Old Year's Day

Old Year’s Day

Waves roll in…
Waves roll out…

That’s what I see from this bench
Overlooking the water, in a strange city
I came here to say goodbye to an Old Year
It was an old year; I’d grown to know it well
It had come around enough times
Like some people I’d knew
Old like an old coat
Comfortable, and ready to fall apart
This year, this old year had wrinkles
That were ugly, not wise
They showed time, not experience
It smiled with bleeding gums
And its hair was blown by the wind
It was an old bastard of an uncle
The kind that borrowed money
Its neck was bent with sleep and guilt
It was sometimes forgetful, occasionally cruel
It smelled like pee, and medicine
I had grown used to the halitosis
The stories it told over and over
Gave comfort, over and over
Because I never had to think about them
I always appreciated how
It would demand so little from me
Usually only my company
And the most passing of attentions
It’s hard to accept that it’s time to say
Goodbye, because
I’ve grown used to it visiting
So often, recently. But,
This old year has grown weary
And is dieing, from its own disease
So now it’s time
To honor, and grieve and remember
As much as this old year deserves
And maybe to learn
Everyone’s life is a story to tell.
Everyone’s time is a lesson.
And, just like saying goodbye
To a dear friend, or a bad relative,
Most of its memory fades
With its absence
I hope, Oh I hope, Oh I pray
That I’ll be that better friend
That I’ll be that better son
That I’ll be that better man
Because of the lessons that I’ve learned
From that crazy, decrepit, derelict, old year
Come 'round too many times before its passing.
I can see the New Year coming
I was supposed to meet it here
And I’ve never felt quite ready
For first impressions
Never shamed, always shy
And knowing that’s not quite right
But all there is to do is rise
A seagull flies overhead
A boat cuts towards the horizon
The wind pulls at my scarf
And the clouds will bring their rain

… waves roll out,
… waves roll in.

Around Eleven- A Progress Report 2

I received a very encouraging comment the other day, so I have decided to post the next section of Around Eleven (read previous post for the first two sections of the story) in gratitude to those people who have been giving me gracious and positive feedback about my writing.

Work progresses on this story, and if all goes well, I may actually have it done by the end of the week. I will be happy to send complete copies to anyone who asks.

Enjoy.

gargh =:]

***

It was nights like this that I would usually take a walk- late, warm, thick, and heavy. I didn’t need any other excuses on nights like this, but I had crossed that fine line between needing fresh air and needing to clear my head that could prove the diference between sleeping at all, or letting the nightmares follow me into the morning.

Moot point, I conceded, directing my attention to the fact that the dreams were meeting me before I fell asleep. What chance did I have of fighting off the night terrors and the damned shakes that lasted all day afterwards, if I found dreams waiting for me on my ceiling before closing my eyes?

Mom was right; I needed a shrink. Of course, for her, therapy meant simply finding a wife who made great pie. Proper interpretation of Mom’s advice usually did me well. Maybe I should make some phone calls in the morning.

I put my hands deep in the pockets of the windbreaker, pushing the corners of the unzipped jacket into arrows that pointed towards my sneakers. I dipped my chin so the bill of the baseball cap hid my face, and trudged like a cliché down the alley, through fog and around heaps of garbage.

Not true, I countered. The image, the dancing couple, that had to do with light, more than anything else. I hadn’t noticed any shadows while they danced in their spotlight. Not my shadows, only theirs. For some reason, all the dark things on my ceiling held no terror for me, while they were there.

I clumphed through a gravel spill from some recent demolition work and ducked under a chain so I could turn down a driveway. I stopped dead.

The sky was an ambient orange-purple ceiling getting lower as the fog rolled in. The universe went about its business of shrinking us into pockets of isolation as walls of mist came up the narrow streets and fell off of rooftops as it always did this close to the docks this time of night, this time of year. There were streetlights here and there on the actual streets, but I was making my way, by and large, following habitual routes lit only by the occasional backlighted window pane from the apartments above, and the city’s own banked glow.

I had come around the corner of a high wall that separated the alley I was walking down from the driveway that ‘L’ed at the chain to turn into some kind of small loading dock. There was one harsh light mounted inside the small courtyard that spilled light just past its threshold, past the wall, and into the end of the driveway.

I stood with my back to the chain, my toes on the edge of the pool of light. Down the driveway was indistinct murk. To my right, was the darkness of the building facing the loading dock, not quite lit by the downcast spot in the dock’s courtyard. Beside and behind me to either direction were narrowing distances that closed off any light as alley walls came together in the veil of night’s gloom and poverty. My mouth hung open.

