Month: April 2017

In The Cards

The cards, slick, dry and neat, were comfortable and familiar in his hands, Shuffling them, he naturally recalled when the cards didn’t exist. Everything had to be held in his head in that period. It was messy.

He’d invented cards, as far as he knew, and he was certain he knew the truth. After he’d used them in public a few times, others began crude imitations. Some worked. Most didn’t. Then they became used for fortune telling and games. They could be very effective for seeing hidden truths but people truly needed the ability for that. Most didn’t have those abilities.

That nobody remembered or acknowledged him as the inventor didn’t bother him. Time and reality were barely stable then. History was yet to come. History didn’t matter in the long run. Neither did time.

Today’s deck was fifty-two. He liked fifty-two cards. They shuffled well and easily fit in his pockets. Cutting the deck, he pulled a few free and spread them face down on the table. Some beer imbibed, another ordered, and then he turned the first over.

A star ship.

Been there…. No, he didn’t want to go to a star ship.

Next he turned over a hot desert, and then a castle. Alexander the Great came up on the next card. A frigate followed. All felt dissatisfying.

He sipped his beer. An IPA, its BTUs were listed as one hundred fifty. He expected a sharply bitter beer but discovered pleasant nuances and currents. The problem with here and the cards was that he didn’t know what he wanted. He’d come here searching for something different. He’d found something different. It wasn’t working out. Greed and violence were consuming honor and principles. The people and nations were becoming husks.

Yes, he’d lived in such places before.

Returning the drawn cards to the deck, he went through the picture cards, stopping when he came across a landscape that was dark, with withered plants, despite the bright sunlight depicted. With a little effort, he heard a moaning wind and felt a chill crawl into his bones. Memories of the place quickened. He’d lived there twenty lifetimes before and had no inclination to return there.

He licked his thumb and ran it over the scene. Its image blurred. Between swallows of beer, he kept licking and rubbing the card until his thumb was dark and the scene was obliterated.

Mason came by. “Do you need a refill?”

A young university student majoring in education, he liked her. Most young woman attending that university were majoring in education, sadly sexist, in his view. She was also an artist. Her acrylics sometimes decorated the pub’s walls. “Can you do me a favor, Mason?”

Although she wiped down his table, she questioned him with a brown-eyed look and flicked back her brown hair. “Anything. Well, almost anything.” She grinned. “We’ll see. What is it?”

“You’re an artist, right?”

She smiled. “I try.”

“Oh, such false modesty.” He put the smudged card face up on the table. “Put your thumb on this card and think of a place for me, somewhere you really like.”

“Really?” Suspicion and doubt were in her expression. “Why? What’s going to happen?”

“It’s new software. It’s going to create it.”

“No way.”

“Sure, way.”

Mason hooked her hair back behind her ear with her thumb. “I just put my thumb on it? Either thumb?”

“Either thumb, and then think of a place, somewhere you really like.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere.”

“Does it have to be real?”

“No.” Her questioned intrigued him. “Be as imaginative as you want.”

Smiling, Mason shrugged. “Okay.”

She put her thumb on the card. Her mouth fell open. She flicked a wide-eyed look toward me. “It feels weird, like something is crawling over my thumb.”

“Don’t worry, it’s harmless.”

“No, I’m not worried. I trust you. How long should I keep my thumb on it?”

“You’ll know when to remove it.”

She was going to say more. A start interrupted her. In less than an eye twitch, she disappeared.

Finishing his beer, he picked up the card to see where she’d gone. He usually didn’t do things like this but felt a new avenue was needed. When he saw her creation, he laughed out loud, drawing looks from the seven others sitting around the pub.

She was already forgotten here, she already lived there. Well, he wanted different. Picking up the card, he put his palm on her creation.

“There you are, Doctor,” she said.

Glancing around the TARDIS’ interior, he put the card in the deck and stuck it in his pocket. “Yes, here I am.” He wondered what he looked and sounded like, whether he was a new Doctor or an old one. “Where should we go today, Mason?”

****

With apologies to Doctor Who and Chronicles of Amber fans.

