Dicentium S1E2 "Star Wars: A Fan's Perspective Before the Premiere"

DeviantArt ~ City Life Photography

EdwardianJackal Cesar Chavez Blvd Market 2015 by edwardianjackal on DeviantArt
I drive through here daily, so I have a natural affinity for this street.

EdwardianJackal Liquor Anaheim Lincoln Rain 2015 by edwardianjackal on DeviantArt
2016 resolution is to photograph as many liquor stores at night, or during a rainy night as possible in Orange County.

...Night, December...and Anne Coray...

"A single sound. The white shade of a drum.
One begins to notice things. The shape of a tear.
How even the wind has surfaces. The fans of the women
swaying like background light. Somewhere
a rock has fallen a long distance. Snow geese
sweep the sea ...
Among the feathers, the stars,
through half-closed eyes, we know the short of it,
how easily the thong is drawn up —
those delicate tufts of fur, white blooms,
silencing the mouth."
     - Anne Coray, 'Eskimo Mask, St. Michael', from A Measure's Hush

Driving tonight to the backdrop of colored points,

Not many on the road.

Better to be with family tonight, better to be warm.

Better to be cozy, fat, happy, stupid, oblivious, safe.

Oblivious behind the thin facade of lighted strings,

And carols to blot the cries of the world.

At the grocer's the young buy their infused beer

Excited at the prospects of something more, something different.

The parking lot is the world and I stare at all its points

The night is black with no stars

Can't see my breath though.

Some little ones are skipping with their parents

The distant sound of a clock chiming 9pm.

     - 12DEC15

Night rests on this mountain
like a great thigh.
You have said a woman’s breast is a moon
and her mouth a sweet river.
I am, as usual, cold.
My hands seek an accustomed warmth
inside your jacket.
Again we’ve stood our glass up to the stars
and named the constellations.
Sometimes I wonder how we go on
loving the familiar and the magnified.

…Anne Coray, 'Beneath Sleeping Lady', from Bone Strings

Red Again

A year ago, red.
Color and light and prism streaks through teary eyes.
The triumph of possibility, not in assurance, or promise
The highs of seeing what no one else could in another
Kindred in glances
Knowing
something
more.

The improbable in the blaze of burnt umber
 I have captured it, lingered over it
Grasped it in my mind's eye
for a year
for next
and another.

I can see your mind racing, picking possibilities
Holding them up and scrutinizing them
As if the world were a library of not only books
But moments, and feelings
exhilaration
each color, each emotion
each texture
each
each.

And red has never left
It still is the sigil of warring of struggle
of birth of life
and truth.

It has been my banner and shall be on the morrow
For life is fragile
and brilliant
Full of prisms and possibilities
because of you.

...were there but color in the center of his sorrow...

The winds, deadly, hit him at such a speed that he could hear its terrifying force shatter against the small ray shield.  It sheared and pitched, making an awful noise.  The equipment would hold, but it took all of his effort to remain upright.  He had to be tightly focused on every aspect of his movements.  The shield had thickened to create feet, his shoulder bore the weight of his forward momentum.  A misstep and he would propel himself, like a jack-in-the-box - over the chasm and to certain death.

The sweat was constant.  The shield was as confining as it was when he trained.  Russian burlap postal sacks, three at a time at fifty pounds each were wrapped around him.  His instructor, Vladamir, would kick him constantly.  It was to teach an invaluable lesson: if the shield should fail, even momentarily, his death would be as quick and complete as an explosion.  He would be an ice block in less than two seconds.

Not only did he have to exaggerate his movements to make any forward momentum, but the shield distorted his view.  It shimmered, inaccurately reflecting what was outside.  He strove along the flattest path he could, constantly figuring center mass.  He worked his way toward the dark blob of the cave ahead.

This went on for fifteen minutes and he felt he had moved about twenty feet.  Shift-E calculated about a minute per foot.  AI isn't always right.  Anytime Bar found a place where AI was not 100%, he made a mental notation.  Probably been seven times his whole life.  How many times have I've been wrong?  But, then again, I wasn't born to be perfect.  Human.  Being imperfect is how solutions are found.  An AI would...he stopped.  He knew the argument ended with him being wrong.