A man, across the yard, pulled a woman into the light. At first it parodied my earlier bedroom musings enough for me to close my eyes and shake my head to rattle something loose. When I opened them again, I could see that this was no set of dance partners. He pulled the woman roughly behind him by the wrist. He took three sloping strides into the center of the lot where a chair was set up in the middle of piles of crates that had been left out to be dealt with the next day. He twisted her arm, forcing her to stumble into the seat. She clung to its sides for support. I couldn’t make out what was said over the not-quite-distant traffic. In fact there was no sound from the couple whatsoever. No crunching of grit under his heavy stride. No scrape of the chair as the woman got settled.

Neither of them were in a position to see me, I figured. But she was turned more to face me, while the man was more with his back to me as he circled around to a nearby crate.

The woman settled herself into the chair, cool with contempt. I have to be specific here. This was the woman. I hadn’t stumbled upon some strange date-gone-wrong-and-about-to-end-badly after all. I wasn’t sure if that would have been worse or better. I shook my head again, but nothing came loose.

The man was not the man though. I should be specific again. He was dressed in a suit, but looked like a gorilla- wide shoulders, hairy knuckles, and all. He was a brute. And he didn’t like what she had just said.

He stepped up and slapped her hard across the mouth, just as a truck backfired a block away. A dog whimpered off to my right, and ran down the alley away from the noise. I looked back and saw that the woman was slumped back in the chair, blood trickling from her mouth in stark red contrast to her silver gown and pale skin.

Gorilla Boy went back to the crate he had been standing by and approached the woman again, carrying a length of rope that he used to tie her to the chair with. He was muttering the whole time the way bastards do when they want to justify hitting a woman. She began to stir before he was finished, but she didn’t struggle.

The cold fires came back into her eyes though, and I shivered despite the warm.

When he was finished he stepped back and talked some more. She said nothing. She just stared at him, chin lifted, daring him again.

Her eyes flicked to the side. In that instant the brute turned with her gaze, towards me.

And the light bulb exploded.

The Anythieves Cycle- An Overview

I had mentioned in an earlier entry that I would provide some information about the writing projects I am currently plodding through. I have mentioned before the travel log project, The World, And How To Get There. This entry is intended to provide an overview of The Anythieves Cycle, as it is currently called.

The Anythieves is set in a shared, strange, universe. Each story is connected in at least one way- sequentially, by character, through passing reference- to at least one other story in the sequence. They are intended to be read in order. Since some of the stories are very far from completion, this may not be possible for quite some time. However, each story can be read by itself for its own sake, and be judged on its own merits.

What follows is a summary of the individual stories, and some commentary regarding my intentions as the author.

Jack, Mary, And The Anythieves- In Progress

This is the story of a proper woman, Mary, brought back into the strange, dreamlike, lifestyle she lived as an orphan in the back and south of London, when her former companion, Jack, finds her in her new life to help care for young the daughter of one of their murdered friends. Jack and Mary's youth was halmarked by a secret life, centering on the knack of some of their young companions to carve and enter tunnels in space that let them travel undetected all over London and the rest of the world. While the mortal embodiments of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins are distracted with the decision of whether they could or should fall in love again, they are driven from their sanctuary by a sinister force of hard, evil men known only as the Parliment Of Black Coats. The Parliment wants the child, that the three must flee or suffer the grizzly fate of their young charge's parents.

Author's Note: This was the first story I started writing and I'm still not satisfied with my progress in it. I have an outline and the first, small, chapter, as well as several excerpts throughout the story that need to be linked together. However, I have also found that by writing the other stories in the sequence first, I may be saving myself some editing down the road as I decide what details to disclose along the way.

One Night At Goodman's Place- In Progress, due for completion by November 31, 2007

Billy, a drunk in a bar, tells a story about a remote island in the Atlantic where he and a business associate attempt to locate and pillage an archeological dig. The discovery of the site and the nature of the treasure (and what guards it) wrap the characters into a literal battle between Good and Evil.

Author's Note: The story told by Billy is set in the early 1980's, and serves in some ways as a prequel the Jack, Mary, and the Anythieves. It was influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and personal historical research into the early church in England. I've patted myself on the back with this one by creating a narrator- a man listening to Billy's story in the bar- who doesn't have a name, and never speaks himself throughout the course of the story.

The Hour And The Thief- Completed

A young priest, Owen, is challenged by the vision of a boy breaking into his church and disappearing after pleading for Sanctuary. As the priest sees this happen repeatedly at hourly intervals he begins walking backwards through the conversation as he retraces the boy's path. He finally comes to what the boy is running from, and has to face his own demons before the night is through.

Around Eleven- In Progress, due for completion by November 31, 2007

A nameless narrator is haunted by both visions of a couple running from unknown danger and strange shadows that prowl the corner of his vision. The couple, in their own time, is troubled by similar visions of shadows that distract them from the web of mob intrigue they must survive in order to get out of town alive and together.

Every Kingdom- In Progress

A drifter with a shadowed past finds himself pursued by intrigue and occult magics as he tries to help a young woman escape a backwater town in the heart of the bayou.

