The Mossy Shrine

2010-08-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

Proposition 8 was struck down yesterday by a federal judge in California. This is very heartening. To me it's beyond liberal or conservative; it's about prejudice, the same prejudice that fought against women's rights, and the liberation of slaves. People who throw religion forward and snarl 'abomination!', they are evil and so is their religion. For God's sakes--if only so much scandal and outrage were made about child molesters, rapists, and serial killers. There is more evil in running a red light, or swatting a fly.

2010-08-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Only a few more weeks before I head back to Indiana. I'll have to arrive a week early to participate in the week-long instructor orientation. Coming home to Texas for the summer has been refreshing, and now I'm all excited to be back in Indiana for the school year.

Lately have been thinking about thoughts, how the written word is like a butterfly pinned to the wall, or a picture of the Aurora Borealis. We only see the thing fixed, yet it is full of motion and depth. In articulating these thoughts, I'm forced to cement words into place, yet language is so rich with dimension. How to tap into the whole?

2010-06-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

The last number of weeks have brought many changes. My sister is now Mrs. Caroline Felty, and she now lives in Corpus Christi. Good changes! It saddens me that we won't be able to see each other as often, and sadder is thinking of all the times I perhaps could have spent with her before. But from this transition yet another change has emerged, in my own life. My sister bequeathed to me two small kittens, the smallest, cutest creatures. Most likely won't keep the kittens, but this has given me a new appreciation for pets. Observing them play together is a source of endless amusement. They spend much of their time playing together, capering and gamboling and dashing from wall to wall in chase of each other. Their predatory nature is constantly in stark contrast to their gentle nature, the one that licks my hands and my face, softly rubs against my shoulders, and curls up on my chest and purrs me to sleep.

2010-05-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

Back in Texas for the summer break. These few months will allow me to look at my life and the direction I'm getting ready to begin moving in. Next semester I'll begin the Spanish program at IU, and I've already begun reading the Master Reading List, starting now with Don Quixote. The process is laborious here at the outset, as I spend more time in the dictionary than in the novel itself. Have spent hours bent over that book already, and I'm still working through the introductions.

But this is where my heart is, reading, and literature seems a much bigger playground than the other disciplines, because the imagination has no boundary, is ever startling, ever transforming. Anything else seems like making my way through a desiccated and alien terrain.

2010-04-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

Eighty degrees today! Flowers are suddenly everywhere, as if a they were impatient to see the sky and so sprung fully-formed from the ground in a single night. The beauty of Indiana is a rich, green, lavish beauty, a fairy-tale beauty. And like a fairy-tale it seems too perfect, as if its elegance were contrived. The way the hills undulate, the grass too green to believe, the picturesque trees, and the flowers so perfectly peppered. In contrast, the beauty of Texas is disheveled, wild, flawed, and thus more bewitching, more authentic.

During my evening walk I looked across the way and saw my 29th birthday huddled very near. Only a couple months distant! Inconceivable.

2010-03-29T17:29:00.001-07:00

Some thoughts on the Age of Information.

Often I'm startled at how sophisticated young people are--especially those very early in their twenties. When critics rail against the Internet as the dumbing of America, I think they are both right and wrong in their assessment.

They are wrong in that the social aspect of the Internet actually encourages faster mental development. Because children are communicating earlier and more often than ever before, their minds are developing faster. Chats, forums, facebook--these facilitate mental development because they require children to communicate, to think, to be mentally engaged. Reading alone does not lead to greater mental sophistication; writing and communicating, the actual process of thinking, stretching the mind, that is where mental development happens. Of course, those who read have more to draw from, a richer, more fertile mind, than those who do not read very much.

One thing to note is that early exposure to the Internet helps to explain why most young people have good spelling and grammar: we are becoming more of a text-based culture, where entire friendships exist only online and via texts.

The critics are right in that while the Internet has allowed for a wider class of sophisticated and intelligent young people, it goes no further. The Internet fosters no great profundity. This must be done through intense personal study, through long and consistent hours of reflection, through writing and articulating the thoughts, and most important, through deep and habitual reading. The Internet discourages most of these, where spending more than a few minutes on a webpage is rare.

At its best, the Age of Information has resulted in a greater mass of intelligent young people; at its worst it has discouraged profound learning. Do young people read great sprawling works of literature anymore for personal pleasure and mental enrichment?

Finally, what comes after the Age of the Information? The Age of Even More Information? Cortical shunts? Bradbury wrote a story--I forget the title--in which a group of human explorers encounter a species that had evolved to the point that corporeal concerns were irrelevant. Through the passing of untold millennia they had become spherical blobs that communicated telepathically. What they lived off of I can only speculate. Perhaps they subsisted on photons. However the case, that is true self actualization.

2010-03-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

At noon my Friday class ended and I took the bus home and squandered seven hours sleeping and piddling online. I rotated periodically between the two, dozing an hour on my bed, then pulling myself awake to sit down bleary-eyed in front of my computer. The large fan I keep at my bedside is the best soporific I've ever encountered. It serves a dual purpose: the soft whirring soothes me while at the same time soaks up most outside noise. I can't imagine ever being able to sleep without it.

My day is a failure. Only a few words eked out. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer. If the sun doesn't deceive again with feigned blandishments, then I look forward to a long walk on campus, where I can organize and shuffle around my thoughts. And spend several content hours in my chair reading.

2010-03-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

After studying a couple hours at the Union I took my backpack and began an evening walk. To circle the main central part of the campus twice takes about fifty minutes. It lets me think. It's the only time that I have full license to explore my own thoughts. It's the only time when my mind is my own, when my thoughts aren't demanded of me. I let them wander, reign them in, inspect any new image caught in the mesh.

