Many Thanks

Greetings,

Yes, my dear friend Tom in the states of amnesia has received one hard copy and boxes of paperbacks.

He said he will wrap up the hard copy in an airtight container and bury it beneath a sarcophagus. A time capsule memory.

The paperbacks will be dispersed through the world to individuals. Such a fine little gift.

Many thanks to each and all of you for giving my novel a little look-see, turning pages, inside and outside the perpetual dance of dreams.

Omar sends his regards from Spain. "It's a thing of beauty."
I couldn't have completed it without his wisdom and guidance.
May your path be filled with light and love.

A Century Is Nothing

Greetings,

I am pleased to say my novel, "A Century Is Nothing," is available through Amazon and iUniverse links on the sidebar. Now I am free to connect with you and others. It's a real joy.

How does it feel to work on a book for what appears to be forever and then let it go? Strange and liberating, like exhaling far out into deep space.

Yes, this transition feels calm and centered knowing the work is now not my responsibility - how I have hunted and gathered, sifted, sorted, analyzed it and nurtured it along the edges of dreams, facts, and playful imaginations.

So it goes now dancing free filled with the kindness, respect, dignity and mind fullness it deserves. Out into the stillness, from the center.

Thanks for reading it should you get a copy. It may make a fine little gift for someone special in your life as we share the adventure.

I look forward to your comments, critiques, and thoughts.

Peace.

Random Moleskine Notes

Creativity is my meditation. The comic, the absurd. Don't take it all too seriously. The one who laugh's lasts.

Writing suggestion: make your characters want something right away, even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of life still have to drink water from time to time.

It's the writer's job to stage confrontations so the characters will say surprising and revealing things and educate and entertain us all. If a writer can't or won't do that, they should get out of the trade.

Writer as hustler. They insist on being read. 

Doodle drama, ah the drama, the unfolding play! Information versus entertainment. Keep them stupid and happy. Children, of all ages, are amused by the idiot box.

We watch all the feelings, sensations and thoughts that arose upon having that event happen. 

Absolved by rain, the deluge.

"Keep your hand moving," whispered the writing teacher. They were strange. All of them.

The teacher in Tang Dynasty clothing filled with dragons, yin-yang mysteries of balance, becoming, a Phoenix rising, a crying crane flying through mist covered mountains while emperors danced with concubines inside Forbidden Cities's red lacquered emotional curiosities where visions of detached ebullient phosphorus streams dove into silence, the abstraction of tonal quality in extreme bliss, a manifestation of phenomenal superior detective analysis and a forty questions of the soul marketing examination at 7:00 p.m. was followed by utter exhaustion.

Draw here please with dancing ink. Speaking of creativity feel free to visit Moleskinerie at http://www.moleskinerie.com/

Manuel, The Butcher

Manuel the butcher stared through his jagged window of broken glass remembering the Spanish.
    His face was a mask of weary, solemn stillness. A quiet lying fury.    
    His silent words were the exaltations, evaluations, the expected surcharge, on an empty stomach, a tax for services rendered, reinforcements riding hard through the Basque valleys, listening for waves of German bombers over Guernica in 1936.     
    Beleaguered men held their own inside stone shepherd huts trapped in the desolate Pyrenees mountains spinning and standing grounded, surrounded by empty canteens, day old bread crusts, discarded family heirlooms, spent shell casings, their decomposing bodies relishing solitude.       
    He was required to remember old Fascist propaganda - the spreading of information.
    He is a fleischer, one who slaughters.   
In order to eat, to put food on the table, to provide for his family after peace was declared with celebrations of music, church services, wine, dancing, after burials he was forced by economics to slaughter his remaining beast of burden.

    This bull was his calling card, his vision, his hope, his dream and his identity in the village. Everything else was stolen by dictators, thieves and fascists. All he had was his dignity, integrity and self-respect.
    Time arrived short of sympathy, sentiment or condolences. He sharpened his short axe. Standing in the shade under the brutal Spanish sun he worked steel across a grindstone. Removing old edges. New edges on his blade. It was sharpened with passionate ambivalence.
    Laughter’s axe was ready.
    

    He walked into the center of the red clay ring surrounded by a white clapboard fence. The bull stood in the far corner. He approached the bull and held out his hands. They were young and lined with pulse rivers. The bull slowly emerged from the shade and Manuel collected the reins. Looking into the animal’s eyes he saw memory reflected in his soul.      
    He sighed, clapped his hands together twice, bowed to the bull, as a Shinto priest pays his respects to Bishamonten, the kami god of benevolent authority. He asked for forgiveness, for his act of fate, raised his laughing axe and brought it down hard and fast on the neck of the bull.    
    The bull froze and slumped, straining to escape the blade carving through old tough weathered skin, muscles, tendons, sinew, snapping final bones. Front legs folded, rear legs buckled. The carcass shuddered as a final breath exploded red dust.
    He clapped his hands again, severed the head and dragged the body to his shop. He cut it up and hung the severed head in his broken window. “For Sale.”    
    His wife served portions to family and neighbors. They consumed his life’s work, toasting his wisdom. Sharing is caring.
    I witnessed this.

 

Daily Casket Express

Greetings,

The daily Casket Express Metro pulled up at the central station between two platforms. On the "Departures," platform stood young military boys in battle dress; helmets, gas masks, water canteens, with weapons locked and loaded. A sergeant at arms played a bagpipe dirge.

On the "Arrivals" platform were strong black eyed men in front of 1,000 weeping women.

The orange and black doors opened on both sides. The soldiers rammed their spines to attention, eyes straight ahead as notes floated.

The express was five cars long and each car held 100 crude wooden caskets. The strong men spit on their hands and moved forward. As the boy soldiers sang, "We're off to the front, we're going to meet our destiny,"  and their wives, sisters and daughters waved goodbye the men hauled out the wooden boxes.

Teams of weeping mothers, daughters and sisters surged forward, pulling and grasping at wooden boxes as the men stacked them against walls. The women were seeking clarification, an I.D., an old photo, a necklace perhaps, a shred of evidence, a glass eye, some visual epiphany.

They came because they were called by some faceless totalitarian desk jockey handed the inevitable task of notifying next-of-kin so they came to claim.

The wives, mothers, daughters and sisters cried tears of blood. This captivated the audience of passive transparent heavily indoctrinated raw stoned ambivalent authorities hiding behind a pile of shredded documents containing treaties and falsified bills of lading.

When the men finished unloading the caskets, the soldiers marched into the cars,  the doors closed and it departed.

So it goes on the daily Casket Express.

Peace.