SF Stewing

I'm stewing on some ideas in the hopes that they come together into something coherent. It may need cleaning up my board and brainstorming plots on it--though that means erasing the Vincenzi stuff I have up there. Here's what I have:

EcoTechnics

Reading Wired's stuff  on the internet of things/industrial internet, I wonder what a society dominated by "smart" objects might look like. If your clothes are tagged and your closet, hamper, and laundry machine talk to each other, does that mean your closet would recommend a certain shirt on Tuesday? If I grab a certain pair of paints, would it tell me to try out a certain shirt? If I get up ten minutes later than normal, would I have black tea waiting for me instead of green? Could my bed, closet, shower, and vehicle cross-communicate to know what I like to do on early Saturday volunteer days?

Would this world create a more insular space--always wearing slacks on Monday with the blue shirt, jeans on Saturday with the striped black shirt--or would there be a way to introduce spice, play, and discovery to such a system? I can imagine that such a system could deeply cement the tedium of workaday lifestyles, but wouldn't necessarily do that. At the same time, "smart" objects depend on incredible quantities of data mapped across a life. This could produce an elite class of statistical programmers producing more efficient worlds by having increasingly responsive objects (an incredible expansion on the increased transcription proficiency of voice capture on smartphones).

How would this elite class define its goals? Would they simply be interested in efficiency (an immediate goal and product of smart objects) to the end of producing a para-governmental body that focuses and adapts services based on the measured behaviors of clients? Such goals could encourage insular lifestyles and ultimately undermine the imagination in a disempowering way, despite increasing overall efficiency. This is dystopic without be anti-utopian. Then again, meta-analysis may introduce new media to your diet and bring about a more cosmopolitan and dynamic world (the way good broadcasting schedules or even mixtapes can).

How this fits together into a story is pretty unclear. I can imagine someone working through this space--or even working in it--or having two people who use the technology in divergent ways... Then there are the political ramifications that could develop a more intricate, even spy-fi style intrigue. I think of this as "EcoTechnics," a field or business that looks at the overlay of technical systems in ecological, inter-related ways (hence a late morning needs more coffee because of poor sleep). And then there is:

Rewind

I'm still sorting this out, but SciFri was discussing--and I had previously read a brief on--how scientists are working to rewrite mouse memories. The therapeutic end may be the treatment of trauma patients--rewriting damaged PTSD neurons--to alternative therapies to dementia and or Alzheimer's. This suggests some crazy mind control stuff which I wouldn't mind hinting at but have no interest in focusing on. Instead, I want to consider the more unnerving repercussions of such therapy.

For example (and this is the story/character I can consider playing with in some form), if we take someone with PTSD and run them through a mnemonic gamut that reconnects the trauma with neutral or positive sentiments, won't that just inspire the actions that initially caused the PTSD? Now, though, those actions are part of a neural process that is positive rather than damaging; the person has just been cognitively primed to pursue high-danger acts.

In a more casual environment, you could get something like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though not in the dominant story. One of the technicians (Elijah Wood) uses the memories of Clementine (Kate Winslet) to activate her sympathies based on how Joel (Jim Carrey) had wooed her previously. If neural pathways have a certain valence (a fight with your partner is negative), but that valence can be neutralized or challenged, then the initial stimulus no longer has the weight attached to it (the fight no longer bears emotional weight).

This relates to how Hume and Spinoza (in different ways) look to emotions as accurate and effective triggers for decision making; it becomes the challenge of ethicists to persuade through both logical argumentation and emotional triggers their points. Argumentation lays the reasoning for a particular position, but the emotional triggers actually make people act differently. If the emotional valence is suddenly trivialized--it can be established post facto--then how would human relationships, intimate and otherwise, change?

...

I can imagine tying these together. I would like to think of SF as responding to a whole suite of technological and social changes or providing a novel perspective on our current political and technological footing. To meet the former, I want to envision the world as a unified whole that has been dramatically changed by technologies and politics emerging now. The potential for statistical behavioral analysis and an adaptive physical environment with the implications for rewriting the emotional relevancy of human memory is exciting and horrible. That said, I don't really have characters emerging from this yet.

