Seawall
The following excerpt is from One Over X - Episode One: From The Inside To the Closer, copyright 2002 Elgon Williams. It is used here for promotional purposes and may not be used in part of whole without the expressed, written concent of the author.
Voices more like muted groans echoed but hardly registered in the darkest corridors of a mind. There could have been two people talking or even a ballroom filled with partygoers, Andy could not have discerned. Comfortable as he was, though reason yet fogged over the trace recollections of other places he had recently been. Specifically subdued in mind, he remembered this feeling and this place. A memory like a dream, an event that he requested but likely never happened at all. He relaxed and enjoyed. He was in no mood to resist any perceptions.
Passing in and out of dreamless sleep, when the persistent nocturnal illusion came it was of an indistinct place. As he focused resolution and intensity merged. It was not so much that he could see, feel, hear, touch or taste. He simply was there, entirely. All that he was clung to a wall made of smooth stone. At a dramatic angle the wall arose from the sea toward an even steeper cliff upon which stood a grand alabaster palace. The angle of the wall could be ascended but only with great difficulty. It was a tedious crawl toward the crest. Andy knew this place. He had been here before, before…life. He knew that all began here.
How many nights were spent in trepidation dreaming of this very place? The first that he remembered was during college. There was a drug-induced interlude that had drawn him back to this place. Unaware of any foreign substance a consumed drink, the illusions and the veils of reality permeated pinpricked consciousness, allowing fantastic flights well beyond any norms. As result Andy achieved command over matter and because of the influence of the drug; it did not even surprise him that he could physically pass through a wall. Had that even happened? The answer was clearly, yes.
Mind could no longer cope with the intensity and variety of stimuli that it was receiving. Eyes shut tight to bar the impressions, only to find the grandest illusion of all, the wall rising from the sea and the palace toward which all manner of life were ascending. Significance and meaning were certain but unknown.
It was beyond being. Andy knew that much for certain. Little else could express it. In the bunk above his physical being, Jason, Andy’s college roommate was humping a girl. Pretending to be asleep in the bunk below Andy heard every sigh and whimper. Beyond even that, his senses were alive in a way that he had never before experienced. He could sense the roughness of the sheets beneath him and the stir of air from the window-mounted air conditioner behind his head. Everything in the universe related to everything else in that drug-induced moment of euphoria. Was it real? Did that matter?
Andy was an expert for the number of times he had experienced this place in dreams but for all that was worth it meant nothing. He lacked enlightened purpose and without it he could not fully comprehend.
* * * *
Andy sat up in bed, startled by revelation. Aware of life before his birth but also he had distinct memories. Memories did not fade. It was distinct as if it had been a moment ago that he had dwelled where only souls exist, before…life. Symbolic, there was no real, tangible wall ascending from some ethereal sea of primordial soul soup. There was no great palace either but metaphors from his sentient experience that roughly equated to the soul’s sensibility of experience translated. In absence of physical mind, no frame of reference for memory could be, though physical mind is unnecessary within the universe. Molecular structure contains a code in the double helix spiraling strings. Memory of the wall was primal truth, recording the struggle to achieve station in life, crawling from an ocean of indifference to strive for a position and purpose. Life was a confusing disappointment in contrast to the simplistic truths of life and death that surrounded his primitive recollection. What was so urgent about getting to the heart of life, anyway?
Andy appraised dimness in an early-morning-lit room trying to get a fix on his relationship in the balance. An eternity expended in the flick of one light switch. He was familiar with the room. It was home, his rezcube, where he had intended to return all along. Sanctuary reassured him, where everything was in its place and made sense. It seemed stable. Stable was good.
He brushed his teeth, shaved and showered. All things considered he wasn’t hungry. He skipped the daily bowl of cereal and opted for a slice of melon and a glass of juice. The aroma of a honeydew melon and the sight of brilliant colored orange juice had him reaching for a slice with one hand and a quick glass full juice with the other. Together they served a potent burst of energy. He felt wide-awake even though he was up and about far too early. There would be nothing to do at work. Still, there was even less to occupy him at home. So, he went to the monorail station in the cool dampness of early morning and took the next line into the Technopolis of Neo-Atlantis proper.
Only the expected ordinariness impressed as he settled in at his workstation. Everything was as he had left it, as it always was after the last shift at night and before the first day shift. There were, of course, EthosMasters about, and the cleaning crews. This was the hour-and-a-half revamp time between the mid and the morning shifts. No one seemed to be attentive to his being early. He was not supposed to be there, but it would not matter at all. Into his array he slipped and linked with the Ethosphere, calling from search engines for anything on PROJECT LOOKING GLASS.
The Ethosphere was unusually slow which meant there was difficulty finding any reference or that the reference was a considerable sized volume in many parts or there was…
An immediate rush of interest passed over the room. Four EthosMasters suddenly became twelve very perplexed people, frantically searching the cubicles. EthosCorp Security joined them and before Andy had a chance to realize that he was the cause for all the interest, they had surrounded his workstation. Two of the security people had taken him by the arms, pulling him up over the back his chair to hold him up, off his feet and fully restrained between them. One of the EthosMasters studied the array then immediately killed power, not even bothering to log the terminal off, as if the station were on fire! Andy knew this was significant as it smacked in the face of all training. Shutting down a terminal improperly risked the integrity of the entire node of the Ethosphere. Killing power was a last resort. There was never a good reason to kill power unless there was an extreme emergency.
No one was forthcoming with any explanation. There was only an eerie silence surrounded by articulated functionality. The EthosMasters simply said nothing as they whisked him away to a security office and deposited him in a small windowless holding room that lacked furniture excluding one very uncomfortable chair. The door closed, and from the voices outside, Andy could tell that there was a guard posted even though he was certain that the door was locked and there was little hope of escape.
