When I found myself awake
this morning, it was at the frayed end
of a dangling thread,
a thought so delicious it had unraveled
unthinkable colors before me.
What it was that dared to breathe
my waking world has found its way
again to its safe, dark deep.
And where am I now for want of the visitor?
How changed am I in my moments?
How will I now greet my peers,
my students, daughter, son?
How will I greet my wife?
Will in the absence
of that timeless thought my love be more
my love? Will our days improve or
otherwise compose themselves differently?
Can a dream, even this
one gossamer strand, be the promise
holding today together?
Showing posts with label tidepool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tidepool. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Resonance
When today began there was in my dream
the world of a child whose friends all had abandoned,
whose neighborhood had estranged,
whose compass needle pointed in all but one direction.
And it was on me somehow to be his godfather
his trip-master older
self peering from my distance into his small actions
and missteps to correct, edify whatever fault or infraction,
breech or offense even before it occurs.
I stand watch in the dream. Watching the boy
befriend others with strange flat drums
at the end of long handles, beating with a single stick
each the song of their bright, street-clad day,
their clatter finding home in my ears (my sleeping ear
drums), banging and thrumming; and the boy
dons his own and now I too am joining in the noise,
tips of my fingers rapping some long strip
of lightly corrugated metal, off-rhythm and imbalanced
at first but then slipping into a pattern, into steady patter,
into a long hushing rasp of sound,
and we see each other in our blended meter
and he, the boy, grins up to me
that I have found my cadence, and the buzzing roll
of our drums there on the alleyway stoop in the back
of my mind lifting me
in a slow march to wakefulness.
the world of a child whose friends all had abandoned,
whose neighborhood had estranged,
whose compass needle pointed in all but one direction.
And it was on me somehow to be his godfather
his trip-master older
self peering from my distance into his small actions
and missteps to correct, edify whatever fault or infraction,
breech or offense even before it occurs.
I stand watch in the dream. Watching the boy
befriend others with strange flat drums
at the end of long handles, beating with a single stick
each the song of their bright, street-clad day,
their clatter finding home in my ears (my sleeping ear
drums), banging and thrumming; and the boy
dons his own and now I too am joining in the noise,
tips of my fingers rapping some long strip
of lightly corrugated metal, off-rhythm and imbalanced
at first but then slipping into a pattern, into steady patter,
into a long hushing rasp of sound,
and we see each other in our blended meter
and he, the boy, grins up to me
that I have found my cadence, and the buzzing roll
of our drums there on the alleyway stoop in the back
of my mind lifting me
in a slow march to wakefulness.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Man at Desk
He sits in the dark early hours of his day, occasionally raising his eyes to the cork bulletin board on the wall before him. The number of notes and papers pertaining to his day-job have dwindled there over the months to just a few essential items hanging from their wooden pushpins.
Tucked into the maple frame in the upper left-hand corner are two old photos. A black-and-white glossy of his oldest brother with an arm around their mother. They are outside in the winter. A tall, leafless tree stands in the distance behind them. The photo, circa 1972, likely shot by the child who is now the man at his desk. In four years the brother would be gone.
To the right of this photo is another: this one in color, matte finish. Two women sitting, hands in their laps, in the breakfast nook of the man's childhood home. The woman on the left is the daughter of the woman on the right. Both are peering, smiling, up at a point on the ceiling, beyond the frame of the picture. The daughter in the photo would also be gone in four years. Upon the wall between the women there is a round plaster cast, painted gold, of a child's hand. The man at his desk wonders, continues to wonder if it were his own second-grade project. It's a very curious photo and that is why it lives there, on the man's bulletin board above his desk.
Another item, approximately five inches over from the photos on the top of the board is a three-by-six inch piece of blue paper upon which a poem has been typed on an old typewriter. The poem, XXIX, by Antonio Machato, is from "Proverbios y Canteres," recited often by the man since learning it as a student of Spanish 20 years ago.
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada mas;
Caminante, no hay camino.
Se hace camino al andar.
The blue paper is tattered and creased from traveling in the man's wallet and in the back flaps of his journals.