So stewing I will continue.

Story - An Unfamiliar Coin

I wrote this in one go and would like to revise it a bit. That said, I don't know when I'm going to make the time. Also, I'd prefer to think of this as a picture book--even an adult reader-oriented picture book--rather than a story. It would be easy enough to capture the familiarity in either a muted or gray tone color scheme. You could also get a better sense of the strangeness of the world--not to mention an opportunity to show off weird, Lovecraftian architecture.

Enjoy!

...

An Unfamiliar Coin - for Emily (literally)

July 22, 2013

A young man went walking on his lunch break. On some days he studied. On some days he worked. But it did not matter what he was doing this day because what matters is that he went for a walk. 

On his walk, he saw the many familiar buildings in the familiar neighborhoods. He decided--or maybe it was decided for him--that he would venture out of these familiar places find unfamiliar places. At first, this was rather difficult. 

The young man at first retraced the steps to his favorite cafeteria where he often lunched. Through the broad front window he saw many familiar people eating familiar foods. A young woman waved at him and her company saw him and also waved. He waved back, smiling but not cheerful, and continued on his way. 

Next, the young man walked to the market where he often bought his dinner as he left from his workplace or from his university. He saw the shelves of familiar boxes displaying familiar images of what was inside. There were Gala apples and Bartlett pears, the bunches of carrots and stacks of zucchini, there were tidy bunches of fresh herbs and a fridge with glass bottles each with its own distinct but familiar flavor. The shopkeeper noticed him watching through the window. The young man nodded at the shopkeeper and walked on.

The young man then strolled through a park where he often read the newspaper in the morning and would, from time to time, read a novel in the clear afternoon light. Familiar trees cast familiar shadows on the passers-by, on the walkway and the central plaza, on the grass and flower beds. Even the strangers in the park were familiar and even the fountain in the center of the park seemed to cast the same flickering light patterns that he had seen so many times before.

As he left the park, the young man was disparaged. He felt that everything he was seeing, everywhere he was walking through was what he had always seen. He worried that it was all he would ever see. As he walked he tried looking up at the sky and became dizzy. He could feel people walk past in the disturbances of their wakes. Then, he looked down at the ground and walked looking at the ground. 

He lost track of how long he had been walking when he noticed that the shoes of the other pedetrian were rather strange. Rather than the laces and shiny leather he was used to, they seemed soft or jeweled or peculiarly colored. The young man was suddenly anxious and was not sure if he wanted to look up.

Suddenly, a flash of light caught his eye. It was off to the left and he darted toward it. In doing so he heard the complaints of the pedestrians around him, though he paid them little notice. He picked up the flashing object and it was a bright, silver coin unlike any coin he had seen. 

The coin had seven sides and either face of the coin was a detailed portrait. One side showed a young man who seemed deep in thought who looked out of the coin at the holder. On the opposite face was an elderly queen, arranged with jewels and a cloak. The queen looked out to the right as if she saw something ahead of her. 

The young man held the coin for some time. There wasn't any writing he recognized on it, though there were small symbols on it, and he wandered what it was worth. After inspecting one face, then the other, then the edges of the coin which had a smooth edge to them before the seven rounded corners, he looked around. 

Indeed, the people around him were strange to him. They wore bright clothing with odd accoutrements like feathers, tails, halos, horns, wings. As he watched them, he saw that they moved differently, too. Rather than the smooth rise and fall of heads in a crowd, they seemed to bob and weave and duck to their own rhythm. It was hard to make sense of how each person moved. They seemed distant even when they were close. And when they were close, they slipped into the tumultuous crowd quickly and were lost to his sight.

The buildings, too, were unfamiliar. He could not exactly make out how, but it seemed that their peaks were too high, that their bases were too narror, the middles too broad, the doorways a myriad of shapes and sizes. Above him, he also saw stars alighting in the sky despite the sun being just past its zenith.

