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December01, 2007 - Dark Windows #7 - Dec. 1, 2007 >> |
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DARK WINDOWS #6 - Nov 1, 2007 ===== ===== ===================> INTRO We liked it better when Escondido was in the news for being in the title of that Eric Clapton & J.J.Cale CD a few months ago. Being a plume of smoke, staging area, CNN hot spot, and Presidential photo opp is much less fun. I kept hoping our Governator really did have giant robot friends he could call on, or that there were enough National Guard to um ... guard the nation. But for 2 days it was essentially a hurricane that was on fire. Nobody could stand in front of the thing and slow it down, and it was too hazardous for choppers to lift off. The few water drops did nothing, since the water never reached the ground. By the time there was a break in the wind, it was 100,000 acres -- more like a few hundred spot fires than one big thing -- but still growing. Anyway ... We had an evacuated Mom & baby stay with us on Monday, but Tuesday morning the smoke was too much, so we packed up the cats & papers & food stash and got out. By late Tuesday the wind stopped, the smoke columns stood up and we went home ... but there were still fires burning 7 to 20 miles away in every direction. There were enough mapping tools online that I could keep an eye on the fires and winds, and get a good night's sleep. It calmed down after a few days, but you can tell that everyone around here has a story and a burden, and we try to go through a normal day even though people are conspicuously missing and we're avoiding some areas because they're supposed to be in ruin. Right now we have a creepy red Halloween moon. I guess kids will be asking for candy in a few days. Never play trick or treat with mother nature. = scott, 10/25/07 More than a week later we still get a lungful of smoke or ash when we least expect it. And we're expecting another red-flag dry and windy weekend ... (11/1/07) ===================> POEM Maze Curtains --- Curtains of metal shield our life from the world, worried always that the curtains may join to form a terrible maze. Amazed when walking if I come to a cul-de-sac, outraged by the restraint of my formerly infinite choices. Voices call and fall, all my own as I stand glaring at the rivets as rivers of molten steel rush to form new walls. Wells of emotion lost in the steam of their cooling, calling to all reason to pull me (us) free of here. Fears that the road behind might close with progress and we might stumble and die in this lifeless chamber, erased. Chasing dreams but they can't escape through the tiny seams or screwholes or the gap between our eyes either. Ether motions about us singing tales of previous souls lost, the last natural thought is the simple hope that there is no metal in the next world. --- Written 11/86. This became the short story "Maze Curtains" after expanding each stanza into a paragraph. But it was never published in the original poem form. ===================> ODD CLIPS: (clips from old "factual" sources) "Every man was supposed by the ancients at his birth to have two Genii, as messengers between the gods and him. They were supposed to be private monitors, who by their insinuations disposed us either to good or evil actions; they were also supposed to be not only reporters of our crimes in this life, but registers of them against our trial in the next, whence they had the name of Manes given them." [1] "It is a very curious fact, by the way, that hardly any Indians can distinguish blue from green. I have seen the sky, which they represent on their graves by a round arch, as frequently of one colour as the other. In the Sioux language, 'toya' signifies both green and blue, and a much-travelled Jesuit father told me that among many Indian tribes the same confusion prevails." [2] "Writing with blue ink, and putting the pen in the mouth occasionally is also dangerous -- Blue ink contains Prussic acid in solution, and a drop of this acid applied to the tongue of a cat will kill her. If many men had not been tougher than cats, (whether they have as many lives or not,) they would have been killed with sucking blue ink from their pens." [3] 1. "Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain", by W. Carew Hazlitt (London: Reeves & Turner, 1905), p.9. 2. "Kitchi-gami wanderings around Lake Superior", by J.G.Kohl (London: Chapman & hall, 1860) 3. The agriculturist and Canadian journal [Vol. 1, no. 5 (Mar. 15, 1848)], p.59 ===================> STORY Baumann's Hands --- Under rows of dripping stones and the clap and patter of rain, you seek Baumann's crypt and the wisdom buried with him. Torch raised, you try to keep back the heavy shadows. Wait! A scrambling sound. Like nothing you’ve ever heard before. "It can't be true," you whisper. "The guardian is real?" His two dead hands, sewn together with catgut and a terrible curse … they slither just out of sight. Then they leap! from the darkest hole in the night. The torch, doused in blood, sputters on the floor. === A fun one for Halloween ... Written 1/9/03 Published in FlashShot #115 (2003) Posted on Unfuture Chronicles (11/2005) ===================> DARKVISION: (captured dreams) flea market --- Down at the flea market in the snow, all the vendors were selling body parts. I was pleasantly surprised. I'd always wanted a Frankenstein monster of my own. And they were