“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.”
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)
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…”
Elk looked at Moose who looked at Steinthal coldly.
Elk looked at Steinthal again and said, “Steinthal you are one of the most smart-mouthed son of a bitches I ever met. You know that?”
Steinthal half-smiled out of the left side of his mouth.
“Really?” he replied enthusiastically. “Thanks for saying. I feel like I never can really hear that enough so it’s always a lotta fun to know how that works when it does.”
Both hired men were quiet a moment. Too long for it to be just catch-up.
“You know it’s dangerous when it works like that too,” Moose said quietly.
“You don’t say,” Steinthal replied, also lowering his voice, but in a different way. “You guys are like Google without the built-in AI. A treasure house of old links running to nowhere. Maybe you should have come here with earpieces and implants instead of pre-programming.”
Elk and Moose’s eyes shifted subtly to Maugham who was watching Moose carefully. Very carefully.”
“You might also wanna know this smartass,” Elk said. “We’re both nearly as big as your man. But you’re not. Not even close.”
Then they both looked at Steinthal.
Steinthal half-smiled again but spoke directly at Elk.
“Well, since you’re obviously the smart one then there’s probably something you should know too.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Elk, shifting his weight heavily from one foot to another. “What’s that?”
Steinthal smiled again, but fully this time.
“He’s not ‘my man,’ so don’t fucking expect me to try and control him when you finally work up the manballs to start this thing.”
Suddenly a set of headlights went on up the street and a car engine turned over. The headlights were pointed in the direction of the four men. The engine was quiet and dropped immediately into an almost silent idle. But the headlights stayed bright.
Elk and Moose looked at each other frowning.
“You did bring the manballs to start this thing, right ladies?” Steinthal smiled pleasantly and it was easy to see his teeth in the backglow from the headlights. Then he thumbed back in the direction of the car. “If not I got some guys in the car with extra sets you can borrow. If you promise we can cut em back out again afterwards.”
Elk looked at Steinthal. Steinthal could see Elk’s breath streaming and steaming out of his nostrils, but he remained calm enough to not move. Muscle, sure, but professional enough to be something else too.
The four men stared at each other without speaking and without motion. Until Elk’s shoulders dropped a little.
“They’ll be another day Steinthal,” Elk replied. Then he looked at Moose and nodded almost imperceptibly. Both men started to turn but before they could Steinthal spoke.
“There always is boys. The question you gotta ask yourselves, though, is this; do you wanna risk it ending any other way than it did just now?”
Elk turned and looked at Steinthal again, then at Maugham. But neither man reacted. Moose just stared at Elk. Finally Elk turned away and started walking. Moose followed after a moment’s pause. Both their footfalls were heavy, massive even. But both sounded clumsy and loud to Steinthal. He could use that. He would use that.
When they disappeared into the dark and couldn’t be heard anymore Maugham stepped up beside Steinthal and spoke quietly.
“What now?” he asked.
Steinthal looked over at him.
“Now Maugham, it’s an Elk and Moose hunt. Wanna bag a coupla big ones?”
Maugham shrugged nonchalantly.
“I got nothing pressing at the moment,” Maugham replied.
“Good,” Steinthal replied nodding. “It’s always good to take em before they ever get back to the herd.”
Then Steinthal raised his hand and signaled for the car.
from The Detective Steinthal
I TRULY ENJOYED WRITING THIS SCENE. IT’S A FIRST DRAFT AND BEGINS IN MEDIA RES…
Well Peden stopped in his tracks, and looked at Wordy.
“Do what Word?”
Wordy stood up and brushed off some of the beer that he had tipped over when Well startled him. But most of it had flooded the top of the small table or had already sunk into his breeches.
“Come stump around that corner like that?” Wordy said loudly, still annoyed, and though he had righted his glass much of the beer had soaked his pants. “Looks like I pissed my britches.”
Well smiled genuinely a moment and then laughed out loud.
“It does at that. But what ya mean ‘stump?’ You mean ‘stomp?’”
“I mean exactly what I said I mean ya mull-berry dumb-lump. You was stompin. But you also come a sneakin. You stump up on me. What are ya, deaf? Stompin and sneaking at the same time. Stump. And when ya did that you also stumped me and then I spilled my drink! Dang it!”
Well thought for a second, then laughed again.
“Don’t ya mean ‘Jomp’ then?”
“What?” Wordy said confused.
“Well, if I come a sneakin and a stompin and that made you jump, then don’tcha mean ya ‘jomped?’Ain’t ya keepin up with yerself? Stomp and jump – jomped. Ya jomped Wordy. Ya got stumped, and then you jomped. Simple as that.”
Wordy was speechless a moment and seemed annoyed again, momentarily anyway. But then a broad, toothy yellowed grin spread across his face and he said with real satisfaction,
“‘Jomp,’ as if sounding it out for the first time. “Say, I’m gonna write that down!”
Well looked at Wordy, then around the room. As if peering about for something. Wordy followed Well’s gaze ‘til it lit on him again.
“Whatcha gonna write it down with Wordy?”
Suddenly Wordy threw his hands up in the air exasperated.
“Hell Well!” he exclaimed. “Why do I have to think of everthang?”
Well laughed again.
“Beats me Wordy, but you’re fair to midlin at it.”
Wordy shook his head at Well. Well was his best friend but in Wordy’s opinion he sure was a lotta hard living.
“Whadda you want anyhow Well?” Wordy asked him suspiciously.
“’Bout what?” Well asked him sincerely.
Wordy threw his hands up in the air again and shook both fists at Well.
“’Bout why you stump me in the first place?!” Wordy shouted.
“Oh that,” Well said off-handedly. “I just wanted to see if maybe you wanted to get a beer.”
Wordy fumed and frowned at Well a second, then reached in his wet pants pocket and got two half dollars. He walked over to Well and pushed em both into his right hand.
“Yes, I wanna get a damn beer, and I had one til you come along and stump me!”
Then he kept walking. As he was leaving Well said,
“Whur ya goin Word?”
“Out in the sun ‘til my britches dry.” Wordy replied, as if the answer had been self-evident.
“Well, what do you want me to do with the coins?” Well asked.
Wordy stopped and looked at Well.
“Hell Well get us two new beers, and this time you tell that no count barkeep I want some decent headins on my tap. If I’m buying his swell he’s gonna give us decent headins this time!”
Then Wordy turned and kept walking.
Well looked at the coins. He thought that maybe Wordy had meant to say swill, then decided that maybe he had meant the beer was made with local well water. Beer-swill made of stagnant well water. Swell. Tasted like it anyway Well thought. But after briefly musing about that Well said,
“Yeah, I’ll jomp right on that Wordy.”