While isolated, Andy had time for his senses to catch-up to the events. To be sure, he was in trouble. He was not sure why. Obviously he had triggered some security response with his query about PROJECT LOOKING GLASS. How much trouble was he actually in? Would he lose his job? Would he be disciplined? Was he in more trouble than just that?
He was alone in the dark. Security cameras covered all angles responding to his every motion. A mirrores along one wall was certainly two-way. How much attention he had called down upon himself? Peterson had been awakened from bed and was on his way. Caroline Henderson was flying in from the other coast to personally question him. Unbeknownst to him the full four hours of his captivity permitted the principle characters to converge on the technopolis. Andy’s major concern was his rezcube and that it was being ransacked. His modified astralnav would certainly be discovered. He worried over what would they do to him. If the issue were forced all of the major components were stolen. Lee would be implicated in a messy matter. Hard labor in a penal colony in the wastelands, or worse, on one of the outer colonies on one of Saturn’s moons was a possibility. If they learned that he’d actually activated the astralnav they might execute him except that now the astralnav worked beyond its design specifications. At least Andy’s reconstructed astralnav operated well beyond spec and it performed flawlessly.
This was his trump card.
He had improved a very important device upon which EthosCorp relied to some extent. They could dissect the device and analyze it of course. They could not readily resolve the programming error about which he alone seemed to be cognizant. They did not know where to look in the code and it was such a primitive thing that it would escape them for a very long time. It was insignificant so they would ignore it because of the system in place to protect the integrity of the system. What was overlooked was dust. Simple dust was not included in the calculations.
Common everyday household variety dust!
The same dust of which all things are made and unto which all things will eventually return. Ever present and always pervasive, if the relatively insignificant mass of dust were not included in the equations it was very likely that the real mass of dust would permit the specific gravity and mass of the astralnav to reach an undefined state. As Earth’s atmosphere retains a greater presence of dust than space, operating an astralnav too near to the Earth would almost always be disastrous.
After five hours as Andy reckoned someone finally came into the room and asked him if he was hungry or wished to use the facilities. Funny, that hadn’t even crossed his mind, but he did need to go, after all. He could use a little something to curb his appetite as well. He was escorted and accompanied inside the restroom.
“Do you mind? I mean I’m not going anywhere.” Andy challenged at the insistence of a guard to enter the restroom with him.
No response; no deviation.
“I promise I’m not going anywhere.”
Still no response.
“So, what do you think? Is mine bigger than yours?” Andy asked.
“Hardly.” The guard finally answered.
“Really. I’ve heard of dickless Security guards.”
Andy could see the rage in the guard’s eyes.
“I may have gotten that wrong,” Andy corrected. “It might have been ball-less.”
“Just finish your business.” The guard said, frustrated that he could not thump Andy for what he was saying.
Andy wasn’t used to peeing before an audience and so it took a little longer than normal to commence the flow.
When he returned to the holding room, there was a small table and a chair set with a plate of some kind of food that he did not recognize. It was the sorts of things someone rich might eat, he thought. He sampled and it tasted very good indeed.
There was vintage wine that had also always been well beyond his economic reach.
His stomach churned at the smell of the food. He sat down and consumed the meal ravenously; afraid that there had been some mistake and that once discovered the food would be taken away. Then he waited again. The waiting frustrated him most. Whatever it was that they planned to do with him, he wanted it to be over.
Increasingly restless, what he feared from the recesses of his mind was that he would never go home.
A fairly long time after he had finished eating, someone came into the room to remove his tray and asked him if he was doing okay. Why the politeness? Only a few hours ago he was treated like a common criminal. Now they seemed genuinely concerned about the well being of a lowly functionary? This didn’t make sense.
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Fantasy, Why Not? (The Third Bout)
When I was starting out in school even the textbooks for first grade reading were a challenge for me. Back then there was nothing close to political correctness. Before the entire class I was embarassed and humiliated. The other students laughed at me as I stumpled over even the easy words. I had a lot of problems.
My first grade teacher wasn't all that patient with me. She did not condemn the class for laughing at me. I don't even know if it would have done any good. I dreaded it when she called on me to read aloud. It was likle being flogged in public on a daily basis.
The printed words danced around before my eyes, performing a hypnotising ballet. It took all of my effort to mentally wrestle them, subuding them for the instant it took to keep them still. I only needed a few moments but at times it was impossible, especially with the pressure of impatience and some other smart-ass bluriting out the word. I stumbled and stammered, himmed and hawed, trying as best I could to sound out the syllables - the way Mrs. Skillings was teaching us.
I have mentioned in previous posts that suffer from dyslexia. I was in college before I knew what my problem was. Certainly no one knew what it was back then.
The school system passed me along, never really correcting the problem while hoping that it would go away. I had my eye tested regularly. I suppose the logic was that if I was having trouble reading that I probably had a vision problem. My eyes were fine, even beyond 20/20 at that point. The disconnect was in the wiring between my eyes, the optic lobes of my brain and how the cerebral cortex processed the information.
Clearly I was not stupid. I was a good student in my other courses because I had a pretty good memory. I did very well in math, science and social studies. It was reading out loud that killed me.
I have already gone over in a previous post how I overcame all that. So I won't go into it in detail again. The point I needed to make was that even though I hated reading time I loved the stories.
Once we have graduated from dealing with the world of Dick, Jane, Sally, Tommy, Spot and Fluff, we were given a more advanced book. I made an effort to commit an entire story to memory. It was a story about a troll that lived under a bridge. For some reason I loved that story. For some reason when I was very young I was also a sucker for fairy tales.
Obviously such a feat would have never been possible if I did not have a pretty good mind. The wiring needed to be corrected somehow, the programming needed some troubleshooting. I was passed along all the way to the fourth grade before I figured out a way to fix my problem.