He turned to the ship behind him.  It too had a shield.  Somewhere beyond the gold glimmer of two shields, he could make the silhouettes of the crew facing him through the port glass.  It was a thin sliver of carbo-steel, like the fore.  Gunny called it the 'visual last resort'.

Bar adjusted his air.  Claustrophobia did that.  He needed more.  After some deep breaths he continued.  "You alright?" came that calm voice of the AI.

"Yep," Bar returned.  Shift-E was a bother.  But he was programmed to ask.  After 1.5 minutes.  That's the other problem with AI, it's too predictable.  It distracts me as I can anticipate what it will say next.

He moved another twenty feet and made it to the mouth of the cave.  The wind calmed considerably, a cross wind that seem to bypass the cave's threshold behind him.  He lowered the shield slightly to compensate.  He waited ten minutes to make sure there were no sudden gusts to push him back. Nothing.  He suffered another AI status request.

"Shift, I'm going to peer over the lip.  The probes seem to have stopped here for some reason."  The shiny metal skin of three of them were clumped in the same foot square.

"What do you think?  A pulse of some kind?"

"They are all stopped in the same place, virtually.  This means there is some threshold boundary or something."

"Don't walk into it?"

"I know I'm safe about two feet from the pile.  We know from the force of the probe for it to land here."  It was dangerous.  Whatever brought them down would be faster than he could react.  Plus, he had nothing but the shield to protect him.  I could take the shield down.  It was at a degree that his survival suit could take it.  Then he saw what looked like a light.  About two kilometers ahead.  Two amber lights.  Eyes?

"Shift, I see something ahead.  It looked as if it were turning."

"Go ahead and come back.  We know enough."

"I could speak to it."  Bar was half-joking to calm himself.  He edged panic for a second.  He increased the shield again.

"Feel like dying then?"  Bar didn't even answer, he picked up a probe by walking over it and then twisting it through, it was frozen solid.  Had he not been wearing his gloves, it would have destroyed his hands.  He started to walk back, a feeling of exposed dread upon him.

Then he heard the growl.  How does anything survive here?  He turned around and only saw dark.  His twenty feet in fifteen minutes would have to be much, much better..."Hey Shift, what's the standing record for a run of forty feet?"

...“La Guitarra de Martín Sanchez” CHAPTER 5: Excerpt...

“La Guitarra de Martín Sanchez”
CHAPTER 5: Excerpt

1933, San Diego

The room did not exist until, in an instant, it returned into view like the burst of a bubble.  The light and color of the world rushed upon her, Abigaíl didn’t realize she had fallen into the parlor chair.

Her mother sat calmly across from her, with a look of sadness that was certainly not meant, her eyes tinged in a glow of triumph.  She would say that this was what was expected of a shiftless musician.  She would say that they shouldn't have gone down to Mexico, seeking unsubstantiated fortune.  She would say Martín's name as if she were spitting a rich illness from her throat.  Her mother's lips moved like pantomime, as if a moving picture reel had been slowed.  She had seen such a thing at the cinema house on the main street.  The projectionist was embarrassed at the mistake, but it lit the theatre with laughter.

Her brother, Earnesto, so much younger, sat bored in another chair, staring out the windows that lined the ceiling.  Where the angle of the ceiling sloped toward the front of the house, her father felt that stain glass was perfect there.  The only problem in the design is that the colored light was never struck by the sun.  It never floated its way across the room the way he expected.

Earnesto should have had the stereographs in his hand, but he was probably told not to.  He did not understand death.  Nor should he yet.

Rosa was crying and shaking in her chair, Abigaíl knew it would take weeks for her to regain her composure.  It was not as if Martín was her fiancée.  Abigaíl now knew Rosa had thought much more about them then she realized.  Seeing the poor maid and the terrible face she made: it struck her heart.  There will be physical pain with Martín’s passing.  Abuelo Cassius was missing from the scene.

Abigaíl could not moved, the telegram in her hand.  What of his mother?  Does Lucia know?

Her mother put a hand on hers.  It was cold.  Abigaíl did not blink in her gaze, "He is not dead.”  Her mother leaned back in her chair, an amused glow on her face.