2010-03-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

Finished the first volume of 'The Demon Princes' from the library, then quickly ordered the entire thing in one volume. Can't put words to how enjoyable the experience of reading Vance is, and the word that repeatedly comes to mind is 'droll.' His humor and narrative style are, uncannily, somehow tuned to my particular frequency so that each page resonates with great vivacity in my mind. So far my favorite character in the Demon Princes is the mad poet Navarth, and it is clear that Vance had fun writing him. As a character study he is fascinating; at first he appears to be an irascible curmudgeon, but soon we discover him to be voluble and somewhat gauche (e.g.: 'Navarth attempted to lay his finger slyly alongside his nose, but miscalculating, prodded his eye.') At unexpected moments I find myself exploding into roaring fits of laughter over the most trivial detail, and I can imagine that my neighbors are often startled and alarmed. But it is such a pleasure to read this Jack Vance. May his dotage be dampened and comfortable.

2010-03-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

Nearing the end of Wonderland. The phantasmagoria depicted in Carroll's book is fascinating. The shifting dream sequences are delightful. I have a mind of setting a work of my own to a similar tempo. There's something wholly enjoyable about exulting in the absurd, even if it's merely a quirky turn of phrase or eccentricity of manner.

2010-03-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

Spring Break is here. Everyone is scurrying to wrap up obligations at school in order to head home for the week. The last few days have offered me a lot to think about regarding the topic of courage. It's strange to think about, but recently I discovered that I am only now learning a lesson from something that happened to me ten years ago. Ten years ago I mustered an incredible amount of courage to ask for a job as a Spanish TA as a Freshman, and only now am I realizing, because of a more recent act of courage, that often very good things are within the grasp of those who find courage to do what they normally would never consider. Mortification is always around the corner, menacing and mocking.

Taking the idea of courage over to the act of writing, I see many correlations. One of the most courageous acts, I believe, is consistently, day after day, facing a blank screen, daily overcoming the doubts and discouragements that weaken even the most steely writer. For the beginning writer, the courage must be greater, because the doubts are greater. It takes an especial amount of courage for the writer who sets out to write something that requires much greater skills than he or she has, for the one who aspires to write great fiction, and not merely good fiction. Maybe it implies a degree of narcissism, a foolish bravura that fuels great accomplishments in language. But partly it also an indescribable love of reading that is part of the recipe. Every couple weeks, after several hours of reading, I stop and reflect on how much reading has transformed my life. I fall in love with reading again and again. Each time I am renewed and encouraged. And inspired to try my own hand at writing.

2010-03-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

It seems like we have a reprieve from the biting cold, although even with the clear sky and the bright sun it is still very cool. The trees are holding back, hesitant to let their leaves forth. But the streams are flowing with a merrier trickle, the grass flushed greener. I'm here at the Union, and through the window a sycamore is standing, arrayed in seed pods, and next to it a mimosa, also full with seed pods, thin and hanging like drapes. Two small children are at play by the stream, a boy and a girl. They bound from one edge of the stream to the other, jumping and leaping for the joy of it. The boy capers a moment, then bends to dig something from the water. The girl has found a stick and is charging up and down the stream with the stick in hand. Three more children join them. In this moment if only it were possible to measure their happiness, for it is the most rare and beautiful thing in all of creation.

2010-02-20T09:16:00.000-08:00

In a couple weeks I'll know if I get into the Spanish program here at IU. Even though I'm already into my second semester in the library program, I've only been able to afford to go half-time, and I'm amassing incredible debt with each semester. The Spanish program would be entirely funded since I'd be an associate instructor, teaching undergraduate courses. Additionally I would receive an annual stipend--enough to live off of. But I'm afraid that it is very likely that I will not get into the program because of my GRE scores: they are very low. And while the scores are completely bogus, the acceptance committee won't know that I took the test after being up all the night before with a terrible bout of diarrhea. Nor will it matter that I haven't been able to afford to take the test again. Hopefully they will consider the other materials in my application. This is the reason why I haven't even continued with grad school--why seven years have passed without me moving forward with the goal of becoming a professor. Some doors are locked and just can't be opened no matter how passionately you beat on them.

2010-02-17T21:03:00.000-08:00

The snow is pushed aside from streets and walkways so that it is piled five feet high in places, like small displaced glaciers. Hanging from the roof high above my apartment door are a row of icicles, gleaming like bared teeth. Whenever I pass beneath them I lunge quickly so that a stray stalactite doesn't get the chance to impale me in the eye. But the snow is cold, like the bite of a snake, a stabbing cold. Strange, as the weather isn't as unbearable as I feared it would be. Maybe I'm just acclimatized already, and going back to Texas will be unbearable. I think not, though. I miss the Texas heat, the warmth that soaks to the bones, to the soul. The warm nights thick with the heat from the day, the smell of grass always on the air. I'm ready to go home.

2010-02-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the Super Bowl between the Colts and the Saints. I was invited to watch the game at a friend's house, and I took a book and ever so often looked up from my page and gave an enthusiastic shout. Finally I took myself to a different room to read in comparative silence (Their screams and expostulations were remarkably clear through a floor and two walls). I marvel at how much people enjoy sports, particularly football. It's extraordinary, really, to think that almost all of America is gathering to watch a small group of people toss around a leather ball. That a minor twist of the ball as it soars in the air could incite such passionate shrieks, induce a cataract of flying spittle, result in dangerous paroxysms of mania. In a thousand years, entire worlds will tune in for the Galaxy Bowl as two final worlds come together for the prize. I wonder what the stakes will be, what the prize will entail. The one thing we can know for certain about it: there will be shrieks, spittle, and paroxysms of mania.

2010-01-25T16:09:00.000-08:00

More snow. It started earlier as a type of snowy drizzle, then became more intense, a proto-snowstorm. All the variations in snowfall are fascinating, something that really doesn't exist in Texas, or at least not on a perceptible scale, since it almost never snows there.