The young man was still anxious about this unfamiliar place. He had so wanted to find something unlike where he had been and had, after some searching, found it. In finding it he felt distant and alone. The unfamiliar people around him did not look his way, though he believed that they could sense him. His strangeness to them, he realized, must be almost as profound as their strangeness to him.

After looking, he listened. He listened to the strange striding sounds--hooves and faint wafting of wings and soft-skinned footfalls--that formed a peculiar orchestra all around him. He wanted to listen to it, but it inflamed his anxiousness. So he closed his eyes and he strained his ears. He also smelled the strange smells of this unfamiliar people, this unfamiliar place. People brushed passed him and he felt fur and feathers and fishy scales and slimy salamander flesh and craggy lizard skin.

The young man thought of the familiar cafeteria the smells and tastes of its dishes. He thought of the feel of a soft, forgiving pear in his hand and how the sweetness was hinted but not given by its texture. He thought of the park with its dappling sunlight and the young families happy to enjoy an afternoon, of the children playing with balls and frisbees or sipping from juiceboxes with cartoons emblazoned on them. He thought of his university and its library smelling of old pages and of his workplace and the pleasant tapping clatter of pens and keys and heels.

He thought of these things when he heard the ring of a bell. The bell was not at first familiar, but unlike everything else it became so. He opened his eyes to the cacophonous strangeness and was not surprised that it was as it was when he had closed his eyes. In the distance, straight ahead, was a phonebooth. And the phonebooth was ringing.

Slipping between the strange people in this strange place he worked to get to the phone. Each ring sounded increasingly familiar and he worried that it would its last. He reached and stepped and danced through the crowd. The phone booth was not enclosed in a glass box, but was open to the air and covered by a small roof. He picked up the phone and called into it.

He heard a click. He called into it but heard nothing. A low, endless hum emanated fromt he receiver. The young man slumped to the floor still holding the phone.

Just as the peculiar surroundings surged back to fill his faded hope, he held up the coin. He looked at its two faces, and its seven-edges, and then back at the phonebooth. There was a slot on the front of the phone, though no numbers anywhere on it. The slot was situated such that the coin went in on a flat side, not on its edge.

Holding the coin in front of him, he gingerly kissed the queen on one side and slipped it into the slot. He waited...

And waited...

And waited some more.

Just as he was about to give up, a woman's voice said through the line:

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I... I'm sorry?"

"Don't be sorry. What do you have to say for yourself?" The woman was spoke with a sharp tongue, but one that had been earned through experience and wisdom. 

"I'm trying to get back home."

"And you're looking for help, I assume?"

"Yes. Yes, I guess I am."

"Well you did it wrong, young man."

"I did what wrong?"

"You called me! I can tell you things but I can't help you do them!"

"I'm sorry?"

"As you should be. I deserve my rest. Especially from silly young men like yourself."

"So you can't help me?"

"Well, I can do one thing for you," and with a click the coin spilled out below the coin slot that the young man had not at first seen.

"Hello? Are you still there?" He asked, then tapped frantically on the hook. The woman was gone. He picked up the coin and flipped it around, looking at each side. He looked at the young man deep in thought. He slipped it into the coin slot and waited.

And waited...

And waited some more.

And just as he was becoming worried all over again, the line picked up. 

"Well it is about time."

"About time for what?"

"For you to figure it out."

"To figure what out?"

"The coin! What a numbskull."

"But," and the young man had idea, "but you looked deep in thought on the coin."

"Well what else am I going to do until someone calls me?" The man on the other line exclaimed. "I've been watching and waiting for you to get give me a call. Who do you think made the phone ring?"

"I... I don't know. I just figured it was ringing."

"Just figured it was ringing? A phone doesn't just ring! It rings for a reason."

"And you're that reason?"

"No you nitwit, you are!"

"I'm the reason the phone was ringing?"

"Well, it is if you have a job for me to do. I'm more of a doer than a talker, so let's get to doing!"

"I want to get home."

"You do? Well that sounds like something for you to do, not for me to do."

"But I don't know how!"

"There's the hitch, isn't there?" The man on the other end sighed. "Well, I guess you'll just have to follow me." And with that, the line clicked and the coin slid out. 