But Wordy had already hit the saloon doors and was stump-out by then, moving for mid-daylight to cool-off and dry out for a spell…
FromThe Letter(ed) Men(my Western novel)
(Post script: I keep a little notebook and a file for my wife’s “Wordisms.” For Wordy is based on my wife. And to be honest Wordy is one of my favorite characters to write. And write about, but especially his dialogue and “Wordisms.” He appears as a seemingly secondary or even minor character in my Western, the Lettered Men. But he’s not really a minor character as will be seen in the book.
He’s seemingly a background character who actually ties together all the other major characters. In time anyway.
But as I said Wordy is in many ways, including the way he behaves and talks, based upon my wife.
Tonight I came walking around a corner to the bathroom after we got back from Anderson and my wife jumped when she saw me. I asked her why she jumped and in reply she said,
“Because you stump around that corner!”
I immediately knew it was a new Wordism and asked if she meant to say “stomp(ed)?”
She said, “No, you stumped. And I don’t mean a tree stump.” Then she explained what she meant by saying stump.
I laughed and said, “If my Westerns become as popular as I think they will then I’m gonna make you famous baby became people are gonna be reading your ‘Wordisms’ five hundred years from now!”
So, being immediately inspired I went and wrote this little scene with Wordy and Well Peden. In this particular scene I’m Well Peden, of course. Kind of out of step for me, to be the minor character in my own scene/story/novel but it fit so perfectly with this scene that I’m well pleased I wrote it that way.
Hope you enjoyed it, and found it funny [I had a ball writing it], and Good Night… and thanks for reading and your support of my writings and Work.)
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 AtomicTime (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.”
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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,
“I mean, look at you Denn. There’s literally nothing you won’t do. Seems to be nothing you fear,” she said almost desperately. She momentarily put both hands to her face and then dropped them again and looked down at the ground. “Most of the time I’m just so afraid. So lonely. So tired. There’s no one you need, but I need everyone.” Then her shoulder’s collapsed and she seemed to sag all over.
But Denn stepped forward and caught her and stood her erect again.
“Carole,” he said softly but firmly. “Everyone needs who they need, and I’m no exception. But you’ll never get over fear and loneliness through other people. Some things in life are just one man jobs.”
She sighed deeply and looked up into his eyes.
“I’m not a man,” she said softly, less desperate now, but still unsure of herself.
Denn smiled at her warmly, “That you aren’t my dear. That you aren’t. And yet that still doesn’t change any of the facts. Eventually you’re going to have to stand alone, if you ever want to stop being alone. And stop being so damned afraid all of the time.”
As he held her she seemed to want to move towards him, but he held her at a slight distance for a moment and then he finally released her. Almost as if to see what she would do. She didn’t move towards him, but she didn’t move away either. Instead she stared at his set face for a long time, studying it. He was tall, and his face was cut and hard, but there was also something very relaxed and open and human about him that maybe she had never noticed before. Fearless, but not without obvious sympathy. Height without arrogance, strength without cruelty. Demand without condemnation. Manhood without malice and calculation. She thought about this as a sort of flash of insight, and suddenly he seemed very alien to her, and to most other men she had ever known. And yet he also seemed very familiar. As if he had arisen from a long forgotten memory. But then she came to herself again, and she shook her head and said,
“Well then, will you stand with me?” The question was entirely sincere.
Denn nodded ever so slightly.
“With you Carole,” he replied flatly, though not coldly. “But not for you. With you is my job as a man, and as your friend, but for… well, it’s time you finally learned to do yours. And woman is no excuse in life for failing at a one man job.”
She watched him again, silently and reflectively for a moment, and then she sighed deeply once more and said, “Okay, Denn. I’ll do it your way.”
Denn nodded silently again.
“But what do I do?” she asked searchingly after a quiet moment wrestling with the obvious. “I mean, this is all so new to me. Where do I start?”
Denn smiled and pointed at her chest.
She mistook his intent.
“My blouse?” she asked puzzled.
Denn laughed freely at her question.
“Your heart my dear,” he replied when he finally finished laughing. “That’s as good a place as any to start, and the one place it might just stick this time.”
(This scene was inspired by something an old friend said to me this morning, about most people in life being lonely and afraid, and seeking companionship and safety above all else (and why this makes them naturally unhappy) and my reply about it.
The story/scene involves my Pulp and Action/Adventure hero Denn Templemann and a girl he knows, and has known for a very long time, Carole Vange.
It is perfect subject matter for Denn and his Pulp stories as Denn fears almost nothing, and needs almost nobody (though he is by nature very sociable and gregarious, just not dependent upon anyone) and Carole, who fears almost everything and thinks she needs everyone, even those who are terrible for her. (She flits form man to man hoping to find one who will “save her.” I’m sure you’ve met females like that before at some time in your life.) And it also, as I envisioned the scene, touches briefly upon their on-again/off-again Romantic attraction and why it isn’t and can’t work with Carole as she is.
Denn is not typically Romantic in nature, as some of my other male characters are [Marsippius, Alternaeus, the Boy, etc.], for he more represents my more entirely pragmatic-romantic side. But like me he is also extremely Chivalrous, in a very antique or Medieval way. He represents, in me, Action-Oriented Romance and Problem-Solving Romance and Manhood-Romance, not necessarily erotic or devotional romance. This is how he handles Carole and how he handles females/women in general. Which tends to confuse most women, but Denn, like me, doesn’t actually care.
[I do have other Romantic and Chivalrous aspects in myself, as my wife can tell you, but if Action-Oriented Romance is what is most needed then again, as my wife and many other females can tell you, that is certainly what comes out first. Problem-Solving first, tra-lah-lah later. For I also, like Denn, have an antique sense of Manhood.]
So, with that in mind, and having wanted to write this scene for awhile but not knowing exactly how to proceed, when my buddy said what he said about other people it gave me an excellent opening. I hope you enjoy the scene and feel free comment if you so wish.
The “One Man Job” is, of course, an obvious play on words and meaning in the scene.)
had a sort of waking reverie right after arising from a nap this afternoon. It involved 3 Comets.
The first kept changing colors and shape and would appear and then disappear and then reappear elsewhere.
The second would change into different things, appearing as a comet, then a meteor shower, then what might have been a huge asteroid, then it looked like a stationary planet, then perhaps something artificial and then finally into a comet again. But more diffuse. More like a large, mobile gas cloud.