As I matured my tastes changed. I liked cowboys and indians, super heros and science fiction. Still I never lost my affection for a good fanasty theme. It as a genre that I also enjoy as a writer. It is almost as wide open for creatity as science fiction but generally there is no need to focus so much of the suspension of disbelief. To be reading a fantasy is to expect magic and supernatural events.
I find that a some otherwise very well written science fiction spends too much time and effort exploring the gadgets that decorate a futuristic landscape. Whenveer I write science fiction I do some of that too. I try very hard not to as i is a distraction from plot advancement. Gadgets are irrelevant unless the plot is influenced or the characters depend on the gadgets in some essential way.
In One Over X and especially in From The Inside To The Closer I tried to focus more of the way the world worked as a socio-economic system and how the world around Andy Hunter influenced the decisions that he made that served as the key event that triggered a seqnece of events affecting other people and other worlds. Having said that there are 56 pages of dealing with gadgets. Int he second edition those pages are no more.
I was a little surprised at how others that have read Book 1 and found all sorts of things that I never purposely put there. Then again the things that they were finding are really there and as I go back and read what I composed so many years ago it is almost like reading it for the first time. I find all sorts of loose ends that are addressed in later books. The significant and perhaps incredible part of the realization is that I never designed the books to fit otgether in those ways. It just happened. There is a reason even if there is not direct intent.
Lately I have preferred to write in the fantasy style. I have the inspiration of a very creative indvidual to thank for nudging me into that direction. It is good to have a close friend to count on when you need some fresh ideas. The amazing part of all that is that her influence has only rarely been direct, as in suggesting a character or a plotline. I have more often been inspried by a conversation or a story that she has told me.
I have received a good bit of feedback on The February Second post. I am very glad that so many people read and enjoyed it. Considering how it was distributed it may become one of those things that gets forwarded to you from other people. So be it. I hope people remember where it originated.
My kids think that I should write more humorous stories and essays. I have a warped sense of humor and of course so do my children. They understand me and laugh at even my most bizarre jokes. Why? It is genetic. I have never be confident that my humor would translate well to the general public. I am certain that at times it would.
I am afraid that I was not endowed with the gift of writing to be purposely funny. I do and say funny things, spontaneously. The way that I perceive the world is off center and at times even twisted. I am not sure that what I perceive would translate universally to others. I could not make a living at it being funny.
I am more of a 'sit down' comic. If on stage, I would stare at the audience and observe their multple group interactions. To me that is entertainment. I like watching other people interact. I am afraid that would be boring for an auidence, regardless how many strange faces I would make.
I like pointing out the irony in life. I like finding irony in what I write. That is my style and for the most part fantasy is the best vehicle for me to produce an amusing set of characters and a challenge or epic proportions...like saving the world, whichever world that may be.
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Fantasy vs Science Fiction: The Second Bout
I have another rejection letter - well in this case it is an email. I will save it and print it out to add it to the growing collection that adorns the walls of 'my room'. It is a good thing, though. If a writer is to survive rejection it becomes something that is in the general course of life's events. I must say that I have a feeling that someone actually read the story and personally liked it enough to regret having to reject it. For whatever reason, it does not meet with the editorial style of the magazine.
My publisher does not reject what I submit; he suggests corrections. Realistically there may be a subtle difference but at least he published a couple of books for me.
Sometime before Christmas, with the whole hearted support of Ash Creek Publishing, I submitted an early version of "In the Way of Humanity" to The New Yorker Magazine. At the time I felt very comfortable with the version and it was not nearly as long as the version that appears in this blog - during the week of 1/09/05. I have a number of shorter works but I have never done anything with them over the years. They occupy space on my hard drive and every once in a while I find a reason to morph them into something that contributes to the plot of a novel. "In the Way of Humanity" is one of those things except that I drew it into Book 7 as it helped fill in a gap in a character's past. That is why it pertains to Brent and is not first person as it was in its earliest format - a journal entry originally composed in 1994 at 2 AM. Yes, I remember writing the original work; no, I won't post the original but it was five pages and it was a prime example of how immature and inexperienced I was as a writer in 1994.
I am not a short story writer. My publisher will attest to the fact that hardly anything I compose is short. Whenever I create, even if it is short at first it evolves into something longer and if allowed to ferment the creative zones of my cerebral cortex for a week or so it turns into a storyline for a novel.
All of my shorter things, the works that are less than novel length that I never did anything else with, I have bound into a single MS Word document. I figure I can still add onto the mass at will. At the moment it is around 250 pages. Some of the material that I have been posting on this blog comes from that collection, by the way but there has been a lot of original and timely posts. Some of them may be added to that collection. So it is a two-way thing.
Most of that material is very, very different than the sci-fi things I wrote earlier on in my evolution from writer to author. I have been posting it as a way to demonstrate that I am not tied to a single genre and am not one dimensional at all.
I love well-written science fiction. There really is nothing like it. The canvas for creating a world really is blank. Anything is possible as long as the writer than make it believable. I only hope that what I have produced can be categorized as well-written.
I also love fantasy storylines. I understand that fantasy is usually considered a subset of science fiction or vice-versa but in my mind they have been pretty much distinct genres. For some reason horror and gore have also been lumped into the overall category which I give the label of bizarre fiction.
Anyone that had read this blog probably knows intuitively how I feel about labels. I am an individual and apart for accepting the categorization as human, I will challenge any further classification as largely irrelevant. So it is also with writing. I get it. There is a need for the labels 'fiction' verses 'non-fiction'. I am fine with that. The other, more specific delineations tend to benefit bookstores more than authors or readers. What I hate about it is that it fosters comparisons between a number of writers and their many works. I am not really about that at all. If it is a good book what difference does it make whether it is like something that someone else wrote or even that it is written in a style that is close to that of some other author?