Below the poem hangs a picture the man's son drew in heavy black ink. It was his son's balloon-head stage, in which all of his creature subjects were depicted with large oval shapes at the end of long, stringy necks. This one has small dots for eyes and, presumably, nostrils. There are two mouths, one upon it's side, or is it the curve a cheek? Several lines radiate outward from the bulbous skull depicting perhaps hair or even limbs. The character's name, Winzel, has been scrawled on the bottom of the piece by his preschool teacher. It is labeled "Gavin, 3 (2001)." Winzel graces the outside of a large folded paper, a neatly fashioned envelope, taped closed. The man wonders, continues to wonder, what the envelope contains.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atras
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
In the center of the bulletin board is a standard eight-and-a- half by eleven inch sheet of white paper, secured at the top with a single pin. On the sheet is printed a list entitled "Nine Effective Steps to Writing Better Stories." The man sometimes allows his gaze to rest on one of the steps in the list as he sits at the desk in his dark early mornings. The step he rests on this morning is #7: "Show, Don't tell." He continues to wonder at this simple, endlessly confounding advice.
Several inches below the nine steps to writing better stories is a scribbled note on a three-by-five card, tacked lengthwise. It's a note on some music he heard at the desk nearly a year ago. "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, June 25th 1973, 'Boarding House.' It was music that inspired him. Inspiration that lifted him one moment, a year ago at the desk.
To the right of the note on music is a business card of an old high school buddy, now a counselor. A friend who had been able to extract a promise from the man, a promise to finish what he had started. "Write it," he said in the coffee shop where they'd met. It was more than permission. But would he finish the novel? The man wonders, continues to wonder if it all isn't what he has long suspected. Is it too big to capture? Too much for this little desk?
To the right of the business card, in the lower right corner of the board, a small lapel pin is stuck into the cork. An old sepia portrait of Jane Austen peers from the round face of the pin, a coin-sized ghost head waiting, waiting.
Caminante, no hay camino.
Sino estelas en la mar.
Tucked into the maple frame in the upper left-hand corner are two old photos. A black-and-white glossy of his oldest brother with an arm around their mother. They are outside in the winter. A tall, leafless tree stands in the distance behind them. The photo, circa 1972, likely shot by the child who is now the man at his desk. In four years the brother would be gone.
To the right of this photo is another: this one in color, matte finish. Two women sitting, hands in their laps, in the breakfast nook of the man's childhood home. The woman on the left is the daughter of the woman on the right. Both are peering, smiling, up at a point on the ceiling, beyond the frame of the picture. The daughter in the photo would also be gone in four years. Upon the wall between the women there is a round plaster cast, painted gold, of a child's hand. The man at his desk wonders, continues to wonder if it were his own second-grade project. It's a very curious photo and that is why it lives there, on the man's bulletin board above his desk.
Another item, approximately five inches over from the photos on the top of the board is a three-by-six inch piece of blue paper upon which a poem has been typed on an old typewriter. The poem, XXIX, by Antonio Machato, is from "Proverbios y Canteres," recited often by the man since learning it as a student of Spanish 20 years ago.
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada mas;
Caminante, no hay camino.
Se hace camino al andar.
The blue paper is tattered and creased from traveling in the man's wallet and in the back flaps of his journals.
Below the poem hangs a picture the man's son drew in heavy black ink. It was his son's balloon-head stage, in which all of his creature subjects were depicted with large oval shapes at the end of long, stringy necks. This one has small dots for eyes and, presumably, nostrils. There are two mouths, one upon it's side, or is it the curve a cheek? Several lines radiate outward from the bulbous skull depicting perhaps hair or even limbs. The character's name, Winzel, has been scrawled on the bottom of the piece by his preschool teacher. It is labeled "Gavin, 3 (2001)." Winzel graces the outside of a large folded paper, a neatly fashioned envelope, taped closed. The man wonders, continues to wonder, what the envelope contains.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atras
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
In the center of the bulletin board is a standard eight-and-a- half by eleven inch sheet of white paper, secured at the top with a single pin. On the sheet is printed a list entitled "Nine Effective Steps to Writing Better Stories." The man sometimes allows his gaze to rest on one of the steps in the list as he sits at the desk in his dark early mornings. The step he rests on this morning is #7: "Show, Don't tell." He continues to wonder at this simple, endlessly confounding advice.
