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| << August17, 2008 - Dark Windows #24 - Aug. 15, 2008 |
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DARK WINDOWS #25 - Sep. 1, 2008 ===== ===== ===================> INTRO Talk about culture shock ... we just went from the Olympics (athletes honestly doing their best to win their events) to the Democratic and Republican conventions (big talk and lies and petty whining as people grasp for power over the masses). Ow, my brain. Ignore those few athletes who take steroids or cheat on age requirements, that's definitely a small minority. But the politics is just painful to look at. Each candidate boasts that they will solve all our problems, but never a whiff of a detail about exactly how that will be done. Sure, they have economic plans filed on websites, but those aren't real until they get through Congress, and historically, Congress just has to delay any real changes until the next president shows up with new promises. It's just awful. It was interesting to note that presidents come more from governors than senators. Governors do actual governing, senators spend their lives campaigning and debating. It still seems like there's a huge smoke-screen somewhere in the formula. Every candidate has big plans or big ideas, but things never change, at least not in a direction any sane person would want it to. Anyway, I'd rather watch hurricanes hit the coastlines. Again, you get to see real people in action. Real stories about what property means to us. And the real nagging question of just how much damage an economy can take before it comes unglued. This is why I prefer to make up my own worlds. The "real" world just seems so hopeless. = scott PS: I wasn't planning to end on a bummer, but that's how I feel right now, no sugar-coating. If I edited it, it would only remove the honesty; I'd be just one more person hiding their feelings. No thanks. ===================> POEM Satisfaction --- In a strange place called Always Summertime, I walked past a house with a man in a window crying, staring out, Thin from waiting for snow. Some people are never happy. --- = Written 2/88, published in Poetry Break (9/90) and From Desert Plains (4/01) ===================> ODD CLIPS: (clips from old "factual" sources) "The Mysterious Devonshire footprints in 1854. -- The imprints in the snow in Devon, which, during the Crimean winter, made not only the peasants believe that the devil had broken loose, but the various ministers of religion preach about the circumstance as it if were an accomplished fact, still crop up in the papers occasionally, and are generally spoken of as 'quite inexplicable.' Yet the matter was fully explained at the time; and Mr. J. C. Mithcell, in whose garden the footprints were found, states in the _Daily News_ of last week that he saw the marks in the snow made by his own cat, and in this way:-- 'The snow was of an unusual kind; it fell so lightly that in the paths in my garden it was several inches high, but so crisp that a little pressure would reduce it to one inch. Consequently when a cat travelled over it by the skips or jumps which it makes on snow in going quickly, leaving a projection between as if done by a cloven hoof, and the hind legs coming close to the same spot and sinkin up to the second joint so enlarged the foot, or feet, print by repetition to the size of my pony's hoof, and seemed perfect as one mark only; thus I had along one of the paths, which no one had used during the snow, a single line of footprints of the size and distance given and shown by an illustration in the _London News_ at the time. The cat approached this path through a hole in the wall, and myself and friends saw her many times use the same spots in going up the path, so that I am quite sure they were made that way." [1] 1. The Angler's Note-book and Naturalist's Record (Jan 1, 1880), p.13 ===================> STORY ELIXIR (part 1 of 3) ----- After years of rigor, the potion finally turned. Darius was watching when it shifted into perfection, each decanter at the same instant. The potion had grown, died, rebirthed and transcended all forms of lifely flaws. Now it churned gently in its glass containers and watched him. It had no eyes, but he could feel its scrutiny. It gleamed a blue ultra-purity at him with a distinct satisfaction. It convected sagaciously in the light warmth of the nurturing bin and wanted to be freed. It wanted to join with its creator. Darius felt his spirit soar with the envious high of success. Although he had cast his faith on his experiment incessantly, at night he had been prone to doubt; and those few visitors which had seen him during the last few years had been more than eager to call him a fool. His wife -- his beloved Elianne -- had left him last year, convinced that he was insane by his great devotion to what she considered ancient folly. But he had not allowed their derisions and jealousies to stand in his way. He had brought new sense to the long-forgotten art of alchemy: he had successfully altered it to the feel of the industrial world. He had turned his genius at the problem, and had acheived power beyond his wildest expectations. He watched it as a father would watch a son, and it watched him in a reciprocal way, but the bonds between them were closer than any mere kinship. They would be united, and together they would live forever. Darius would never die of age or disease, nor even violence of the average magnitude. He would have an eternity to perfect his art, and he suddenly wished that his love wss by his side to share this moment with him. He still, loved her, of course; and he hoped that she might return upon hearing of his success. But he was not yet done with his work. He would tell the world what immortality was made of, and they would be able to produce it in their great factories. Nobody would ever have to face the trials thst had consumed the last fifteen years of his life. Though Darius avoided society, he did not hate it. Quite the opposite, in fact: shut away in his stately cabin in the backwoods of Oregon, having almost no contact with the daily news of death and crime, he had built up a tremendous love for his fellow man. For the years that he had ignored the world, he now felt he owed it his service. He picked one of the vials of his sacred philter and took it from the room. In the adjacent room was his biochemical laboratory, immense and exhaustive. He needed to run some tests, many tests... every test he could devise. But in the doorway, the glow faded from his creation. .Shocked and insulted, he turned about and rested the elixir nearer to the bin. Its merry glow returned, its internal seeping