I write fiction. I write some things that are fictionalized accounts of real events. I write because I need to write and sometimes what I write ends up being read. It is a process.
I write science fiction, sometimes; I write fantasy, sometimes. Other times I write neo-realism. I will not claim to be the first to merge the three genres into a single, overall plotline. Others have done it successfully. I believe the honor of first may well belong to one of my favorite authors, Samuel R. Delaney.
Perhaps only his most devoted readers had the mental strength and physical stamina to read "Dahlgren" but I consider it his masterpiece. You have to dig a bit to find the fantasy elements as they are masked behind the image projectors that are science fiction gadgets at their best. Some of the characters use the projectors to create the illusion that they are dragons or other mythological creatures whenever they engage in gang warfare. The characters are into piercing, tattoos and implants. Some of the implants are bizarre, like talons attached to the wrists or ankles. Some of the characters that Delaney describes may not have the outward appearance of a human at all even without the image generators.
Apart from the fantasy elements in the work, the sci-fi elements are more obvious. It is a post modern urban setting where the socio-economic fabric and political structures of a large city have utterly collapsed, leaving the city in a chaotic quandary in this the gangs emerged as the only force of origination or authority and they 'manage' as they see fit.
Dahlgren is a beefy work, pressing hard against the 1000 page barrier. It is a challenging read as the transitions between plot and characterization are sometimes abrupt. In my estimation the reason anyone should read Dahlgren is that Delaney's abilities with the English language rival any writer that has ever lived. He also is unabashed in his exploration of the human condition even at its fringe.
I do not know how to express this any other way but I do not want for it to be misconstrued as I respect the art and craft of Samuel R. Delaney. I also think that the classification that I have seen associated with him is irrelevant. He is a gifted writer, regardless. Celebrate in that and enjoy his many achievements in fiction.
I have to interject this as it is somewhat pertinent. A teacher turned me on to Samuel R. Delaney's writing. I blessed her every time I read and enjoyed one of his books. In passing, while I was matriculating at Purdue I mentioned to s couple of my friends that were English literature majors that I was reading Dahlgren. I was very impressed with the book and felt that they as lit majors should know that it was a work of significance.
"Oh, I have never heard of that book, is it new?"
"It is a sci-fi thing," the other friend said. "Samuel R. Delaney wrote it."
"Oh, that Black author."
So there is at least one Black man in the world that writes science fiction. Not only can Samuel R. Delaney write but he writes at a level of sophistication that I doubt many others in the genre could ever attain.
I admit that I read everything that Samuel R. Delaney ever wrote before I read Dahlgren. As a testament to the fact that he is a writer for every one of us: I never knew or had I known would I have cared to know the irrelevant fact that he is Black.
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Science Fiction vs Fantasy: The First Bout
It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized that some of my favorite episodes of Star Trek were written by some of the best science fiction writers of the time. Now that I think about it the word that comes to mind is ‘duh’.
Case in point is Harlan Ellison. In 1967 he wrote a short story titled ‘I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream’. I was so impressed with the descriptive, even graphic imagery of that work that I used an excerpt of the story in an oral interpretation class presentation in 1977. A few months ago when I was moving yet again into another abode, I happened upon a paperback collection of short stories that included Ellison's masterpiece. I read it with the fresh eyes of having matured and having forgotten much of the story. The only passage that I remembered, much to my credit, was the passage that I had used in the oral interpretation course. It still gives me the same intense feeling after all the intervening years. It is that focused and clear in its intensity. I strive to write a few paragraphs that can even begin to approach that level of near perfection in the conveyance of emotion and sensation through the written word.
Before college I had a meager desire and a small appetite to read. I had difficulties reading. I had dyslexia before it was a popular affliction or even recognized. My mother had it worse than I did, like that is a small consolation.
Somewhere during the fourth grade I was so embarassed with my poor reading skills that I forced myself to learn how to read. When I was home and all weekend long I sat down and read a dictionary. I memorized words. I learned how sentences were constructed from the way that definitions were presented in the dictionary. As I taught myself I learned how to read word patterns instead or individual words sounded out syllable-by-syllable as I had previously been taught.
What I discovered was that certain words tend to be used together in English sentences. The result of that fundamental realization was that after a year of my new, self-taught approach I could read about 500 to 600 words per minute.
By the time I had reached college I read very well. I still faltered whenever I was reading aloud but over time I had improved to the point that it was almost excusable as I was hardly worse than anyone else. However, when I was reading silently I could consume text with a voracious appetite, eventually apporaching 800 words per minute.
To that point I had merely sampled the works of the obligatory Science Fiction masters: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Delaney, LeGuin, and Herbert. I had some idea of what they had written but I wass seriously a novice int he genre.
When I began college I read Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Player Piano. It was a required book for a Computer Technology and Mankind course I had to take. Back then I still believed in coincidences. While I was in the process of reading Vonnegut's book, I met a young lady name Denise. We were a thing for about two or three weeks. I took her to see the movie adaptation of Slaughterhouse 5, another of Vonneguts books. I had been too young to see the movie when it was originally in the theaters so it was nice that my dormitory had obtained it for a special showing, albeit on a relatively flat sheet draped between two stanchions. The combination of those two influences hooked me. I read everything that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had written up to that time.
I even read his son Mark’s fascinating book, Eden Express about his ordeal with schizophrenia.
At that time I felt that science fiction was the wide open plain for creative expression. Since then I have learned that it is the subject not the genre that truly matters in literature. I also know that I may have to wrestle with some critics in the future over that assertion but I wholeheartedly beleive it and can presuade even the most belligerant that I am right.
