Careless Product of Wild Imagination

History: Here's a Story You Should Know.

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:50:02 GMT

Right Here.

What happened, what happens, what is happening is so much scarier than anything I could write.

From liz_marcs

Y Cant Aloysius Rite Papa Silenus Went Courting - Plot Daisy

Tue, 06 May 2008 19:57:59 GMT

A plot daisy works like this: You have the central thing (theme, whatever) in a circle and then you draw "petals" around it to include lesser themes or things you want to throw in. As I go, I'm liable to have a copy of this up on the wall, and check off the things I touch upon as I go.

The Main One is

This is a story of love gone bad.

And I mean all forms; Eros gone bad, Philios gone bad, even Agape, at least attempted. Lesser loves; love of country, love of money, ain’t no love going to survive this story. None at all.

The lesser ones are (Starting from upper left, going clockwise)

De-humanization

Both in the sense of “less than human“ and “other than human”

Exploitation

Come to Grief exploits the sweetlings. Gianni and the others break hearts. The Fairfield Nine want to remake God in their image.

The End Times

No man knows the day or the hour? That will never do…

Necromancy

And when you die, you learn that all the dead possess are their friends and long, long memories.

Straw Men

Slavery need not require the ownership of flesh and blood.

Satyrs

What makes a spirit of land choose a different land? Are they as far from humanity as they think? What happens when a satyr loses their joy?

Sweetlings

Died lacking affection. What do they see? What do they want?

Brass

Ifrit love it. The Fire Queen. Brass as a metal. Brass as a quality. The final trumpet?

The ‘Bury

Shit, that place is fucking creepy.

Tells

Everyone has got one, no one has got one like Esther. You’d think that she might know a thing or two about them.

Heartbreak

Honest and Real do not necessarily have to be present at the same time.

Broken hearts are components for magic.

Pimps don’t Commit Suicide

In the true tradition of exploitation and pandering, they let others do it for them.

Masks

In all it’s glory. What you see is in compensation for what lies beneath.

Force and Fraud

Always together, never separate. They are twins who cannot bear to be alone.

Y CANT ALOYSIUS RITE Papa Silenus Went Courting?

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:09:15 GMT

Poll results are in.

What Does the Protagonist Want?

(Really, I love this question, and thanks to

toddalcottfor pointing it out, obvious as it may be.)
Esther wants to find out what happened to her parents, because she fears they may not be as dead as the ought to be. One of her mother's dead associates has directed her to the city of brass to find the Fire Queen. So she's come to Waterbury (Brass City and all, also the last known location of one of her mother's still living friends) to find the way.

Unnamed Leshy I'm not sure if I will still use this character, but if I do, he is one of the workers in Gianni Sileni's workshop, making clockwork hearts for he knows not what purpose. He worries about his boss and wants to protect him from whatever it is he's gotten mixed up in; he is the POV character if he's involved. Eventually, he will want to help Esther discover what Gianni is up to.

ETA: What Does the Protagonist Get?
Esther becomes Rose.
The Leshy gets freedom.
Both get their hearts broken.

Who is the Antagonist?
Come to Grief (J. P. Maure) One of the group that included Rev. Heider, Henry Stallingwraithe, Sweet Basil Kapshaw and Eidolon Coyle (The last two being Esther's mother and probable father). In Waterbury, he pays the bills by controlling a sweeting grotto below the city, and pimping out the ghostly inhabitants. In fact, his plans are a little more grandiose than that, involving the Heider Text, Straw Men, and mechanical hearts.

Gianni Sileni A faun, and the leader of the crew that makes the hearts. There is something wrong with him, and it's clear to his crew that, to a certain extent, he's lost his joy. They do not know why. This changes when he meets a new girl, one he brings around more than once (unusual for a satyr or faun), one with roses that shift and change on her body, one with a lot of questions.

Questions to Answer

1) What date is it? I'm leaning 1933, for the strawman angle. which would make Esther 90 years old, close to the end of a normal human lifespan, when, I think, people who don't age start to lose a little bit of hold on humanity. Esther does not age, or, at least hasn't seemed to past her mid 20s. It couldn't be much earlier than 1909, since Scofield plays into it. I really want to put Holy Land USA in there somewhere as well, but we're looking at 20 years lag, which means it might appear in an epilogue. Normally, I like the idea of epilogues as much as I like the idea of epilators, but what the hell. It's Holy Land and the big cross just came down, so it deserves something. Also, I just heard a rumor that the convent up there is a home for nuns who have lost their rosary beads, which is, while no joke, evocative, in a tragic sort of way. It will likely be 1932 or 1933.

2) POV character? My conception of Esther is that she is a lot like my homage to the Kurosawa's Mifune portrayed swordsman in Yojimbo and Sanjuro; like Sanjuro, Esther is not going to want to help, but is going to help anyway. Also like Sanjuro, Esther is a drawn sword; she can be violent, but is much more likely to use guile than force. Mostly, she cuts anyone who tries to handle her. She arrives, mayhem ensues, she leaves. That said, none of my work with Esther has made publication, so, really, I need not hew to any sort of canon. Also, this is something a little more personal and close to her than most of her monster killing, sorcerer thwarting capers. Still, I want distance, I want you to guess what she is going to do, I want you not to see everything, or more than a glimpse at a time of anything. Without mystery, Esther's not as cool. Also Leshy are cool. I need a good Polish name.

Which leaves us with the dynamics Esther - Gianni - Leshy, Esther - Gianni - CtG, and Possibly Esther - Leshy -CTG.

3) Tell us about the satyrs? Satyrs are Greek and, to a lesser extent, Balkan; Fauns are western Med, Italy to Portugal, Leshy are Polish and thereabouts. All are related, woods spirits, more or less. All of the ones in Connecticut seem to work in Waterbury in Sileni's shop. There are some differences between, but not many (well, okay, Leshy seem to be very distinct). What I know about them: they behave as they behave, they like music and sex and drink. They can change shape, or, at least seem to. Both sexes are represented, though, with shape changers, I think sex and gender becomes one of those things like a belt or a watch; more an accessory than an identity. One of the very important things about satyrs and fauns and leshy is that it is very important that they stay happy. One who doesn't can go very bad, very quickly, becoming something other entirely. This is happening to Gianni, and it is a danger to all the old-world transplants, since the ocean voyage sucked and homesickness sucks just as much.