Last night I had another series of bizarre dreams. I didn't write them down when I woke up, so they've flitted back into the void, and only their ghostly echo remains, a gauzy play of shadows, a fretwork of evanescent emotions. Sometimes I wonder if dreams are the true lifenode, connecting the body with Something Other.

Uncertain

2010-01-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

How to get the thoughts to burgeon fluid and unfettered, malleable, undistilled. The most daunting task really is to daily face that empty screen, with the heavy weight of all those who have come before, and the weight of all those paving the way now, so that at every turn my resolve flags. The temptation every day to turn to other endeavors, and resign myself to the fact that I don't have the gift--that preternatural essence--the rare genius, the mental fortitude. These and sundry other discouragements cause such despair, and is only vanquished by the antidote of long reading. It's all-consuming, this passion. I wonder if it will destroy me one day. Do I fling it away? But it always reappears, and when I go a day without reading, without drawing out these images onto paper, the misery is all the more unbearable. The writer has the biggest playground, the largest Lego collection, but the strain, the burden of pushing for greatness, might be too much. Still, the reward is immeasurable and ineffable, like the prophet struck dumb by the vision. Each story is a discovery, for the writer most of all, who feels the most awe, the most horror, the most joy. All there is to do is write, and hope that the writing will be my fuel and my salvation.

12 Tales of Christmas, Day 4

2009-12-17T06:59:00.000-08:00

The teacher, above all, took pleasure in imparting his store of accumulated knowledge. Such hard-won stuff! Whether with a student, or an old friend, his authoritative tone inserted itself into every discussion, however trivial the theme. He considered it his solemn duty to correct people whenever they uttered an unfactual statement, or employed a word in an incorrect way (or that contradicted his vast understanding of language). Perhaps it was subconscious, involuntary, the habit of much teaching. One snowy morning the teacher was discovered at his desk, slumped over. By chance or treachery, he had suffocated on an apple.

12 Tales of Christmas, Day 3

2009-12-16T10:51:00.000-08:00

There was a sound in the night, and it woke Andrew. He drew back his covers and slid from his bed. In the hall he quailed...maybe it was just his older brother Matt, about to pour syrup on his sheets again. On the hearth, by the Christmas tree, Andrew caught a glimmer. It was a book, sparkling green and red. He lifted the cover, turned the pages. It was Santa's Twice-Checked List! 'He must have dropped it,' Andrew whispered, and set it back for Santa to find. But not before finding his brother's name and changing nice to naughty.

12 Tales of Christmas, Day 2

2009-12-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

The reindeer were thin as the icicles flanking their stalls. Their captor, the Fat Man, had plucked them from the warmth of their own world, and locked them into a perpetual nightmare. They subsisted on slop the dwarfs brought, tittering grotesquely, while the fat man, who was as fat as he was old, feasted hourly. Each year the reindeer, pleading and remonstrating, were forced to bear the Bottomless Bag. It held the weight of a mountain. They shrieked and groaned; they wanted to die, but the only thing heard over their screams was the fat man's booming: HO HO HO.

12 Days of Christmas, Day 1

2009-12-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

Our tale begins on a cold wintry eve. Christmas lights are winking, snow is frosting cornice and eave, and the wind bears the joyful strains of carolers. Through a window two young lovers appear, he tenderly holding her leg, his nosed pressed against her ankle as in a sensuous caress. What lovely...but wait! Now he shifts and we see the splotches on his face, we smell a foetid stench, we see the leg is attached to no body. We see sinew and ganglia. And as our tale closes—indeed our very life--we see the zombie crunch off a toe.

Las Burbujas

2009-10-21T05:37:00.000-07:00

LAS BURBUJAS

por Guillermo Pregonero

[ESCENA: BASE MILITAR. CAPITAN SENTADO ESCRIBIENDO; ENTRA CORNELIO]

CORNELIO: ¡Capitán! ¡La guerra se nos viene por encima! ¡Todo es locura y caos!

CAPITAN: ¡Paz Cornelio! ¿No ves que estoy concentrando en una tarea de muy alta importancia? No perturbes el fluyo de mis pensamientos.

CORNELIO: Perdón, Capitán, pero ¿cuál sería una tarea más importante que proteger a la patria de los ingléses?

CAPITAN: Escribo un par de cartas a algunas personas ficticias, el mejor para frustrar y angustiar a mis futuros biógrafos. Fisgones intrometidos. ¿Notas la atención que invierto a los detalles?

CORNELIO: Por cierto, es una táctica sumamente admirable, pero la guerra--

CAPITAN: Gracias Cornelio. Fue mi madre de quien heredé mis dones literarios. Y también mi aspecto tan atractivo y romántico. Ella era la Flor de Menciyalga.

CORNELIO: Disculpa, Capitán, pero Flor de qué?

CAPITAN: Menciyalga. El ducado de Menciyalga.

CORNELIO: Pero, no existe tal ducado.

CAPITAN: Sí existe. Simplemente te olvidas. Menciyalga es un pequeño paraíso ubicado al este de Toledo. Por ahí. Ah, Cornelio, veo que los libros te han revuelto la mente. Es obvio que no eres un verdarero hombre de letras, como yo.

CORNELIO: Claro. Como dices. Pero los ingléses, Capitán. ¡La destrucción, la muerte!

CAPITAN: Aborrezco a los ingleses. De hecho, Lo único peor que un inglés es un biógrafo inglés. Despreciables criaturas. Mejor extirparlos a todos los ingleses para que ninguno llegue a ser mi biógrafo. Carajo, eso sería una verguenza monumental. Y además son feos los ingléses. ¿Te has notado? Tienen rostro de ogro...

CORNELIO: Capitán, ¿mencioné que atrapamos a una damocella inglesa...una joven de la nobleza?