At some point in the past I started to write and some, maybe a tenth of what I have written fits into a sci-fi categorization but almost nothing else does. There is a good bit of fantasy that is perhaps 40 percent of what I have done. So by my own estimates between science fiction and fantasy it is merely half of my body of work. What is the remainder?
I call it neo-realism. It is a fictionalization of my experiences, and the experiences of others that were shared with me. At least half of my writing is just that. Word by word measures may differ but I really and honestly believe that only about ten percent of what I have ever written is science fiction and combined science fiction and fanatasy is maybe 50 percent of the body of my written work.
E
February Second
For most of the country it is Groundhog Day. It is a silly sort of holiday; the excuse for a small town in Pennsylvania to be mentioned at least once a year on the national news. There in Punxsutawney is a groundhog named Phil and like the dog that portrayed Lassie in the movies and on TV, there have been many Phil's over the years.
When you think of Groundhog Day, some may remember a Bill Murray movie a few years back. In the movie Bill's character is trapped in Punxsutawney after a freak snowstorm hits the town and for whatever reason everyday that he wakes up after that it is Groundhog Day all over again. Having had the misfortune of being in Punxsutawney once, I could understand how some might consider that purgatory.
Anyway, legend has it that if Phil comes out and sees his shadow there is 6 more weeks of winter. Of course even if he doesn't see his shadow and there is an 'early' spring, in Pennsylvania spring like weather is usually six weeks away. Somehow I miss the point of the holiday.
Perhaps it is a shameless ploy for commercialization and gaining attention but it caused me to think. How could Florida gain more national attention, something other than getting pounded with a hurricane or two every month for a few months or the ceremonial counting of the dangling chads? Negative publicity like that is a bad thing for the state. I was thinking more along the lines of a state creature. Of course, the most prevalent creatures that I can think of in this state are palmetto bugs and vultures.
Now a palmetto bug is really just a big-assed cockroach that can fly. No doubt the name palmetto bug came from some genius at the Chamber of Commerce. Who in the hell would want to come here for a vacation if they knew there were three inch long flying cockroaches? Certainly the weather is usually nice here except for the aforementioned hurricanes but would the nice weather offset the fear of being attacked by a large flying cockroach? The real estate industry in this state, which is a major component of the economy, would collapse.
As for the vulture, I have a theory as to why there are so many of them in this state. It all has to do with the food supply. Don't get me wrong, I love old people but so do the vultures. I think the mass migrations of retirees may be attracting the scavengers.
So, finally I considered the animal for which this state is possibly best known, the alligator. That has some possibilities. Why, we could create a retention pond in a landfill that used to be a swamp and build a community around it, call it Gatorsville or something equally tacky. We could seed the pond with ducks. You don't even have to stock such ponds with alligators. They simply find them or materialize out of thin air - no one is certain.
Maybe a seasonal change could be prophesized by the ritual counting of the ducks. If a pond duck disappears, there will be an extra week added on to hurricane season. It's just a thought.
I don't know why I wrote any of this. Maybe it just has always seemed to me that the observation of Groundhog Day was silly. That the news media even covers it at all says a lot about how bored we are with life in winter time. Now that the powers that be have pushed back the Super Bowl into the first week of February, Groundhog Day finally has some competition. Competition is a good thing. I just hope that things don't spiral out of control.
What if Punxsutawney Phil starts to have wardrobe malfunctions on live TV?
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The Order of Posts
I fully understand the concept of displaying the most recent post however anyone wanting to read installments of a literary piece has to scroll back in order to get the next most recent post.
That is something I do not like about this format. I hope all that enter here understand the limitations of the blog format for dealing with serialized content. You may be reading later installments.
Having said that I love the direct intimacy. Near real time communication with the reader is almost like a gift from God to a writer. In theory you could interact with a willing writer to create a book that you or someone like you would like to read. I am not sure how that will ever work out. However the world tends to adapt and incorporate new technologies for communicating.
Should anyone wish to have a serialized post (a multiple post in the blog) emailed to them directly contact me. This offer excludes copyrighted material and/or anything that is in the process of being published. The legal reason is that there are other entities, peoples and corporations involved. As far as I am concerned I write only expecting to be read. That is not a profitable objective but it is something I can personally live with.
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This Is Frances
Hurricane Frances in High Resolution digitally enhanced. If anyone out there wants the source file contact me through my email. I will send it personally. I have two computers and this pic is a desktop background on one of them. It serves as a reminder of how insignificant each of us really seems in the face of the forces of nature. It also reminds me of how such catastrophic events brings out the common humanity in us.
The Curse (Third Installment)
The Curse: Part 3
It was that time of day that depended on perspective; if you were still awake it was very late at night but if you had just awakened it was very early. I was the only one in the fraternity house that was awake. I was relatively certain of that.
Through the wall of Brad’s room I could hear music turned on at a low enough level that it would lull him to sleep. Brad loved to listen to music especially when he was studying but the fact that he had it turned on at such a low level was not only respect for me but also an indication that he was sleeping.
My desire for revenge had burned within me for more than a month and a half. Very soon all my fraternity brothers would be returning to campus from their summer vacations idea, refreshed and reinvigorated in their quest for the sheep-skin covered brass ring that promised a bright future. The time could not have been better. It seemed as if the universe had delivered not only the opportunity but the means to exact remedy.
I tiptoed down the hall, just in case my bare footfalls might make enough of a disturbance to wake Cooker, Larry, and Chuck. When I reached the door, I already had the master key in hand. I had removed it from my key ring so that there would be no jingle as other keys on the ring collided. I slowly, quietly slipped the key into the door handle lock and gently turned, careful not to make a noise. Then with as much stealth as I could still muster, I pitched the crusty, sweaty, smelly pair of socks under the bed closest to the door, the bed under which there was already a pile of dirty clothes.