4) Why did they come here? They had to. Someone or something forced them to. I'm going to assume it might have been the Great War, since, this version of the world, sorcerers would have a big hand in the fighting as well, and so would monsters, goblins and spirits. There would also be more nations involved. I don't want to look into this too deeply, so we'll blame WW1.

Mon, 05 May 2008 19:54:20 GMT

View Poll: Y CANT ALOYSIUS RITE?

The Little Toad that Could

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:05:47 GMT

"Bufo Rex" Is one of StorySouth's Million Writers Notable Stories for 2007

Oh yeah!

Faster Technopeasants! Kill! Kill! (Internets Double Feature)

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:29:40 GMT

My fellow pixel-stained technopeasant wretches:
After saying I had nothing to contribute, I dug around the root cellar and came up with what I found. Neither of them are what I think of a professional quality, which is why I've decided to contribute them both in the manner of the decade that gave birth to me: Exploitation Double Feature. These stories aren't even the strongest of my trunk material, but they are the most exploitive, so I guess that counts for something.

Both of these have appeared before in this journal, but what the hell.

Thrills! The Eating Disorders of Dragons!

I am a boredom eater. It is a bad habit.

My needs are not so small nor my life so comfortable that I don't eat for sustenance; months may pass between my times of abundance. When I eat for hunger, though, it’s a different creature that bites, a different thing entirely that chews and swallows. Hunger makes me no different than any predator; I must place myself between the sun and my prey so I can fall like an arrow from the golden bow. I strike and I feast without savor, I move again before I eat my fill, and single out a second and a third. I drive the individual from the herd, kill, and kill again, and again as needs be, as many as I must in order to eat my fill. I drag the corpses together and feast until glut; at times I remember to taste. I'll bury, but I never revisit, not even in the coldest times. I have my instincts, but also I have my pride; the wolves know to prowl where I have landed for easy scraps. I am a predator like any predator, and food is a matter of survival. A predator does not like to leave to chance, we do not care for drama or surprises. We do not hunt for the intellectual stimulation of the stalk or the kill.

You might not believe this, but I don't care for your kind as victuals. You are neither filling nor terribly nutritive; you taste of pork, but more filthy, and you give me the wind. But you are unpredictable, and you are challenging, and I am a boredom eater, and this is how you know me. Otherwise, I would stay well clear.

When I visit your kind in state, it is never for the first time. I have already visited, in disguise, and I've bid my time in the alley ways between the houses, where the gossip passes. I've hung round the scaffold in the center, under the pews of your church, perched on your bedset; boredom has made me a voyeur as well. Another poor habit; speaks poorly of me, but it is worth it to see the expressions change from fear to horror when I come demanding a virgin on the second of the May. I come in state, and Lord, I am terrifying, all wings whipping up dust from the ground and booming voice.

I often kill the first person who comes to treat with me. You little fiends are dangerous, and I do not, for a moment forget that. Your stories are too full of cousins and brothers who did, and I see too little fear, most times, in the eyes of the first one who comes to beg for the lives of the settlement. Not always; scare a settlement enough and there is no telling what they're going to think you said. The confusion, sometimes, is good enough; I’ve made my demands in languages that no one in a thousand miles or a hundred years has ever heard, less speaks, for that very reason. These days, I prefer to tell the vineyards that I want their arbors and their vines, the devout that I want their god's gold for my pile, a merchant's guild that I want every penny belonging to every third merchant in their company - leaving them to determine the count. Once delivered, I'll circle the settlement once or twice to make them remember, and fly only as far as terrain and conditions force me in order to get out of sight. The better to return quickly, in disguise.

You have your music and theater and ritual; I have not cared for any of them, but I have you. You can liken it to a cat playing with the rat before the end, if it pleases you to do so, most of those I've told have. I disagree; the cat is blameless. They are creatures of habit and instinct, predators first and last; they appear cruel by wearing out their prey so that when they kill, it does not have the strength to fight back. Even a mouse has sharp teeth, and even mice know how to kill. A mouse can't kill a cat, but any cut or sore can take infection, and infection will kill any cat. When I treat your kind as a danger, and I do, for you are dangerous, I do the same. It is the most risk a predator takes, to tire before the kill, when killing the fresh is a greater risk. No, I am only like a cat when I hunger or I fear. Here, I am much more like your kind, for it is delicious to have power over, and to exercise that power in causing anguish. You are just the same.

Sometimes I return early, and sometimes I return late; these things depend on my mood and how your kind reacts to my demands. Three days is tradition, for they usually spend the first day in shock, the second in strife and recrimination and the third in dread. I'll give time for grievances to come to the surface, like your farmers, looking over seedlings in the fields. If they are slow to rise, or they are old and bitter, I will let them go another day. If I've failed to stir up the right pains and hatreds, I'll return on the second day. Perhaps I will kill a few and ruin some buildings and give them more time. Perhaps I will take the easy way, and be wanton. If they organize a defense, then I'll wait a few days, until their attention wanders and their determination fades. When it better suits the mood, I will glide in slowly, letting all see me. Most often I will simply drop my disguise, and let them wonder how I arrived without being noticed.

This brings us to the business of the killing. It is the least of my satisfactions in these interactions I have with your kind, and it is the most personal risk, but it is necessary for the next interaction, and all those that follow. The balance to strike is the least danger to myself while not letting any who live believe, for a moment, they were not the unfortunate, and that the lucky were the ones who have found their way, at least in part, into my belly. It's convenient that you tend to store your food stocks together. I intend that no more than a dozen from the settlement live to see the anniversary of my coming, and that no one in a generation seeks to build on the spot where it stood. This is standard, but the joy and the challenge of the standard is in the reaching.

I am not ignorant of what I do; I do not concern myself over it. I do not care. Compel me.

I always find fault with the offering; indeed, I take great pains to ensure that my demands cannot be met, and that my wrath inconsolable. It goes without saying that any I leave alive will have no homes, no food, no livestock and no clothing. They will be the ones, when I can manage, with most cause to hate one another when I have gone. At times I have followed them; occasionally stalking them in the form of a great wolf with eyes that glow like your holy men's do when they speak of hell. How many live depends on how terrified, how panicked they are when they see me that second time. If they try to face me, I leave one or two.