CAPITAN: ¡Qué! ¡Cuerpo del mundo! ¡Cuerpo del cielo! ¡Dónde! Enséñame. ¡Te ordeno! ¡Te obligo! ¡De inmediato!

CORNELIO: Por aca, afuera.

CAPITAN: Hay un durazno inglés en mi campamento sin que sepa yo. ¡Inaceptable! [SALEN]

[ESCENA: EL CAMPO. ENTRAN EL CAPITAN Y CORNELIO]

CAPITAN: ¿Dónde está la ninfa inglesa?

CORNELIO: Hubo de escaparse. Son muy capaces los ingleses. Muy astutos. Pero como ya estás aquí, te conviene dirigirte a las tropas. Te esperan las órdenes.

CAPITAN: ¡Cielo y Sol! Resulta que tengo que hacer todo. ¡Trae a una gitana!

CORNELIO: ¿Una gitana, Capitán?

CAPITAN: Sí, una gitana.

[ENTRA DUODONA, LA GITANA]

CAPITAN: Oiga, vieja bruja. Aunque tus habilidades las consigues del diablo, y auque sacas tus adivinanzas con métodos repugnantes y demónicos, en este caso lo perdonaremos, como es asunto del estado. Ahora, dime quien ganará la batalla. ¡Te ordeno! ¡Te obligo! ¡De inmediato!

DUODONA: Hombre necio, que no traigo mi bola de cristal.

CAPITAN: ¡No importa! ¡Improvisaremos! Cornelio. Trae jabón y agua. Formaremos una bola provisional. Miren. Todos ayuden. Andale, así.

DUODONA: ¿Una burbuja? ¡Santa Teresa de Avila! Este es un demente total.

CAPITAN: Son como bolas de hada. ¿Ves, vieja? Aquí tienes varias bolas de cristal. ¡Rápido! Aquí hay una bola de cierta promesa. Echa un buen vistazo antes de que explote. ¿Qué ves? ¿Quién de nosotros ganará?

DUODONA: Dios mío. Pues te digo que ninguno. En este momento viene el rey de España para aplastar él mismo a los ingleses.

CORNELIO: [leyendo dos misivas] ¡Ha muerto el rey de España! Tuvo un infarto. Una tragedia de proporciones épicas. Y recibimos un mensaje de los ingleses. Quieren una reunión pacífica.

CAPITAN: ¡Que vengan! ¡Admítelos!

[ENTRAN JAMES, CAPITAN INGLES, CON SU TENIENTE CHARLES]

CAPITAN: Inglesh mehns! Yooo arrr grehtings!

JAMES: [a su teniente] What did the fellow say, Charles? I am grating?

CHARLES: That seems the case, Captain. You are grating.

JAMES: I should think so! We are trouncing them famously. But still, such indecorous salutation.

CHARLES: The Spanish regularly greet each other with insults and invectives, I notice. The barbarity. However, I suggest we return an insult in kind.

JAMES: Agreed. [a los españoles] Hail! Inglorious curs!

CAPITAN: [a CORNELIO] ¿Qué dice el fulano? ¿Glorioso cuz? ¿Cousin? ¿Que somos primos gloriosos?

CORNELIO: Eso también intendí yo.

CAPITAN: [a los ingleses] ¡Bienvenidos primos! ¿Pasamos a mi base para conversar y planear? Para aca, por favor. [SALEN TODOS]

[ESCENA: BASE MILITAR. ENTRAN EL CAPITAN, CORNELIO, JAMES, CHARLES]

CAPITAN: ..como siempre decía mi madre, la Flor de Menciyalga.

JAMES: ¿De dónde?

CAPITAN: ¡Menciyalga! La famosa región de Menciyalga, que queda por Toledo. Seguramente has oído hablar de la belleza edénica de Menciyalga.

JAMES: [con tono dudoso] Ah definitivamente. Pues llegando al tema de sucesión, sugiero que decidamos quién será rey de España de una manera justa e imparcial.

CAPITAN: Estoy de acuerdo.

JAMES: ¿Listo?

CAPITAN y JAMES: ¡Piedra-papel-tijera!

JAMES: Mmm.... empate

CAPITAN: De nuevo.

CAPITAN y JAMES: ¡Piedra-papel-tijera!

JAMES: Te gano. Nos quedamos con España.

CAPITAN: ¡Carajo! Me ganas. Que mala racha me tocó.

JAMES: Ahora, como una muestra de buena fe y de amistad, y actuando en el nombre del nuevo rey de España, te otorgo el ducado de Menciyalga.

CAPITAN: Que profundamente generoso.

JAMES: Me da gusto saber que te quedas contento.

CAPITAN: Pues ni modo. Jugaste bien. A propósito, observo la agilidad de tus manos. ¿Acaso te gusta soplar burbujas?

JAMES: Me encanta. ¿Quieres? [SALEN PARA SOPLAR BURBUJAS]

[FIN]

some scribblings

2009-09-09T05:58:00.000-07:00

http://thedrabbler.com/

a couple recent drabbles

2009-05-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day Drabble

VALENTINE, that insufferable savant. His shadow dimmed my university years. How everyone was smitten with his genius, his Byronic prettiness. Then there was his Via Cardiaca, which was published to such ridiculous acclaim. 'A monument,' alleged one reviewer. 'An epic poem hewn from a vast and boundless imagination,' wrote the New York Times. Valentine was a rising star; I was the lint to his socks. Our senior year I decided that Valentine should never feel the joyous love he wrote about. So I stole his heart. Literally. On Valentine's Day. And that, if I may add, is true poetic justice.