I closed the door without making a sound and calmly returned to my room where I immediately noticed a great improvement in the smell. I had a good chuckle before finally turning in for the night.
It was cathartic. Even though it served no immediate purpose I felt much better about myself and the things that I felt were important. I felt that I had made a statement, albeit in the background. I realized that I could never take credit for the act. It would probably be one of those mysteries sometimes mentioned but never solved.
When I awakened late in the morning I just had enough time to take a quick shower and hurry off to class. Otherwise it was a pretty busy day. I had a couple of presentations to make and it was the last day of the radio production course. We had to turn in our final individual projects, which the professor would present and each of us would formally comment upon and rank in order from best to worst.
Except for the necessary collaboration to complete our midterm project I had not said much more than hello to Senobia since the episode on the Fourth of July. It wasn’t that there was any anger between us. I felt that she was disappointed in me, that I had not acted like a true friend. It prevented me from being comfortable around her, from the two of us being friends.
Even though the truth was very different from what she thought, I knew that anything I might say either wouldn’t matter or would ultimately worsen the situation. There was a wall between us. So long as it was transparent and that we could be professional for the purposes of working together in the class, it was fine. She presented civility toward me and I pretended that nothing had happened.
The fact that only the night before I had done something about it on a personal level may have contributed to my overall perspective as I sat there in class listening to the professor’s comments on the first presentation. Each of us had been assigned five challenges. There was a one minute time limit on our solution involving sound, sound editing, mixing, overdubbing and special effects. As I heard the first presentation, I was horrified. I had misunderstood the challenge that would represent half of my grade for the course. I had not seen the examination as a series of five discrete exercises. I had instead used every technique to produce five distinct solutions for the overall challenge.
As one after another of the presentations were played back, I squirmed, uncomfortably awaiting the condemnation that I alone had not paid attention. My project would stand out as being the only one that was different in its gross ignorance of the conditions of the challenge.
Again and again, the others in the class had responded pretty-much in kind. This is an example of special effects; this is an example of mixing; this is an example of overdubbing and so on. If I had the magical power to conjure a hole in the floor beneath my chair I would have gladly fell into it and hid.
There were only two presentations left. I dreaded the inevitable but also hoped for a swifter execution. I hoped against all hope that my presentation was next. When the professor had threaded the tape he turned toward the class and, as he had with everyone else, asked Senobia if she had any comments in preface.
“I did something a little different than everyone else,” she admitted. “I thought the challenges were to produce five different examples of using all the techniques.”
I was amazed. She had approached the presentation in the same way that I had. What she had come up with was completely unique of course but she had created a commercial, a man on the street interview, a sample of someone playing multiple instruments, a sound montage that produced a rhythm and a beat that became almost musical and a formal headline news leading with field reports overdubbed.
“Impressive,” The professor told her. “I can’t believe that we have gone through the entire class and this is the very first person that stepped outside of the box and did exactly what I was trying to get you to do. This is a capstone production, using everything that you have learned how to do, employing every tool and technique at your disposal. This is a very good example of what I expected.”
I felt a rush of relief.
Of course the critiques of the other students followed suit in lavishing praise. It was a classy, slick production. I would have expected nothing else from Senobia. Obviously only the two of us had really understood the purpose of the challenge. As my presentation was next, the only question remaining to be determined was whose production was better.
As the professor threaded the 7 ½ X ¼” reel-to-reel tape he glanced at speed. He knew that I usually worked at 15 inches per second. He had told me repeatedly what a waste of tape it was. I did it because it was easier to edit and much higher signal to noise ratio but for the sake of space, I had mastered the entire recording at 3 ¾ inches per second. It surprised him a little. I could tell as he glanced my way and flashed a quick smile.
I had taken his advice, using the source as a master and filtering the output to remove as much of the background noise that came from re-recording. My professor had been right. I was pleased with the overall lack of hiss.
It was my style to let the work speak for itself, so of course I decline the opportunity to preface the recording.
In the first track I had used multiple overdubs of a series of fundamental tones generated from the magnetic pickups of an electric bass guitar. I had processed the ‘notes’ through a feedback loop that was running through a ten stage linear compressor. The result sounded like a machine in a factory.
The second track was an interview with me. Using a parametric equalizer I had altered one of my voices to sound much different. Since it was all recorded in a sound studio, in editing I had overdubbed background noises so that it sounded very open and airy like the recording had been made outdoors with some traffic passing by and in the distance there was even a passing train.
The third was a commercial promoting a fictitious product complete with a number of sound effects.
The fourth was a sound montage about the life of a chicken, with birth heralded as the beginning of a day with a rooster’s crow and death being the sound of a axe chopping into a block of wood with the fluttering of wings in panic afterwards segued into the finality of the coop door closing and being locked.
The fifth was very similar to what Senobia had done with a headline newscast except mine was humorous and drew some laughter from the juxtaposition of special effects that did not exactly fit the stories.
“Very nice work,” my professor said. “I know from the amount of time that he requested in the past few weeks that everything on this tape was created in the studio.”
Whether Senobia voted for mine, I voted for hers or we both were jealously selfish it did not matter. When combined with the votes of everyone else in the class, we tied for the best. Even so it was a hollow enough achievement. Even with my professor’s recommendation I did not get the internship that I had sought.
In consolation I was offered a news reporting internship, which due to the requirements of my degree I needed to take when offered. Senobia won the last production internship.
As I was stepping out of the studio in which our class had been held, she called out to me, “That was very good.”
“Thank you,” I said as I approached the group with which she had been talking. “Yours was as always perfect.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Are you going home between now and the fall semester?”
“I probably will. I have a lot of laundry to do.”
Senobia laughed. “You have done your laundry since…well I would hope you have.”
