The Migration Patterns of Imaginary Birds

The prophet

I wrote this in 2004 or 2005. It was about a man that I met about a year earlier.

 He sat in a coffee shop writing a letter to a friend of his. A girl who he would have liked to have dated but never did. There was an art exhibit in the coffee shop, a small one, but people occasionally looked over him to at the wall behind him. A man sat down at the table next to him. He was small and scraggly. he looked homeless.

After waiting nervously for a while, the man leaned over and said "It's all vanity."

"What?" he replied, looking up from his letter

"Its all vanity."

"It's just a letter."

"oh" said the scraggly man, obviously having thought that the letter was some sort of work of art in progress. "All this though, is vanity."

"Yea, seems that way."

They started talking for a while. The scraggly man talked like a prophet, and seemed to know the bible rather well. The other was interested in him, but not enough to put off his return home. 

As he said his goodbyes the man told him he lived out in the countryside, and invited the letter writer to go fishing with him sometime. The man said "sure" though didn't get any contact information.

The last thing the scraggly man told him was "I am a poor man, but I have walked in mansions."

They smiled, said goodbye and parted ways.

He only met this scraggly man once again, many decades later. It was the same day he found out that his wife had died.

Bizarre Bible quote of the day

Another attempt to revive my interest in this blog, which has fallen by the wayside due to real work. The series won't be daily though, but I come across these things while working on my novel, and my girlfriend says its creepy to post it on Facebook.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Engaged

 I designed it, and now she's wearing it.

Good days.

 

The Wolves

Written specifically for, and just rejected by, the Fairytale Review. They wrote a quite supportive rejection letter. Noting that they received 10 times their usual submissions and I was one of the last to be thrown out. Nevertheless, have no where else to publish it.

After the jump

The Resurrection

I tend to write somewhat intuitively, which means sometimes I get things stuck in my head that I tend to turn into one or two stories (never fully written, because I dislike doing things I won't be paid for). My last post on this newly revived blog deals with what I've been thinking about for the past few months: The Resurrection.

The subject has a few charming spots, but the first thing I always think of is the synopsis of a short story my friend wrote in High School, about "the first man to ever live through death."  I never actually read the story (perhaps fortunately), but the synopsis always fascinated me, as the existence of things in two mutually contradicting states I always found to be a stunningly beautiful concept (such as Borges' "fabulous Irish bird which exists in two places at once.")

The idea also deals with some rather bizarre concepts of time, which are complicated enough that I should probably get into them later (lived time, epic time, eternal time - which is anti-time - historical time, chronological time, etc. etc.). Generally though, with no end to life, actions obtain a completely different meaning, which stories can exploit.

The story outline I posted uses a number of typical tropes from "reincarnation" literature, which is something I ran across when I was studying Buddhism through rather untrustworthy evangelical Buddhism books. The stories read almost exactly like the "white light" near death stories from evangelical Christian literature, which I made me realize the book I was reading was untrustworthy. But the theme stuck with me, as I began to grow fonder of a certain nervous type of memory, and voila.

I think the below story would be worthwhile for a novel treatment, and I'm hoping to come back to it in the nearish future.

Poor Lazarus

She was born in 1917. Forty-Nine days after the death of some unknown young man on the fields of Verdun. It was a textbook case of reincarnation, but she was born in some sleepy mid-western town, to parents barely conscious of what was going on in France. To people with little thought of Buddhism or mysticism.

 She couldn't understand her dreams at first. She got the same feeling of horror or joy that other children her age got from dreams, but none of the people she dreamt of spoke to her in English until she turned nine years old, or thereabouts. When she was 11 she dreamt that she was talking to a boy in her class, she understood everything, and woke up feeling she had lost something irretrievable.

In high school she learned French. Unusually quickly. She was intelligent and managed to be sent to get in to a Northeastern school. She hated he home town, and her parents. Men told her she hated beautifully. Though the term always made her upset.

She lived in France for a few years shortly after graduation. She was surprised to find that she could walk the streets of Montpelier without asking for directions. She would occasionally recognize shop keepers and call them by their first names. She left angrily though in 1939. Her trip had been cut short.

She was in love with an American boy. She had met him in France, and he escaped back to the US with her. That didn't save him for long though. He was drafted by early 1942. She was angry that he left her. Their love wasn't a happy kind of love. She treated him with a sort of fixation, like he was proof of a logical argument. His existence proved to her a subject that made her tremble. Though it was not something she could ever articulate.

He survived the war, but still died before her. Around 1987. She died three years later.

When she was older, she would tell her grandchildren stories about a young man in Montpelier around the turn of the century. She would describe the city in great detail, and tell stories about every friend, marriage, describing conversations as though they had just happened. The children listened attentively, but afterward always found the stories rather pointless.

Love Letter 21: Once there was a king who lived in an odd corner of the world that no one really cared about...