“What?”  She almost wanted to laugh and Abigaíl caught it and would hate her for it.

“Was there a body?  I won’t believe it until I see a body.”

“Dear…the telegram comes from the Mayor’s Office of San Simeon.  They sent his affects to his mother.”

“You spoke with her?”

“Yes.”

“What affects?”

Her mother shivered.  She shivered in a way that showed she, at least, felt for a maternal spirit.  “His papers.  In fact, all the papers of all the men came back here.  They followed the telegram.  Lucia also spoke, brokenly, about a story in the newspapers down there.”  Her mother made a sound on the verge of a chortle, “You know it was the first time her and I ever spoke.”  Her mother let that go, continuing to pace the room.  She cut the shaft of lighted dust, cast by the large bay window, of the setting sun, across her waist.  “Your father called some of his people.  The story from the papers is that one cartel fought another.  The mariachi were playing and were killed along with them.  It is a sensation and a scandal.  Those men are American.  I don’t think the cartel realized that.”

“What good is it now?”

“There will be an official inquest.  The federal government will get involved.”  Her mother sat back down.  The dying light of day reflect warm colors on her permanent.  She smiled in a way that Abigaíl had not seen since she was a child.  Her hands fell up on hers again.  “I’m so sorry, Abigaíl.  I truly am.”

It almost sounded as if she meant it.  “Where is abuelo?”

“He didn’t…”

“I don’t want to see him ever again.”

“Abigaíl.”

“He hated Martín.  He told him he wanted him to die.  There: he is dead!”

…

"We have got to do the "jiminy jilickers" scene again, Milhouse." "But we already did it. It took us seven hours, but we did it. It's done."

In the immortal words of Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten, "I'm done."  My fingers and hands hurt something awful.  With thousands of words in the last couple of days to make up for a week of sickness,  'La Guitarra de Martin Sanchez' started out as a love story.  It was iinitially set in modern times, but, at about 25,000 words in, no joke, I found it was not the right voice.  The story needed to be rough and dirty and not necessarily about love at all, at least not in the way that I thought.  The love interest that sets Martin on his journey to Mexico, Abigail, was a great character, but Martin was not.  He was bland and uninteresting.  Now it is the reverse.  But not in the future revision - I will make sure to give her a similar voice, but set in the late 1930s.  She deserves more than to be the Mary Sue...and I wouldn't want her that way.  But, the driver of this story, and 85% of the novel is based on Martin and his Mariachi de San Ysidro.  It's a story of his brothers and how they drive him.  The story now has its defining image met, a story of seven mariachi walking in the desert back to America, playing a song in the mid-day sun.  A playful tune as they get Martin home to Abigail.

As with any nanowrimo - this is rough.  It was written in spurts and stops.  It was primarily written on my tablet on my lap.  It will need the careful revision and 'wholing' that must happen.. But it is done.

...thanks for being you...

Let's

Let's eat quickly, the owners may wake soon.

8 Days Left in NaNoWriMo - 1/2 a blue pill...

M. F. Husain "Mother Teresa"

Love Is Not All
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

Half-way of November, Bleary Eyed

La Guitarra de Martin Sanchez is at the half-way point, but I'll need more inspiration tonight.  That will come in a musical montage, in the form of Huey Lewis.  Visuals: ice water face bath, dancing down the aisle of Walmart as I stare at the vitamin section looking for novelty horse-sized anabolic steroids, eating them with a Monster, flying through the air like Neo at the end of Matrix, stopping in a cloud, eyes aglow, spinning like a banshee.  Then, I swoop down to the computer and push another 6,000 words in the next day.  Like a boss.  Then the song "Like a Boss" comes on.

Word Olivia!

"Liberty is fraught with enemies who think only on the frailty of their egos."

Autumn Leaves ~ Vince Guaraldi

Evening
H. D., 1886 - 1961

The light passes
from ridge to ridge,
from flower to flower—
the hepaticas, wide-spread
under the light
grow faint—
the petals reach inward,
the blue tips bend
toward the bluer heart
and the flowers are lost.

The cornel-buds are still white,
but shadows dart
from the cornel-roots—
black creeps from root to root,
each leaf
cuts another leaf on the grass,
shadow seeks shadow,
then both leaf
and leaf-shadow are lost.