If one should injure me, and it has happened before this time, make no mistake, I kill them all. It wouldn't do for anyone to know that I can be hurt by just anyone with a knife on the end of their shepherd's stick or arrows only used before on deer. I do not fight soldiers or heroes, but I intend to make it plain to your kind that those are the only sorts I ever fight, the only ones who have any hope of facing me. Hope, as you may have noticed, makes your kind dangerous. When I can, I save the one who injured me for last. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened. You must be tired. This will be over soon.

Those settlements that have faced me with effect, those are the burnt sticks through which someone travels in a year and marvels, wondering what terrible fate befell those who lived here. They are not built over so soon; your kind regards these places as haunted or cursed. I regard these places as known territory, and so I suppose there might be something to that designation among your kind.

I am a boredom eater. It is a bad habit, and one for which I have paid a price, today. A mouse bite can become septic, and infection can kill a cat. You can pray, if I've not convinced you that your God either does not exist or does not care any more than I do, that the wound you gave me does the same.

I am a boredom eater. You could feel honored, if the honor pleases you, your kind is not very palatable, and I am not very hungry. But I do hate to waste.

Intermission

Chills! The Icy Grip of a Deranged Samurai Swordsman!

The man from Edo came up the mountain pass to the village a couple of weeks before the snows. He traveled alone, on foot. His garments were good quality, once, and he dressed heavily, despite the fact that it was not yet that cold. He set up in the ryokokan, and Sachiko, the obasan's daughter got to telling everyone that he spent most of his time either by himself or in the kitchen, and he used an awful lot of charcoal. He dined in the hetman’s house the first night, but declined his hospitality, to the hetman’s secret relief. The last time any man from the government came up the mountains, he was for Oda, and came with an army to destroy the monastery that had been just a little further up the pass. The folks old enough to remember those times (there were a few left; it's no secret that mountain people live a long time, if they stay clear of the world of the samurai) scurried for shadowed places and looked at the man and his swords as wise old mice might hide in a haystack to watch a young owl.
The man had been given the name Honda by his father, in honor of Lord Ieyasu's famous retainer. His family name was not very famous. He was young and tall, and, if you liked men who had the look of an owl about them, rather handsome. His eyes were too big, not very much so, nothing you’d notice yourself noticing, not until the third or fourth time you looked at him, and then, all you’d find yourself wondering is what he saw.

His hair was longer and thicker than that of many of the girls; he wore it loose. It made the village that much more nervous that the man did not wear the topknot you expect to come with the swords he had but no one dared question him. He bore the right documentation, his travel papers and a letter of introduction; honestly, he could have shown the villagers none of these things, and they would not have questioned him. The brown leaves had a way of swirling around him, when he walked, as if some invisible serpent was trying to attack him, and there was always wind where he was, even if the rest of the village was still.
On his second day in the village, Honda sought out Toshi. Toshi was an embarrassment to the village. His father had been pretty successful in his life, and had been able, building on the work of his father and his grandfather and his great grandfather, all fairly successful, to save enough money to send Toshi away to school. Toshi, the man said, had gone to China, though none of the villagers really believed this, and some of them, privately, didn't necessarily believe that such a place existed. Toshi's father had passed on of a stroke some years ago, and, upon hearing news of the old man's death, Toshi returned home. His mother died a few months later, a stroke as well, but her friends said it was also from mortification. Toshi had been a miserable scholar, hated the work, hated the school, and hated being away from home. He had also turned out to be a miserable farmer, and, for a while, got by on selling pieces of his father's lands, probably the best in the village. Now he lived, a bachelor past 30, by himself in the house with a miserable little plot of land, envy over the chance he had, and scorn over the hash he'd made of it.
The one thing Toshi had picked up in his schooling was calligraphy. No one in the village except for Toshi and the hetman could read, and no one but Toshi had ever seen scrolls or much writing on anything, ever. Toshi's house was full of scrolls, and those scrolls were full of characters. Toshi had run out of paper and means or opportunity to buy paper years ago, so he drew characters in the practice bed and on scrolls he had already completed. Honda found him sitting outside his home, one of the village cats sitting in his lap. Honda carried a huge sheaf of paper with him. Toshi shot up out of his chair at the sight of the samurai and did what he needed do to show respect to station, but, unlike his fellows in the village, he did it well, he made Honda some twig tea (Toshi apologized for the poor quality) and the two men stood outside of Toshi's house and spoke.
Honda's orders were to get five scrolls from Toshi, made on a special paper, drawn with certain brushes and a special ink. These scrolls were to bear a poem each, which Honda had memorized and would dictate to Toshi. Toshi was to be given paper, ink and brushes with which to practice, and would have to practice ten characters a day, which is a lot of work for anyone, and the thought made Toshi’s brow sweat.

Honda pointed out the walls of Toshi’s cottage. When he had run out of paper, he’d started in on the walls. There were rooms still untouched by Toshi’s fraying old brushes in the house, but the house, for what it was, it wasn’t that small.

“I have confidence,” said Honda, “That you are the only man alive who can do this.”

The scrolls needed to be complete and delivered to Edo before the end of the winter, or the enterprise would have failed. Toshi asked how Honda could ever get back out of the mountains once the snows had come. Honda answered that that was his burden, not Toshi's and showed him the money he was supposed to pay Toshi on the completion of the task. The sight of it silenced Toshi's other questions.
Honda left Toshi with supplies and bid him practice and make ready for tomorrow, when they would begin their task. He gave Toshi five sheets of paper on which to practice; then he returned to the ryokokan, and the fire in the kitchen. Toshi sat and stared at the paper, stared at his practice tablet, stared at the inside of his eyelids. He walked through his house, where every wind made the sound of autumn leaves in all the crowded scrolls and scraps affixed to its walls. At sunset, when a heavy blanket of black clouds began to spit tiny ice crystals at Eight Winds, Toshi finally set down to work.
It took him less than half an hour to finish five scrolls.
The next day, the sun returned, but it was very cold and the season's first hard frost was on the ground. Honda came to Toshi's house early in the morning; his coming startled up a little owl from the rafters of Toshi’s house.