Once there was a king who lived in an odd corner of the world that no one really cared about. He tried to go to international finance meetings, but no one would listen to him, then he'd try to go to king parties, and the doorman wouldn't believe he was a king at all. So he thought about ways to increase his status, and he thought people would surely pay attention to him if he married the most beautiful princess in the world.

So he studied up a bit, discovred the most beautiful princess in the world, and then set about trying to charm the pants off her. He succeeded (he was quite dashing you see, and very nice and charming), and took her back to his Kingdom. He hadn't told her though that his Kingdom was little more than some houses in the middle of a forest. She still loved him, but she knew she couldn't live a glamourous life here. The King hoped this would be fixed by his new queen, that would bring respect to his Empire, but when it didn't he fashioned another plan. He would build his queen a might palace.

There were only trees in the Kingdom though, not enough fancy stones to build a palace, but the King was clever and fashioned the entire palace using trees as the foundation. Corridors, stairways, balconies, were all fashioned using the trees, and the top of the palace overlooked the entire forest. 

The queen was ecstatic, and would spend days just wandering the hallways. And soon people from other countries came to see this wonder of architecture. Some stayed and turned the small village into a bustling metropolis, kings came and visited the Kingdom everyday. The Queen and King were so overjoyed by their castle that they didn't care about the other Kings anymore, they just wanted to run through the hallways together. When Kings insisted on an audience, they'd come angrily, being very rude to the other kings. Eventually they banned all foreign dignitaries, and spent the rest of their days together in their grand kingdom. Until the forest swallowed them once again.

Love Letter 20: One day in a world full of innocuous things, there lived two shadows

One day in a world full of innocuous things there lived two shadows. These two shadows were the best of lovers, but, being shadows, they were only able to communicate through meaningless things.

They would meet every morning and communicate differently: for a month the girl shadow couldn't talk, and for a while the boy shadow was just communicated in hand signals. Despite these problems they developed quite a nice relationship, where each seemed to understand the signals of the other.

The problem began one day when the girl took to the habit of speaking to him in pleasantries. "good morning Mr. smith, it sure is a nice day today," he whistled back at her, as it was his only means of communication for the day. THey went through the day doing their household chores, with her occasionally saying things like "you're looking awfully nice today Mr. Smith," or "the Greenberg kids are growing up fine." While he whistled back at her like a friendly bird.

He didn't notice anything wrong with this, until she passed him in the living room and whispered into his ear. "I'm so glad you could come to my party." This triggered a memory in him, these words languorously whispered into his ear brought up images of a time long past, but he wasn't sure when, after all, he wasn't sure he had a past. This was the first he remembered it, as shadows live a day today, or streetlight to streetlight existence, think of the past as a fairy tale, if that.

So he was suspicious of these memories, but since this was his first experience of things of the type, it was enough to arouse his curiosity. From that point forward he began paying much more attention to what she said or did and would take notes on what he felt was important, and he could then study by candlelight (a candle he lit in the daytime to give him more time to work).

She asked him about this new found interest in her slightest actions, but on that day he could only answer by breathing on her face, and the next day when he tried again he was only able to run his figers through her hair. She seemed to vaguely understand and took his new hobby in stride. As he studied over the weeks and months and years (a shadow's life is very slow) he began to notice patterns and sometimes these patterns would trigger memories.

The memories didn't seem to be his though, they were those of a man, not a shadow but a real man, and a girl he met somewhere. They communicated normally, and one day they decided they were in love. He could only remember bits and pieces at a time, and as he did he'd write them down, then he would try to write stories to connect the memories together. Sometimes he write wrong, which he'd discover when a contradicting memory came up, but increasingly he wrote right.

He had noticed that her communication only slowly changes from day to day, she never changed from yelling to pleasurable talking in one day, but would slowly lover her voice over the course of two weeks, then piecing together these two weeks he'd have a vague story of an argument that would refer back to a memory immediately, but the sequences were disconnected, so they at one time had a lovers spat, and then after that sequence met for the first time.

He knew how these two met, he had seen them make love, have arguements, have children, die of old age, he slowly recreated pieces of this couple's life together, but he couldn't find out their relationship to him and his lover.

He eventually worked out a theory. Over the course of several nights he drew a portrait of the tman in the memories, then when complete he showed it to his woman. She was emotional when she saw it, and he immediately understood. She kept on repeating "you are my man," which was the only thing she could say that day, but she also grabbed him and kissed him in that all enveloping way that shadows kiss. She had recognized him, or at least who he really ways, his doppleganger, his person. Her lover for all the years of her life.

They as shadows after their owners death had to live the moments of their lives in minute details. This they had to do forever. He wanted to communicate to her all the things he found, he wanted to tell her the story of their love, but ever day she cried and screamed louder at him, and threatened to leave him, even though she made it quite clear that as a shadow she didn't mean that, they couldn't find the space to sign about their new discovery.