01NOV15 ~ NaNoWriMo Begins

NANOWRIMO begins today, so I've already pitched myself into a not-yet-before outlined novel, but one that has gestated for several years.  It first latched into my brain as a visual, something not far off of my own experiences growing up less-than-rich.  It is of a migrant worker's wife in a department store, it swirling around her like a top, and she crying at the sight of so many things, and all of them out of her means.  This first inkling of a story came about seven years ago.  It is not the story, but the basis of one.

Follow along with me here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/edwardianjackal.  Specifically, it is tentatively titled 'La guitarra de Martin Sanchez', with nanowrimo stats here.  For past efforts and two completed novels, see Freeway 1979 last year and Filipino Cookbook the year prior.

For some tips, if you are on your own journey, my favourite sci-fi blog site, io9.com posted an open thread on how to get started and/or motivated: http://io9.com/open-channel-your-nanowrimo-tips-1739900885.

http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/150-writing-resources/

...Pride and Prejudice and Zombies...with unrelated Pride and Prejudice quotes...

Oh happy play!  If you could but spot the difference between Austen and Grahame-Smith.  Rely upon your wits and see!

"Angry people are not always wise."

"Your balls, Mr. Darcy?"  "They belong to you, Miss Bennett."

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!  How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!  When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

"Elizabeth sheathed her sword, knelt behind him, and strangled him to death with his own large bowel."

http://tinyurl.com/ngjz4k5 

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.  The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."

"Elizabeth lifted her skirt, disregarding modesty, and delivered a swift kick to the creature's head."

"My good opinion once lost is lost forever."

"I dare say she means to keep you from his attentions.  Your honour demands she be slain."

"Our scars make us know that our past was for real."

....

Shall we look to the skies with closed eyes? (Jamaica)

Redemption Song Statue, Kingston

America
BY CLAUDE MCKAY
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

- from McKay's (1889~1948) Liberator (1921).  He was a Jamaican-American poet.

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you.  You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." - Bob Marley

CHILD DUB POET

It rough but we don’t complain (fuss)

Life down in Jamaica (yard) is tough, it’s rough, but we don’t complain (fuss)

Days upon days the children (pickney) don’t eat, there out on the street, some of them are sleeping on the cold concrete.

Life down in Jamaica (yard) is tough, it’s rough, but we don’t complain (fuss)

Naked Body and empty stomach, deep collar bones and enlarged stomachs, depression show on their faces.

My JAH, what a disgrace.

e.e. cummings ~ 27 'the boys' ~ [langue sexual!]

I find interesting in many a quarter.  From the Anaheim Library, I selected 'Another E.E. Cummings'.  And, as I wont, I find anything that may be left behind those that read the book before.  In this case, there was a dog ear (I don't do this myself, mind you) on page 29 (73).  And on pages 196, 147, 136, 123, 122, 73, 21, 15, 4.  This person wanted much of the naughty to return too - cheeky.  It is 4, 73 and 29 that interest me as well.

The book, it is a bawdy time - I wish it were executed differently.  The book itself should be as brilliantly dirty as the mind of cummings.  Make it like you see this in the corner of a bathroom stall and notwanting to pick the filth from its home.  There is nothing wrong from me with offense.  I desire its rejection.

cummings sketch

#4 (6) ~ 'she, straddling my lap'
Start at the end and work backward:
"until....unvisibly love's furthest secrets rhyme"
"the hungry Visitor steers to love's lips"
"swoons sternly my huge Guest!"

#27 (73) ~ 'the dirty colours'
More linear:
"my seeing blood, her heart's chatter
riveted a weeping skyscraper
in me
and the Y her legs panting as they press
proffers its omelet of fluffy lust)
at six exactly
the alarm tore
two slits in her cheeks."