'Lake Lashley'

AN OLD MAN once lived alone by a lake in the fold of a tall mountain.
Every day he took his knapsack and fishing rod and went down to the
lakeshore. The old man rarely fished, though; for some reason the fish didn't bite. Instead, he read. A stranger passing by might see an old man reading silently, then, suddenly seized by a violent emotion, the man might snarl, 'Abominable plot!,' and fling the book out into the lake. Down below--the stranger might not notice--schools of fish hovered over a thousand upturned pages with cold unblinking stares.

Updation

2009-05-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

Have been thinking more or less on art and what it means to be an artist. The artist who creates with words, rather. Imaginative writing. Whether it stands solidly up there with the other arts, and the infinite different nuances we evoke with language. The trials of the master artificer, the unfathomable hours of ingesting new words and new ideas, piecing them together randomly, ever so patiently, always one step behind an epiphany.

With all this in mind, I've begun to entertain a suspicion that the greatest writing--the very best collections of words--is not really writing, per se, but art. Intricate patterns pressed into words. And just as there can be no living person free of prejudices and biases, no piece of imaginative writing is free of style. Perhaps no writing is free of style. This makes all the more a marvel a great work of fiction. It also leaves me to ponder whether or not language was actually the first form of art, instead of music or drawings. Certainly a few neanderthal men uttered a last poetic plea before being pounced upon by a saber-tooth tiger.

annals of the ludicrous

2009-01-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

The neighbors have at least two children, possibly a third. It's difficult to distinguish their squalling and shrieking tantrums through the wall, though it is not difficult to hear the noise. The parents decided to set a small metal pot right outside their door where they can toss dirty diapers. The diapers pile up, then they begin collecting on the ground, scattered messily. Of course, my door is only two feet away, and on any given morning I emerge from my apartment to be met by a bright promising day--and the sour stench of twenty rancid diapers. Yes, I love apartment life.

Drabble of the Week

2009-01-08T14:41:00.000-08:00

'Phenomenon'

HE did not know it, but something unnatural had occurred within his water heater. The water that fell from his shower began to work a subtle effect on his body. The years dripped by, until one day a strange knowledge burst upon him. Suddenly he was able to perceive the hidden truth of all things. So keen was his awareness that he attained wealth and power, and sent his children happily into the world. Yet, one thing eluded him, one thing often caused him to gnash his teeth in consternation, remained an enigma till his very last days. His wife.

Chai Cream Frappe

2009-01-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

At the counter I place my order
and the barrista smiles, though his face crinkles
in all the wrong places
I find a table huddled against the window
The night traffic moves like fluid, sluicing around the curve,
muffled soughs slipping through the door every time it opens
I get my order, grandechaicreamfrappethankyouhaveagoodday,
always the same
People push into the building, buy their drinks
talk of themselves, laugh, pass the time
My thoughts are sediments resting at the bottom
of my mind
like a lump of taffy wrapped in cellophane
I tug at the edges and pull
wondering how thought leads on to thought, bifurcating
in infinite threads, sometimes revealing a pattern,
sometimes not
The room is small and dim;
music plays, softly, and above
the whir and clank of the coffee machinery,
above the cacophony of conversations, I can make out the
soothing modern nuances of the song
Young people brandish iPods and iPhones
They casually make mention of facebook and
Google and
I entertain a brief thought that in a hundred years Google
will launch the first starship, the USS Google, each colossal
letter welded colorfully to the hull
Though that's just conjecture, a twining thread I snip off
Sometimes I come here with pen and spiral notebook,
I scour and prod my mind for a hidden epiphany, for some inchoate
tableau to foster,
hold my breath as words poem onto the page
But tonight I don't come to
write. I don't come to concentrate, or meditate
on matters of prosody; I come to feel the pulse of
existence, to feel the jostle of life, to feel a body brush against mine
to feel something. To feel anything.
So I sit in a sophisticated coffee shop
surrounding by people with their sophisticated electronic devices
tasting a sophisticated drink
with sophisticated music humming
in the background
Only I never feel that kindred flame leap up around me

Thanksgiving Drabble

2008-11-18T11:04:00.000-08:00

There was a vale that long shied its dismal face from the world, until discovered by a band of dour pilgrims. In thanksgiving they slaughtered turkey upon turkey, until their gobbles became a dark wind that sighed up over gables, and hissed past the church steeple. Thenceforth, each year at the appointed hour the townspeople sealed themselves inside the church. ‘They draw nigh!’ shrieked a small boy, his tender countenance disfigured by a spasm of terror. ‘Speak not!’ shushed the mother, and pressed the trembling child to her bosom. Outside gathered a legion of little shadows, silent as death. Waiting.

Story fragment

2008-11-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

In the deep predawn I wake to the groan of wind and the sound of Crepe Myrtle clawing at my window pane. I lie beneath a mound of cool linen and wait for my mind to piece itself together again, for memories to coalesce, but all I see is a whorl of capering silhouettes and so remain in a limbo of stupor. Rising, I grope for the light switch. In the bathroom I’m still half-asleep, and the white ceramic curve of the toilet is a giant deviled egg without the devil. Have some yoke, I offer in slurred dream speech and drizzle, yellow and frothy. From the other end of the house I hear my mother stirring, beginning her daily ministrations in the kitchen. Prepare coffee, feed the dog, feed the cats, open the blinds, take out the trash. Neither of us drinks coffee and the cats have all disappeared, but she clings to her routine, like a sprinkler system that keeps to its diurnal chug long after its owners have fled their home, long after the home has begun to crumble and blow away upon an ancient and dying planet, which in turn persists its weary revolution around a black and shrunken sun.

Back in my bed the ceiling fan is a pin-wheel and I blow and blow, but never send the blades spinning.

