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DARK WINDOWS #21 - July 1, 2008 ===== ===== ===================> INTRO Days are like blurs. I may be working on a website in my office for a few hours, then pricing stamps on the kitchen table for a few hours, or scanning eBay lots (or pricing in one room while a friend helps scan things) ... and I try to get outside and go on a few walks each day to clear my head and stop be turning into a total spud. We've had some fun trying to spend less and eat less each day. Having a garden helps (see the intro to Dark Windows #20 for more), we can make an all-garden salad that's good for one free meal for two each week. Recycling for a few small local businesses helps -- I sure don't need paper or envelopes anytime soon. Being too busy to go anywhere cuts down on gas. Trying to manage such fragmented time is a pain. I keep saying that after 10pm is "writing time", but I keep doing other things instead. I want to spend less time on the web, but I've found some good forums to post messages, and it gives me ideas about what I'm interested in writing about. The real trick right now is, by the time midnight rolls around, my eyes are screaming tired. Still, this issue is only a half hour late, but who's counting? = scott ===================> POEM Upon Reflection ---- Enough mirrors in one place Cannot help but reflect unreality, Cannot help but create material; Hallways and false rooms, Touching surfaces align, Traces as light paths cross, They confuse and conjure; Photons in plight speak their mind, Their strange words in our eyes, Our senses undermined; Reach out a longing hand, With fear rising, patience fading, Try to find the way, outguess The glass and the air, Click! fingers on mirror-cold, again! A faint smudge remains A reminder of another choice without exit, made in haste; Even time needs a guide For your trapped and helpless labyrinth eyes. --- = Written 8/87, published in Expressions newsletter (3/01) ===================> ODD CLIPS: (clips from old "factual" sources) Bebe, the dwarf of Stanislaus of Poland, who was thirty-three French inches high, was weak, of delicate health, became deformed as he grew up, and died at the age of twenty-three; his parents were of normal stature. [1] The _Homo diluvii testis_, the skeleton of which was described by Scheuchzer, was considered by Cuvier to have belonged to a species of Salamander. [2] A case is recorded of a girl who cut four teeth at the end of the first fortnight; walked about, and had hair reaching to the middle of her back after the seventh month; exhibited signs of puberty at the ninth month, but perished in a state of exhaustion in her twelfth year. [3] 1. J. G. Millingen, Curiosities of Medical Experience (2nd ed.) (Bentley, London, 1839), p.10 2. same, p.14 3. same, p.16 ===================> STORY Sketches Of Memory by Scott Virtes Need, desire, things without names. Physical-emotional attachment. Just a few more streets and I will be with you. I haven't forgotten you, but my time has not been my own to manage. I remember once while climbing that cliff across the river with you, my foot had slipped. I needed then to see why it had come loose from its hold, I needed to bend back sorely to assess the perilous fall so barely averted by my deathgrip on a moist root. I need you now. It feels the same. And there's your house. How we used to hate to come back here. Not that our rovings were important in content, but they were statements of much-needed freedom. What could have come between us then? Only this house and that sharp-gravel driveway and the tyrrany of parents not at all sympathetic to the effects of our cause. I park the car, it sputters to a halt. It once broke down on a sputter long ago, far from here but en route. You were expecting me and I was somewhere counties away stranded and alone, my noble hopes dashed to near-tearful pieces by the spasm of a piston. But this time it survived, and here I was, expectations high. I wander up the path to your closed door, the wind flapping my pantlegs like a jazz incarnation of impending autumn. I had no other place to turn. I could not handle my circumstances any longer, I had to drop my world and run while I still retained some vestige of sanity. To you I ran. Nothing else made sense. I know I've been out of touch, but I was ever so faithful to Your memory. I had to return. Dreams. You open the door, soft-haired and so consoling in shape, but not alone. I was surprised that he could keep his hands on your waist the way I glared at him, wishing he would burst into flames. He looked like such a fool, a pathetic replacement for me. It made me recall days long past when I was a child, and my parents were stlll living together. When they would yell, I would run outside and kick trees until my leg was numb and shaking. I was angry, and I felt partly to blame, though I could not explain how. Maybe my fury wasn't needed then, but at this moment it feels all-important. I turned away. Now the cold breeze went through me, whistling around the gap in my chest where warm feelings had been living not long before. Its touch spoke of foolishness and the icy pallor of lurking winters yet to come. # Who am I? Why can't I sleep? Maybe the innocence of the first answers the second. Maybe the imminence of this second answers the moment. Awareness. Blackness. Somewhere there must be light, for light has struck me before and I desire it now. There is none here with me and I feel alone. Tactile sensation. Gone, returning ... Intermittent. A face in the dark smiling of the night. Something I did caused her happiness. Her face has a name, but I do not know It. A snarl in the night grimace of the dark. She is not pleased now. I am struck. She is softer than me, so I do not strike back, and only my pride is injured. My mind jumped briefly, realigned, compromised. Nothing receding. Something protrudes from me. I cannot move to observe. I realize that I am impaired. I panic. Nobody comes to strap me down, for I make no noise, commit no motion. Nothing returning. My form is touched in places by the coldness of alien materials. The infection of their presence has kept me alive. How badly crippled am I? Who am I? I feel I have a reason for insomnia. Many things have passed through me. I saw all as they