#29 (29) ~ 'the boys i mean are not refined'

A home:

"they do not give a fuck for luck"

"they do not give a shit for wit"

"who laugh like they would fall apart

and masturbate with dynamite"

"they do not give a fart for art"

http://hellopoetry.com/e-e-cummings/

-------
Naughty you'll with the tip of your index lightly indicating lower lip
That's where you say, I know
(but that's not what you really want, I know)
You see the intent written in taunt muscle that belies nothing than what it is
Primal is not the word, because it is not dull stupid energy
Serious like you've never seen
You know and it strikes your propriety
(you didn't know you still had it, I know)
Ferocity written in saliva on every ------ square inch
I won't stop because I don't know how when I'm here
My mind is tomorrow night and next week and three months hence
Position, place, time
Hair up, hair down, clothes on, clothes off
In the elevator, in the bathroom stall, the stairwell, Sunset Beach
Running like its track, extending every sinew at the end
Heart beating out of my ------- chest
This some serious ----
There's that brittle flash
The salient sound
Exhalation.

...the 'face' of James Bond of Ian Fleming's description...

Ian Fleming's description of Bond, at least through the veil of his characters, he appears to be a "cold and ruthless" Hoagy Carmichael, with a scar upon his right cheek.  An interesting turn of popular culture, Carmichael was a star of music and film.  His song credits include Stardust, Georgia on my Mind, Up a Lazy River, Lazybones, and Heart and Soul.  The long angular face of Carmichael graced countless record players in the late 30s and through the 50s.

In Fleming's Moonraker, the character Gala Brand thinks that Mr. Bond is "certainly good-looking....Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."

Bond is consistently six feet (or taller), athletically below 170 pounds.  He also has a faint scar on the back of one hand, in memorial of his run-in with SMERSH, a counter SAS unit from Russia.

SMERSH is a contraction of two Russian words, SMERt SHpionam, or 'death to spies'.

Wildly, the SMERSH agent that carved the initials into Bond actually stopped Le Chiffre from killing the British spy and let Bond go.

...the Captain Upon the Unending Razor's Shore...

The Captain of the Stella Maris lost track of time weeks before.  The black shore the Maris had left him extended endlessly onward.  The very edge of the world, it was the threshold between earth and ether.  The black stone was pitted.  Its edge razor sharp.  The under soles of his boots were torn through in a matter of days.  He had to rely on the forgiving nature of his shirt, tied around his feet, to traverse the obsidian.

The nature of the sky changed little.  It was a cast of flat cloud, with no undulation in texture or contrast.  The light behind it ranged from a usual bright and only another cast slightly less so.  The Captain could only rest when extreme exhaustion settled him cold.  Sleep only lasted until he awoke by the crisp cutting while moving in his rest.

The lack of day and night made time irrelevant.  The lack of sleep became maddening.  After a time, he forgot himself and became more like an automaton.  Moving forward only by the initial instruction to find this shore's edge.  There was a star's light somewhere beyond the horizon on black and grey.  Even this, he forgot.

After many days a sharp pain from his side, from lack of drink, struck him awake.

His clothes had worn themselves away.  His kit was lost.  He did not remember where.  His body was cut in dozens of places.  His beard met his chest.

Why am I here?  He had forgotten.  He sat upon his haunches and wept.  His eyes had no tears, they burned with salt.  He looked to the heavens.  The heavens spoke to him.  It spoke to him in colors.  It said to him in gold.  It called to him in emerald fires.

Upon the ground he saw a thread that disappeared as he shifted his sight.  He put both hands down, one on either side of the thread.  He slowly pulled his hands together but came up empty.  The Captain breathed and tried again.  He came up empty again.  If there were a stranger about, they would be chilled by the lunacy of his laughter.

This time he focused his eyes, and not his hands, on the endeavor.  Once the line of gold was bright in his view he did not shift, but slowly moved his hands unto it.  It was grasped!

He kept both hands upon it, lest it fall from and lost forever.  He pulled it taunt and saw that it extended for some leagues ahead.  He stood and pulled it tighter.  With it, the rudderless landscape now had direction, he felt the thread was East.

He walked forward with it, wrapping it around his palm as he strode forward.  A golden thread saving his life.  A light wind, blessedly cool and new, flowed over his body and his senses came to him again.  He remembered the destination, he remembered the star.  The gold thread became a cocoon around his open palm, growing with each league.

On the horizon he saw the dappled tops of a massive forest.  It appeared blue.

He wept at the sight and help the gold cocoon to his bosom, as if it were a baby.