Halloween Drabble

2008-10-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

On All Hallow’s Eve, the election polls were teeming with life. Some polls, even, with death. Across the country, in small, remote towns—near dense woods and dark cemeteries, polling locations were set up. ‘Vote Obama!’ cried a leathery corpse. ‘Vote McCain!’ chanted another. Now that Congress had extended civil rights to the undead and the unsavory, they appeared in droves. From sarcophagus and cell, from slag and cesspool, they came. They came shuffling, loping, creeping, slithering. They came crawling, gyrating, hobbling, burrowing, lurching, and flapping. And they cast their ballots. There were, after all, many important issues at stake.

A Thing of Beauty...

2008-10-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

..is the IU School of Information Science. Witness the lovely verdant meadow gently enfolding the SLIS building. Clasp an eye on the serene pond where a weary willow caresses the water's surface. Here a small creek murmurs the seasons away, a cool ribbon of blue splashing over rock and stone.

Tucked away behind foliage and field, a gazebo sits nestled in peaceful solitude.

My week in Bloomington was ecstatic. On the final night we went to eat at La Charreada, and there Andres made some inane, degrading comment to his wife. As evidenced, she didn't take it very well. Snap.

Farewell, dear friends. Andres, you will go on to be a wonderful writer. Alisa, you are a formidable musician, worthy of the highest accolades. Both, please never let me order a giant strawberry margarita, ever again, or, in my drunken stupor, allow me to embarrass myself in such utterly shameful degree.

Elizabeth Moon is a Curmudgeon and other News

2008-10-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

That's right. Elizabeth moon is a curmudgeon. She said so herself. Actually, she was looking for the right word to describe her recent crone-like tendencies, and I kindly offered a few adjectives of choice--curmudgeon being the one she preferred.

The first annual Hill Country Book Festival was a smash. It was all the more awesome to see Elizabeth walking around with a giant broadsword swinging from her hip. Occasionally she would pull it out and start smacking people. The crazy bat. She let me play with her sword, and gave me a detailed lecture on swordsmanship. Grasshopper than I am.

Seriously, though. Book signings are the biggest waste of time. People amble by, smile at you, finger your book, leaf it through, and, realizing it's just a bunch of poems, they smile again and scurry on to the next table. I sold five books. Eight long hours and only five books sold! After a few hours of twiddling my thumbs I finally took out a Vernor Vinge novel and began reading. I think, though, I may have unintentionally shooed away a few potential customers during the intense moments there at the end of the story.

The Crone of Westmoreland

2008-10-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Note: this little yarn I wrote for a recent online competition, but I thought it would also be appropriate for the Halloween season. It's about witches and blogs.

The Crone of Westmoreland

The crone of Westmoreland sat hunched over her desk and hurled a vehement oath at the item propped open before her—a silver monochrome Hewlett Packard TX1000 laptop tablet. In all the width and breadth of Westmoreland none had ever dared defy Hexenia Bladthorne. That is, nothing but the impertinent contraption in front of her. It infuriated the crone to no end. She seethed and jabbed at the keyboard with a gnarled finger.

"Bloody! Error! Messages!" screeched the witch and pounded her desk, disturbing the sleep of a fat rodent that slept, paws-up, in a small cage next to the laptop. The rat rolled over and squeaked reproachfully at the old woman. "Oh, sorry, Dante, my dear," she said and drew her baleful glare back onto the monitor. A white film had dimmed the vision of one eye, and chronic rheum blurred the other. From the old woman's head sprang festoons of hideous tangles, flagrant and indomitable, like the wild heather that overtook her bog and threatened to lay siege to her small cottage.

On the work bench, behind her, were strewn an assortment of jars and flasks. The fireplace housed a cauldron from which bubbled an unknown liquid that swathed the room in pungent, alien odors. The witch clicked and clicked at her laptop, periodically reaching back with a clawed hand to seize a certain ingredient and toss it into the cauldron. She was consulting a recipe posted on her blog by a colleague in a distant country. Though apparently—as the crone had recently been informed—online spell books were now referred to as splogs instead of blogs.

"And another wretched spam on my splog!" spat the old woman.

The first time she received a spam the crone was scandalized. The insolent miscreant mistook her for a man (when her email quite firmly established her as a female: evilhag07@hotmail.com) and even deigned to suggest a certain enlargement procedure.

"The gall!" she hissed indignantly. Then, she began scrolling through her My Documents file where she now kept the entirety her library, each book scanned, indexed, and fully searchable. She found and clicked on Guillaume Libreffe's Transpositions de Corps et Esprit, which quotes vigorously from the ancient work Sortilegus Disembodia, of which both the text and author were lost to antiquity. The crone also glanced briefly through Geoffrey Darke's The Principles of Heistcraft.

So she contrived, by subtle and sinister machinations, a severe consequence for any similar intrusions to her website. The next time a spam appeared on her blog, the person responsible received an email. It bore a single sentence:

"You possess an abundance of gall and no longer require it all."

When opened, the email unleashed the spell and an automatic reply was sent to the crone. She opened the email and printed it out. The image was red and glistening and seemed to release an acrid smell. She cackled once, and then she used the printed paper to line the bottom of Dante's cage.

Occasionally the crone would read an online article (via her RSS feeds) about a sudden unexplainable death due to vanishing gallbladders. The crone would be seized by a round of wicked guffaws, then she would print out another sheet of paper to place in her pet's cage. The crone would take the old, soiled paper and cast it out the window into the turgid brine of her bog.

Thus is demonstrated another reason why none should ever go trundling unwittingly into the domain of a witch—be it bog or blog.

Reflecting with my Evil Reflection

2008-09-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

Evil Reflection: Hey! Is everything okay over there? You’ve been blasting and trumpeting away the whole day.

Billy: I’m blowing my nose. It’s called a cold. You should try it sometime. It’s loads of fun.

Evil Reflection: I’ll think about it. Anyway, what are you reading?

Billy: Oh, just some training pamphlet from work. It’s about different personality types and how to deal with them. You know, Type A, Type B, and stuff.