flashed by, but they're gone from me now. I am isolated. Part of me should think, part observe, and part react. Why then can I only think? There was an accident, but not like the many I had seen. There was an impending sense of wrong, then a flash as the tension snapped and darkness settled in. Now I am damaged, paralyzed. There are bumps, motion, a strange feeling. Have I ever moved before and would I ever sgain? Somewhere amid this desperation, I know I am changing. The dread extends me. Time slows. Having lost my sight, my hearing benefits. Alien words float to me. "Your computer is fixed, lady. It was just a fuse or two." I know that soon I'll be laughing. # A roommate of mine once rigged a generator up to the house, shunting an accidental 440 volts through my word processor. Smoke came out the back of the monitor. I was writing a novel at the time. I watched the vapors curl away in a fit of despair. Did he do it deliberately? When I cooled off I took out my old typewriter and continued my work. The typewriter broke two chapters later... But I wondered how that computer felt. I must now know. I am a machine, my fuses overloaded, insensate. I am that car that sputtered and complained about its thoughtless abuse, but at least that car once had the sense not to go where it is I have gone. # Maybe tomorrow they will let me out of here. I doubt it, for they want me to improve. But with the same four walls about me every day, how can I not relive the same four stories? One wall bears the slideshow of paranoid database darkness; another boasts the smoke curling from the burned computer monitor; the third has me always sitting outside your window, waiting; and the fourth plays again and again that fateful day when I discovered at your door that I was forever lost. Please come visit me. I need a good excuse to hide in the filth under my bed. # I woke up, shocked. I realized that I had been dreaming horrible things. I went straight to see you, but you were asleep. I should have called, for you were not alone. But there had been no phones to use. You're married now, I see. I could vaguely remember now: all those years sitting around watching those stories on the walls. What can I do now but watch you sleep and wait for for you to notice me? The breeze feels so familiar, so consolingly mechanical. I hear wheels coming. I bet you'll never find out about this night, just like you obviously forgot that I once -- and forever -- loved you. -- end -- Written 08/24/86, touchup 08/28/86, edited 6/28/08 for inclusion here ===================> NOW AVAILABLE: I am working on compiling Dark Windows #1-10 into a PDF file with some illustrations. More news soon. ===================> DARKVISION: (captured dreams) "All spots lead to tickets" --- I went back to my hometown, but there was nowhere to park. All the good spots said "Resident Parking only", and all the bad spots were full of holes and scrap iron. I figured, since I spent 15 years of my life growing up in this town, they owed me one, so I parked in a good spot and ran into Luigi's for a slice of pizza. I came out and saw the lady cop sticking the parking ticket under my wiper blade. I grabbed it, said something about how many years I lived in this town. She looked at me from a few cars away. I asked if she knew so-and-so, or whats-his-name, she said she was from out of town, and walked away. I needed some ginger ale to help simmer down, but the parking lot at the supermarket looked like an eye chart, with line after line of text getting gradually smaller. It started with, "NO PARKING on the WEST side AFTER 6 PM, except on ODD TUESDAYS ..." and I just had no time for it. I ran into the store to get the much needed tonic, came out, and there was the same beat cop giving me another ticket. I could only stand there and babble. "That sign there? You mean that's not a joke? I mean, what kind of insane town council came up with that little nut job?" She handed me another ticket that just said, "Jerk" on it, with a little "$50 fine" checkbox checked off. And she walked away again. Later I got a ticket for parking in my friend's driveway, because he hadn't gone on the internet and registered my car on the city's guest list. I was glad to finally leave that town and never look back. The past just wasn't worth the expense. --- = captured 6/1/08 * Note: this is based on a real event. I did go back to Port Jefferson, New York around 1996, and all the good spots along Main Street did say "Resident Parking Only." I did spent 10+ years living in the area, but didn't think it was worth trying to cash in on that little detail. To have it come up in a dream in 2008 (on the other side of the country) was a little odd. ===================> MY NEWS: I sold "The First and Final Day" (story) to an anthology of myths & fairy tales called "Mother Goose is Dead" As editor, the anthology "Book of Tentacles" is about 25% filled. 15,000 words of stories have been selected, plus a few poems. ===================> STORY BITES: (clips from old fictional sources) The slayer threw down his parang, dropped a knee upon the red-spouting neck, and picked out of the water the still fatuously grinning head. Then, as he sprang up astounded, came running from the hut the Raja's men, spreading out to cut him off. [1] In ten thousand sailor-men there may be one who doesn't swear. Morgan was that one, but he was sorely tempted. [2] Shriek on shriek made music to her ear as she ran up and saw rolling on the ground a dreadful hairless object, with its blackened hands pressed to its blasted features. But the Dutchman, with his clothes on fire, lay still enough! [3] 1. story "A Lamb to the Slaughter" 2. story "Cured: a Legend of Lombok" 3. story "The Woman Scorned: A Tragedy Of Three" ===================> POEM Watermind --- Water grasp sliding draws me into myself, Standing on a seaweed rock like an island of mind, I see the crabs my fish larger and smaller, Whales and barnacles jungle of size-shapes, All these things are my thoughts, As the merciless waves tumble me into sand. --- = Written 9/87, unpublished ===================> 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)2008 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: 2,280 words cumulative: 43,690 words |
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