This day, he showed Toshi the brushes he would use. The handles were blue, and they did shine in winter sun; the light that shone on them was blue as well, the blue of veins in the skin. The wind stirred the bristles a little; they were blue-black and glossy. Toshi saw the samurai’s eye on the other side, just a little too wide; maybe he noticed for the first time. The eye sighted him, the bristles just beneath; it made Toshi think Honda was holding a bow.

Honda returned early the next morning and remained until late at night. They worked together, Honda dictated the words, not in order, he explained. This was like a cipher, and the meaning would have to reveal itself over the course of the work. Toshi practiced each one many hours, concentrating on them, sometimes doing nothing but sitting and considering.

Snows came, Toshi burned through most of his store of firewood in first month, his house glowing yellow-orange from within from the huge fires he built. Both men now wore heavy clothing all the time, and neither of them left the fire for long. Toshi took to shivering even in the warm. The cats abandoned his house, which had been their sanctuary for all the time he'd lived there.
Nights for Toshi and Honda grew later, mornings grew earlier, first and then later. Some mornings saw Honda returning to his rooms in the ryokokan from Toshi's house.  There were a couple of people who claimed that there was frost on his eyelashes when he came back, even on milder days.
It was near the deepest part of the winter, and the firewood was dangerously low; Toshi finished with the practice and Honda showed him the ink he was to use, a stone that was the deepest color that Toshi had ever seen. Wet and applied to the last sheet of paper Honda had brought, the character that Toshi wrote was blue.
Toshi's hands were numb for several seconds after he finished. He stuck them under his arms to warm them.
"What will we do for paper, now," Toshi asked "You told me that this is all you've brought."
"I'll show you," said Honda and he stood up and went outside.

It was snowing that night, the fat white flakes that made intimate, wet sounds as it fell. It lay as deep as Toshi's ankles; he had difficulty following the samurai out into a field that had once been his father's. They walked to near the center of the field; a place where all Toshi could see was white and black at war with one another in his eyes. Honda had not brought a light, and neither had Toshi. Honda didn’t seem to need much light, with his eyes. The wind howled as it always seemed to do around Him, Toshi wondered, too, if there were owls calling nearby, there was a little sense of something throaty under that wind, but it always just escaped Toshi’s ears. Honda stopped as they reached the center of the field. Toshi looked around. He did not dare speak.
Honda began to speak, mumbling, the language didn’t sound like one Toshi knew or had heard of before; it sounded, a little, like Chinese. Honda held one hand in front of his face, like a monk and stared at a patch on the ground. Toshi looked and maybe he saw the patch shimmer, a little, or perhaps it was simply his eyes adjusting to the dark. Honda stopped looked at Toshi and nodded at the spot on the ground.
"Quickly," he hissed "Pick it up!"
Toshi bent and looked put his hands into the snow, not expecting to find anything, but too conditioned to obey to hesitate. Part of his mind wondered if this was some lesson, or way for Honda to make him feel foolish. These thoughts had little time to form and none to walk; Toshi's hands closed on the edge of a sheet of paper.
"Careful!" Honda said "Pick it up and roll it."
Toshi did. Honda walked away, coming to a stop about 20 paces away, and repeated the process. Toshi picked up the paper without being told. Honda did this three more times, with Toshi following in his wake, collecting the resulting sheets. When he had the five, Honda turned to him; he was shivering.
"We need make a fire to dry them," he said.
Toshi and Honda returned to Toshi's house and made a fire large enough that Toshi was at first afraid that they would burn his house down. They set out the pages on five sides of the fire pit. Despite the fire, nothing charred, and nothing burned; the house was cold. Honda stayed that night, as he had several times. He took the paper with him when he left in the morning, telling Toshi that he had a day's rest before the real work began. Toshi did not get out of bed that day. He lay under all his covers, dressed in all his clothes, shivering.
Honda had always been pale, and his skin was cold. Toshi had told himself that he could get used to that, and, in a way, he was. Toshi had gotten thinner, and his flesh had gotten pale, and chilly, and, in a sort of way harder to the touch than it had been. Toshi slipped in and out of sleep during that day, dreaming of men fighting on snowy fields, blue ink staining the snow where there should have been blood.
Honda returned the next day, with a single sheet of paper. Toshi prepared the ink. Honda recited the first of five poems to Toshi, as Toshi sat and opened his mind to the words. They hung in his mind, floating for a few long minutes and then froze. His entire mind became ice, and with numb fingers, he drew each character in the poem. By the time he was aware of anything else, it was night time, and, again, snowing. He was in his bed, Honda lying next to him.
Noticing he was awake, Honda got up, told him that tomorrow they would have the second poem to do and left. Toshi knew that Honda would never spend another night in this house; he tried to be disappointed; honestly, he did try.
That night he dreamed of walking across the field again, barefoot, and seeing, off in the distance, the figure of a tall woman, young, with hair hung to her ankles, dragging in the snow. He walked toward her, and found, where her hair had touched, a trail of blue ink. She left no footprints.
The next day, Toshi was shivering as Honda told him the words to the poem. Those words, though not in any order like that which he had practiced them for most of the month, now froze in his mind. Toshi drew out the scroll. He dreamed of the snow woman again that night, only sometimes her face was Honda's, and her hands and feet had faded from view in an evaporating wisp of blue ink.
On the third day, the third poem. The third night, the snow woman's arms and legs were gone at the elbows and knees, and she seemed to move on her hair, supported by locks as strong as legs, jellyfish tentacles slithering through the snow, each one leaking dark blue characters as she went.

Toshi wasn’t afraid. He felt for the girl. Toshi had no siblings, but the feeling, he thought would be the same as if she was his sister. Maybe. Toshi woke with a sense that they had something in common. Owls had gotten into his house in the night, somehow, and they startled when Honda came in.
“I’m not going to draw any more for you,” Toshi said to Honda, “I’m done with this. My hands are full of chilblains and I’m cold like an old man.”

Honda didn’t say anything. He thrust the fourth sheet of paper in front of Toshi and waited. Toshi didn’t move.

The samurai struck him, Toshi felt his jaw come partly lose, saw the world go white and black, felt something warm on his lip. In the moment that his head was back, maybe he saw the woman from his dream, standing there in the room, back pressed tight into the corner.