It wasn't long until she was gone. She was actually still there, but they couldn't see each other because at that time the people shadows weren't in each others presence. He did the work and remembered the time she left him for a long time, a lonely period in his life, that now he'd have to repeat in every day to day minute detail. But he had seen them die together and he knew she was coming back to him. It would be a long, long time, but when she got back he'd explain it to her somehow, with sign language, whispers, or tears of joy.

Bones: Watching Emily Deschanel have conversations is a great idea for a TV show

Gah, long title... but hopefully there's enough buzzwords to draw all the people who have crushes.

On the suggestion of my girlfriend I just went through all four seasons of the TV show Bones, which was an absolutely superb idea. The TV show is basically about actress Emily Deschanel and Actor David Boreanaz pretending to be a FBI agent and a charmingly anti-social forensic anthropologist, who solve crimes with the help of their actor friends pretending to be the anthropologists assistance.

Though most reviews of the TV show might erroneously think that its a show about Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, and FBI agent Seeley Booth, a (not really) close watch of the TV show makes it exceptionally clear that this is a TV show about actors. Because there are an exceptionally large number of situations where the "characters" are acting, and are all exceptionally talented at doing such. The point is really knocked home by the second to last episode in the third season, where Emily Deschanel does a great, and rather hot, rendition of 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun'

So basically the show is just a place to show off the talent of a pile of actors, and luckily Emily Deschanel is more than crush worthy. She has a wry smile that makes her look like she's up to no good (in a sexy way), she can do a great rendition of Cindi Lauper, and she's a vegan (ok, that's more a personal thing, as half the girls I ever dated were vegans). 

The real kicker is when she does her "Clara Bow" impersonation. Which, though it has little to do with the real Clara Bow (its more a 1940s New Jerseyite impression), it shows three things which basically would show up in any dream woman:

1. She likes Clara Bow

2. She can make big eyes like Clara Bow

3. You can watch Clara Bow movies with her

Add to that the fact that she seems relatively intelligent and can quite definitely act, sitting around watching her have a conversation seems like a perfectly wonderful use of your time.

David Boreanaz impresses as well, though without the crush factor (unless, you know, you like guys). I never watched Buffy, or the spin-off, but the TV show seems to try really hard to accentuate the fact that he's an adult (he's called 35 in the show, whereas the actor is actually 40, but they continually refer to the character having a kid, and other "adult" stuff). He also does a fair amount of in character acting, and its always fun watching it whenever he goes into another character. 

The TV show has three other things going for it, the first being a rather mature understanding of female sexuality - though I'm going to let people watch it rather than get into that prickly bag of worms here (is that a mixed metaphor?). The second is a fair amount of commitment when delving into moral issues, which I think is increasingly common for cop shows, but is a good trend which I'd like to see continue, as "moral relativity" is filled with all sorts of sloppy thinking. Last is a willingness to go into full blown pulp, and then make fun of itself for it. Though the pulp trend of the show was present as early as the first season, when they were discovering buried treasure, it really got full blown in the third season, when one of the main characters joined a cannibalistic secret society. This partners up with how the actors occasionally leave character, to make the show one of the more "playful" shows out there. More about finding little bits and pieces that charm you, like lines in a notebook, than grand plot. 

Which I very much like.

Love Letter 16: When Christianity took over Europe....

When Christianity first took over Europe, all the Greek gods sailed over the great ocean to America. They weren't heard of for a long time, but there was one interaction people know about. 

Though Americans have been strongly Chrisitian people since the first European migrants, the old Gods hadn't yet retreated by the 19th century, when one Kasey Jones found out he was going to die in a train wreck. Three ladies told him this, three ladies who lived in a cave sharing one eye between them. Kasey knew they were telling the truth, or at least he was willing to believe it after seeing their countenance, and finding they knew he was a railroad conductor. 

With this thought hanging over him he went to see a girl he once loved. They went drinking together, they talked about old times, and at the end of the night they made it. In bed with her he thought about his death, his cold body, this lovers warm one. He thought of his train, he thought of running from it, but saw no use. He left his lover sleeping, and called his wife, but it was too late and she didn't answer.

It wasn't many days later that his train jumped the rail and smashed him against the rocks. When he woke up in the afterlife he met Achilles and Aeneis, they talked about kingdoms and histories, but he couldn't join them, he found his voice had been replaced by the sound of a train whistle. So he just listened for as many years as he could.

Shortly after he died though his lover gave birth to a child that could be none other than his. When the child reached a certain age the lover took him on a long journey, over hills and fields, until, without knowing why, she understood there was a special purpose to the river sitting in front of her. She dipped the child head first into the river, holding on only by the heel.

In his adulthood the kid traveled the land, until a gunshot wound put an end to his long life of dreaming.