The third at first appeared to move in one direction, West to East, then it turned back upon itself and ate itself. But it did so in a large loop so it looked like an astronomical ouroboros.
These “comets” appeared one after another, though there was some overlap between the second and last as the third seemed to “come out of or erupt out of the second” as the second scattered and disappeared.
Immediately I wondered if it were some type of omen, but to be honest I couldn’t tell as usually an omen makes some type of impression or feeling upon me, usually in my gut or my chest area. Leaves an uncanny or ominous feeling or impression upon me. This was more like almost disinterested “observation from a distance.” (Whether that distance was one of space or time, or both, I don’t know.)
Anyway, after recording it I decided it/they should go into my high fantasy novels The Kithariad. Though I am also not at all opposed to using the same or a similar thing in my scifi novels…
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
I’ve been very busy lately. Lot of travel with the wife, had a severe back injury around Easter, and my daughter just had all four wisdom teeth ganked. But I’ve been working in the background the whole time and I’m back at it now 100% and hopefully my schedule stays clear for a month or two.
Also I’ve started a Patreon account. More about that later as I get it up and running.
As some of you know it is National Poetry Month and therefore I have been writing one poem per day.
This is a poem I wrote today for Passover, the Last Supper, and Easter.
I’LL EAT FOR THE SAKE OF EATING
(A song for Easter)
Well I killed for the sake of killing
Then I lied for the sake of lies
When I ate for the sake of eating, and
Drank the wine of the blood-red vine,
Did I watch for the sake of watching
Did I hear for the sake of self
Or did I steal for the sake of stealing
As I took from the Vault of Hell?
Must I feel for the sake of feeling
Can I touch for the sake of lust
Do I taste of the wrong within me
May I speak of the things I must?
There’s an old thing deep within me
I often hear it sing,
Of wonders rare and welcome
High blooming in the Spring,
Yet old as all desires
Deep wandering in my soul
There burns there still a fire
Infernal, black, and cold
It wants to eat the future
It vomits out the past
To lose for the sake of losing
To shoot for the end at last –
Thus does come disaster
Thus does ruin wake, and
Hunger harms my Inner Man
With a thirst I cannot slake;
So I’ll eat for the sake of eating
So I’ll drink for the sake of you
To remember what you ask me
When you told me what to do
Yes, I’ll live for the sake of living
Yes, I’ll give up all that’s mine
Just to eat for the sake of eating, and
To drink of the blood-red wine…
On the True Size of the Armies and the Battles
On the Great Wars
On Languages and the Variations of Pronunciation
On the Scripts and Writing in Iÿarlðma
On the Art and Architecture of Iÿarlðma
On the Known Lineages and Lines of Descent
On Lifespans and the “Yorluin” (The “Graces” Given)
On the Ancient Eldevens
On the “Great Crafts” (Theurgies and Sciences) of the Eldevens
On the People’s Before (The Pre-Dwelvens)
On the Animals and Creatures of Iÿarlðma
On the Fauna and Flora of Iÿarlðma
On the Climate of Iÿarlðma
On the Lords and Rulers
On the Samarls
On the Eladruin
On the Great Chronologies
On the Histories (Extant and Extinct)
On the Ghans, Folk, People, Races, Tribes, and Nations
On the High Calendars
On the Translations
On the Eons and Epics
Indexes
Poems, Songs, and Verses
References to Other Works in Terra (Our World)
References to Other Works in Iÿarlðma
Important Personages
Great Beasts and Monsters (Oiyluin and the Korreupt)
Geography and Important Places
The Objects
The Marvels and Wonders
The Pre-Dwelven and Pre-Historical Wonders
The Ancient Wonders
The Elturgical Wonders
The Present Wonders
The Prophesied Wonders
The Three Great Myths (Lae-Iÿarl-sel) of the Eldeven Peoples
The Anÿlîsos
The Redelyost
The Earlwé-Iÿarl-Skëma
Magic and Miracle and Science (Theurgy/Thaumaturgy/Technicae and Elturgy/ Sarlementh/Eldarik)
Elturgy and Ilturgy
The War Between Magic and Miracle (Elturgy and Thaumaturgy)
Translations (complete and partial) into English of Selected Eldeven Works
Glossaries
The Wyrdros (The Wyrding Road)
Maps (Antique and Modern)
Other Linkages
_________________________________________
Above you will find a listing of the various Appendixes, Indexes, Glossaries, etc that will be found in my Mythological and Fantasy series of novels about the Basilegate. This material will be supplemental to my novels themselves and will provide the flesh to cover and support the skeleton of the story itself. This will probably be the final form of this supplementary material and with each novel in the series new Appendices, etc. will be added at the end of each book until the last, when all supplementary material will be provided.
Some of this supplementary material is already finished, as a matter of fact a good deal of it has already been finished (in my Notes and Plot Maps), although I may edit and rearrange some of this material into a more refined product. Some of the supplementary material has not yet been finished or has been reworked several times or I have yet to create it.
Although most of this material I have been writing or creating concurrently with the novels themselves.
Eventually, after the novels are written and published, and assuming they are a success, I intend a complimentary books with much expanded supplementary materials but I intend to hand that over to other writers with my notes so that they can write that book while I go on to other works.
If you wish to comment on this material, although it is only an outline, you are welcome to do so.
A special thanks to my daughter Kes who has typed up much of my handwritten notes and manuscripts after my wrist break. Thank you very much baby, your father loves you and you do superb work.
And thank you for the other books and poems and songs and such you have been typing for me as well. You’ve allowed me to proceed apace. And I greatly appreciate that. You’re a superb problem-solver.
Since it is National Poetry Month I have been attempting to write one new poem for each day of the month. So far I am maintaining my output despite my other workloads. Because poetry is not only one of my favorite avocations, it is also one of my favorite occupations.
Though some of my new poems have been necessarily short and/or very simple because I have been pressed for time given my other pursuits.
I will not be posting every new poem I write here (on Wyrdwend) because a couple have turned out to be really good indeed and because I shall enter them in contests or otherwise seek publication for those. For instance last Saturday (4/8/17) I wrote one entitled The Carpentry of Dead Men which I thought to be particularly good.
But I will try to post at least one of the poems I have written every week.
With that I give you this poem for this week’s First Verse: The Master and the Guru.
Inspired by something a friend said about “modern gurus and experts” and their never-ending advice.
Enjoy, and have a good evening folks.
Also, and less I be remiss, thank you for your readership and on-going support.