Ring The Bells- In Progress

A priest, Matthew, is woke in the middle of the night by his brother, an unrepentant thief, who needs his help in covering his tracks from a recent burglary. A simple errand embroils the priest in assasination plots and a criminal underworld he had been blissfully unaware of. Meanwhile, his brother, Patrick, triggers a mystery, a curse, and a love story, none of which he feels equipped to cope with either.

Stay For The Pie- Completed

A small slice of strangeness just for the fun of it. A person is told a strange story for the sake of a writing excercise. This, is that story. It's and epilogue of a sort, a coda if you will, and a good way to tie things off until the next batch of stories come out of my head.

Author's Note: I was told the story in this story and was, in fact, requested to write it, just as the character was. The pie was my idea. I enjoyed writing this, because I found halfway through it that I was writing a story completely populated by dialogue- wholly in quotes without even as much as a 'he said' to distract the reader from what was being told.

Around Eleven- A Progress Report

I began the story, "Around Eleven", two and a half years ago. The first three paragraphs were written between the morning that My Second Ex-Wife left me and a car accident that forced me and my driver off I-10 doing 80. It was a very long day and I didn't add anything to the story for about a year.

This summer I picked the project up again. As is often the case with my strange fiction projects, I wasn't sure where it was going to go for some time after I had put the first words down. I had worked out the outcome and drafted the next section by my thirty-fifth birthday. I had decided by then to work it into a scope of stories, big and small, collectively called "The Anythieves", a name I was given in a dream about ten years ago, related to another story. The shared universe of this story cycle has connections of characters from plot to plot, and slides liberally around through time, exploring diferent themes. I am including below the first two sections of "Around Eleven".

Cap Mango, a Commentor to this blog and a Good Friend, has set an interesting challenge for himself in his desire to participate in a month-long writing contest. See his blog, "The Seven Day Quest" for more details on NaNoWriMo.

While plans didn't work out for Cap this year, he has resolved to be in training for next year and is writing towards that end. In a show of solidarity, I have resolved to complete two of my projects in The Anythieves Cycle- Around Eleven, and One Night At Goodman's Place. I will be posting on that project soon.

Enjoy the excerpts. I will write more on the cycle shortly.

gargh =:]

The headlights of passing cars became spotlights that played across the smooth surface of another place. As the light paused and hung for a moment in the corner of the room, a man stepped from the shadows and brought with him the hand, and arm, and body of a tall woman. Her platinum hair was piled high over a graceful neck and a delicately exposed back. Her gown fell in shimmering waves of silver that caught highlights from the mirror on my nightstand.

They danced to the rhythm the night played outside my window. They spun and swayed with the rattle of trucks. They caressed and held each other in time to the arguments of my upstairs neighbors. Finally, they waltzed to the sultry blues of a well-timed, out-of-work musician practicing his saxophone on a fire escape down the alley.

The couple was joined by the shadows of cats dancing across a chain link fence. The figures moved to their music in perfect ballroom form. The flashing lights of a tow truck caused a crowd to form on the dance floor, swirling around, with them.

***

The man and the woman stepped out onto the dance floor and began their swirling circuit through the crowd. At first, all he could think about was how radiant she looked. Their movements were without conflict or hesitation, as they swayed and shifted together through the others just outside the shifting spotlights.

Anyone watching would assume the couple had danced many such dances in many such clubs on many such nights. No one watching would have guessed how his heart had leaped earlier that evening when the man saw the woman by the bar, ordering that too-dry martini. No one watching would know how the light catching the silver lines of her gown had sent electricity to his brain and had seized his tongue. No one watching would have known her heartbreak, or the soothing balm his quite-shy smile had laid on her soul. No one watching would know that they had just met. No one watching would know that their trip across the dance floor was a means to avoid the distraction of crippling, awkward, conversation, as much as the result of the attraction that drew her hand to his hand, and his arm to her waist.

But even as he moved with her, danced with her, and was lost in her, the man became drawn outside of his reverie by the shadows outside the spotlight. It seemed to the man, as he looked over the woman’s shoulder, that the walls of the club had been lost in a distance of glare, smoke, and shifting darkness. The woman’s arm tightened around his middle. She had noticed too. Outside the spot that remained fixed on them (and why did that damn light keep following them? the woman wondered), she saw the shadows move at awkward angles, and the darkness overhead form irregular, alien, and altogether too-large depths to what should have been rafters and light riggings.

“I know,” he whispered in her ear, “just keep moving.”

They continued to dance, holding closer to each other as they went, suspecting only they were what was real, as the dark prowled and flashed around them.

The lights got brighter and the music dimmed. Then reality snapped the other way and they were dancing once again in shadows as the strains from the band pit rose around them. Always though, the man and the woman stayed in their spotlight, holding each other.