John Melhuish Strudwick

"Here's my station But if you say just one word i'll stay with you" ~ Christine and the Queens

http://www.sergioalbiac.com/

Toutes les formes de l'amour , de la souffrance , de folie ; il cherche lui-même , il épuise en lui tous les poisons , et préserve leurs quintessences . Tourment indicible, où il aura besoin de la plus grande foi, une force surhumaine , où il devient tous les hommes le grand malade , le grand criminel, le grand maudit - et le scientifique suprême ! Pour qu'il atteigne l' inconnu! Puisqu'il a cultivé son âme , déjà riche , plus que quiconque!

http://tinyurl.com/og8jgg6

“A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed--and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!” 
― Arthur Rimbaud

9/25/15

Tell me where is fancy bred.  Or in the heart or in the head?  How begot, how nourished?  It is engendered in the eyes, With gazing fed, and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies.  Let us all ring fancy's knell I'll begin it.  - Ding, dong, bell.  ~ Merchant of Venice III, 2, 3

Upcoming Exhibit: "The Red that Colored the World" (Bower's 11/1/15)

of matthewsgalleryblog.com

RED. [v3]

I.
The Matador.
The flag extends in arm outstretched, for sake of bold.
His eye drops along its frame.  The cloth, a sign,
Draped on, in spite of sense, unfurled; it's lack of fold
An offense to the braying monster beyond.

II.
The Bar.
They, shadowed about the pate of varnished wood, says
Little.  Thoughtful quiet, in the reflective glow
are words enough.  For the undulating buzz

of abqjournal.com

Contemplation is found in the gloss of spilled drink.

III.
The Revolutionary.
On her lips the warring colour, the warning one,
Revolt declared by those fierce eyes: ready, wet.
The masses in struggle, civil thoughts undone,
Smoke rose, the fire lit, as she moves to the fore.

IV.
The Couplet.
Alternating tones, its force as the same,

of animpartationofcolor.blogspot.com

Color of wanting, and, by degree, claim.
~ JE, 9 Songs, 9 Stories, 9 Poems

THE EXHIBIT: "The Red that Colored the World" coming to Bower's Museum 11/1/15, displays the power behind the color red and how the American Cochineal creates this dye (see below).  A deeper dive of the exhibit is available at WSJ.

"I always saw, I always said If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red As fine as you could see,..
And he would be a gallant one, With stars behind his eyes,
And hair like metal in the sun, And lips too warm for lies.
I always saw us, gay and good, High honored in the town.
Now I am grown to womanhood....I have the silly gown." ~ Dorothy Parker, The Red Dress

Ode ~ Arthur O'Shaugnessy

"We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; -
World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems"
- O'Shaugnessy, 1873, Music and Moonlight

Fascinating thing his Ode, is the first line has been used over a dozen times in song and film.  Of course, the line in Willy Wonka is arresting, but I enjoy Sodheim's Merrily We Roll Along, with "These are the movers / These are the shapers / These are the people / That fill the papers".  It is a delicious bit of alternating trimeter and tetrameter lines (odd is tri and feminine; even is tetra and masculine).

The poem is merely fun to say.  In feminine rhyme, we match two or more syllables at the end of the respective lines, and, where they are unstressed.  It has its roots, since it is sprung rhythm, in English folk songs.  The first beats are stressed with a variety of unstressed beats.  And why it feels as if you are singing, though you may be only speaking.

"For we are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry—
How, spite of your human scorning, Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die.

"Great hail! we cry to the comers From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers; And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more."

Henri Gervex Le Bal de l'Opera.

...Verge of a Cusp...

Edges illumed as they lay, burning on the cusps of thought
Tinder sparking warmless embers into the sky
Smoke smoke it moves through my outstretched fingers
Smelling of plastic and angry trees
Guiling on like egrets flowering their grey flat
Shall I cry the hue and rage and mark beginnings
That fail falter, richness folly

'was sollen wir aber constitiuents'
I breathe it in, the grey and the naught

The shifts that settle
Jaunty repose and recompense
Etherous Illium
'dachte über alles'

edwardianjackal on DeviantArt

http://www.deviantart.com/art/figment-as-it-verged-upon-the-cusp-559991135

...for you...