_______________________________________________
THE MASTER AND THE GURU
The Master took me to his forge
A hammer placed he in my hand
The guru with his tongue disgorged
His tales of wondrous, foreign lands,
The Master bade me strike the steel
To work upon it what I will
The guru told me, “sit and learn,”
As he spoke in fitful turns,
And when I erred throughout my Work
The Master’s hand made me his clerk
But when the guru spoke of truth
He said all things are thus, “for-sooth!”
The Master bade me work again
When failure stained my heart within
The guru said, “Do not lose heart,
All truths to you are but a part (apart)…”
The Master said, “You’ve learned enough,
Now practice til you perfect-up!”
I asked him when that day would come
He laughed at me and sent me home,
My guru, on the other hand
Mentioned not his future plans,
Nor did he bid me practice more
“Just wait awhile, I do implore –
For always there is more to learn…”
In that he marqued, and most profound,
In endless thought I’ve never found
How it is we may surround
An end to knowing, to that ground
Plowed and furrowed, waiting still
For seeds to grow, for crops to till –
The mind it is a hollow hall
Fathomless, without recall
The guru knows this, yes he does
And warrants then his work because,
The Master makes, the guru speaks
The one insists, the other seeks
Solutions that can never end
In anything, but will suspend
That day you come to know at last
That knowing is not action
In this world…
I was flattered to receive the nomination for this award.
Thank you.
I am not exactly sure what this award is or what it means but I’m gratified nonetheless. In answer of your Seven Questions here are my answers:
Seven Questions:
1. Where do most visits to your blog come from? From the US but I have a significant number of followers and visits from Europe (about evenly split between East and West) and Australia and Canada and a few from Africa.
2. What is your favourite sport? To play soccer – to watch boxing. But I am not a big pro-sports fan. I prefer amateur and singular athletics such as hiking and climbing and running.
3. What has been a special moment for you so far in 2016? An old case well resolved, and a trip to Charleston with the wife.
4. What is your favourite quote? I have many from many sources. One of my favorites is, “Jesus wept.”
5. What is/was your favourite class when still at school? Unfortunately I am a bit of a polymath with many interests. So I had not a single interest or favorite in school, primary or college. Some of my favorites included physics, philosophy, psychology, subnormal and criminal psychology, Greek, history, literature, religion, chemistry, cryptology, biology, and genetics. Just depended upon my mood and the day as to which was my favorite.
6. Anything you had wished to have learned earlier? Many, many things. Far too many to count or name.
7. What musical instrument have you tried to play? I play (well enough) to compose upon the piano. I wish I had also learned to play the guitar and violin, or that I had the time to do so now. I do not.
I’ve either been out of town a lot lately or my back has been really screwed up (due to prior and recent injuries), or both. So either I haven’t been able to sit at my desk a lot recently or I couldn’t stand to for very long due to the pain (and I can take a lot of pain). But pain plus crippling has dissuaded me from blogging much, and has been just a bridge too far, you might say.
Nevertheless I have been writing and songwriting and inventing and so forth. A lot actually. But I’ve done all of that by long-hand, by memory (while clearing land, etc.), in bed, or in my notebooks for my daughter to type out later.
I’ve also downloaded and begun testing some new 3-D printer software for my Ikon™ start-up project.
And despite my back I’ve started preparing for Hell Week (which I had to delay due to my injuries) and started refurbishing my garage to convert it into a gym. Which, just to be honest, has probably not sped up my back recuperation rate any. I guess I should also mention that I’ve been trying to get more than three or four hours of sleep a night. You know, to be better set for Hell Week.
Finally I’ve begun finishing and preparing some new short stories and other materials for the Autumn magazine season.
With all of that in mind here is one of the new songs I’ve written lately. I’m still looking for a good composing partner. So if you’re one and are interested, or know of one that might be interested, then contact me here.
I’LL TAKE A JOB
I’ll take a job for nothing, like everybody else
I’ll do it all for nothing, ask me it’s just as well
One day I’ll leave for elsewhere, cause it’s nowhere that I’ve been
Like to say I’d come back, but I’m looking for the end
I’ll take a job to go there, work my way on through
Once I’m there I’ll leave it, like everything else too
One day I’m gonna up and go, cause there’s too much I ain’t seen
But mainly cause you live out there, I saw it in a dream
I’ll take a job I’ll take a job One they’ll rob Of hope and pay But I don’t care Because one day I’ll make enough To look for you, And that ain’t No real job to me
I’ll take a job for what I want
I’ll take a job because I don’t
Much care the cost
Or time I’ve lost
In getting there to you
I’ll take a job with overtime
I’ll take a job, no loss, it’s fine
The money’s poor
But so am I
When I stare up at the sky
To see the stars
Of where you are
When I am here alone
I’ll take a job for nothing, like all the others do
I’ll use my job for something, and that something is for you
One day I’ll leave for where you are, just watch me here I come
Cause where I am ain’t nowhere when I’m somewhere all alone
I’ll take a job to get there, work my way on through
Once I’m there I’ll leave it, then I’ll start again with you
Soon I’m gonna up and go, cause there’s too much I ain’t done
But mainly cause I’m missing you, my job has just begun…
I feel as if part of my function in establishing and running this blog (Wyrdwend) is to gather, promote, and share the good work of others (literary, artistic, poetic, lyrical, musical, fictional, non-fictional, etc.) as well as to post and promote my own Writings and Work.
I do not see this as competition but mutual advancement.
“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.
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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 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.
Failure is the one thing that modern men are almost always willing to excuse and yet are almost never willing to learn from. No wonder it does them so little good.
“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.”
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.
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
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.”
These are things that I either like or love to do. I try to do many if not most of these things for at least a few minutes every week, depending upon my Work Schedule and other matters. Some I can only get around to about once a month or so. I like or love all of these things, some more than others, but I do not consider any of them contradictory to my Nature or Personality or in any way contradictory to each other. This is me as I am and in a nutshell:
Analyze and study Criminal cases and Terrorism (though I much prefer to prevent and thwart either if possible)
Attend and listen to a lecture
Box
Clear and tend my land
Climb
Conduct business
Cruise the internet – see what I can find
Design and build things
Do something athletic (hit baseball, play ball, run, swim, etc.)
Do something for someone else – assistance, charity, etc.
Draw or sketch or map
Engage in science (study, conduct experiment, develop theorem, make observations, write papers)
Explore and if possible Vad, sneak around places
Geochache (though I don’t use GPS)
Get together/hang out with friends, drink ale, talk
Go camping
Go see a movie (about once a month)
Have sex with my wife
Hike in the woods
If possible destroy or at least hamper or cripple evil
Invent and/or Innovate
Invest money
Listen to a radio play (especially old ones)
Listen to music
Listen to my scanner or CB or HAM radio
Make money
Nature watch
Patrol
People watch
Play and design games (board, chess, D&D, RPGs, etc.)