Several inches below the nine steps to writing better stories is a scribbled note on a three-by-five card, tacked lengthwise. It's a note on some music he heard at the desk nearly a year ago. "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, June 25th 1973, 'Boarding House.' It was music that inspired him. Inspiration that lifted him one moment, a year ago at the desk.
To the right of the note on music is a business card of an old high school buddy, now a counselor. A friend who had been able to extract a promise from the man, a promise to finish what he had started. "Write it," he said in the coffee shop where they'd met. It was more than permission. But would he finish the novel? The man wonders, continues to wonder if it all isn't what he has long suspected. Is it too big to capture? Too much for this little desk?
To the right of the business card, in the lower right corner of the board, a small lapel pin is stuck into the cork. An old sepia portrait of Jane Austen peers from the round face of the pin, a coin-sized ghost head waiting, waiting.
Caminante, no hay camino.
Sino estelas en la mar.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Dilemma
A satellite loses altitude, having completed its mission, or simply deciding in the sum of its parts to fail, and we stand on the dirt awaiting its descent. We stand peering up, but what can we do? Step a little to the left, the right? Should we take a boat ride or a hike or a nap? How will this creature of ours come to fall?
At the end of the day, some of us will pick up the pieces and shoot it all back up again.
The only way to build something is, after all, knowing how it falls apart. Clocks were first on my list after Lego towns. One by one, they scattered their parts across my bedroom carpet, unknowing themselves before me. When I moved on to watches, I knew then whole universes lay hidden to behold.
Later, much, there was the rolling and unrolling and rolling of joints. The task took eons, to the chiding of friends, but not until I had unrolled one perfect gift was I able to produce one myself. So it is that I shudder at the numbers it took to find myself unrolled and unknown to myself, again and again, only to be known by another.
It was a practice, this unravelling, merely a gateway to bigger and more complicated undoings; so that as midlife unfolded, mysteries layers deep into my clockwork became more fathomless, more appealing in their muted irresolvabilty. And so it is now that I clink and bang in my shop at pointless little endeavors that reveal in the heart of their pointlessness what may yet be.
At the end of the day, some of us will pick up the pieces and shoot it all back up again.
The only way to build something is, after all, knowing how it falls apart. Clocks were first on my list after Lego towns. One by one, they scattered their parts across my bedroom carpet, unknowing themselves before me. When I moved on to watches, I knew then whole universes lay hidden to behold.
Later, much, there was the rolling and unrolling and rolling of joints. The task took eons, to the chiding of friends, but not until I had unrolled one perfect gift was I able to produce one myself. So it is that I shudder at the numbers it took to find myself unrolled and unknown to myself, again and again, only to be known by another.
It was a practice, this unravelling, merely a gateway to bigger and more complicated undoings; so that as midlife unfolded, mysteries layers deep into my clockwork became more fathomless, more appealing in their muted irresolvabilty. And so it is now that I clink and bang in my shop at pointless little endeavors that reveal in the heart of their pointlessness what may yet be.
Monday, October 21, 2013
10-20-13 Paddle
We went paddling into the wilderness of channels and sometime passages of that inland island of the lower Columbia I will not name. Seven in all, our cumulative experience average to good, though none of us, save our adventurous leader, had previously explored this watery maze. Happily that sunny yesterday we entered the grassy passages, tooling down one snaking channel and up the next, providing the bald eagle perched atop his tallest snag an amusing view: flotilla of crazies in single file, outlandishly attired, giggling and chattering in circles and curls through the tall reeds in the unmistakably confounding manner of humans. Ridiculous to be sure, but from our view, we glided along our own logic, among forget-me-nots impossibly gracing the waters edge, past the bothered bard owl, to the log half-submerged where all of this confusion began, back to the familiar canal again. We will return.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Story bud
I read in the news over my cereal this morning of the capture of two boys, 19 and 20, cousins suspected in the murder of one of the boys' great grandmother. The story describes the relationship the grandson had with slain woman, how they loved each other. The great grandmother doing everything possible for the young man, who suffers from bi-polar disorder, who has had a rough time in high school. The mother and the great grandmother are the only family members mentioned in the story.