From a life filled with derringers, stickball bats, and tommy guns, the man finally came to a place where he had met fear. Not the apprehension of the moment, not the uncertainty of death, but the knowledge, at the root of his soul, of something worth fearing. Even knowing that Dolczek’s men were in the club, that they had followed him there that night, he had not been afraid. But now, with her in his arms, he knew the mobsters to be a threat to be dealt with sooner than later, and the shadows the real reason he should be running, maybe for the rest of his life.

But, not without her.

“We need to get out of here,” he whispered into her hair.

“You think so?” Her steps remained light. He knew her voice was not mocking him, but offered general defiance of their circumstances.

“I have an idea, but I’ll need your help.” He spun them towards where the band faded in and out among the shadows outside the spotlight.

“Anything, let’s just go.”

“There’s a back way out, under the bandstand. You take the trap door by the drummer’s riser to the service duct and through to a supply room. I’ll meet you there, then we can make our way out.”

“How does that involve my help?”

“There are some people following me, like this weirdness isn’t enough,” he cocked his head to indicate the obvious. “We’ll need to make our way around them if we’re going to get out. They’ll be looking for a looser in a bad suit, not a couple out on the town, lost… in each other,” he finished lamely.

“Right.”

“You’re okay? Coming with me I mean.”

“We’re going to need to talk,” he could feel the half-smile as she pressed against him. “I may need to be asking you the same thing.”

“Then it’s decided. We shall Run Away together,” he declared in mock triumph. Then he caught himself. “So to speak.”

“Yes. Indeed.”

“We can talk when I meet you in the storeroom.” And with that he moved her to the edge of the floor and she slid from his arms and out of the light. He bowed slightly at her parting back, and then straightened as he saw her ducking behind the musicians. He dusted off his pants with his fingertips, and straightened his jacket with both hands. He still stood alone, in the spotlight, as the band wound down. The house lights came up as they concluded their set.

Strange. The shadows had gone. Reality had returned.

Which meant there was more normal terror to be dealt with. At least muscle and bullets were something he had experience with.

The World And How To Get There- A Progress Report

I'm nearing completion on a project I started inadvertantly four years ago when I gean what would become a series of trips in and around the world. I have titled the project, "The World And How To Get There". It would be nice if I could publish this someday- a comilation of my travel logs over that year. Recently, I've gone back and written a very brief introduction to teh book. I've been taking time, like I did this morning, to transcribe more of the journals from my handwritten notebooks into a single electronic volume. Most of the Introducation reads as follows:

***

In the 367 days that passed between February 13^th, 2004 and February 14^th, 2005, a full leap year and a day, I traveled across the country and across the world. I saw the Southern Cross and the Midnight Sun. In between I fell in love, twice, broke up, once, and got married, by almost all accounts, on accident.
And there was so much more…
One man, one world, one year. These are those stories.

The Official African Tourist Picture Tree
(Arbolus Kodakus Africanus)

***



Which does a fair job of summing up the plot. For the cast of characters, conflict, theme and setting, you'll have to wait at least until the transcription is complete.


I don't take enough time to acknowledge the people in my life who've supported me, inspired me, and helped grow me. One person in particular insisted that I purchase a journal the day I left for Africa. We made a special stop while running my last minute errands to do this, and she selected a notebook for me with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson screened accross the cover.

"Do not go where the path may lead. Instead, go where there is no path and leave a Trail."

She also purchased two small lapel buttons that she slipped into my bags, not telling me about them till we were on our way to the airport to drop me off. The first, I was instructed, was to be given to a deserving native of the African bush that I may come accross in my journey. She reasoned (correctly, as it turned out) that the rest of the world paid more attention to our politics and news than we did as Americans. She insisted that I find, in her words, "some tribal chieftan", and offer it to him as a token of friendship. It was a campaign parody button that read, "Re-defeat Bush".

The other button I was supposed to keep with me. It was a timely quote by J. R. R. Tolkien:

"Not All Who Wander Are Lost"

It's still in my wallet.

The same woman, four months later, while visiting one morning, turned to me without warning and convicted me, "It's the first day of summer. Start writing your book."

Sometimes life is just that simple.

Everything I've written in the last four eyars- all the stories I've started, the fewer I've completed, the many more I've dreamed- are the result of the momentum developed writing these logs. These are the people we need to remember to thank for the blessings they give and are.

I'll post more about the project as stages are completed. Right now, I've completely written and transcribed my trip to Spain, need to edit and completly transcribe my journals for Africa, Alaska, Memphis, and Venice. I need to finish the draft of the trip to Vegas that concluded that amazing year.

I'll conclude this entry with one grain of wisdom I've learned on those journeys.

It's not about where you're coming from. It's about who you are, and where you're going to.

Trollishly yours,

gargh =:]

Hey Kids, Let's play 'Find The Zebra'!