cheap, too! The heads were only a buck and a quarter. I was a bit curious as to where all the merchandise was coming from, but the vendors were all grey-skinned grumps with intense dirt under their fingernails, so I didn't ask. The things were only slightly rotted; some had been shellacked to keep the freshness in. I was amazed by the miscellaneous table, where you could get small unexplainable pieces ... two for a quarter. There were bits of brains, limbs, internal stuff, and things that simply defied location. This vendor was proud, communicative, bragging about the Army chopper that crashed in his backyard the week before. I had plenty of cash, so I stocked up and tried to innovate. I knew that building just a man wasn't good enough for me. I wanted a freaky Hindu god. So I bought mostly blue-skinned parts and lugged them home. I sewed and wired and charted and stitched and toiled, while the body parts piled into form. At the end I thought I'd be cute and buy him a lotus flower. That must have been my mistake, because at the final stimulus my pet god woke up and started to insult me. It complained that it had been perfectly happy in Limbo, that its arm was asleep ... all kinds of minor details. So I bitched in return that I'd spent so damned much pocket money building him. He tossed me a couple of useless Indian coins and evaporated in a puddle of sparks. I went back to the flea market, but it wasn't there. --- end --- Written 4/4/94, one of those rare dreams that had enough plot to work as a standalone story. Recorded (audio) on "Protothings" tape (1988). Published in Museweek (10/95) Published in Expressions Newsletter (10/2001) Posted on Unfuture Chronicles (11/2005) (just trying to be thorough! sometimes the history of a story is a story itself.) ===================> MY NEWS: I had some downtime & interruptions, so no new writing news. But I have done a few book cover design projects, including "Potter's Field 2", "Hungur 3", "Sometimes While Dreaming" (chapbook my Marcie Lynn Tentchoff), and I'm now the semi-official "cover designer" for SamsDot Publishing. As it turns out, the best way to make something happen is to try and focus on something else ... My article "An Eye on Horror" was included in The Writer's Chatroom Spotlight newsletter (10/07). My chapbook "Jane Doe Discovered" is coming soon from SamsDotPublishing.com ===================> POEM Hints of Beyond --- Sometimes when talking, people pause to listen to things unknown unseen as though a second intuition had taken control; Sometimes while living, a sharp pain will jab you and sink back into obscurity like the playful pinprick of a specter; Sitting up at night, something crashes against the window just a sound, no damage, but where was it from? Then a cramp comes and goes, a hint as you stop to listen that very little of what you see you control. --- Written 11/86, unpublished. ===================> STORY BITES: (clips from old fictional sources) "So he went, with the letter in his pocket, and I felt something like the king in the tale, who sent a messenger with a letter, and wrote in the letter, 'Slay the bearer of this as soon as he arrives!'" [1] "The mother raved and tore her hair; the daughter wore her Sunday clothes and danced about like a fool. It was impossible to get anything out of them." [2] "Something was climbing [the ladder] with difficulty. The old stairs creaked. Bump, thump, the thing was dragged up the steps with many pauses, and at last it seemed to have reached the deck. A long pause now followed. The silence grew dense around. I dreaded the stillness -- the silence that made itself be heard almost more than the sounds. What new horror would that awful quiet bring forth?" [3] 1. "Poor Pretty Bobby" (story) by Rhoda Broughton 2. "The White and the Black" by Erckmann-Chatrain 3. "Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk" by Frank Cowper ===================> POEM The Maze Revisited --- Wanting to find myself cast back into the maze I built with cards great things around me but waking found them tumbled; Next I tried cutout paper ring stacks for structure I left holes between but still the wind struck up and left me naked; So I hauled log after log and cut and chopped and piled and notched inventing the house, it was good, it was warm but it did not grow and soon I needed a larger one; So I found my way into the earth which had formed me indirectly and so long ago, here in the cave darkness, Animal! sounds somewhere shift spaces and the distant dripping gives me something to count on. --- Yes, a sequel to the other poem. Written 11/86, Published in Cat Machine #9 (1996), Maelina's poetry page (6/98) ===================> CREDITS About the author: Scott Virtes has had over 400 stories & poems published since 1986. Look for them in Analog, Space & Time, Ideomancer, Dreams & Nightmares, Cafe Irreal, Planet, and more ... My Home page: http://tales.scvs.com?inw=dkw Notice: Odd Clips and Story Bites all come from original sources in the public domain, or are brief clips in the spirit of fair use (a.k.a. free advertising for the source). All other sections of this newsletter are copyright (c)2007 Scott Virtes. All rights reserved. Please don't grab chunks of my work and post them all over the place. If you ask permission, you'll find that I'm pretty easygoing. ;-) ===== this issue: 1,897 words cumulative: 12,610 words |
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