Instead of the coin catching on the lip as it had before, it slid down with such rapidity that it hit the lip and hopped out of the catch. The young man, not sure what to do, dropped the phone and began dashing between the legs of the people trying to catch the coin. It rolled unevenly on its seven edges, but with surprising speed. More than once it looked as if it were about to fall on a face when some hoof or claw or foot would tap it along and it just moved along in its own awkward and unpredictable way. 

The young many was leaned over trying to keep an eye on the coin and pumping into the hips and knees of the passers-by. He kept reaching out for the coin but it kept sliding just away from him or getting kicked or nudged in the opposite direction. He felt dizziness overtake him.

He kept after the coin, his footing almost sliding out from under him. Then, just as he was about slump over and collapse on the sidewalk, he snatched up the coin! It felt warm and solid in his hand and suddenly heavy. The weight dragged him down and he held onto the coin just hard enough to keep it from slipping out of his hand.

He wheezed on the ground holding the coin in his fist, his eyes closed. He wandered what his next step would be, how he might get back to the university, to the office, to the cafeteria or market or park when he heard a familiar voice above him.

"Are you alright?"

He peeked one eye open. His hair had fallen in front of his face, but even still he could see the familiar young woman from the cafeteria who had offered him a seat at the table. She leaned over and her hair made little bars around him and he thought of the willow tree in the park that he liked to sit under during light rain showers. He saw her eyes, brown with just a hint of green, and they reminded him of the bartlett pears he could smell in the market, with their light sweetness like honeysuckle.

"Are you alright?" she asked again. She straightened up and offered her hand.

"Y-yeah. I guess I am." He took her hand and she firmly pulled him up. He saw that her familiar compatriots were down the sidewalk looking back at them. 

"Well, that was a bit of a spill."

"I," and he felt the coin, still faintly warm, in his hand, "I dropped a coin. I guess it was getting away from me."

"It must be a valuable coin."

"I guess it is." And he opened his hand and showed it to her.

"That is a strange coin." She traced its outline with her finger. The young man's face was upturned. "Where did you find it?"

"You know," he said smiling, "I don't really know."

"Well I'm glad you didn't lose it." She placed her hand under his and eased his fingers around the coin. "Hold onto it next time."

"I'll try."

She smiled. He smiled back.

"Are you walking back with us?" she asked.

"I guess I am," he said. And they walked up to her familiar friends and they walked the familiar streets of the town. 

Vincenzi - Resurrections: Mirror Excerpt

I'm trying to figure out how magic works in this world I'm exploring. I want the magic to be believable, reminiscent of meditation or happenstance or that weird knowing that some people seem to have. I'm not interested in blasts of fire and mind control. I think about Aleister Crowley writing, “Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.”  Somewhere (possibly in Kenneth Grant's The Magical Revival)I remember reading a story of Crowley mimicking a hapless man on the street, then feigned a misstep, and the man "tripped" from Crowley's influence. It would also mirror my use of the Tarot as a form of meditation.

In this case, I have Alecia Castavettes, Vincenzi's niece who has fled her overbearing parents (and the prep school she attends) to haphazardly follow Lorenzo's profession. She is also adequately acquainted with his world to connect with the lecherous Cranston who is quietly practicing his own sorcery. Consider this itself a "found item" in the larger story of Resurrections, this page being introduced sometime after Alecia's return to the Vincenzi's world.

As I said, I want sorcery to exist here. I want it to be believable in a contemporary world. I draw from some of my own experiences and want to make the habit of identifying potential magical "found items" based on their connection to the larger story. This will give Alecia more "wiggle room" in the narrative space and ultimately provide her with the magical-linguistic prowess to contest the construction of a narrative world.

This probably all sounds like nonsense but it makes sense in my head.

...

A Torn Page in a Tight, Cursive Scrawl, [Undated]
Cranston has been teaching me. He calls it the "Study." We've been using found objects. He has a habit of snatching mirrors from women's purses. Why he is deft at pickpocketing from women is not especially my concern. I do keep a sharp eye on my few things and bring only the necessary to his shop.

