..."Bing"...excerpt Part 2..now on Lulu...

2:

When I awoke with the kirpan* at my throat, on the edge of cutting it, I knew that my so-called guides were already mystified by Da Vinci.  By what means, I could not guess.  However, being that he was a day ahead of me, I was aware of the risks involved.  The inexhaustible means and mechanization he had at his disposable were not a trifle – these hypnotized men were proving the rule.  He was a scientist, an alchemist, and had proven the dangerousness of his knowledge in places across the Mediterranean
[* I understand that this is not the continent for the kirpan, but, having recently fought alongside Sikhists in the North of India, this knife readily reminded me of one.]

My luck bore out as I slept with a revolver on my belly and my hand on it at all times. With only a forced turn and three shots, he was dead.  His eyes bulged, his body convulsed back, bringing the knife with it.  The other two guides ran into the brush - I could only make out the direction by the foliage that jostled behind them. I emptied out the remaining rounds and spat.  I reloaded without missing a beat.

....

As I made a direction by the constellation Lepus (using the variable direction of the moon, and the north-easterly direction of the wind the last day), I struck north by east.  By three in the morning, I could feel the clamminess of the jungle start working on my body heat. I trudged on, at an almost frenetic pace to stay warm. Better to keep going and sleep during the early day.  I've done the opposite before and all for the price of a mean-spirited headache.

Humming a bit of Gus' tune put me back in the music room of his little apartment on Los Angeles Street. We'd pull back some dry whiskey, a few pints from the corner mart, and have a couple of swell young starlets join in the fun.  Gus was almost on with the Coconut Grove and I had a way with "I Surrender Dear". That one made the ladies cry. Boy, could I put the ham on with that song, all on pumpernickel and mustard and carried it all the way from the deli.

Chuckling in the pre-morning mists of a jungle was not on my honey-do back then.  Nor was this interminable bastard on my short lists to celebrate with this year.  Let me tell you that I was hankering for a pull and a long smoke.

Suddenly I found that my movement was encroaching on something that wanted for quiet.  The jungle was unnaturally still and I was being the belligerent one.  Not a single sound from a creature came, at least not in the area within 150 feet. There was something out here that even the bugs didn't want a part of...and I know that fear wasn’t coming from me.

I looked below [my feet].  What first appeared as normal foliage was nothing more than shriveled growth.  In fact, as far as I could see in the meager light, the entire jungle around me had been sucked dry as if a capable agent had ingested the entire plant and animal life in this little circle and swallowed its animus whole. The ground beneath my feet, where there would have been a wet loam, was completely dry.  Perhaps this was the answer for coming to the dark of the world.

Da Vinci and his crew passed through here and may even be watching me.  He had done this in at least two known locations, although the prey was much different. One was the entire crew of an Oriental outrigger ship, the other a small bar on the shore of Venice.  ....

There was a trail leading from this last jungle copse and into the prairie: five to one odds he was heading out deeper into the wilds of Africa.

Continue to part 3...

...Ceyx and Alcyone...

Inseparable we, Alcyone. I must hasten to save man.
Take me, husband. As I would die than to have you from me.
No. The oracle's voyage may be the last.
Then I shall watch you until the horizon leaves no sign.

Alas! Not one night and we find ourselves covered in the frigid sheets of water: our ship falls. Alcyone!

I count the days, my husband, upon your return. This robe shall be your gift. Juno! Goddess! Find Ceyx and bid him to me.

Iris! Forth unto Somnus. Seek him at the Abode of Sleep.
Awake from thy slumber, stir from your bed, Somnus. Hear me apart from the beckoning Lethe and heed Juno's word. Send Alycone a sleep-turn sign of the fate of her love.Awake from thy blissful turn, son, my Morpheus and satisfy Juno's word.

Alcyone. As you slumber, see me as your drowned love. See my garments, my pale skin, my eyes are akin to the fish. Weep for me!
Oh, husband, then I, with you, will go.