Play the piano or my harmonica
Play video games (although I only do this about once every three or four months)
Play with my dog Sam and my cats and explore with them
Play with my kids
Pray, meditate, etc.
Promote Right and Truth and the Good
Read a graphic novel
Read and Study the Bible (especially in Hebrew and Greek)
Read for pleasure (genre works and fiction)
Read non-fiction
Revolt against wrong and injustice
Save money
Shoot (my guns)
Sit naked under the stars (if not too hot or cold)
Star and moon watch with my telescope
Study a different/foreign language
Study and do research (on all kinds of things)
Sword and knife fight
Talk to God
Track and study animals
Visit an old church, historical building, site, monument
Visit a museum, see a play
Watch TV (though only on the weekends)
Work
Work out/train
Work outdoors
Write a book
Write a novel
Write a poem
Write a song
Write a story
Write non-fiction
If you are a young black male and you don’t understand that police are sometimes spooked by you, especially if you live in a high crime, urban area, then you aren’t thinking this out very far. Now as a black kid or man is that necessarily your fault? If you are law abiding and peaceful and doing the best you can, then no, it is not your fault. But at the moment anyway, it is the way it is. And no one can argue the way things actually are. You might not like it, and in this case you shouldn’t like it, but you can’t argue it’s not true.
If you are a police officer and you don’t understand that a lot of young black males (or others) are sometimes spooked by you, especially if you react to them with automatic suspicion or an assumption of guilt, then you aren’t thinking this out very far. Now as a cop is this your fault? If you are a good cop and doing the best you can, then no, it is not your fault. But at this moment, anyway, this is the way it is. And no one can argue the way things actually are. You might not like it, and in this case you shouldn’t like it, but you can’t argue it’s not true.
Everyone is spooked. Sometimes for entirely legitimate reasons and sometimes for assumptively dubious and entirely erroneous reasons. And when people are spooked, then rightly or wrongly, bad things tend to happen. People react instead of carefully observe, people are triggered by instinct rather than reason, people’s emotions become actively paramount rather than their common sense. The result of those habits are often very bad (certainly stupid and unnecessary), even murderous things.
But no one but criminals and terrorists and very bad men will benefit if young law abiding citizens and young men and the police are spooked of each other, and are reflexively hostile towards and automatically dubious of each other.
What’s the answer? Hell, I wish I could tell you the answer. The one that will work in every case. But no answer will work in every case. That’s just not real life. Not the way real people are. People are people. They will at times revert to their worst instincts or their most illogical and counter-productive habits. Or even to bad or incomplete or misguided training.
However I can tell you this much: When you are angry at each other, and vengeful towards each other, and automatically suspicious of each other, and spooked by each other then no real good can come of that. And no solutions either. Sometimes though, just really thinking and dwelling on the problem can give you an understanding of how to start.
However I can tell you what ought to be happening. What ought to be happening is that young black men, the law abiding and decent and good ones should be working with the police to take down criminals and thugs and terrorists in their own neighborhoods and to straighten out those neighborhoods for everyone else. (Including for the benefit and safety of their own children and women.) What ought to be happening is that cops should not to be automatically suspicious of all young black men who live in a dangerous area (and yes, they have every right to own personal firearms and maybe even more reason than most – because, well, think about it, they live in a bad or violent or high crime neighborhood) and instead the police ought to be conscripting the young, decent, good ones as allies and informants and friends to help clean up bad neighborhoods. (And good cops cannot stand beside or defend bad ones, or even wrong ones.) There should be an alliance and a true friendship and a partnership between citizen and police, but that has to run in both directions at once and respect and protection and cooperation and trust has to also run in both directions at once, and keep running in both directions at all times and as much as humanly possible.
Now I fully understand human beings and their true natures. I’m not fooled by how things will have to go or will go, or are even likely to go. And I’m not gonna try and deceive you with a bunch of feel good, talk-show, pop-psychology, fairy dust and glitterized bullshit. Mistakes will be made and will continue to be made. That’s human nature. Humans are imperfect. But no one should defend wrongdoing in either direction and over time the mistakes should become fewer and fewer, and even less and less egregious.
But this shit has got to stop people. My nation is already entirely fucked up enough as it is. Manslaughter and mass murder and unending suspicion and chaos and innocents being slaughtered and riots in cities and snipers on rooftops and kids shot dead out of suspicion is not the way. We’ve nowhere else to go from here but straight down to hell.
Being spooked all of the time will make spooks of far too many of us. Dead men in a dying land. It is a false hope to live as ghosts in a ghostland, to be half-men in a dead land, when we could be a Great Thing in a Great Land.
We should all be living and thriving and growing and developing, and at and about worthwhile, profitable enterprises.
What we’re doing right now ain’t working, and it can’t work. And, in the end, because it cannot hope to succeed, for anyone, it will have to be abandoned anyway. Or to stubborn self-ruin we go.
I hate even mentioning shit like this because I despise politics being interjected into life and death matters and matter of Right and Wrong. Right and Wrong should always stand on it’s own because, well hell, it’s fucking Right and Wrong. If you don’t get that then I can’t help you. Truth is you should never have to interject race or class or sex or any other far lesser considerations into Right and Wrong. But my wife is black, and my kids are half-black, and a lot of my good friends are black. And I grew up around cops and I’ve worked crime and tracked murders and rapists and thieves (and I know exactly how it works, I’m not in the least naïve or misguided about how criminals and terrorists are) and a lot of my good friends are cops and God-damnit it all to hell this ain’t fucking working.
I’m sitting here about to cry just thinking about all of the totally useless, murderous, violent shit I’ve seen over the years and I don’t fucking cry. And I keep thinking, Christ in Heaven, damn this mindless, habitual shit, don’t they ever, ever, ever fucking get it? How useless this shit is? How utterly unnecessary most of it is!!?
And if they don’t get it by now then what will it actually take?
Look, I’m under no illusion that most criminals are not gonna get what I’m saying. Nor are they gonna care. But by God, why can’t the rest of us? Get it?
So start now. For God’s sake. For your own sakes… Start doing things differently. Start treating each other differently. What in the fuck do any of us have to lose if we all do this differently?
Otherwise this shit is all you’re gonna have and this cycle of idiocy and death is all you’re going to have to hand down to your children and grandchildren.