Two drops of his blood fell on the paper. Toshi looked down and saw them spread, soak up.

“I’ve spoiled it,” he said, “You can kill me, if you want, but this is ruined now. I can’t do any more.”

“You haven’t spoiled it,” said Honda, “Look.”

His blood had turned blue on the page. When Toshi put his brush to it, it flowed into his stroke, and the scroll, when he finished, was without flaw.

That night, the girl was nothing more than a fading torso; she came to him and began to speak, but no sound came out of her mouth that Toshi could hear above the howling wind. Maybe the feathers of an owl’s wing in flight, maybe it was the sound of a cold throat in the wind, or a big, low flute, winter playing on a cave mouth, a hollow tree. Maybe it was the voice of that owl lost under the wind.
On the final day, Honda came to Toshi's house, and Toshi began to prepare the ink, but could no longer find the stone they had been using. He felt his face grow hot, the only warmth he'd felt since they’ gone and gotten the paper, but Honda was calm. He told Toshi sit in front of his table as always, and set out his tools. Honda walked behind Toshi and whispered the last poem into his ear, close enough that Toshi could actually feel warmth from Honda's breath.
And then he had ink, he dipped his brush, and, with numb cold hand, drew out the final scroll. Several times he had to pass his hand over the bowl to refill the ink, but this didn't much bother him. He finished, in good time, dizzy, cold, weak from the effort, but Honda smiled at him and rolled up the now dry scroll.
Toshi knew he ought to ask Honda about the promised payment. Instead he held up the brush, so that the tip lined up with the bottom of his eye, lined up with Honda.

“These weren’t poems,” he said.

Honda shook his head, “Confessions.”

Toshi shook the brush, slightly, so that the tip curled over, just a bit. Honda’s too-big eyes narrowed and focused on it.

“You seduced her?”

“I didn’t love her,” Honda said. Toshi wondered if that was meant to be a comfort.

They sat a long time; Toshi, he was weary, and he didn’t find it hard, anymore, to meet Honda’s eyes. He noticed, finally, that Honda’s eyes had no whites. There was a red-brown band of iris around wide, wide pupils, and the rest outside was the dark green-gray of a preserved duck egg’s yolk. When Toshi spoke, he could almost not hear the low voice that came out, not under the sound of the wind.

“Did you love me?”

It was ten days before anyone came to check on the house. Toshi and the man from Edo were not there. The village ignored the house until spring, ignored the land. There was a little talk of sending out some word, but no one could agree on whom they ought to tell, and everyone could agree that it was better not to trouble trouble. If you ask, no one in town is going to admit to having seen a samurai since the old folks were young.

Owls roost in Toshi’s house, but the cats stay away. Either way, it keeps the mice down.

No Change The Wicked not Facing Itself

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:45:55 GMT

Hello. How much physical pain can you withstand, do you think?
How long can you go without sleep?
How long can you go without human contact?
Food? Water? How long?
What would break you? What would break you so badly that there was no fixing you?

Have you thought about it recently? Have you thought about it ever? Did you notice, those of you who live in America, who is asking you those questions, not in so many words, not bluntly, as I have, but asking them just the same. I tell you, if you have seen them with the black bags over their heads, the orange jumpsuits, hands tied behind their back, you must have wondered what it would be like to be them. Or you did not wonder at all. That's the true beauty of torture, that's the real effect, and I would argue, the real intent. Did you not wonder what it would be like to be one of those in the pile, one of those in the brine, or one of those smiling and pointing, one behind the camera, taking pictures.

Do you ask yourself what you think you can take?
Do you ask yourself what you think you could be made to give?
Do you not ask, and not think and turn away?

Any choice you make is victory for the torturer. We know, every professional investigator knows, through experience, through tradition, that torture is useless as intelligence gathering. The information gathered cannot be trusted, is not usable. Torture, we tell ourselves, does not work.

It does, however, if intelligence is not the goal, and I hold that it is not, nor ever was the goal of the torturers to get intelligence, to get usable information. The goal of torture is the same as the means; you inflict pain, you create fear, you destroy humanity. For these goals, torture inarguably does work, and it does not merely work on those who wait on the torturer's table. It works universally.

If you have empathy, you will feel fear, you will understand pain. You may, if you are sensitive or imaginitive, you may even search your own self for the torturer, and maybe you will find them. The outcome for most would be fear, the outcome for some would be the loss of empathy, still fewer will find a horror within their hearts and the fear will be that much greater. Some small portion will find strength, commitment. Those vanishingly small numbers will make themselves known, they can be dealt with later. The strength they gain cannot withstand the second treatment. Or the third, or the thousandth. The torturer knows that time is his ally.

If you lack empathy, you will become accostomed to this. Torture is designed specifically to destroy empathy. The human psyche withstands only so much horror before it ceases to register. If empathy and humanity are senses, torture seeks to create a horrible sun to blot out that sight, that insight, and leave you blind. If you lack empathy, you do not see it, you do not feel it. You might come to believe that there is a necesity to it, and if you do not, well, without empathy, we are truly individual, truly divided, truly powerless. Those who harden themselves sufficiently may find a use for themselves in the torturer's regime. Those who harden themselves sufficiently may become torturers themselves.

The torturer enjoys causing pain. This is not a sexual pleasure, there is nothing sexual here, there is only power. Through torture, you hold a power that even God does not have; you control the will, you break and destroy the soul, if there is a hell, you are the one who sends the soul there, making them feel nothing but rage and fear and despair. You become the judge, you arrange the heart and arrange the mind and arrange the soul to madness, denial, despair. You become the judge. You damn souls.

So yes, torture works, and the beauty of it is that torture works on everyone who is aware of its practice. Some will cower in fear, some will burn with rage, some will freeze their hearts, but everyone is wounded when the torturer picks up his brand. The torturer seeks to create hell on earth. Welcome to hell.

Tribal Magic

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:31:52 GMT

ETA Now available to the general public at request. Comments will be screened.

I spend time in myth and fantasy.  I spend time in politics and power.  Most folks would hope, and the folks in power seem to be very invested in propegating this viewpoint that the two have nothing to do with one another, and shouldn't. I've never gotten the impression that people, the general rout of us, all faiths and beliefs and shapes and shades and political affiliations, see a connection between the two, or appreciate that connection. After all, we accuse our political rivals of fantasy all the time, and why not? It's an accusation of which we can always be sure.