There was a small, plastic Estée Lauder mirror I found on the sidewalk. Its ivory plastic frame is cheap and I worry that it hasn't been owned for long. The more time an owner has had an item, the more it retains. The more of what, I'm not exactly sure. The mirror has a small scratch along one corner. I focus on that scratch.

At first, it is just a damaged reflection. I am there, but cut or split or somehow not me. I relax and let the mirror show me what it is. Silver and sand, heat and industry; it is something of use and something unused. One moment I feel Cranston watching me with his impatient eyes, the next moment my breath catches in my throat and the perspective... slides.

The scratch isn't in the mirror anymore. It is in the world. The mirror shows the wholeness that is unclear. It is a crease in the folds in the origami of the room, of the folding fabric of the City; it is a thread in the world just beginning to fray. On the thread is a chord, a song of time and history. I follow the twine out into the world, into the labyrinth of time and space and roads; the trail of the mirror follows itself back to the sidewalk and back into the purse.

I hold it there, match step with the purse, its owner, the world of the purse and its owner. I am there. The street wraps around me/us/this, the people, and buildings a fisheye lens, a tidal wave on each side threatening, enveloping, warmed with previously lived life.

She is beautiful but does not walk confidently. She is made tall by wedge heels. The skirt of a dress--a cleaner shade of ivory than the mirror--whirls around her, casting her lightly tanned legs in soft, wavering shadows. The light around her is cleaner than the dingy street, the food carts and gutters muddle in grays. Her shoulders are almost bare, the straps contrasting softly with her delicate shoulders, and blonde hair dances just above them.

I see her from behind--a reflection, the past, the chase of what has gone. I see her as she sees herself, or how she wants to see herself. Mirrors, especially the throwaway variety, are fickle. It tells me this from behind my ear, from somewhere in the present. "I am fickle," it says, "I see what can be, what is desired."

The image shifts. It flattens.

The odd bits of litter--napkins, a straw, a fractured cup with a rounded double arches--clarify. A man sleeping in a doorway with a cardboard sign appears, as if hidden in a pocket suddenly inverted. A myriad of smells--hotdogs on sugary white bread buns, piss in humid alleys, the faint acridity of body odor at 5:23, the reek of a shattered whiskey bottle, greasy French fries emanating from a glass doorway--but all deadened and defined and cleaned by the silver and glass.

She has become... something else. The scrubbed stains of her dress glare. Her perfect hair is marred by undyed roots. A scar presses against her dress, a scar like a window left wide to the rattling wind, the crumpling leaves, the bits of broken glass and a single rusted knife; an open wound no longer concealed.

I see her face. Her eyes are light in darkness, Her face is weighed from hiding the stories of her skin.

I am following the thread, simultaneously in and out of the mirror. I know its truth and I know its limits. I am on the mirror's edge trying to see the world as it is while being shown the world as it is seen.

Or the mirror reflects the world I would see. I see the cheap food and the booze and the veteran being hollowed out from underneath his rags and skin. The light is dim, each line sharpened by its potential to cut, each face looks on with brutal intensity and obliviousness. The white bread is diabetes; the reshaped organ meat: heart disease; the phenols slowly stab a tired liver.

The world breaks from underneath/around me. It is not within. I feel the edge and my eyes open/close: open on the world of Cranston's shop/close on the thread and streets of the ivory dressed woman with shimmering crystal eyes.

The mirror lies broken in front of me. Broken mirror line a jagged maw. Cranston holds a hammer, comically large in his small-boned hand. My eyes blink, the afterimage of the street stands inverted on my eyelids.

"That is enough for today," he says. "Do better next time."

Vincenzi: Resurrections I

For those of you (assuming I actually have readers) who know my character Lorenzo Vincenzi, I'm returning to him. He's going through some transitions. First of all, I'm holding off on the first storyarch in order to jump deeper into his life. For this reason, characters and places get a little different mention--and minimal introduction--in this treatment. Second, I'm trying to incorporate a more "found document" style of writing. The style is premised on finding a jumble of documents and trying to put them together. I'm ditching some of Vincenzi's experience in order to just make him speak for himself rather than through exposition.