You’ve already bankrupted them. Do you want to hand them down this useless shit too?
So man the fuck up already people, throw in together, and stop being so bucking spooked when you don’t need to be. And stop giving out reasons for others to be spooked by you too.
Because what we’re doing right now can’t possibly work over time.
And we’re running the hell out of it.
Pray for your nation folks. Pray for your own understanding. But just as importantly, if not more so, start doing things differently.
This shit is all on us. The solution will be on us too.
Or the doom and the fucking damnation will be.
And I for one have had a fucking nuff of the doom and the damnation.
I want to see things they way they ought to be. I want to see all men behaving as they should.
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
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.
“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
1. The inability to grasp or take into your own custody that which you only partially perceive or understand. Your ability to apprehend is suspended until you can understand or know more.
2. The failure to understand the Code or Message or Language or Evidence being presented to you. A coded obscuring of the obvious and the resulting apprehensive feeling that one is failing to both apprehend and comprehend some vitally important matter. Often leads to an almost mystical, uncanny, disturbing, and creepy feeling of being choked off from or hung just out of reach of the Truth.
I call this/these state(s) apprespension. The inability to grasp what is patently in front of you (even though you plainly see or hear it) because it does not fit what you assume to be true or real, because it contradicts normality or the available evidence, or because you have not yet put all the pieces of the puzzle together in your own mind. I’ve felt it a near infinite number of times working on cases, for even when you know the Truth there are still details missing or “ungrasped”
(Unapprehended, unconfirmed, your full understanding is suspended. Your grasp “hangs in the air” unable to be retrieved. And to tell you the truth most of the time, at most things in life, you will never know the full account and all of the Truth, just some basic part of it, substantial or not. Your apprehension therefore is “suspended” and incomplete.)
When it comes to mystical and supernatural and preternatural matters, matters such as noted in the link here to Chesterton and Browning, that the world is speaking a Secret Code, or that God is speaking a through other things in a language you can only partially understand, that things are being said you cannot quite make-out, or can make out only in part, I also call that Apprespension, but I define it a little differently. It is that weird, uncanny, creepy, unnatural feeling that you are apprehensive that you cannot comprehend what you are sure you are sensing or seeing or hearing. That you are apprehensive that your comprehension is fully capable of knowing what you can only partially discern, and therefore your understanding is suspended and unrealized. Or choked off, if you like the hanging metaphor better.
In any case that is the term I use, Apprespension. (You could also use comprespension, but that to me seems even less accurate.) Though when it comes to describing states like this all words are wind, and all words are at best, only partially accurate and only incompletely descriptive.
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“ONE of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”
~G.K. Chesterton: “Robert Browning,” Chap VI.─Browning as a Literary Artist. (1903) http://bit.ly/28Tx4o8
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
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.
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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
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…
Steven Pressfield is giving away a free download of his new book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit.
You should download a copy before the free offer expires. I really like and admire Pressfield’s work, both his historical fiction and his non-fiction.
The War of Art was superb. I added it to my personal library. Everyone should read it.
This will likely be another excellent tool for writers.
I can’t wait to read my download of this new book. I’ll start it this weekend. Afterwards I anticipate that I’ll add it to my personal library as well.
A lot of my buddies have military and law enforcement backgrounds.
Because of that one of my friends brought this article to my attention and a few of us discussed it since it is of more than passing interest to many of us.
It gave me an idea for a new science fiction short story about the same subject matter which I’m going to call Jihadology. (For the Jihad of Technology.)
I going to completely avoid the whole Terminator and tech gone rogue approach though of modern sci-fi and rather take a particular variation on the Keith Laumer BOLO theme, though there will be nothing about BOLOs or other such machines in the story. Those stories though were as under-rated and prophetic as was Laumer himself.
Anyway I want to avoid the whole world ending, unrealistic bullcrap kind of story (both from the scientific and military standpoints) and focus more on a very tight interpretation of what might actually happen if technologies such as those listed or projected in the article below were employed against an alien species in the future.
What would be both the operational and eventual ramifications, good and bad, of such technologies,and how could such technologies get out of hand or evolve beyond specified tasks and design parameters to become something completely new in function and focus?
I’ve already got the first few paragraphs to a page written which is based loosely upon this observation I made about what the article implied:
“I’m not saying there are any easy answers, there aren’t when it comes to technology, but technology can at least potentially do two related and diametrically opposed things at once: make a task so easy and efficient and risk-free for the operator that he is never truly in danger for himself, and secondly make a task so easy and efficient and risk-free for the operator that he is never truly in danger of understanding the danger others are in.
And if you can just remove the operator altogether, and just set the tech free to do as it is programmed, well then, there ya go…”
If the stories work well then I’ll add them to my overall science fiction universe of The Curae and The Frontiersmen.
By the way, as a sort of pop-culture primer on the very early stages of these developments (though they are at least a decade old now as far as wide-scale operations go) I recommend the film, Good Kill.
Anyway here is the very interesting and good article that spurred all of this. Any ideas of your own about these subjects? Feel free to comment. If your ideas and observations are good and interesting I might even adapt them in some way and incorporate them into the short story series.
Czech writer Karel Čapek’s1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), which famously introduced the word robot to the world, begins with synthetic humans—the robots from the title—toiling in factories to produce low-cost goods. It ends with those same robots killing off the human race. Thus was born an enduring plot line in science fiction: robots spiraling out of control and turning into unstoppable killing machines. Twentieth-century literature and film would go on to bring us many more examples of robots wreaking havoc on the world, with Hollywood notably turning the theme into blockbuster franchises like The Matrix, Transformers, and The Terminator.
Lately, fears of fiction turning to fact have been stoked by a confluence of developments, including important advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, along with the widespread use of combat drones and ground robotsin Iraq and Afghanistan. The world’s most powerful militaries are now developing ever more intelligent weapons, with varying degrees of autonomy and lethality. The vast majority will, in the near term, be remotely controlled by human operators, who will be “in the loop” to pull the trigger. But it’s likely, and some say inevitable, that future AI-powered weapons will eventually be able to operate with complete autonomy, leading to a watershed moment in the history of warfare: For the first time, a collection of microchips and software will decide whether a human being lives or dies.
Not surprisingly, the threat of “killer robots,” as they’ve been dubbed, has triggered an impassioned debate. The poles of the debate are represented by those who fear that robotic weapons could start a world war and destroy civilization and others who argue that these weapons are essentially a new class of precision-guided munitions that will reduce, not increase, casualties. In December, more than a hundred countries are expected to discuss the issue as part of a United Nations disarmament meeting in Geneva.