My political enemies have that infamous quote about reality and how they create it. Such arrogance, such fantasy. A lot of my allies ignore it. A few of us don't, because we know what they mean. We know they are sincere. We know that they may succeed. Magic is like that. Sometimes it works.

I see one of my copractitioners got himself embarrassed trying to kill a skeptic on Indian TV, and, frankly, I am surprised; not that it didn't work, but that a respected magician would be foolish enough to take that bet, to appear on that show and try to work mojo on someone who's going to laugh at him the whole time. Let me tell you, there is no magic proof against laughter. Breaks every damn spell. Magicians hate to get laughed at; we have giant egos, and while C. S. Lewis, I think, was a crank on a lot of things, he had us nailed on that one.  Granted, you get a magician who knows that and laughs at themselves, well, then, you're really not in danger from them anyway, so don't worry.

Magic? WTF. Yeah, I figured that would be showing up the moment I started talking about it. The way I see it, there is nothing mysterious about it, nothing supernatural or supernal. I would use a different word if there were one that encompassed the great mix of mythology, applied psychology, imagination, theatrics, mind-over-body, mental organization and confidence building that comprises it. What it is, more or less, is a rubric you use, a way of organizing your thoughts, understanding your intent and getting what you want. Nothing more. It's got a lot in common with art, with martial arts, with business, with financial planning (hell, one of the more respected magicians I know is working that angle as we speak, to reasonable, professional effect. He might disagree with me on the content of what he's doing, or he might not. I should ask sometime).

That said, I would be a liar to characterize it as anodyne, harmless. Nothing is harmless. Ask any artist. Magic requires two things of its practitioners, as far as I know. It does require a measure of arrogance; there isn't really a way around that which I know. A good practitioner will remember to kill that snake once it's told all its secrets (with laughter) but a lot of them won't. And arrogance has a tendency to grow back when you're not looking. If you look in a certain stream in Middletown and you hear laughter echoing in the streambed, then you know I've caught mine. Laugh with me. Laugh at me. It's good for me. The other thing one needs is the willingness to transgress. Any magic you do, however benign in intent is "black magic" the first time you do it, because it is transgressive in nature. Transgression leads to greater boundaries, sure, and it leads to greater mastery of self, and yes, Bigger and Better things, but damn. That Spiderman quote, about power and responsibility. Which boundaries you choose to transgress and when and how you choose to trangress them, I don't suppose I need to explain the dangers inherent. The dangers to self, the dangers to others, and when you trangress the wrong boundary and cause harm, well, on your head be it.

I don't, in the end, reccommend it as a lifestyle, there are other ways to be successful in life, ones that don't have quite so bad a reputation. Of course, some poeple are going to come to this place anyway, just like I did, and there isn't any helping it. So remember to laugh at yourself, because anything that breaks under the weight of laughter is not something you want. Anyway.

If you're going to ask Americans about ideals their country has, good things about their country and how it operates, you're going to get notions that you can categorize as either coming out of the "enlightenment" period of European history or out of Christianity. I'd tell you the same, then judge the nation harshly by our shortfalls in regards to those ideals. Both categories of thought or belief don't have an awful lot of truck with magic, and yet, somehow, we have been saddled with a ruling class of hierophants and soothsayers with scuttling scribes and magicians at their hems. We have a new priestly class, here, which you can know by their giant churches, satellite dishes and satellite congregations, corporate models, and, oh yes, their witchcraft. This is territory I've run down before, and I'll try to make my stop here pretty brief, too, since I am already well into tl;drland.

On Sunday night, I saw a little of Joel Osteen working a crowd with the name it, claim it / Prosperity Gospel routine. God wants you, he says, to have a big HD TV, a big car, a big house. God wants you to be successful in this world (you know the one with moths and rust and mice and shit like that), so pray for cash. I organized my mind and thoughts for cash and got a good review at work and picked up a class on Wednesday nights. God has just as much to do with my witchcraft as Joel Osteen's; or, more to the point, those who listen to Joel Osteen and name and claim what they want around here. You know, where Mammon is in charge. Joel Osteen is a kind of magician that I could never be, with powers that I would never want. Man frightens me, he's got kinds of black magic I don't understand, he uses television and a huge organization to transgress thousands and teach them to be subordinate magicians, I mean, shit. The way I see this guy, well, Weta got all sorts of awards for their special effects work depicting him.

You would think that Osteen's ostensible Christianity would serve as some kind of check on him, but it doesn't. That's no indictment of Christianity, which, really, has influence only on those who subscribe to the faith. Osteen doesn't. He's no kind of Christian I know. He's one of our boys. Robertson, Le Haye, Fallwell, Parsley, McCain's friend Hagee, magicians all.

But then, they are different from the other powerful magicians that run this country, aren't they? Cheney, Rove, Murdoch, Eric Prince, those guys (despite the last's devotion to the false Christianity of Dominion) they don't wear the collar, so to speak. The ones I'm talking about  are men of faith, an ostensible faith, anyway. Again, it's not Christianity; my friend John Brand (who I miss dearly) identified the Gods these men serve: they serve Mammon, they serve bloody Mars and gorey Ares (because well, frankly, there is enough war for both of them). Granted, they use all the same names that Christians use, and (carefully selected portions of [see Slacktivist for a really good rundown of which and how]) the same book, but their religion is fundamentally different in other ways than the Gods they worship.

Christianity, though many forms of the faith have overdeveloped hierarchies and impressive hats, as far as I know, is meant to be and was always meant to be a personal faith that forms a community of believers, who, would, in theory, impress the rest of us by being cool and smart and kind, maybe so much that we wanted in. Yeah, they do often fuck up on that account (by their own admission), but some of them do succeed quite well. I've got some issues with some of the things that even successful Christians believe and do, but those aren't for this post. Those aren't as pressing to me where I'm sitting.

These others, they are different. The faith is not personal to them. Their personal faith is encompassed in the moment in which they say the magic words and ostensibly Jesus gives them the free pass. Personal faith, resolved; it now has exactly as much meaning as authorial intent. It can be whatever they say it is. It's not the focus at all. There are no requirements on that faith.

