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.)

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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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UNTOLD LAYERS

Untold layers of a man, say I

But three most vital and prime: Body, Mind, and Soul.

Of Body – movement, grace, strength, and sensation
Of Mind – craft, thought, apprehension, and creation
Of Soul – his inmost Self, Endurance, Honor, Truth, and Love

Untold layers of a man, say I

On Three All Other Things Depend

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.

WHERE AND HOW DO I BEST CREATE?

I decided tonight to participate in a writing prompt that appeared on this site, the Daily Post:
This was the specific prompt I am responding to:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/writing-space/

“Where do you produce your best writing — at your desk, on your phone, at a noisy café? Tell us how the environment affects your creativity.”

I altered the name of the prompt a little bit from, “Where do you produce your best writing?” to “Where and How Do I Best Create?”

Although I am a writer, I am also an inventor, and a game designer, and a businessman, and I’m aware of how I create best in all of those disciplines.

Some real amount of creativity is required for all of the functions I listed and with me I have particular environments or actions that are most conducive to creativity in each particular sphere of activity, but the environments or triggers for each of those activities tend to vary. For sentence the triggers for my creativity when I am inventing tend to be different from those when I am writing. Individual triggers may overlap but different fields usually produce different methods for me.

First of all a bit of background regarding creativity as I see it – and to me where you create is directly linked to both what and how and how well you create. I have studied creativity (the subject in general) and my own creative habits and tendencies for decades and have gotten pretty good at knowing what best stimulates creativity in me.

Secondly I live in the country and pretty far away from any city, or even town. I purposely choose to live out in the country and would never choose to work in a city at any creative function. I lived in a city for a brief period of time when my wife and I first married and found that particular environment anti-creative.

I would and do visit cities to work cases (criminal cases that I still assist on occasionally), to meet clients or investors, to see a film, attend a concert, visit a library, go to an airport, or just to see the sights. I would however never work in a city. So for me almost all creative undertakings are done in the country and most of those near my home where there is plenty of land to wander and wildlife to study, track, and watch. But noise, pollution, congestion, distraction, all of that is the very opposite of a creative environment to me.

Third, I tend to create first in my mind, working out most of the aspects and details of what I am creating in my head, then go over and over the subject again, committing it to memory, then later I write it out in sketch books or on notepads or notecards, and finally I transfer it to my desktop computer. I have tried other methods, and other technological aids, but most don’t seem to work for me very well, if at all. So that’s my normal pattern. Construct first in my mind, work out most of the details, commit to memory, then write out my notes, and finally commit it to my computer where I can edit and revise.

As for how I commit whatever I am working on to memory see this post: https://wyrdwend.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/the-memory-palace-matteo-ricci-and-the-city-of-agapolis/

So, all of that being said by way of introduction here are the places I best create and the circumstances that tend to spur on creativity in my case.

1. Business or Investment – if I am working on a business or investment project either for myself or for a client I tend to do best by simply driving around town in my car looking at businesses or by stopping at a public place (like a mall) and people-watching and observing commerce. This is the one exception to my No-City Creativity Rule. In this case I like to make close observations on how people are interacting and how and in what directions commerce and human activity tends to flow. I try to look at it from an objective point of view, as if I were a disinterested observer. Then I commit to memory what I saw or occasionally I will make notes, make a comment into my digital recorder, or I will ask my wife and children to make notes on something I or we have observed. Every Friday that it is possible I/we have what I call an Idea Sabbath. The wife, the kids, and I will take that day off for nothing but Idea Generation. These are the occasions I use for business and capital creativity. Sometimes I will also use these outings to make close observations of people (people watch) so that I can later use what I have observed for fictional character development.

2. Game Design – if I am working at game design or development I do best by imaging the game in my mind and then trying to play out various scenarios in my imagination to the logical conclusions. This is where the City of Agapolis comes in very handy. I often design best by lying in bed in the dark and the quiet, by meditating, by lying in a hot bath, or in the sun. Sometimes I do quite well at design by listening to music, mostly Art Music. For the most part though I design best in quiet and peaceful environments. I have done some really good design work at night in the yard while stargazing through my telescope or by simply sitting in the dark in my yard at night listening to the night wildlife and birds.

3. Invention – I usually do my very best inventing while walking in the woods or riding my bicycle in the country. Either activity allows me to clear my mind completely and to make close order observations of everything around me. Most of my inventions are spurred on by making observations of Nature anyway, or by having conversations with God while I walk or bike or hike, and on those occasions God will often point out to me something I had previously failed to notice. This almost invariably leads to a good invention idea.

4. Poetry – I often write my very best poetry after reading, often after reading history. I also do extremely well at writing poetry after I am physically exhausted. So, often I will run or train or work out heavily, then go take a hot bath (followed by a cold bath) and while I lay in the tub I will commit to memory whatever poem I am writing in my head (poetry is extremely easy to memorize because, well, it’s poetic), then after I get out I’ll write it down. Sex with the wife also often leads to good poetry, and sometimes good songs. Point is my best poetic compositions are usually related to states of extreme physical exhaustion and or states of extreme physical relaxation.

5. Songwriting – songwriting for me is usually spurred on by listening to music, by becoming distracted by something, by play, or by athletic activities, or even by driving in the countryside. Though sometimes it can occur in my dreams or come out of almost nowhere. (Or it seems that way to me anyway, see: https://wyrdwend.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/everyone/) It also seems to often occur just before and just after sleep. Songwriting often hits me a couple of days or weeks after carefully listening to a song by someone else and closely examining and then thinking about the lyrical structure of the song I listened to. Like with poetry I can go days, sometimes weeks, without writing a single song and then I will write six or seven or even more in just a few days.

6. Writing Fiction – writing fiction for me is almost always connected with Work and the Land. I write my very best novel material and short stories and things like that while working the land. If I am chopping wood with my axe, if I am cutting grass, or hauling dirt, or clearing brush, or using my slingblade, or working outdoors then I will write well. Usually the entire time I am working outside a story or novel is running through my head and I can either write out entire scenes or develop whole plotlines as I work. Physical work is fully conducive to my best fictional work and I can write far more easily while my body is at work than I can by sitting still at my desk (which I tend to hate anyway). So as I work I also write out the piece (or to be more accurate I usually imagine the characters and scenes) in my head, commit it to memory, then when I finish I will come in and write it all down. If the story becomes so involved I fear I can’t remember it all correctly or I start producing particularly good character dialogue I’m afraid I’ll forget then I come inside immediately and write that down. But it all begins with physical labor and working outdoors.

Those are the environments and situations and techniques regarding how I tend to create, and create best. I could mention a couple of other efforts, such as when I’m working on a scientific project or paper (and my best scientific work tends to be a sort of combination of how I best Invent and Write – Nos. 3 and 6), or how I might still work a case, which tends to be a combination of Business creativity (such as revisiting the crime scene) coupled with Design creativity but overall the techniques and environments I listed above pretty much sum up my methods of creativity depending on what form of creativity I’m pursuing.

Overall I almost never associate creativity of any kind, or even a specific creative pursuit like writing, with being sedentary, or with something like sitting in a café. To me creativity is an active function, whether that activity is physical, mental, or psychological.
Mostly I associate activity and motion and movement and work (actually making things physically happen) with creativity. But to me being sedentary and inactive seems the very antithesis of real creativity. So just sitting my butt in a chair is one technique I find hard to stomach. I guess it’s the way I’m built but I detest the standard conception of the sit-around creator, or the sit all day drinking coffee writer.

I’m sure that there are writers who do very well that way or in that type of environment, but me, I prefer an axe in my hand or some land to wander while I write.