The body of Ceyx was there in the ocean, washing to shore when she went to drown. The gods smiled kindly on the sight and Alycone became a bird, as did Ceyx - come to life and wing. Both sailed on along the waters. When mild peace settles the winter days, they are named for her, although halcyon.

...images abound and the nightly still of Poe...

...new photos include some tests with my new Toshiba H30 (jury's still out on whether I like it or not) at Sunset Beach on Saturday as well as a collection from my Sony DSC called Arcadia, in memory of lost arcades, soda and tokens.  The BEACH and ARCADIA - images are roughly 1440x1000 for desktops.  I'm particularly fond of the images I didn't have to retouch.  One photo in two hundred is the average.

And, in honor of Poe, being the witching time of year, here are a few poems to satiate one's sense of horror, particularly apart from the short stories.

- Ulalume (1847): tremendous 9, 10 metrical form follows the protagonist, in October, as an angel (perhaps) leads him to his lost love.  Reminiscent of The Raven.

- For Annie (1849): a decidedly blithe lyrical that is not fearsome as it is Poe happily appearing dead with love at his breast.  As much as I love the guy, you have to think it wouldn't be too much fun on Friday night (well, there is laudanum).

- Shadow - A Parable (1850): hard to find this appropriately arranged (unless you find a copy of the Penguin "Portable Poe"), but here it is if you can create the breaks in your mind (only copy I could find).  Think the Red Death and Tell Tale Heart but in ancient Greek.

- The Sleeper (1831): quick rhyme analogous of the grave.

- Annabel Lee (1849): and ends with a favorite of any fan of American poetry.  Here Poe allows less to do more - doing away with the baroque and allowing his mastery of meter and stress take rein.

These are best enjoyed in the company of the middle of the night, with coffee that has chilled by the damp weather outside.  The fire should be started and one could ponder the fears that assault us from within.

...the 7 List...worst applications of technology...

There's been much discussion on science and science fiction blogs about the role of fiction as it affects the shape of technology. There's little doubt that fiction stirs the imagination and, in turn, pushes the curious and the genius toward discovery. However, there's got to be a limit. This is what I came up with in five minutes, I'm sure there's about a thousand variants similar to these. In no particular order: 


i. anti-gravity/hoover-boards [BTTF] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkyLnWm1iCs
     If we were to find the silver bullet to create the dubious construct of anti-gravity, whereby we can simulate or repel the effects of gravity, would we then ask our toy manufacturers to exert energy (lots of energy in fact) into toys? As many physicists will cite: there are few practical ways to generate or repel gravity. There are tricks that you can apply to get an effect, but, unless you are able to manipulate spacial geometry and mass, we're simply not getting hoover-boards from Mattel. [Apologies to my favorite sci-fi movie, BTTF!]
     And why would we need this? It's an example of something wholly unnecessary in its application, where instead, we could apply science and funding towards mimicking gravity in either smaller capsules (gyroscope) or, if it must come to inter-solar travel, larger ships that can mimic gravity by their sheer density. It almost seems likely that a mass-producing element can then generate a localized spatial well.
     The next step is determining what amount of gravity is enough to survive indefinitely.


ii. capital ships/war [BSG] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APNRdANiZEQ
     No worse application of science is the idea that only war or corporations will hunger for interstellar travel. From this, the idea of ginormous capital ships caught up solely for the war or capitalization effort.  
     What?! So we would create massive scale ships so they could be potentially destroyed in seconds?            
     Wouldn't we, being wholly realistic, create smaller ships with maximum firepower and win by prize? I'm thinking of how the Golden Age of Sail operated. You wouldn't mindlessly destroy ships on a foolish whim - you would reasonably dispatch or press the crew and put the ship into service. I couldn't imagine a future where dystopia is what fuels the human condition.  History would not prove that out.