“I have,” I said, “Maybe once at least.”
She laughed again, “You’re bad.”
“Hey, I’m busy. At least I have been.”
“Me too. I’m glad this summer is over.”
“Except that it is probably the last summer of freedom.”
“Come again?”
“Next summer it will all be over. College that is.”
“Oh.” She smiled, “You could go to graduate school.”
“I don’t have the grades. I partied too much. Maybe I’ll try it when I have been working for a while.”
“My dad says that once you leave school it gets harder and harder to ever go back.”
“He is a wise man,” I said.
“He knows. He had to work his way through college, bussing tables…it is how he met mom though.”
“See it had a purpose.”
Senobia smiled the looked directly into my eyes. “We need to talk.”
“I would love to. What about?”
“No here,” she stepped closer to me and away from her friends. “Somewhere alone.”
“I drove. I parked over in the garage. I can give you a ride back to the dorm if you like.”
“That would be nice,” she said as she followed his lead and hurried up to walk beside him. “Slow down your legs are longer than mine, damn it.”
“I forgot. Are you hungry?”
“I didn’t have time for breakfast. I got up kinda late.”
“Yeah me too,” he admitted.
“I was working my project down to the wire.”
“Wow, that’s a change. I haven’t touched mine for a couple of days and you procrastinated.”
Senobia flashed a smiled, “You were a bad influence.”
“Not all that bad, I hope.”
“No, it wasn’t all bad.”
“How does pizza sound?”
“Some place with salad. I need a salad.”
“Yeah, me too,” I confessed. “But I want a pizza.”
She laughed. “You have lost some weight.”
“Brad and I have been jogging lately.”
“You still watch Star Trek reruns afterwards?”
“Of course,” I said. “I have this thing for Nichelle Nichols.”
“Lt. Uhura.”
“You never told me you are a fan.”
“You never asked. I suppose I remind you of her.”
“Why? What do you have in common with her?”
“You’re crazy,” she laughed. “Well I always liked Mr. Spock.”
“Damn! Then it wasn’t necessary to have the points of my ears removed.”
“I used to watch it every week when I was a kid.”
“I am really into science fiction, space travel, time travel all that stuff. That is what I am writing about, well sort of anyway.”
“I’ll have to read it sometime.”
“It is awful. All first draft. What’s worse I typed it.”
“Oh, well I know how bad that is,” she chuckled. After a few moments of silence, she finally broached the subject, “Do you like me?”
“Of course I do.”
“That answer came too easily.”
“You’re fun to be with, you have an amazing wit and sense of humor and you’re very pretty.”
“Why, thank you,” she said. “Is that why you made up stories about us to tell to your friends?”
“Senobia, I swear whatever is in their heads is the product of perverted minds.”
“You were always a perfect gentleman with me,” she said.
“We had a lot of things we needed to do and, well I didn’t want to allow anything to get in the way. It is like dating someone that you work with.”
“You thought about it, then?”
“How could I not?”
“Well at least I wasn’t alone, then.”
I stopped. “You mean I had a chance?”
“You might still have one if you are careful,” she said over her shoulder as she continued on toward the Student Union parking garage. “I mean, we aren’t ‘working together’ anymore.”
“That is a good point,” I said as I hurried after her. “Slow down. I didn’t know you could walk that fast.”
“You had better get used to it. If you are going to keep up with me,” she said with a laugh.
We spent most of the afternoon together. We went to a pizza place. We both had salad…and pizza. It was a nice, pleasant afternoon and so when I took her back to her dorm I parked and we sat outside the door enjoying the clear skies and light breeze.
She was going home the next morning, going to spend a few days in Chicago with her family before coming back to school. I had made plans to spend a day or two over the weekend at home before driving back and getting things rolling on the fraternity’s social calendar for the fall. We made promised to get in contact again once we were both back and settled, maybe take in a movie or something.
As I drove back to the fraternity my thoughts were completely on how much of the summer Senobia and I had wasted when in fact we had a lot more at stake and a lot more in common than either of us might have believed. As I entered the fraternity house and ascended the stairs toward the third floor, my mind was on anything else but why it smelled like someone had broken a bottle of cologne.
The roar of a fan called my attention to room where Cooker, Larry and Chuck slept in air conditioned comfort. “What the hell happened?” I asked as I peered around the door.
“Damnedest thing,” Check said. “About 4 in the morning all of us woke up gagging. There was the worst smell in the world in this room. I figured a most or a rat or something had crawled into the room and died. So, Cooker sprinkled cologne around the room until it covered over the smell.”
“Wow! I am not sure this smell is any better?”
“Cooker claims it is expensive cologne. Who knows? Anyway as soon as it airs out it will be fine. We found what it was.”
“That’s good,” I said suddenly remembering, suddenly realizing, and immediately wanting to not show the truth of my understanding.
“It was a pair of crusty socks.”
“Whose were they?”
“Beats me. It wasn’t from any of us. I don’t know how they got there. They were behind the cabinet at the end of my bed. Nasty things.”
“You threw them out of course.”
“Damn I didn’t want to harm the environment, so I tossed them down the other stairwell, the one we haven’t been using. I figured with the windows open and all they can air out a little. Then maybe someone with a strong enough stomach can deal with them.”
* * * * *
When I returned to campus from the visit home with a stack of freshly laundered cloths stuffed into my duffle bag, I parked at the far end of the parking lot so that I wouldn’t be trapped by other people that were unloading trailers and trucks. I entered the fraternity from the west end, stairwell saying hello to a couple of brothers that I had not seen all summer long.
“I thought you were taking care of the house over the summer,” one of them said accusingly.
“I did. It didn’t burn down. No one got injured.”
“Well, you guys never used this stairwell, obviously.”
“Barely ever, why?”