Photos, Top: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images; Bottom: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jose Jaen/U.S.NavyMortal Combat: While drones like the MQ-9 Reaper [top], used by the U.S. military, are remotely controlled by human operators, a few robotic weapons, like the Phalanx gun [bottom] on U.S. Navy ships can engage targets all on their own.
Last year, the debate made news after a group of leading researchers in artificial intelligence called for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.” In an open letter presented at a major AI conference, the group argued that these weapons would lead to a “global AI arms race” and be used for “assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.”
The letter was signed by more than 20,000 people, including such luminaries as physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who last year donated US $10 million to a Boston-based institute whose mission is “safeguarding life” against the hypothesized emergence of malevolent AIs. The academics who organized the letter—Stuart Russellfrom the University of California, Berkeley; Max Tegmark from MIT; and Toby Walsh from the University of New South Wales, Australia—expanded on their arguments in an online article for IEEE Spectrum, envisioning, in one scenario, the emergence “on the black market of mass quantities of low-cost, antipersonnel microrobots that can be deployed by one person to anonymously kill thousands or millions of people who meet the user’s targeting criteria.”
The three added that “autonomous weapons are potentially weapons of mass destruction. While some nations might not choose to use them for such purposes, other nations and certainly terrorists might find them irresistible.”
It’s hard to argue that a new arms race culminating in the creation of intelligent, autonomous, and highly mobile killing machines would well serve humanity’s best interests. And yet, regardless of the argument, the AI arms race is already under way.
Autonomous weapons have existed for decades, though the relatively few that are out there have been used almost exclusively for defensive purposes. One example is the Phalanx, a computer-controlled, radar-guided gun system installed on many U.S. Navy ships that can automatically detect, track, evaluate, and fire at incoming missiles and aircraft that it judges to be a threat. When it’s in fully autonomous mode, no human intervention is necessary.
More recently, military suppliers have developed what may be considered the first offensive autonomous weapons.Israel Aerospace Industries’ Harpy andHarop drones are designed to home in on the radio emissions of enemy air-defense systems and destroy them by crashing into them. The companysays the drones “have been sold extensively worldwide.”
In South Korea, DoDAAM Systems, a defense contractor, has developed a sentry robot called theSuper aEgis II. Equipped with a machine gun, it uses computer vision to autonomously detect and fire at human targets out to a range of 3 kilometers. South Korea’s military has reportedly conducted tests with these armed robots in the demilitarized zone along its border with North Korea. DoDAAM says it has sold more than 30 units to other governments, including several in the Middle East.
Today, such highly autonomous systems are vastly outnumbered by robotic weapons such as drones, which are under the control of human operators almost all of the time, especially when firing at targets. But some analysts believe that as warfare evolves in coming years, weapons will have higher and higher degrees of autonomy.
“War will be very different, and automation will play a role where speed is key,” says Peter W. Singer, a robotic warfare expert at New America, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C. He predicts that in future combat scenarios—like a dogfight between drones or an encounter between a robotic boat and an enemy submarine—weapons that offer a split-second advantage will make all the difference. “It might be a high-intensity straight-on conflict when there’s no time for humans to be in the loop, because it’s going to play out in a matter of seconds.”
The U.S. military has detailed some of its plans for this new kind of war in aroad map [pdf] for unmanned systems, but its intentions on weaponizing such systems are vague. During a Washington Post forum this past March, U.S. deputy secretary of defense Robert Work, whose job is in part making sure that the Pentagon is keeping up with the latest technologies, stressed the need to invest in AI and robotics. The increasing presence of autonomous systems on the battlefield “is inexorable,” he declared.
Asked about autonomous weapons, Work insisted that the U.S. military “will not delegate lethal authority to a machine to make a decision.” But when pressed on the issue, he added that if confronted by a “competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are…we’ll have to make decisions on how we can best compete. It’s not something that we’ve fully figured out, but we spend a lot of time thinking about it.”
Russia and China are following a similar strategyof developing unmanned combat systems for land, sea, and air that are weaponized but, at least for now, rely on human operators. Russia’sPlatform-M is a small remote-controlled robot equipped with a Kalashnikov rifle and grenade launchers, a type of system similar to the United States’ Talon SWORDS, a ground robot that can carry an M16 and other weapons (it was tested by the U.S. Army in Iraq). Russia has also built a larger unmanned vehicle, the Uran-9, armed with a 30-millimeter cannon and antitank guided missiles. And last year, the Russians demonstrated a humanoid military robot to a seemingly nonplussed Vladimir Putin. (In video released after the demonstration, the robot is shown riding an ATV at a speed only slightly faster than a child on a tricycle.)
China’s growing robotic arsenal includes numerous attack and reconnaissance drones. The CH-4 is a long-endurance unmanned aircraft that resembles the Predator used by the U.S. military. The Divine Eagle is a high-altitude drone designed to hunt stealth bombers. China has also publicly displayed a few machine-gun-equipped robots, similar to Platform-M and Talon SWORDS, at military trade shows.
The three countries’ approaches to robotic weapons, introducing increasing automation while emphasizing a continuing role for humans, suggest a major challenge to the banning of fully autonomous weapons: A ban on fully autonomous weapons would not necessarily apply to weapons that are nearly autonomous. So militaries could conceivably develop robotic weapons that have a human in the loop, with the option of enabling full autonomy at a moment’s notice in software. “It’s going to be hard to put an arms-control agreement in place for robotics,” concludes Wendell Wallach, an expert on ethics and technology at Yale University. “The difference between an autonomous weapons system and nonautonomous may be just a difference of a line of code,” he said at a recent conference.
In motion pictures, robots often gain extraordinary levels of autonomy, even sentience, seemingly out of nowhere, and humans are caught by surprise. Here in the real world, though, and despite the recent excitement about advances in machine learning, progress in robot autonomy has been gradual. Autonomous weapons would be expected to evolve in a similar way.
“A lot of times when people hear ‘autonomous weapons,’ they envision the Terminator and they are, like, ‘What have we done?,’ ” says Paul Scharre, who directs a future-of-warfare program at the Center for a New American Security, a policy research group in Washington, D.C. “But that seems like probably the last way that militaries want to employ autonomous weapons.” Much more likely, he adds, will be robotic weapons that target not people but military objects like radars, tanks, ships, submarines, or aircraft.