iii. uncontrollable automatons [I, Robot] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBtMq0QzIdQ
     We'll learn quickly that, other than military or industrial application, domesticated robots should never have the strength above that then the task that they are oriented for.  If an elderly person can only handle 30 psi of practical strength, the robot should be easily overpowered.  This is the only way to avoid abuse.
     It would be illegal to hack or create any automaton that can overpower or otherwise harm a human.  Military applications are already here, so good luck trying to stop that bus (or, be it as it were, drone).
     I would hope our future selves would easily see the fatal flaw in creating any construct in which no one, or simply one, has control.


iv. time travel [The Time Machine] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRWwI61so5Q
     Time does not move the way folks may think.  What has passed is gone folks, stop worrying about trying to go back to another date: it simply cannot happen.


v. self-importance/vanity in perpetuity [Superbia, Bruegel] http://crucialxtimes.com/xdx/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Brueghel_-_Sieben_Laster_-_7-Superbia.jpg
     This will be somewhat of a didactic argument.  The idea that perpetuity can exist through ones work or art is, of course, fact.  There is a temporal element only applicable to those that care about it.  Already, in this past "information" age, history has forgotten more than the future will ever care to remember.  Do you think anyone, unless you are beyond brilliant, will want to here your hologram in a 1,000 years.  Statistically doubtful.  Enjoy MySpace, Facebook and Twitter now.
     If there are flash copies of minds, they will be how these synthetic minds learn, not so much upon whom they are based on.  There will be fashion statements of AI, for sure, but, literally, they will be as disparate and individualistic beyond any one person.  99% indeed - more like 99.9% will be forgotten with three generations.


vi. technological / organic implants [Halo] 
    I'm going to be wrong on this one, I know.  Once folks see the miracles of enhancement, or some other benign term, they will line up like monkeys at a banana picnic.  But, cautionary tale as it is, remember the old Twilight Zone when they were able to perform enhancement.  It won't be democratic and wholly capitalistic.  The 'have' and 'have nots' will be in constant struggle.
    Let's pretend they are free - why not evolution take its course and only bump it when critical?  That's what 's frustrating about (some) science without religion: there's something cold and precise and unfeeling toward the natural world as it exists.  The human organism is amazing, beyond all of our feeble reckoning.  Will we destroy our DNA at the expense to read or react faster?


vii. endless life [ancient fable of Caeneus] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caeneus
     Another cautionary tale that would probably get lost - immortality.  Man is not designed to 'live forever'.  We are temporal beings that are only meant to live and die (and pending your faith, as spirit or energy after).
     I suppose the idea is that we have a system that disallows the cell of the body to deteriorate or malign.  I hope this panacea also holds the key to avoiding accidents, famine, pestilence, war, jealousy, etc.  Seriously, the idea to live beyond one's natural span of life is egotistical to say anything.
     I could only imagine what monstrosities the future holds for those that try to stave off death.  Body grafts, impossible cosmetic surgeries to repair damage, litigiousness when those things fall short.  How about the horrors of Caeneus, where one is imprisoned for years underground unable to die?
    This possibility, not remote, is impractical and would hasten the need for strict, moral guidance.  The alternative is the bourgeoisie living forever, with the slaves feeding their insatiable desires. 

...Ono no Komachi...12th Century...

Kokin Wakashu, No. 658, Ono no Komachi:

Though I visit him
Ceaselessly
In my dreams,
The sum of all those meetings
Is less than a single waking glimpse.                (as translated by Helen Craig McCullough)

The town of Ogachi (in Akita) still celebrate the legendary poetess, Komachi.  All that is extant is about 22 poems that can be attributed to her brush.

On such a night as this
When no moon lights your way to me,
I wake, my passion blazing,
My breast a fire raging, exploding flame
While within me my heart chars.                     (as translated by Earl Miner)

That's just hot.  http://youtu.be/UcfcfHrA-3Q

..."Bing Crosby: Killer of the Interminable Da Vinci" Full Chapter 1...