“There was a pair of socks in here that were stiff as a board. They smelled so rank that Greg got the tongs out of the kitchen to pick then up and hauled them off to the woods.” Then he laughed. “There he is with his camouflage outfit complete with his gas mask on telling Farkle to pick them up and Farkle barking and growling like he was arguing with him.”
“Smart dog,” I confirmed.
Greg had personally trained Farkle, a rat terrier. The Dog had been Greg’s inseparable buddy returning from a hitch with the Marines in Viet Nam. Apparently there was a limit to training and friendship.
* * * *
When I had finished recounting my version of reality, I looked up from the container that sealed The Curse. “This could possibly be worse than the socks,” I said.
“Then you admit to it,” Tim, Brad’s big brother asked.
“They were my socks,” I confessed. “I had a good reason to do what I did.”
“I’ve heard what you said and I’ m sure you felt that you did but actions always have consequences.”
“In this case, it is The Curse.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’m never going to use it,” I guess with this remark I accepted it finally and until I yielded it to another.
“You never know,” Tim said.
“I’m sworn to secrecy, an oath that I will never break,” I said. What time I was in college I never broke that promise and not even with close friends or family members until now. When it was time I too passed on The Curse to a deserving if reluctant successor, another brother added to the unbroken chain. I would not be surprised if The Curse is still out there somewhere in someone's possession.
The End
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Updates
There have been a couple of updates to the
www.acbooks.com website which lists the two books that are in print and shows the cover of the third book that will be out later this year.
I highly recommend James Ela's "Finding CJ" by the way. I am a little partial as I did some of the editing on the project but it is really a very well written book with enough twists and turns to keep even an adult reader occupied. It is intended for an 11 year old but from the feedback from adult readers it is entertaining and very unlike other books targetted at that the pre-teen audience.
"New Light of Day" is another book that I read while it was in progress. It is historical fiction set in the post World War II Franco Era thru the turbulent times of the late 1960's. It is written from the different perspectives of the members of a well-to-do family in Spain that have economic ties to the government as well as historic tires to Mexico that date back to Cortez.
I think what I like the most about Peter van Benten's first novel is the way he demonstrates the linkage between events in the distant past and present times, perhaps suggesting the importance of the decisions that we make in our own lives as they will impact our progeny.
I have read it again since its publication. The writing style of the book is engaging. It is hard to believe that van Benten's first language. He creates an almost poetic flow at times and has a good deal of fun with verb tense. He is a skilled writer and a gifted story teller.
As for my past week, if you couldn't tell from the blog, I was in a bad mood. I spent much of last week avoiding others. It was my time to be anti-social. I guess it was mostly that I had a lot of things on my mind. Some were creative challeneges but most were just personal. A good bit of that has settled, mostly for the best and now I am again my old lovable self. It was not a good time to be my friend, I'm afraid. I hope I did not piss-off anyone. Family forgives and forgets. Friends sometimes can't. The vast majority of the few people that I am close to know how I am and also know that whatever is going on with me will pass in a few days.
Anyway, as a result of last week, I think I have been frightening people, even at work. I have a very intense, focused and serious side that is in stark contradiction to the playful, wise-cracking prankster that I usually seem. Some people don't know how to take that transition. It may seem like a Jeckle and Hyde thing to some. It isn't that my personality changes so dramatically with my mood it is just that I am usually patient and tolerant. Last week was a good example of how I am when the patience is worn thing and my tolerance is connected to the one remaining nerve that is not irritated.
When I was younger I used to worry a lot more about the mood swing and how I affected others. I would have a bad week each month and spend the other three weeks patching things up. I know what causes the moods and it is a natural cycle. It can be controlled as long as I am cognizant. Over the years I have gained a level of control that I think evens out my mood swings, at least how others perceive them.
Lately I have not cared so much about control. I have things to do and dealines to meet. Relying on others when their priorities are completely at odds with mine is something that I simply did not want to endure last week.
To my friends, if I went to far or said something rude and inconsiderate, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you do not know me well enough yet and I am sorry that you took a wire brush to my nerves last week. It is something that each of us will need to address and correct. You will need to get used to it as sometimes I will go through those episodes of seriousness. I also know all about your moods too. So don';t think any of us is perfect. It is how each of us responds to a certain level of pressure.
I am very tired. I plan to take a power nap and maybe get up in the wee hours and work on the third installment of "The Curse". I am really going to try to post it tomorrow or Wednesday. I hope that everyone enjoys the story. It is an experimental thing, using 1st person to tell a story that is roughly based on some things that are autobiographical. I won't go into what is and what is not true. A lot of it is bold face fabrication, much like everything else that I write. The major points are accurate. There was something called The Curse and it is as I described it. The smelly socks is also a true story. Beyond that I am sworn to secrecy.
E
What's for Dinner?
Sarah cooking something on a propane burner after the storm while power was still off.
Good-Bye Crazy Jeanne
The sky on the backside of Hurricane Jeanne
Iraq
Despite politics, whether or not you support what we did a couple of years ago, I have to say that the events of this day moved me in a deep and personal way. The Iraqi people have to be the bravest people in the world today. Threatened as they were and marked with their fingers dipped in indelible ink they voted for the first time in fifty years. The turn out was at least as good as the largest turn out in America in years, the most recent election.
I voted back in November but I do not remember anyone blowing up a car near my polling station or otherwise threatening me. In fact outside the polling station I was engaged in a discussion about the choice of Bush verses Kerry, which might not have been appropriate that close to a polling place yet it was tolerated. No one threatened me. I have to tell you that if I risked life to go vote I might have thought a lot about it. I am in awe of what happened in Iraq today. Democracy is a difficult force to suppress. Free choice was the essence that was once contained within Pandora's Box. Liberty is irrepressible.
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