ER (evil reflection): Right. Lemme guess: you’re Type T for Tight-Ass?

Billy: That’s totally original.

ER: You got it.

Billy: Actually it smacks of C.S. Lewis’s Four Loves business. And as much as I admire the learned Professor, I finished the book with the nagging conclusion that he was still oversimplifying the subject. I mean, humans are unimaginably complex and the psychological construct cannot be charted and mapped out with a few generalized attributes. It’s bogus. It’s untenable.

ER: C.S. Lewis? Wasn’t he a homosexual? What do they know about love?

Billy: You are evil. Have I ever mentioned that before?

ER: Possibly. Probably.

Billy: Well, you’re definitely not complex. I’d say you are an Expressive Expressive.

ER: Err, what? Espresso, you say?

Billy: No, according to the training there are four main personality types: Analytical, Driver, Expressive, and Amiable. You are most assuredly not Amiable. Fo shizzle.

ER: I’m feeling the love. They should add another personality type for you: Bitchy. And as your secondary characteristic: Crotchety.

Billy: I’ll pass the suggestion on. Everyone’s pretty much in general consensus that I’m an Expressive, but—

ER: --I concur. This is my resounding concurrence.

Billy: Um...very nice. I concur with your concurrence of everyone’s concurrence. I’m a writer, for God’s sake. Of course I’m expressive. How does the poet rhapsodize lyrically if he isn’t an Expressive. It’s the other characteristic that’s in question.

ER: Crotchety. Believe me.

Billy: I’ll keep that in mind. Some want to dub me a Driver, some purely Expressive. I say I’m Analytical Expressive. You should see the fervent remonstrance of those who don’t want me to belong to the Analytical quadrant. The idea that an Expressive could also be equally Analytical. It’s bogus. It’s untenable.

ER: Crotchety.

Billy: In truth, I’d say I’m an Uber-Analytical.

ER: Uber-Anal, more like.

Billy: Because a writer—a decent writer, at least—has to be equally analytical and expressive. The rigorous combination of logic and creativity. And while the imagination is the fuel of the narrative, it is tempered at every point by constant intellectual analysis, by evaluating and assessing each thought, by drawing upon vast readings and previous studies, by contrasting and comparing each minute element, by turning words over and over in the mind, agonizing and mulling for hours over a single phrase; by examining all the possible variations of a subject, often involving intense research, and then the time to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize that information into your work, be it fiction or nonfiction. As a writer I’m in a perpetual state of sustained, systematic analysis, only my subject isn’t the trivial aspects of work—it’s life itself. Especially people. Their mannerisms, demeanors, their idiosyncrasies, their different gaits, expressions, how they interact, the tone and timbre of their voice, etc. Honestly, I wish I weren’t an analytical. I wouldn’t be irked by every grammatical, spelling, and punctuation error that I come across. I’d sleep much better at night, instead of lying awake with a dozen thoughts crowding for further contemplation, seizing hold of observations and dissecting them, taking them apart to carefully scrutinize them,and then gleaning from what I can.

ER: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Billy: Just the other day I was reading an essay by Ursula Le Guin about this very issue. In an article entitled ‘Where I Get My Ideas From.’ And I quote: ‘The writer writing, then, is trying to get all the patterns of sounds, syntax, imagery, ideas, emotions, working together in one process, in which the reader will be drawn to participate. This implies that writers do one hell of a lot of controlling.’ Le Guin goes on, but I think the point she makes is that we writers really have the burden of being both analytical and expressive—that it requires a high degree of both characteristics to be a good writer.

ER: Ursula Le Guin? Isn’t she a lesbian? What do they know about writing?

Billy: You incorrigible twat.

ER: Hey! What are you doing? Back away. You’re sick, I don’t want your amoebas.

Billy: I need to adjust the mirror. You’re all askew, tilting too far to the left.

ER: That’s because I’m showing my support for Obama. You should, too.

Billy: Oh, please let’s don’t start on that again. For the hundredth time, I’m not voting Obama.

ER: You pathetic sob. If you wanna support a geriatric old misanthrope who—Argh! Just great! You sneezed on me. Now I’ve got bogeys smeared all over me.

Reflecting with my Evil Reflection

2008-08-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

Billy: Vituperative. Soporific. Salubrious. Abstemious. Desultory. Specious. Equanimity.

Evil Reflection: Excuse me.

Billy: Inchoate. Innocuous. Opprobium. Tractable--

Evil Reflection: Excuse me!!

Billy: Oh. Hello, Evil Reflection.

ER: Um, Billy... What are you doing?

Billy: I'm studying for my GRE exam. I sit for the exam tomorrow. Didn't I tell you about that already?

ER: I think not. But, if it's all the same to you, please go in the other room to practice. Your voice is rather annoying.

Billy: Uh... Excuse me?

ER: You heard me. I don't mumble, unlike you, you dithering idiot. Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?

Billy: What? You? Sleep? Evil Reflection, you are my reflection, for God's sake. You don't need sleep. That's crazy.

ER: Crazy? You're the one talking to his reflection.

Billy: Oh that's clever.

ER: Yes, and close the door on your way out so I don't hear you sqawking to yourself in the other roo--Hey! What are you doing??

Billy: There's a smudge on the mirror. I need to clean it off.

ER: Blech! You know I hate the taste of Windex!

Billy: You'll live. By the way, could you help me with a certain math problem. Quadratic equation again. They make me cower in terror.

ER: You always were pathetic and obtuse. Why are you taking the GRE, anyway?

Billy: Because I want to get into the UT School of Information. Because I have aspirations. Because I want another reason not to be here listening to your inane ramblings. Are you going to help me with the math problem or not?

ER: Of course not, you bloody bafoon. You won't do well on your exam. Your aspirations are nothing but shrivelled prunes, and you will not get accepted into UT. Give up, already.