So here it is. Ideally, the "clippings" pieces would be formatted differently, spaced further down the page, and even appear scanned or copied through an old Xerox machine with gray background and black text. Not all the dates will be clear for stylistic reasons ("Lo" is increasingly lost in his own sense of time and place) but postmarks, clippings, and other markings at the beginning of a section should "remind" readers where different pieces fit together.

For those who have no idea what this is about, Vincenzi is a detective of sorts. He is enmeshed in a world drawn from weird fiction and, to a lesser extent, horror and SF. Vincenzi is uncertain of the extent to which that is the case. For those aware of the work of HPL, then some names and places will ring familiar. That said, it should not be essential to know and enjoy this work if I do it well.

...





Community News, April 4
The Church of the New Life opened its doors Monday in the Delta Plaza shopping center. Sister Veronica Gardner, or Ronnie as she prefers, describes the Church's mission as "ecumenical and nondenominational" and "welcome to all the community." Ms. Gardner invites the entire community to visit and meet with her fellow congregants. Services are held daily at 7:00 am and 9:30 am, though morning prayer begins at dawn to "welcome each beautiful day," according to Ms Gardner. Congregants are encouraged to take part and even lead services once they are familiar. The adjacent suites, formerly a Subway and Curves Weight Loss Center, remain vacant but their "For Lease" signs have been removed.

Journal
April 22
    I manage to forget far more than I remember. For example, I have forgotten why it was a good idea to trap myself in a walk in fridge. If only I were lucky enough to forget why I was interested in this fishy smelling strip mall in the first place. Toni had to throw that duffel on my table like we were old friends, going all the way back to the good ole days or something. She could have been nicer about handing me my own detonator.
    So here I am, waiting for my pen to die or hypothermia to shutdown my fingertips and it is all I can do to not break down that damn steel door taunting me with its facelessness because that horrible scrabbling in the walls sounds like some army of rats waiting for loathsome release. Underneath or behind or somehow nestled in it are enough human words that I suspect someone is outside that faceless steel door, but they might as well be coming from the rats or whatever the hell that is while the refrigerator hums mercilessly, shuffling everything into a deck of malice and misfortune. Then there is the smell of brine and squid and bad fish getting into my coat and nostrils and--God help me--underneath my lids. I find myself scratching at my wrists and stomach so I picked up the pen.
    It isn't helping. Well, not much anyway.
    Okay, it is helping. I stopped there and wanted to wrap myself up in cardboard and through semi-frozen tilapia against the wall to hear something besides the rats and the hum and the muffled voices, so it is probably better that I stick to writing. All I can think of is how I got here so I guess that's all I have to write.
   