...this is available as an ebook here http://www.lulu.com/shop/jon-edwards/bing-crosby-and-the-interminable-da-vinci/ebook/product-20037854.html.  The following is the abridged version, but newer iteration of "Bing":

...this story, Bing Crosby and the Interminable Da Vinci, follows the fearless adventurer in 1921.  Bing searches for a quarry that he had long wanted dead, that of a fifteenth century inventor who seemed to have found a way to stay alive for almost 500 years...

1: Africa, 1921

The twenty-odd tips in Morocco led me here, and to what may have been the very end of the Earth. On the coast of Gabon, in the city of Mayonami, the ghostly footprint of my prey was said to have only recently arrived. The appellation they used was unimportant (and unnecessarily superstitious), as it changed with each port, each ruddy steamboat or putrid back wood stream.  I know him as one name.  It will be the one I use when I kill the abomination.

You see (as time permits only bluntness), he was born in Florence five centuries earlier and should not be alive.  And, being there are few in authority with the knowledge to do something about it, I seemed to be the only one with enough gumption to do what had to be done.  (Untied to any authoritative locality had its advantages in these matters.)

Having only a pocketful of lira to my name and Mayonami not a tourist destination, I pieced together accommodations as I could: spending my first night in the bosom of a small fishing boat.  It was no bigger abreast than my shoulder’s width and I could only find comfort in the wet chine.  My hunger was to be satisfied by small local fish that were simply salted and fried - harder than potato crisps and scraped the top of my mouth something fierce. The village was well asleep by the time the sun ducked below the nearby wall of jungle.  I slept fitfully, making sure I woke up with first light.

…

The village was up even before me (and I before the sun even tinted the sky): their sustenance was based on fishing and export from their local farms.  My “bed”, was, by my nude concierge, brusquely shaken and pulled to the river.  I rose from the boat like a ghost, and feeling much like one, freeing the small knotted net that I had used as a blanket.  I tipped my host with what loose change I could.  He looked dubiously at the contents of his hand as I walked away.

I sauntered over to what amounted as a general store.  The thatched hut had opened its wide window and a dark fellow scowled as I approached.  He probably had enough of strange visitors.

He was helpful with information on an 'ancient spirit of a man' almost 'a ghost' that had blown through here yesterday afternoon (this was done in pantomime as we had no way of communicating otherwise).  The old man was unaccompanied but for a 'workless cart' that pulled a 'small mountain of boxes'. He had given up some of his tooling for food (could this be a desperate measure?) before leaving into the thick brush of the east.  The shopkeeper reluctantly let me examine the tools, which I pored over carefully for any sign.  Not much was there, but enough to let me know I was on the right trail.

I needed pack and food for my trek into the wilds.  Looking behind the store-keep I could tell he was a music buff.  There sat, in pristine condition, an old Edison Cylinder with a single Jolson record to his name.  (I’ll have to ask Al what he had on cylinder.)  So, I requested goods solely based on a performance of an early draft of my good friend's play, Bombo.  That songbook has many a song that would put the old Pharaoh himself in a good mood.  Well friends, if my mood and the twenty or so villagers weren't changed in three tunes...I had my gear and three guides post-haste.

With only a dark finger stabbed towards the east did I set out.  I should have felt worse, had I not, by luck, obtained a capable Berthier in Morocco.  I kept the rifle clean enough – to the amusement of the guides – who felt that it was cleaner than their own children!

As I tipped the pith hat forward and prayed to my God, I headed into the jungle knowing that either one of us were not coming out alive. And, if my God were good, this walking phantom will see his rightful place below ground.

And it was not like this case did not have its own pale of treachery: he had managed to survive this long without seeing the losing side of a duel. He was a ruthless man and I'm sure he'd strike me dead as a common fly...ba ba ba bum.

Continue to part 2...