resumed. This puzzled the alchemist greatly. He needed to analyze his masterwork, to set out every little detail of its structure, to bring the world immortality. Again he tried to bring the potion into his lab, and again it became inert at the threshold. He returned the potion to its room of origin, but this time he sat next to it and wondered. He knew that the elixir should be as eternal as the promise it offered, yet it seemed to die if taken from that very room. This made no sense to him. A third attempt yielded the same result, and Darius resigned to the nurturing room for a review of his work. After much elimination, he decided that his work was indeed perfect, that something in the biolab was upsetting his creation. Knowing this, and knowing that he might need a century to figure out the problem, he readied himself to merge with the life he had created. (to be continued...) ===================> NOW AVAILABLE: I have organized a new page on my website that has all my available ebooks in one place: http://scott.virtes.com/ebooks.php ===================> DARKVISION: (captured dreams) "School of Oppression" We seemed to spend our whole lives in an endless school. Not like Hogwart's, since we only learned dull, useless things, but it was just as grandiose and epic in scale. Heavy stones, long hallways full of echoes, hardly ever glimpsing the sky between the thick, ponderous ceilings. Mitch & I were in the cafeteria when heavyset Rob came over and plopped down next to us. He slapped a half sheet of paper on the table and whispered in his conspiracy voice, "Check out this deal." I looked. The flyer said something about a fancy party or dance, and we could get in for only 10 florins each. Rob was an idiot, of course. He didn't realize that I was helping to cater that very same event, the Dorling Day Pageant. And that there was no cost to get in. Surely, he'd have one of his stooges at some side door, clipping these bogus tickets as losers showed up. I just couldn't take it anymore. Always being treated like a nobody. I knew it wouldn't do any good telling Rob what a jerk he was, so I pulled out a bullhorn from under my seat, and let it rip: "SCAM ALERT! SCAM ALERT! Rob Goldstein is coming around pushing fraudulent tickets to a Pageant. Don't give his one farthing!" Rob grabbed his papers and scurried off, stopping only to point a withering finger at me. "You're just mad because you could never get a girl to take you to a dance!" Across the room, a voice called out, "Hey, we just bought three of those lousy tickets!" Rob shouted, "No refunds!" and left the area. Mitch looked at bewildered. "How did you figure it out? Looked legit to me." I shrugged and stowed the bullhorn under the bench. "Easy. If Rob's got it in his hands, it must be bogus. And he'll never give up." We talked about how we had to get into that club where Rob and his stuck up friends did all their scheming, and later that night we were there. We had crashed their gatherings before. They really had no talent for keeping secrets. They had only gotten more paranoid. This time, their meeting was about sixty feet down a long featureless hallway with no hiding places. The ceiling was an arch almost lost in the shadows above. And several women were patrolling the area with pocket-sized geek radar. We knew we'd never get in without a diversion. One of the watchwomen stopped to glare at me. "What are you doing here, spy?" "Just taking a walk, lackey." "Why the nerve of you! Just stay away from the men." Funny how she equated manliness with being an oppressive rich boy who rips off underclassmen. Hey, I was in the 17th grade and should be treated as an equal! Mitch came out from the nearby wall of bushes with a fistful of dark berries, and dark juicy stains on his shirt. "I found some blueberries," he said. "Those aren't blueberries, they're holly berries. And they're poisonous." "How come you know so much? It spoils all the fun." "Did you eat any of those?" "A bunch." Damn. Mitch did strange things when he was poisoned. Maybe it would give us the diversion we needed. I grabbed him by a handful of shirt collar and dragged him to where the watchwomen were sitting at a sidewalk table snickering and sneering. I pushed the now-giggling Mitch at the girls. "If you wanna play hall monitor," I said. "Then you need to take care of this! He ate bad berries and oughta be dead in about ten minutes." The girls scrambled, and blubbered, and skittered away to the dark cracks of the endless hallway. Anything to avoid responsibility. Mitch burped and disappeared. Which was odd. He'd never had that reaction to dying before. I wondered if I should tell one of the schoolmasters, then wondered why nobody had seen a schoolmaster in several years, and why it was now snowing indoors. He showed up back at our tent at about three in the morning. He told me all about the plans of the Scam Gang. But the school collapsed before we could get up in the morning, spoiling all our plans. --- dream, captured 7/2/08 ===================> MY NEWS: Wow, what a dry spell. No new acceptances. But the SFPoetry.com 2008 Poetry Contest is now closed. As a judge, I got to go through over 400 submissions in 31 days. It was nice to get my final picks delivered. ===================> POEM Street #412 --- A hundred raindrops on a windshield, no more, no less, (I counted them all). Just an afterthought on the way I thought I was feeling when you turned away. --- = Written 4/88, unpublished ===================> STORY BITES: (clips from old fictional sources) You chatter like a temple ape. Does Keuke Mongol die or live? That alone interests me. [1] I remain here to talk to my seven ancestors and sharpen my knife. [2] It had come to his at last, this dread thing, unheralded, totally unexpected, a few minutes after Sanang had departed. And he suddenly knew he was going to die. And, when, presently, he comprehended it, he bent his grizzled head and listened seriously. And, after a little silence, he heard his soul bidding him farewell. [3] 1,2,3: Robert W. Chambers, The Slayer of Souls ===================> POEM Chemical Dust --- Ashes of the future laying restless upon shelves over book bindings swirling before the vacuum brush. Ashes of the future coursing through the fog driving down the road clinging to car-metal safety. Ashes of the future in the front page news in Chernobyl children and forgotten Gulf wars. Ashes of the future in our eyes, our lives, cannot be wiped away they are heavier than tears. May they not wipe us away instead. --- = Written 4/88, 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: 2,320 words cumulative: 52,300 words |
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