    Things haven't been going well. That's no surprise coming from someone writing in his notepad from a fridge he's worried he's going to take the big sleep in. And then there is the third person coming up, so yeah, definitely more on the worst of times than the best of times.
    I've been combing personals in the free papers and Sabine's been printing out more from online. Plenty of calls from and waiting by the payphone nestled in the dingy corner at the Bean. I bet you didn't think there was still a payphone working, but not everyone is so luck to be fiddling with a gewgaw. I rely on paper. Silicon doesn't play nice with me. That's that. When I'm not here, I'm sleeping under a mattress held aloft by books across the street. It isn't falling apart and roaches don't scramble the floor, but it doesn't exactly have the heart that makes it a home. Well, maybe it is underneath the neighbor's floorboards, but I haven't checked.
    Speaking of neighbors, I've given up on the crumpled piles of numbers on the floor hours ago and am nursing a headache of hunger and caffeine and eye strain, when Toni Wilcox strolls in and throws a bag full of lead pipes on the table. That's what it sounds like, anyway.
    I moan and refuse to look up, though I can tell its her from the smell of India ink.
    "Need work?" She asks. My ears perk and my eyes move at a Thomas the Tank Engine pace; slow and steady and like veins full of lactic acid. "Figure out where this came from."
    Just as my eyes are about to meet her's, a scrappy hardbound notebook slides into view. My hands are moving and my eyes are trying to catch up, my last coffee suddenly kicking in. The pages are marked with heavy handed lines that carve into the notebook, leaving valleys in subsequent pages. It has a heady smell like papyrus, like something sturdy that has decayed. Despite the weight of the scribe, the words and symbols are elegant and neat, each letter has been marked several times as if the author needed to cement them to the page.
    There is Latin, Greek, Arabic, German. I can't make sense of most it. Many are similar but seem to be archaic spellings, extra letters and flourishes that demand further attention to discern. I consider that with a meal and some rest I made be able to translate some of it. My Arabic is rusty, but any tool needs oiling now and then. I can pick out German, but there are names for people and places and long, winding sentences that challenge my grammatical construction. I think back to Hans and I reading Kant and him remarking on the ease of it compared to the German; it was all I could do to not tear the pages out one by one.
    The words didn't always make sense when I could put them together. I wondered if it was coded when I read "dreaming death" in Latin and "ineffable names" in Portuguese; but coming upon "pages of flesh" in German I knew that it wasn't. Whatever was written here was as plain as day for the person, or persons capable of reading it.
    I was flipping into the middle of the book when I heard Toni's making a shuffling noise.
    "Go on," she said as I looked up at her. She casually fanned a stack of bills, twenties by the look of them. I don't know how much comes in a stack of bills, but it looked like enough to make a deck of cards out of and that meant one grand at least. The duffel was unzipped just enough so I could see it was filled with bound bricks of cash. My eyes jumped from the duffel, to Toni still running her right thumb over the stack in her left hand, and then to the book. Toni was not smiling. I flipped the next page of the book.
    The page and the next one, and the one after that and after that seemed to describe chaotic but mathematical motion, like the trails of subatomic particles that show up in Discover and Scientific American. They suggested space and size that was both immense and minuscule. Small, tight letters captioned the images, though it was not in anything I recognized.
    Going deeper, the charts were abandoned for architectural designs, annotated with numbers suggesting incredible proportions. A pyramid like a ziggurat was raised as high as a mountain, stooped as they were in the background. Jagged towers suggested impossible angles and heights. A whole city seemed inscribed with cuneiform or some similar early script.
    I was turning one more page when Toni's hand came out and covered mine.
    "Save that for later." She said sternly and removed her hand. She had replaced her book into her duffel, though change sat at the table with two cups of coffee and a three hefty looking pastries with speckled poppy sseds. I knew from better days they were filled with leek, lamb, cheese, and spices; a favorite of Sabine's, and of mine. Toni pushed the plate next to me, a fork and knife balancing on the rim.
    I gingerly raised the fork, looked at Toni, then set it down and picked up one of the pastries. I bit into the flaky crust and smelled the spiced lamb underneath, my teeth collided with a hefty potato, and my tongue burned at the heat. It was gone in a moment and I ate the next just somewhat more slowly. The first two sat like billiard balls in my stomach. I straightened up, picked up the fork in left hand and the knife in my right and neatly nibbled on the last pastry.
    "What's the job?"
    "Finding out where this came from," she slid the now closed notebook close to the duffel bag.
    "You don't know?"
    "That's the job."
    I swallow the last of my pastry. As it joins its comrades, I reflect on how glad I am that I ate before saying, "Well, let's get started."

Poems from June III - Haiku

I tried to avoid haiku during June. It is a style I am fairly familiar with and therefore wanted to stay away from. In addition, writing such short pieces felt disingenuous to the exercise despite how I enjoy them. That said, I returned to the concept of nothingness and wrote a series of haiku dealing with it.

"Six Empty Haiku and One on Fire," June 30, 2013
A Cat & i walk,
finding emptiness crumpled
in packs of twenty.

Two bottles: blessings
of gratitude, made full by
joyful emptiness.

An almost vacant
room made full & warm with
music, wine, comrades.

Empty pages that are
marble waiting for hammer,
chisel, & patience.

The hollow of an
empty glass; a nothing that
marks meaningfulness

This space stands littered
with the trails of those not now
present passers-by.