Billy: Fine...forget it. I'll continue studying my vocab. Mendacious. Perfidious. Nefarious. Insiduous.

The Crossroads

2008-08-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

The Crossroads

One night I had a dream that I was sitting alone in a forest. Purple twilight was bleeding into everything--the trees, the leaves, the soft moss clinging to the rocks. I looked up and saw you emerge from behind a tree.

You did not look exactly the same way you appear in real life. In my dreams I see people differently, the way I see them without the layers of flesh and blood masking their true image. Most people look very different in my dreams. Their true essence doesn't fit their physical form. But you are almost exactly as I see you in life. Only, your hair is always longer, shoulder length, and very curly. Your eyes are luminous, the softest blue-gray, like peering into the vast depths of some celestial pool, ancient beyond time, where once angels gathered, but now forgotten even by the oldest of beings for countless weary eons.

I stood up then, and we began to explore the forest together. After a period we found a small house that had succumbed to time and decay. The front wall had collapsed outward so that only the front door remained standing, along with the wooden beams that served as the outer frame of the house. Vines had grown up along the frame, and drooped here and there, with great orange clusters blooming all along them. Part of the ceiling in the living room had sunk in and fallen to the ground, and trees had spread their branches down through the yielding roof.

The back half of the small house was still intact. We plodded through the rubble on the cottage floor, a combination of rotted plywood and leafy vegetation, long eroded to a clumpy turf. As we shuffled back through the house, stirring the leafy debris with our shoes, a dank smell rose up from the floor. In the back room we found an iron stove. It was brown from years of rust, and screeched miserably as you pulled it open. Inside a rusty maw exhaled, acrid and empty. I tugged on your shirt to go.

But you looked back at me and smiled; the blaze of life in your eyes startled me. You closed the door of the stove and turned the dial on the panel. Then once again you opened the door and stepped back next to me. We watched as several forms crawled out of the opening of the stove. I don't remember exactly how many came through, perhaps about 6 people or so. Only later did I realize that these were people who were dearest to me in life, the ones that I loved the most. My little brother was there, except we were now the same age. We were all the same age, in this place outside of time.

We all restored the small house, adding walls and windows, and even a well. It was our paradise, where we met to be together, to laugh and play and linger. Once, I was playing with my little brother. We were sprawled out on the grass below the pale shadow of a large bough. I was rubbing his hair. It was short and prickly, and I always liked the way it tickled my hand. You saw us and you said, 'Hey, you never do that to my hair.' So I tackled you and wrestled you and tousled your hair, and said: 'See, your hair is too long!' Then we all laughed and got up and went to explore the forest together.

And, though I do not remember when, we must have decided to set a signpost in the clearing next to our little meeting house. There it remains, in that twilight forest where time does not reign, and etched onto its surface in our own clumsy marks it reads: The Crossroads.

Note: this actually was a dream from last night. I remember listening to Ray Bradbury speak once, years ago, on how he gets the ideas for his stories. He said that most of his stories he pulled from his dreams...that in the early hours of the morning he would lie in his bed and watch the visions and voices flitting before him, then suddenly he'd sit up and dash to the typewriter before the story faded from his mind. This is the same way many of my stories appear. If only I had the technical mastery that Bradbury has.

Annals of the Ludicrous

2008-08-22T09:57:00.001-07:00

Yesterday something strange happened to my co-worker Telexiana (For anonymity’s sake I slightly alter her name here). A woman approached the circulation counter with her books and pulled out her library card. As Telexiana (hereafter referred to simply as T.) reached for the card, she was suddenly seized by a hoarse cough; she turned, courteously, and hacked into the empty air behind her. When she turned back to take the card, the woman quickly pulled away.

“Your hands are dirty.”

Her hands had been at her side: they were anything but dirty. Incensed at this woman’s juvenile behavior, T. bent forward and pulled out a heavy container of Germex and, in front of the woman, slapped a large portion into her palm and slowly slathered it over her hands.

The woman’s demeanor was indignant as she handed over her library card. But T. did not seem too concerned about the woman’s unpleasant predicament.

“Maybe next time I’ll save the effort of being polite and just cough in her face," she said later.

a la recherche du temps perdu

2008-08-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

Now the time comes to begin piecing together fragments of dreams that have been amassing over the years. Dreams long stowed away in memory's chamber. The fear is always that in pulling open the door to let loose only a few stray memories, instead I'll be pummeled by a surge of them, a legion of filmy wraiths careening over that dim threshold.

So a commitment seems best. A commitment to one short piece of fiction a week. Be it poetry or prose.

I'll post it here, and if I don't keep to my commitment, may my mind be devoured by a bevy of wayward wraiths.

tabula rasa

2008-08-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

Once there was a 27-year-old fellow who turned around one day and realized that he was not working very hard at his dream of becoming a writer. It was an epiphany he first had at 17, but the years began to stack up, and dreams slink by so elusively for the unwary.

Once there was a 27-year-old fellow who wanted to sketch the texture of his heart, but he had neither the proper tools nor the skill of the artist or the musician, so he was left with the most difficult of Art to master: language.

He has spent over 20 years in the study of this sacred calling, imbibing books beyond count, shifting words one over the other in myriad patterns, but he is only still just begun. He is Newton's child dipping his toes on the shore of a sea that spreads before him, terrifyingly vast.

None may accompany him on his journey. None may tread the same paths he treads, nor share with him the joys and the horrors of what he finds along his way. He is alone in the world. That is the sacrifice.

His only comfort is in recording his observations. But the fabric of language is so deficient, bankrupt. Yet he does the best that he can, and passionately believes that the true transfiguration of the mind and soul is only possible through language.

So he decides to keep a notebook where he will practice his art, where he will store his notes, his stories, his sketches.

He will start a blog.