Where is the father?
I wonder this aloud to myself, writing in the morning dark of our sleeping house. How can a young man grow up in such a way as to never express himself violently and then suddenly to murder a member of his family who adores him? I think what gripped me the most is the insult to the grandmother, the severe and emotional trauma so fleeting but intense. She died of blunt force to the cranium, but was there a moment when this final insult occurred to her: to be murdered by someone you love deeply and without condition? There is something Shakespearean in it, something epic. How can we do this to each other?
But where was the father? This question looms tall for me, not because I wish assign blame in any way. I ask the question because as a father myself of a sixteen year-old, I cannot look away. My son is also experiencing the anguish and depression, the desperation of his aloneness. He too has had his struggles in school, mainly with peers and with fitting in. And of course, I had my own similar challenges at that age. I remember very well the idea that no one could possibly be feeling or thinking what I was. No person alive would understand. And like my own son, I also considered suicide. While I still believe that no one can truly understand the precise nature of this suffering, I do know what the suffering is.
A self-loathing, a blackness overtaking reason, steeping in its brine of doubt, barring the corridors leading to redemption or release or both, depression turns off the exit signs, outs the lights, pins its victim to a seat in the cinema of self-devise from which to repeatedly spectate an auto-tailored tragedy in compounding detail. O the mind of the self-absorbed teen is one to fuel a car, lift a plane, steam a ship. Energy untapped and divine, an awful and frightening force it is among those of us unwitting, hapless passengers.
But it is not to be taken lightly and this is what I fear to write: as a father, one who has suffered these dark arenas too; how do I find my way into my son's world? I've been looking for a story. Perhaps this is it.
Where is the father?
I wonder this aloud to myself, writing in the morning dark of our sleeping house. How can a young man grow up in such a way as to never express himself violently and then suddenly to murder a member of his family who adores him? I think what gripped me the most is the insult to the grandmother, the severe and emotional trauma so fleeting but intense. She died of blunt force to the cranium, but was there a moment when this final insult occurred to her: to be murdered by someone you love deeply and without condition? There is something Shakespearean in it, something epic. How can we do this to each other?
But where was the father? This question looms tall for me, not because I wish assign blame in any way. I ask the question because as a father myself of a sixteen year-old, I cannot look away. My son is also experiencing the anguish and depression, the desperation of his aloneness. He too has had his struggles in school, mainly with peers and with fitting in. And of course, I had my own similar challenges at that age. I remember very well the idea that no one could possibly be feeling or thinking what I was. No person alive would understand. And like my own son, I also considered suicide. While I still believe that no one can truly understand the precise nature of this suffering, I do know what the suffering is.
A self-loathing, a blackness overtaking reason, steeping in its brine of doubt, barring the corridors leading to redemption or release or both, depression turns off the exit signs, outs the lights, pins its victim to a seat in the cinema of self-devise from which to repeatedly spectate an auto-tailored tragedy in compounding detail. O the mind of the self-absorbed teen is one to fuel a car, lift a plane, steam a ship. Energy untapped and divine, an awful and frightening force it is among those of us unwitting, hapless passengers.
But it is not to be taken lightly and this is what I fear to write: as a father, one who has suffered these dark arenas too; how do I find my way into my son's world? I've been looking for a story. Perhaps this is it.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Forget the path
Let Jade be lost. Beg the question: when will she be found? This is the central quest--not when m&c will be found, but when will Jade herself discover the rest of her life. It is her quest, but she doesn't see it yet.
Let Jade speak with kuleana,her responsibility to tell the difficult stories, to be accountable to herself (Ref. Kim Stafford's One Hundred Tricks Any Boy Can Do, p.175)
kuleana: http://www.managingwithaloha.com/19-values-of-aloha/kuleana/ Perhaps this is something she finds in her notes from her visit to Kauai.