Fire of a forge
held aloft between fingers
sculpting brilliant words.

...

Reflections: All in all, I wrote 15 poems in 30 days. Not exactly hitting the mark, but a solid exercise. The regularity of haiku I've practiced in the past probably maintained the perspective I was trying for more than this. That said, poetic writing is a challenge and this was a nice way to get in the habit. In addition, I need to finish an essay I started last month on SF and alien encounters that allows me to meditate on what a first contact scenario might actually resemble. (Now I'm pondering a follow up that pits this more in the, "They're already here" scenario and why that would be viable.) I think I'll get to that later on today.

In the quotidian, I am cleaning and seasoning my cast iron. It is an exercise in patience and attention that I very much enjoy. Here's a little poem about it:

Iron recast by
loving heat, purifying
with patient practice.

There is something about fire/heat/energy and emptiness/vacancy/nothingness that I find perfect themes in poetry. They envelop whole fields of imagery, personal experience, transformation, functionality... I just love it. Perhaps I am already becoming too reliant on them.

Also in the day-to-day, I'm considering a condo or home purchase, even to the effect of taking a first-time homebuyers' class at BOTHANDS on August 17th. Anyone want to join?

Poems from June II

I'm not especially happy with these. They employ themes that I generally find uninteresting in others' poetry. That said, I was able to fiddle with my own comfort and interest in the imagery.

Rogue Planet, June 11, 2013
I find myself adrift in achorless space,
a planet shot away from its stellar center,
from its satellites and neighbors,
from those astronomic coordinates,
from the astrological gods that are
always eager to guide my way.
...
I find myself in parts unkown
where every star & quasar & gaseous giant--
with their own myriad moons--
with their draw of light,
with their draw of gravity,
with their own draw of a new pattern
of stars & gods & neighbors.
...
I find myself amongst alien vistas
of brilliant ultraviolet dawns,
of occultations of super-earths,
of roiling hot ice seas that
crackle with plasmic life
& parallel intelligences
seeing their world & my passing
with bizarre serenity
passing by on weird, spherical music.

Skin Stories, June 16, 2013
She has scars
& she tells me about them
but they are not the stories
the stores that cause the
softly expanding blemishes
beauty marks that are
unbeautiful.

Graffiti, June 2013 (specific date unknown)
A tapestry of asphalt & concrete,
a palimpsest of insults & artistry.
What might have been said?
What might be read?
What secret languages
have been spoken and forgotten?
What loves have been
transcribed, affirmed,
& now destroyed
by a stewardly brush?

Poems from June I

Iron Song, June 8, 2013
Iron veins sing
the oncoming rushing
the roiling steel
& are thankful
thankful for its approach
for its presence
for its departure
& sing for its passing. 

Bricks, June 16, 2013
(My Habitat for Humanity poem; this was previously posted on my Facebook page.)

I have bricks for hands & mortar for words
& I am pounding with hammer fingers, hammer eyes;
I have a screwdriver tongue & paintbrush hair
& my ears are plugs into my power grid brain.

I lose my wooden legs to shingle the house,
& each toe forms a gently opening door.
My thoughts conform to beds & countertops & scattered silverware.

My hot, thrumming heart is an oven, the aorta reaching outward
& within is a loaf of bread, light but hearty & sustaining...
I am waiting for it to be ready.

No Mic, June 18, 2013
The human voice is the finest
--& maybe the most coarse--
of all--& of any--instrument.
Which is why I do not
--or maybe it is that I cannot--
use the microphone in front of
--or maybe behind--me.
The human voice can deliver
a moan--or a groan--,
a soliloquy--or a sermon--,
an exhaltation--or a damnation--
& in so intoning--or keeping silence--
that peculiar--& particular--human noise.

Spokes, June 18, 2013
Spokes hold the wheel.
The wheel holds the spokes.
The hub holds the center.

I whir & whir & whir,
spinning around some middle,
some unknowable gravity well.

Wheels carry me to & from,
each made of nothingness
& movement & spokes.

[Note: This meditation on nothingness is picked up again in the haiku I wrote on the 30th.]