...an echo spanned and fulfilled in reply
I hear you
For you
Me....

...Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus...

"When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation.  I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base."
- 9.6 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein

What's fascinating about the success of Frankenstein is that its genesis is as queer a tale as the titular horrors of the doctor's story.  As well known as it is, that Mary Shelley wrote this at the urging of her lover, Lord Byron, during a lightless summer of 1816, when possessed by 'grim terrors'.  She had struggled for several days to come up with a ghost story, until the galvanizing effects of stress struck this visual chord within her.

If you have not read it, and with Halloween mere weeks away, I'd entreat you to try.  It is not only Gothic, and, both, Romantic - it is the height of fantastical fiction, or science fiction, or fantasy.  Mary wrote it as if the factual world of Dr. Frankenstein existed in some other universe and she fully culled all of his resources as if it were a research document.

And, if you have a chance, or the money, I was lucky to be introduced to artist Bernie Wrightson's rendition of the novel back in '83.  Of all the illustrations his is the most haunting and the most familiar.  The creature is the height of perversity and failure of Science - and, yes, Science does fail at times.  Yet, the outcome of the experiment brought forth a creature we fear, but ultimately pity.  He has no place in the world.

Wrightson drew 47 black ink plates, each one will sear into your memory.

The most inexpensive place to purchase it is Barnes and Noble either as a hardcover or as an e-book.  The illustrations are all over the web, of course, but I would hope that you would want to hold the book as was meant, with the light striking from its surface and not glowing into your retina.  (No, I don't hate technology, in fact, I wrangle it more than I come across!)  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bernie-wrightsons-frankenstein-mary-shelley/1102472254?ean=9781595822000#productInfoTabs

The Romantics include William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.  http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics

...a dream of maps, a dream of seas...

"He beheld an image of the Earth in his hands, held aloft.  He no longer saw it as it was commonly perceived: it was no longer the amalgam of its constituents.  The blindness erupted, he opened ancient eyes upon a faceted jewel.  He shifted the sphere in the sun's singular beam.  At once there shone the red core, the next the warming thrum of topaz, the next the clearest blue.  The world shifted, but he controlled its pitch, he controlled its effect." ~ The Lipherious Gazette, 08SEP15

As a child, what factors would draw you into a book?  It's cover most likely.  Next would be the author.  Perhaps a provocative title.  It's shape, paper weight, heft, smell, print, pictures, inlay, fore edge, fly leaf, end sheets, pastedown...things known and not yet known.  All of them combined were constituents to an experience.  You will hear this from me often: a book is technology.  From the standpoint of knowledge the democratization of the printed book has enjoyed a much greater lifespan of revolution, progress, education than the internet.  The internet would not exist if not for the book.  The erudition of the human citizen would be far less certainly.

What drew me well after a story was read, as a child, was the fictional map in the end sheets.  The maps of well known stories can instantly recall the hero's journey.  It can, in an instance, provide the eye all of the salient points of a book.  It allowed a child to dream.  To run a finger over rivers, across roads, feeling the courseness of the paper and the 'realness' of a story.

End sheet maps run the gamut of monotone or color.  If authenticity of age is required, the monotone sepia of the past lends credence.  Color is immediate and modern.  Each tell a story in different ways.  Here are a few of the ones that have led me on an endless journey to seek more...

The Princess Bride

Thinking more over it on the long weekend, it reminded me of Daniel J. Boorstin's The Discoverers.  Boorstin's strength in narrative is to take the recognizable and lucidly move outward then back inward, reaching out for the largesse then pulling it back to reflective ideas.  Discoverers looks at time (as clock), the earth (through its maps), nature (cataloging), society (community of knowledge).  Considering the (lack of) conventions of our age, Boorstin does not fit any singular continuity, but, I feel, allows for judgement and exploration of ideas.

"The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." - 86

Narnia

"For [Gutenberg] was a prophet of newer worlds where machines would do the work of scribes, where the printing press would displace the scriptorium, and knowledge would be diffused to countless unseen communities." - 510

IT is within these maps that democratized imagination.  As Stanislav Grof said, "Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious."

The Discoverers is available everywhere.