This is why when the Creationist, or the Dominionist, or the Premillenialist rails and the progressive or the atheist lobs that "Well, I'm sorry that your faith is so fragile that it cannot stand up to (someone not believing, women having sex drives, Muslims' or Mexicans' continued existence, radio-carbon dating)," it never seems to work. A person with faith would consider whether or not said thing makes God any less relevant to their lives and whether they do good or ill, and will probably come out of it a better person, with a stronger faith, who probably won't worry so much about whatever it is. But with someone who's faith has been resolved in the recitation of magic words, that faith is unfalsifiable and may as well not exist. Really, this kind of "Christian" does additional violence to the faith whose name they hijacked by looking like perfect evidence for an atheist. Faith is not the issue with them.

The leaders of these people are not ministers, seeing to the needs of their people; they are magicians, transgressing their followers and taking of them. They do not check their arrogance, they do not hesitate to cross any boundary (notice how many of them turn out to be brazen apparent hypocrites? A forked tongue is usually one of the first thing these magicians go for), every boundary. Their lust for personal power is has no limit. Granted, it isn't just personal power they seek.

Hail Jupiter, bring me victory! That's the issue. Or more to the point, bring my tribe victory. Their religion is a tribal religion; their purpose tribal unity, the kind of unity that comes from unconditional, unquestioned authority. With the adoration and the obedience of the whole tribe, the sacrifice of the whole tribe (and I'll give you three guesses what that tribe looks like. You can use the ones you have left over to guess what language they speak) they could accomplish such great workings of magic. They must have you believe Special Creation and Literal Bibilical Inerrancy becuase they would be able to control what interpretation is literal, they would hold the keys of heaven and hell. They must have you believe Special Creation becuase science does not always anwer their questions the way they would like them answered. They must have you believe that God entitles you to luxuries so that you will seek them deep into debt and you will demand more, and, in that demand accept anything they do to other nations to provide it. They must have you believe in the virtue of wealth, because they are wealthy, and because, if there is any belief that you could consider tribal amongst Americans, it is that money is status and status is virtue; those with more deserve more, they are better people. They must have you believe there is a monolithic Caliphate creeping into and conquering Europe because they would create a monolith of their own for to conquer.

And conquest is the goal. They look at the Romans and come away with the wrong lesson; they believe that an empire must always expand, must always be at war. Without war, there is no purpose. They sell the wars on need and hate and self-righteousness and the fact that for those who believe as they do, the martyr's exit is way sexier than the pilgrim's progress (I'm told certain bands of criminals in the other parts of the world recruit this way as well).  At this point you're probably wondering why I haven't talked about sex before now, or why I'm putting it into a paragraph about conquest. Okay, the feminists in the audience are not, they know this song and dance, and there is a damn good reason why it is here. All the tribalists know of sex and sexuality is informed entirely by the militaristic model of conquest. Their understanding of sexual intercourse, their understanding of gender, their understanding of sexuality. It is not just the hardcore tribalists, though, it is linguistically programmed into the English language. Think of how sex acts and sexuality and the like are spoken of; did you ever nail or bang or score with someone? No one embraces that dynamic like the Tribalists, do though; their sexual hangups stem from the fact that they must have many soldiers and the proper war magic. War magic that is hard, steely, unyielding, unbending, rigid, strong, firm, ruthless, endlessly plunging, pushing, pumping, penetrating, conquering...

Look at Simmons' piece that I excoriated last night. "You have grown soft... the world isn't as complex as your gentle liberal minds..."

Softness, gentility, complexity. Hm. I sense something here.  Words associated with... nah, can't quite remember. I'm sure it will come to me.

Oh, and just so you know, this is why they are terrified of queers, because one consensual act of sodomy ruins the whole magic. Gone. *poof*

This is the magic that they want; and they do believe they need it. They must; I see no other explanation to the common hypothesis that I most recently visited last night with Simmons. These are people who truly believe that wars are won in the will, that a war requires good magic in order to be successful, and that, when force fails, more force must be necessary, and more force, harder, faster! If we have no more force, the only explanation is that we are too gentle, too soft, too complex. War magic must be, ruthless, hard, simple. When a hard force fails, more hard force.

It sounds ridiculous, and it is. This is the best part. They've put power and money and will and organization and a great mountain of theatrics (which is something in which this administration specializes - we have the commentary about Bush's landing on the Abraham Lincoln, with, I kid you not, breathless fanboying over the Most Powerful Penis in the World, which you can find easily - I humbly submit to you now as evidence for my point about war magic, its composition and its importance to these people) pressed into making us believe, horrible acts to try and isolate, marginalize and yes, even cull the people who the Tribalists do not see fit to include in the tribe.

We cannot take on the money and the power and the force and the fraud so easily, but we can break the magic, wreck the spells, and endlessly frustrate the bastards who want to mold us into something thoroughly monstrous.

Laughter (and, well, sodomy, if that does it for you). I've been told the devil can't stand to be mocked. So laugh. Enough laughter will make the rest of the work we must do seem a lot easier.

Yay, more crap we have to do...

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:45:51 GMT

Snurched from
lupabitch.

who snurched it from (two or three steps along the way)
yendi, whose post I must've missed.

Facebook is putting adware on your computer to see what you buy. Three guesses who else is doing this too.
I'll give you a hint.

They just got sold to the Russians.

Here's what you can do about it.

ETA More on the Russians from insomnia right here.

Warren Ellis has been thinking insanejournal. Might be worth a look.

Crackers Don't Matter, Give Me the Contributor's Copies

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:31:28 GMT

...and last night they arrived for Jabberwocky 3

And they look awesome. Watch this space, once it's available you should get a copy (or 12), because it is fortified with win (including my poems "Kore" and "Summer of Smoke").

In Which I Prove to a Few Folks who Might have Said Otherwise that I Am Not an Old La - er...

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:14:00 GMT

Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax

You are Granny Weatherwax! The most powerful witch on the Disc! You often use headology rather than actual spells, and are a very good witch, despite the fact that you sometimes wish you were a bad one. You play a mean game of Cripple Mr. Onion, and have a very powerful stare. By the way, you should really get that broom fixedÃ¢â‚¬Â¦

Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax

75%

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg

69%

Lord Havelock Vetinari

56%

Commander Samuel Vimes

56%

The Librarian

50%

Cohen The Barbarian

44%

Death

38%

Greebo

38%

Rincewind

38%

Carrot Ironfounderson

38%

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:29:10 GMT

Happy Armistice Day, Everyone.

