stockwork prepared and in order for presentation…

THE RED TRACTOR – FIRST VERSE

A poem I began this weekend. I am usually not much for modern poetry but in this case I thought the juxtapositioning of that kind of poetry against the subject matter fit very well. I am also not posting the entire poem here as I intend to publish it.

THE RED TRACTOR

“Love demands infinitely less than friendship.”

                                                                                   George Jean Nathan

If I could admire a machine
As I admire a man it would be you
You were tough and you were strong, you did not relent
You were fit for tasks for which you were not
Designed and yet you mastered

*    *    *

One day I shall show my grandchildren the green and open
Fields we cleared and I shall say,

“Here we pushed back the frontier together,
he and I, my old friend. Here we hauled
and carried and labored and strained
and cut and leveled. This is because
we were as we were, and he was stalwart
and faltered not. I wish you could have
known him before the end, on the
border of what was wild forever we finally
made tame. What was chaos we ordered.
What was savage we made fit.”

And they will say,

“papa! it was only a tractor!”

And I shall remember fully the fields we made, ground we claimed, land we
Tamed. Uncertain Earth we took foot by foot from the long dry summers and the
Shower soaked springs with restless toil. The memories shall return to me of how
I repaired you endlessly and with great effort and frustration,
And yet did you always abide…

KAL-KITHARIUNE – THOUGHTS ON THE END

KAL-KITHARIUNE

I finally have the ultimate titles for my set of mythic/high-fantasy novels. They shall be called Kal-Kithariune (Or, The Fall of Kitharia). Originally the series was to be called The Other World but I was never really pleased with that. It was only a preliminary and place-holder title anyway.

The Kal-Kithariune shall link back to another myth/history or time epoch called the Kol-Kithariad (or the Rebirth or the Establishment of Kitharia). I have not really decided if the Kithariad will refer to a period of time 300 years prior to the Kithariune (when Kitharia undergoes a Rebirth or Renaissance) or to a period 3000 years prior when Kitharia is first established and founded.

Ideally I’d like to work it out so that the Kithariad refers to the Rebirth of Kitharia, 300 years before its Fall, but realistically I’m having real trouble making that fit and so it may have to refer to the Founding. It may be better to use the Founding as the other reference point anyway, to contrast the Genesis with the Armageddon and End. But I’d prefer the Rebirth. Though that might be impossible.

Kitharia is a both an analogy and a metaphor for America. And all of the Eldeven lands for the West even though the events take place in what would in our world be The Orient (near our Real World Samarkand).

The individual novels in the series will be entitled:

The Basilegate (The Emperor’s Legate)
The Caerkara (The Expeditionary Force)
The Wyrding Road
The Other World (or perhaps Lurial and Iÿarlðma)

The novels will be a tetralogy. Now that I finally have all of the titles, know the plots and endings of all four books, have the languages developed, many of the poems and songs written, some of the maps and illustrations drawn, have hundreds of entries in my Plot Machine and thousands of notes, and about 200 pages of the each of the first two books written I suspect I can complete the entire tetralogy in under 2 years.

This is by far the very most complicated thing I have ever constructed (to date), at least as far as writing goes and that includes a couple of epic poems I’ve written. I first conceived it in 2007 as a single book and I’m sure I have thousands and thousands of hours sunk into it since then. Despite my other workloads.

Eventually I plan to write a set of children’s short stories connected to it and to at least plan out or begin the Kithariad though that will likely have to be passed on to others.

Before I start either of those though I just want to complete the Kithariune and then move on to my other novels, such as my sci-fi series The Curae (which will be every bit as big as the Kithariune), my detective novels, and my Frontiers novels, such as The Regulator and the Lettermen. And I want to complete my literary novels such as Modern Man and The Cache of Saint Andrew. Plus I want to finish my epic poem America. And I want to write some scripts. Not just TV scripts but movie scripts. So once I finish the Kithariune it may be a long while before I return to myth and fantasy, such as after my “retirement” (though I don’t plan to ever really retire).

I have however learned much by writing the Kithariune. I now know exactly how to plot out both long, complex novels and series, and much simpler single books. So the learning and research and study period was worth it alone in that respect. And it should both add to the richness of the Kithariune and to all of the other novels I write thereafter.