Going back to her notes and locating this word, seeing it for what it is--suddenly in her moment of loss--may be the emotional pivot needed for the end of the book--an inevitable end.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Writing as Giving
When I think of writing as giving I think of what I've been doing with the practice for most of my life: journal writing. I process what I am going through on daily basis and this makes me feel as if I've actually been writing. Another might be the rationale I often use to see myself in the reflection of the words that come to my mind in a moment (this one, for example): essentially an act of narcissism.
Another perhaps less productive reason for journal writing is just writing for the sake of it. This in itself is fine as a stimulator, but my tendency is to be too satisfied with journal writing, as if it were actually going to be read by another human being. It is not, of course. No one in their right mind would want to pore through this drivel. What I see in my journal writing is an attempt to "figure things out" which really is fine; it's good, therapeutic fun. But real therapy for me is in the giving, not the receiving, and journal writing for me is all the latter.
So, how can I invert this writerly energy to be more of a giving act? One step might be to confront my anxiety that what I have to give will be rejected. After all the exhortations and warnings to ignore this childish fear, I still find that it is very much a part of my consciousness as I struggle to create, explore, reach into the unsaid, the unfathomed. It's this very fear of the unknown that ironically is also the impetus for writing.
So, in confronting this fear I have endeavored occasionally to post some drivel on my blog, a blog which, except perhaps for three members is read by none. Experimental honesty indeed. If I were really to experiment, I would be pushing the blog, promoting it, soliciting comment and critique. Alas, it languishes in the ether, safely, unread and invisible: the inside work of an outsider.
Another step might be to forget the blog altogether. Focus on story. It could be Drum or it could be a new story. Maybe it's time to revise some older stories. Whatever the case, I need to pull myself out of this protection zone, become a more challenged and enlightened creator. I've thought that poetry may be a way out of these doldrums.
In an excellent interview with avant-garde Jazz composer, John Zorn, Terri Gross asks about how he stays creative. Zorn, in his feisty, staunchly independent way, speaks of ignoring these voices that almost always have their own agendas:
I love this. Zorn has found a way to live with his art, and this way is to cut out distraction. The complete transcript is here: Terry Gross interview with John Zorn.
Has my attempt though journal writing to flesh out personal truths become also a self-deception? A gift to myself alone? Could it be time to cut out this distraction and use these letters in a more generous way? Or should I just tell that voice in my head to "go get stuffed" and do my own thing?
I suppose the answer I've conjured is reflected in the the labels of this blog. Flotsam is for random wisps of ideas, floaties; Tidepool is a dedicated to capturing the sort of wandering process writing represented here; and Undertow is reserved for story and character ideas, poems, complete thoughts that beg for more. Undertow is where I want to live as a writer, but the other two places are where things gather and grow.
Another perhaps less productive reason for journal writing is just writing for the sake of it. This in itself is fine as a stimulator, but my tendency is to be too satisfied with journal writing, as if it were actually going to be read by another human being. It is not, of course. No one in their right mind would want to pore through this drivel. What I see in my journal writing is an attempt to "figure things out" which really is fine; it's good, therapeutic fun. But real therapy for me is in the giving, not the receiving, and journal writing for me is all the latter.
So, how can I invert this writerly energy to be more of a giving act? One step might be to confront my anxiety that what I have to give will be rejected. After all the exhortations and warnings to ignore this childish fear, I still find that it is very much a part of my consciousness as I struggle to create, explore, reach into the unsaid, the unfathomed. It's this very fear of the unknown that ironically is also the impetus for writing.
So, in confronting this fear I have endeavored occasionally to post some drivel on my blog, a blog which, except perhaps for three members is read by none. Experimental honesty indeed. If I were really to experiment, I would be pushing the blog, promoting it, soliciting comment and critique. Alas, it languishes in the ether, safely, unread and invisible: the inside work of an outsider.
Another step might be to forget the blog altogether. Focus on story. It could be Drum or it could be a new story. Maybe it's time to revise some older stories. Whatever the case, I need to pull myself out of this protection zone, become a more challenged and enlightened creator. I've thought that poetry may be a way out of these doldrums.