The challenge of target identification—determining whether or not what you’re looking at is a hostile enemy target—is one of the most critical for AI weapons. Moving targets like aircraft and missiles have a trajectory that can be tracked and used to help decide whether to shoot them down. That’s how the Phalanx autonomous gun on board U.S. Navy ships operates, and also how Israel’s “Iron Dome” antirocket interceptor system works. But when you’re targeting people, the indicators are much more subtle. Even under ideal conditions, object- and scene-recognition tasks that are routine for people can be extremely difficult for robots.
A computer can identify a human figure without much trouble, even if that human is moving furtively. But it’s very hard for an algorithm to understand what people are doing, and what their body language and facial expressions suggest about their intent. Is that person lifting a rifle or a rake? Is that person carrying a bomb or an infant?
Scharre argues that robotic weapons attempting to do their own targeting would wither in the face of too many challenges. He says that devising war-fighting tactics and technologies in which humans and robots collaborate [pdf] will remain the best approach for safety, legal, and ethical reasons. “Militaries could invest in very advanced robotics and automation and still keep a person in the loop for targeting decisions, as a fail-safe,” he says. “Because humans are better at being flexible and adaptable to new situations that maybe we didn’t program for, especially in war when there’s an adversary trying to defeat your systems and trick them and hack them.”
It’s not surprising, then, that DoDAAM, the South Korean maker of sentry robots, imposed restrictions on their lethal autonomy. As currently configured, the robots will not fire until a human confirms the target and commands the turret to shoot. “Our original version had an auto-firing system,” a DoDAAM engineer told the BBC last year. “But all of our customers asked for safeguards to be implemented…. They were concerned the gun might make a mistake.”
For other experts, the only way to ensure that autonomous weapons won’t make deadly mistakes, especially involving civilians, is to deliberately program these weapons accordingly. “If we are foolish enough to continue to kill each other in the battlefield, and if more and more authority is going to be turned over to these machines, can we at least ensure that they are doing it ethically?” says Ronald C. Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech.
Arkin argues that autonomous weapons, just like human soldiers, should have to follow the rules of engagement as well as the laws of war, includinginternational humanitarian laws that seek to protect civilians and limit the amount of force and types of weapons that are allowed. That means we should program them with some kind of moral reasoning to help them navigate different situations and fundamentally distinguish right from wrong. They will need to have, embodied deep in their software, some sort of ethical compass.
For the past decade, Arkin has been working on such a compass. Using mathematical and logic tools from the field of machine ethics, he began translating the highly conceptual laws of war and rules of engagement into variables and operations that computers can understand. For example, one variable specified how confident the ethical controller was that a target was an enemy. Another was a Boolean variable that was either true or false: lethal force was either permitted or prohibited. Eventually, Arkin arrived at a set of algorithms, and using computer simulations and very simplified combat scenarios—an unmanned aircraft engaging a group of people in an open field, for example—he was able to test his methodology.
Arkin acknowledges that the project, which was funded by the U.S. military, was a proof of concept, not an actual control-system implementation. Nevertheless, he believes the results showed that combat robots not only could follow the same rules that humans have to follow but also that they could do better. For example, the robots could use lethal force with more restraint than could human fighters, returning fire only when shot at first. Or, if civilians are nearby, they could completely hold their fire, even if that means being destroyed. Robots also don’t suffer from stress, frustration, anger, or fear, all of which can lead to impaired judgment in humans. So in theory, at least, robot soldiers could outperform human ones, who often and sometimes unavoidably make mistakes in the heat of battle.
“And the net effect of that could be a saving of human lives, especially the innocent that are trapped in the battle space,” Arkin says. “And if these robots can do that, to me there’s a driving moral imperative to use them.”
Needless to say, that’s not at all a consensus view. Critics of autonomous weapons insist that only a preemptive ban makes sense given the insidious way these weapons are coming into existence. “There’s no one single weapon system that we’re going to point to and say, ‘Aha, here’s the killer robot,’ ” says Mary Wareham, an advocacy director at Human Rights Watch and global coordinator of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of various humanitarian groups. “Because, really, we’re talking about multiple weapons systems, which will function in different ways. But the one thing that concerns us that they all seem to have in common is the lack of human control over their targeting and attack functions.”
The U.N. has been holdingdiscussions on lethal autonomous robots for close to five years, but its member countries have been unable to draw up an agreement. In 2013,Christof Heyns, a U.N. special rapporteur for human rights, wrote an influential report noting that the world’s nations had a rare opportunity to discuss the risks of autonomous weapons before such weapons were already fully developed. Today, after participating in several U.N. meetings, Heyns says that “if I look back, to some extent I’m encouraged, but if I look forward, then I think we’re going to have a problem unless we start acting much faster.”
This coming December, the U.N.’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons will hold a five-year review conference, and the topic of lethal autonomous robots will be on the agenda. However, it’s unlikely that a ban will be approved at that meeting. Such a decision would require the consensus of all participating countries, and these still have fundamental disagreements on how to deal with the broad spectrum of autonomous weapons expected to emerge in the future.
In the end, the “killer robots” debate seems to be more about us humans than about robots. Autonomous weapons will be like any technology, at least at first: They could be deployed carefully and judiciously, or chaotically and disastrously. Human beings will have to take the credit or the blame. So the question, “Are autonomous combat robots a good idea?” probably isn’t the best one. A better one is, “Do we trust ourselves enough to trust robots with our lives?”
This article appears in the June 2016 print issue as “When Robots Decide to Kill.”
Today I feel bloody awful. I woke up feeling like I should go back to sleep. Usually when I wake I’m raring to go, but not this morning.
I don’t know if it’s been working out in the heat (except Sunday, I kinda sheltered in place) as we’ve been having near 100 days, or the herbicide and pesticide I’ve been laying down, the long hours, the parties we had this weekend with the family, something I ate (we had a lotta party and junk food, pizza, pie, chips, nachos, etc.), or my daughter’s new boyfriend staying over at the house until about 2:00 AM but I rose feeling terrible.
Nauseous, kinda dizzy, headache, lack of energy, stiff, etc. Most days I get up and after I work out the stiffness from my prior injuries and broken bones then I’m on to whatever I need to do. Takes me about half an hour or so to warm up and loosen up but after that I’m good and usually have more energy than a lotta guys half my age. But again, not today…
What I want to do is drink about a gallon of water and go straight back to bed, but I gotta lot to do today including laying dirt, clearing land, making submissions, working on my novel and script, and setting up my new weight bench. If I can get to everything. And at this point I doubt it.
But I may have to nap some anyway. After my mid-morning snack. If that doesn’t help me feel better then I may have to go back to bed.
Nevertheless I hope you have a much better days folks.
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Wyrdwend 
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