Learn Vocab, Donate Rice

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:15:44 GMT

If you follow this link to Free Rice, they let you play a vocadbulary game that donates 10 grains of rice for every word you get right.
Oh yeah. There goes the rest of my day.

YEAH!

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:01:06 GMT

Bufo Rex has been accepted to the anthology Fantasy: Best of the Year

Snoopy Dance Mode: Engaged

The Jena 6

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:46:31 GMT

Pam notices that there isn't an awful lot of coverage of this in the progressive blogs. I've noticed this includes mine. I intend to rectify that right the hell now.

From a much earlier post

The Jena Six, as you recall, are being charged with attempted second degree murder because of a fight with a White student. What the law enforcement folks conveniently forget is that this was after months of being harassed, threatened, and intimidated by White students and their adult allies.

At the Jena high school, White students only sat under a tree. A black student asked to sit there one day, and the next day, Black students found three nooses hanging from the tree. The White superintendent called it a “prank,” and suspended the White students who hung the nooses. They were back at school three days later.

To protest, the Black students all stood under the tree. And what happened next was a ridiculous overreaction on the part of the good Whites (with no racism! Nosireee!) in Jena, LA.

JACQUIE SOOHEN: The school responded to the protest by calling police and the district attorney. At an assembly the same day, the District Attorney Reed Walters, accompanied by armed policeman, addressed the students. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers, one of the few black teachers at the school, was there. She recalls the DA’s words to the assembled high schoolers.
MICHELLE ROGERS: The kids didn’t say anything. They were listening. The kids were quiet. And so, District Attorney Reed Walters, you know, proceeded to tell those kids that “I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.��? And the kids were just — it was like in awe that the district — you know, Reed Walters would tell these kids that. He held a pen in his hand and told those kids that, “See this pen in my hand? I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen.��?

After that, there were other “incidents” that must have been no big deal, as the White students who ~~committed the crimes~~ engaged in harmless pranks were never charged. The attendees of an all-White party ganged up on and beat a Black kid who had the gall to go there. A White student pulled a gun on a group of Black students, who got the gun away from him, and called the cops. Not only were no White people charged in either incident, but the Black teens in the second incident were charged with robbery (of the gun) and assault. For Hades’ sake.

Several days later, when a White student was attacked (he was released from the hospital that day and attended a school function that evening), six Black students were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They could spend over twenty years in prison each. One, Mychal Bell, has already been convicted by an all-White jury and is facing 22 years in prison.

During his trial, the racist crap continued.

The all-white jury which was finally chosen included two people friendly with the District Attorney, a relative of one of the witnesses and several others who were friends of prosecution witnesses.
Bell’s parents, Melissa Bell and Marcus Jones, were not even allowed to attend the trial despite their objections, because they were listed as potential witnesses. The white victim, though a witness, was allowed to stay in the courtroom. The parents, who had been widely quoted in the media as critics of the process, were also told they could no longer speak to the media as long as the trial was in session. Marcus Jones had told the media “It’s all about those nooses��? and declared the charges racially motivated.
Other supporters who planned a demonstration in support of Bell were ordered by the court not to do so near the courthouse or anywhere the judge would see them.

Whites in Jena don’t believe they have a race problem. They have a “crime” problem, according to the local librarian, and I would hazard a guess that the superintendent would call it a “prank” problem. Or, more accurately, they have a “crime” problem when Black students do it, and a “prank” problem when White students do it.

Elle has a post up about what you can do about this. Blueintheface at Kos has the contact information for state and local representatives. Contact them and put the pressure on them.

Further reading:
While Seated
Countercurrents
Kevin of Slanttruth started a Facebook page and cause in support of the Jena Six. In fact, thank you, Kevin for the reminder to keep supporting the Jena Six.

Also:
Sign a petition urging the Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation of this case..

You’ll notice that I linked to a report about the case by Democracy Now! Democracy Now! has a lot of new staff, interns and volunteers. They need computers for these folks, and if you–or an organization you work for or with–can do it, a donation of Power Mac G4s & G5s, PowerBook G4s, Mac Minis, Power Macs, MacBook Pros and flat screen displays would be a big help. You can go to this link for a list of specific models.

From the Bannered Website's Talking Points:

This was a schoolyard fight. The charges in this case are out of proportion to what actually occurred.
The young men who hung the nooses were only suspended for 3 days for what is essentially a hate crime.
Even though Mychal Bell’s conviction has been nullified, District Attorney Reed Walters says he will appeal the ruling, and plans to prosecute the other 5 young men.
The District Attorney is trying to ruin these young men’s lives. It's time for him to drop the charges against all 6 young men.
The District Attorney has overstepped his authority and acted unethically, and should be disciplined by both the Governor and the Louisiana Bar.
The goal of the Day of Action is to raise the pressure on D.A. Reed Walters and on Governor Blanco.
Blanco and Walters have both failed to act in the face of compelling evidence of misconduct.
There are hundreds of events happening across the country today in conjunction with the rally in Jena.
In addition to the events, thousands of people are flyering in their neighborhoods and making calls to Louisiana officials.
We couldn't go to Jena, but we wanted to make our voices heard here in _______.
This is an issue that affects people from all walks of life across the country.
Anyone who cares about the welfare of Black Americans should be outraged that this kind of Jim Crow justice is still alive in America today.

Hey, It's Comics!

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:38:29 GMT

I wonder where we are in this.

A poem made from a meme and Orange Diary.

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:17:21 GMT

Haiku² for watermelontail
no visible land in any direction the sky is a shade of
@

Created by Grahame

The man who comes
up with these stories tried again
back east but this group,
Lord, I saw the sin in
both of them. I know because
I’ve written them and
leaning up against
a rock she looks much colder
than the river.
no visible land
in any direction the
sky is a shade of
red taken from the
dead leaves of a certain type
of oak tree the one that
becomes white with black
paws and his vision must be
very hot to touch.
His voice has shrunk and
retreated down into his
chest underneath,
white with black flute tied
up in orange thorns and one
more as I wrote it.