In an excellent interview with avant-garde Jazz composer, John Zorn, Terri Gross asks about how he stays creative. Zorn, in his feisty, staunchly independent way, speaks of ignoring these voices that almost always have their own agendas:
ZORN: Well, you know, I mean, discipline is a very important thing. And, you know, I wanted to play the bass and my parents said, you know, you don't want to play the bass, that's in the background. You want to play the guitar, that's in the front, you know. So, you know, I want to play the bass. No, no, no, we'll get you guitar. They got me a little guitar. Then they had a teacher come by who was very strict and very disciplined and had me spend all my time playing scales. And he wanted me to play the chromatic scale, four octaves, from the lowest note to the highest note of the guitar and back down in eight seconds. And I worked on that a lot but I couldn't get it any lower than 12. And he said until you can get it at eight seconds, you know, I won't let you play a Beatles tune or anything like that. You have to do this.
GROSS: Geez.
ZORN: So I told them to go get stuffed and I started doing my own thing. And discipline is important as long as you're having a good time. What I always did is I did what I enjoyed and I think that's why I don't have any grey hairs. I'm 60 but I look like I'm 40. And I have a very beautiful life with great friends and I look forward to waking up everyday. Everyday is a vacation but every day is a workday. I don't want to take vacations because music is my life and if I escape from music, that's the same thing as death. So a vacation is death to me. Sitting on the beach for a week is my idea of hell. That would kill me.
I love this. Zorn has found a way to live with his art, and this way is to cut out distraction. The complete transcript is here: Terry Gross interview with John Zorn.
Has my attempt though journal writing to flesh out personal truths become also a self-deception? A gift to myself alone? Could it be time to cut out this distraction and use these letters in a more generous way? Or should I just tell that voice in my head to "go get stuffed" and do my own thing?
I suppose the answer I've conjured is reflected in the the labels of this blog. Flotsam is for random wisps of ideas, floaties; Tidepool is a dedicated to capturing the sort of wandering process writing represented here; and Undertow is reserved for story and character ideas, poems, complete thoughts that beg for more. Undertow is where I want to live as a writer, but the other two places are where things gather and grow.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Tidepool Story: Simeon
Simeon
It would be suicide by Great White, he decided. They didn’t like that word, suicide, but he used it in his mind to see it for what it was. The image would lunge at him from the screen with such voracity and immediate surprise that his adrenalyn levels would immediately sore, sending him into fight or flight. He would be restrained so the impulse would go inward, shutting down first heart then brain just as the devil fish tore into him. He’d had months in his cell to conjure in his mind the razor teeth that would sink into his chest.
He’d chosen this ending over others for nothing came closer to dying a natural death. Only simulations in those days could be characterized as natural. But oh what simualtions were they. Bigger than life, meaner and far more beautiful than the pics and vids we have of the natural world in early times. The world was disigned to knock you out, and when someone had accomplished what this man had, they gave you the works.
But suicide was not what he had in mind. They would restrain him, shoot him up with pshychoactives. After that, he knew they’d give him the Privacy, so when his imagination tore his body limb from limb, spattering blood into every corner of the room, he knew he would be completely alone. The windows would be switched off. The seven minutes would pass and they would come in to wipe up the mess and crate his collective ass to the incinerator. Those minutes were all his, though. For the only time in his life, nothing, no one would be watching his actions.
The titanium cuffs locked around his wrists and ankles were in his mind as real as the shark that would devour him. The drugs shot from the hypo into his veins and mingled with the nutrients in his blood. He understood every synapse that would be frozen, every one that would be in a spasm of firing. He knew the detoures, the shortcuts in his nervous system. His minders had no idea what he was capable of, but one of them said, “never mind, he won’t need it,” and the other sheathed his long blade. They were his assisins in case the shark failed in the duration of the Privacy to kill him. They would rush into the room, check his pulse, and if he lived, open his carteroid like a pig’s at slaughter.
The door slid shut and chimed the first minute. This too, he would defeat. He pushed the thought into the place it needed to be.