The Hobbit

Treasure Island

"Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased." - John Steinbeck

...here is proven that indifferent cruelty...

Here is proven that indifference
The uncaring, the cruelty, the muted heart
Written in your fragility,
That gentle hair lapped by soulless waters
Greeted by repulsion
The outrage would last but a day
Perhaps two if we can turn our eyes toward this
This...then where?
Where shall our eyes turn to tomorrow?
And this casket, it is woeful small

But it is a home

The patter above is not of rain
A father who sought only a peaceful shore
A promise he said a thousand times
A promise like a prayer
Into your ears

Saint Pancras

And you, just happy to hear that serious tenor
As it tickled in your head
And you beamed
Like a light
I must protect you a thousand times

The shore was reached.

You were owed a modicum of consolation
But not there, not here
You came from an asylum writ large: unstable sands
Broken walls
Sanity spilled out in red finality
These are children pursued and swallowed
By monsters
How shall we make account but by a census
Of the chattering teeth of Baal
As he swallows endlessly
And he is fed?

{Pancras knew, a child himself,
The indifferent works of Diocletian
Then Saint, martyred well, where shall we set our hand
For vengeful peace and fated justice?}

Give for the Syrian Refugees
http://www.ifrc.org/syria-crisis
http://www.churchinneed.org/site/TR/Events/UnitedInFaith?fr_id=1100&pg=entry
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/07/has-the-world-looked-the-other-way-while-christians-are-killed/

...1936, Fresno...Pop Laval Photography...

{Upon a recent visit to Fresno, one will find that history abounds in the north of the State.  A small gallery, Pop Laval, seeks to maintain and preserve that history by restoration of early photographs.  They have an online store as well as a way to donate to their mission.}

Claude "Pop" Laval (1882-1966) transplanted from his home in Pennsylvania to rural Fresno in the very early 1900s.  It was here that he pursued photography and was known as the man to call for any photographic event.  All told, he shot on some 100,000 negatives.  He worked closely alongside contemporary Ansel Adams, who had taught Laval to keep logs of all his photos, producing a rich history of the Central Valley.

This view of Fulton Street at Tulare in downtown Fresno is a snapshot in time.  The buildings have not all survived since 1936, so it is crucial to see what did exist and understand what came before.  Looking closely you will see the ubiquitous drug store (Owl Drug Co) a postal telegraph service in the back, The street is teeming with people in their summer clothes.  The casual, non suit of California, the white dress shirt, pulled up at the arm

The cars appear to be a mixture of both 1934 and 1935 Fords.  A truck hawking 'accurate' painting patiently awaits the street to clear.

Another beautiful story in the Laval collection is Hart's Restaurant, which was razed in 2004.  The giant neon clock and signs were a 'beacon' during the hard times of the pre-war Depression.  {A beautiful story is here on the Fresno Bee Hive.}

It was opened on April 8th, 1936 and was a 24-hour cafeteria, serving what you would expect of a diner of that era.  It remained a center point for many Fresno families through 1968.  I could only imagine the late stories told over cups of coffee and fresh pies.  Pies made from the cornucopia that Fresno is known for.

A Shropshire Lad  1: From Clee to heaven the beacon burns
BY A. E. HOUSMAN

Picasso - 'Girl Asleep at Table', 1936

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
      The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
      And beacons burn again.

Look left, look right, the hills are bright,
      The dales are light between,
Because 'tis fifty years to-night
      That God has saved the Queen.

Now, when the flame they watch not towers
      About the soil they trod,
Lads, we'll remember friends of ours
      Who shared the work with God.

...you say 'introvert' like its a bad thing...Alessia Cara...

Some nerve you have
To break up my lonely
And tell me you want me
How dare you march into my heart
Oh how rude of you
To ruin my miserable
- Alessia Cara, I'm Yours

I would rather be at home all by myself not in this room
With people who don't even care about my well-being
I don't dance, don't ask, I don't need a boyfriend
So you can go back, please enjoy your party
I'll be here, somewhere in the corner under clouds of marijuana
- Alessia Cara, Here

"The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person's solitude."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

"We can break step.  Magnificent living beings that we are, we humans are free to unravel our patterns."
- Louisa Hall, Speak