His mind was pounding now, full of lurking enemies, while the wallscreen came slowly slowly alive. He was impressed with the imperceptibly gradual display of an undersea- scape. Schools of small fish darted and vanished and occasional rays of sunlight pierced the deep. The sound was internal, from within his skull: pinging oxygen and the swishing of small creature clashes.
He did not wait for the second chime, begining to shrink the muscle tissue beneath his retraints, the cartlidge, the tendons. He accomplished this in the way that he did the thing for which he was being given his Privacy. No one was aware of his ability, only the Power, and he pretended, as all other good Citizens of the Power, to evaluate himself in no way more or less powerful than another. All of his adult evals, in fact show adherence to this principle of self knowledge. But now, as he defied both himself and the Power, the cuffs and anklets began to loosen.
You may recall the Wallscreen from your history tabs: ancestor technology, a forerunner to our exquiste and beloved InSense experience. But even before the Wallscreen there were virtual reality programs that were quite fashionable among the elite of the day. One would simply zip on a sensory suit and don a pair of goggles to experience the simulation of their fancy. Of course these were very crude sims, primitive 3D, and usually premised from the basest elements of human nature. This is what turned people on then. Life, after all, was short.
The develpment of the Wallscreen, however, presented an entirely new, far less cumbersome interface. As the screen powered up, the very air between the screen and viewer became supercharged with pixelated atoms, the cutting edge interface of that century. Primitive, yes indeed, but what was factual at the time had long been discredited by physics, setting the stage for the consciousness altering Pixal Mist. As prime time entertainment, it became the new common sense, a virtual life that offered full participation apriori; that is, the virtual experience was a projection of the imagination comingling with light particles immitted by the screen. Looking back, we poo poo this technology its quaint approach to reality design. In it’s time, though, especially for its time, the Wallsceen represented what would become the harbinger of the sociotech revolution we now eat, drink, breathe.
Our man, none other than Simeon Horugato, was watching with his bare eyes the now expanding submarine stage in which he was about to be martyred. He had proven himself more powerful than his fellows and becoming shark bait was to be his self-directed fate. Most of the fish scattered, clearing hastily from the air (now green seawater) and Horugato paused his concentration to watch what he knew his mind, if he allowed it, would happily co-create with the Wallscreen. Restless masses moved in the darkest reach, beyond the waving seaweed, and the door chimed another minute.
Several seconds passed. Horugato’s hands, scraped and bloodied, but free. The heels of his feet were proving a challenge, though. Reducing bone mass was an exercise he had performed only once, risky and necessitating an hour of restorative meditation. He would have less than three minutes.
We know from Horugato’s entries in the Log of the Power that Horugato was a dreamer, not one of those drones perpetually escaping into some forced future or retrospective past; he was one who dreamed of the literal now, of the alternate realities which we take for granted today. This was a man who grasped the principles of transcient grounding long before the theory was mainstreamed and became the basis of our revoulution. This is why he is our father, our saint, the very personage of our destiny; for it is you see that by exercising that skill, which he knew only as a dangerous strength, treacherous even, he released into the world a
By the time the anklets dropped to the ball of his heel, one massive shark had angled into the room and was darting in its graceful manner around his chair, charging him menacingly. We can imagine that he was terrified, but perhaps he was also of the mind that he only needed to will his escape, for as we know, this is what we have inherited.
What is Tidepool?
Tidepool is a collaborative story inviting thoughtful contribution and critique. It is a project I'm putting forward to members of this blog as a way of engaging in a creative effort without having to commit to a full critique. That is to say, the smallest suggestion is welcome as long as it moves the story forward in a compelling manner.
I will keep the current story up for as long as it is in need of inspiration. Then I will replace it with another. If the story is ever published, your contribution will be acknowledged.
Tidepool stories begin as my own creative effort. They are borne in qual measure of dreams and waking life, of a child's comment, a spasm of anger, the old coat I used to wear and what I found in it's pocket. You might explore some of the posts in undertow to see more on the origin of my story and poem ideas.
Have fun!
Peter
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