5

The Beauty

Where is the beauty? I see it all around me here but thoughts and events crowd it out. This is one of those periods when I need to look past it all to glimpse the world’s inherent beauty. There’s much calling on me to rail on, but to what point?

Strength comes not from ducking your head or disputing the truth, but in embracing it as your own and ignoring the alternate facts that others senselessly buy and accept. It can be painfully lonely and troubling.

0

Catstidious

Catstidious is the term catologists use to express cats who are delicate about their eating habits and intense about grooming.

With eating habits, they prefer clean bowls and a clean area, not deigning to touch something offered if the bowl isn’t perfectly cleaned first. When offered a presentation not up to their standards, they’ll stare at it for a long while. Drooping whiskers, a tail lowered to half-staff, and dull eyes will aptly communicate the severe letdown they’re experiencing. It’s not just the food, but that you, you have failed to meet their standards. With that established, they turn and hurry away from the offending offering.

Quinn of the Black Paws is a master at this.

Castidious is also applied to their intensive, extensive grooming. Sometimes they provide it to themselves, but often, castidious felines will include other animals, like humans. One cat, Jade, never believed anyone touching her was clean enough. It was great fun to touch a spot where she’d just washed because she’d immediately turn her pink tongue back on that spot in a furious attempt to fix what you just did by, gad, touching her.

She also groomed our faces. It was cute to us…at first. However, we would say, “Okay, that’s enough,” and she would take us firmly with a genclaw and hold us in place. “It’s enough when I say it’s enough,” she communicated to us.

 

1

Today’s Theme Music

I was listening to Uriah Heep for years. My wife didn’t know anything about them but began listening to my albums extensively while I was on a fifteen-month unaccompanied tour to the Philippines a year into our marriage.

Like a lot of albums from that era, I played the whole album extensively. That’s how it was done in my youth. We had one segment, it seemed, who liked to load and listen to forty-fives. I was of another school. We put on one side of the thirty-three LP, listened to it, turned it over and listened to the other side. As my memory functions, that means that I will often automatically recall and begin streaming the next song from the album in my head.

Now, of course, with downloads, it’s way different.

Originally part of their ‘Demons and Wizards’ album, Easy Livin” was a song released by Uriah Heep in 1972. It became their only U.S. hit, and only reached something like the high twenties on the top forty playlists. I don’t think I ever hear it, or anything else from Uriah Heep, played on the radio. But this one, with its hard pressing guitar, fast pace, quick bass and spread of organ has taken a place in my heart.

0

Catvoom

Frantic panic and/or alarm a cat displays when the vacuum cleaner, sweeper, or other loud appliances made an appearance is called catvoom.

In example, “Quinn displayed intense catvoom, alerting to the sound of the door opening where the vacuum is kept and snaking to an exit an instant later.”

 

4

The Cards

He was awake before I was, feeding thoughts of the novel into me.

“Ready?” DeeMichael shuffled the deck.

“No,” I answered.

DeeMichael proferred the cards. “Draw three cards.”

“I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Just draw three cards.”

“Why three?”

“Because I have three in mind.” DeeMichael shuffled and then he cut the deck. “Three is a lucky number, always in threes, all that crap.”

“Can’t it wait until after I’ve peed, drank some water and made coffee?”

“Jesus H, you could have been done already. Will you pick three cards? You’re ruining the mood.”

I cursed him a dozen ways that I’d picked up as a senior NCO and selected three from the fanned out offering.

“Let’s see them,” he said, putting his hand out.

Sulking and dispirited, I replied, “You know what they are.”

DeeMichael beamed. “You’re right, I do.”

I didn’t want to ask but felt the tableau wouldn’t end until I did. “What are they?”

“We’ll finished the card started yesterday, and then — ”

“The one called ‘You’?”

“Did we start another one? Fuck, no. So it has to be that one, right?”

“You say so.”

“Then we’ll work on ‘Untrue’.”

I knew he was excited about ‘Untrue’. Bleedover between the writing and real world had informed me about what was going on. “What’s the third one?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s about the Monad, but that’s all I know. Come on, get up, get dressed and take Tucker to the vet so we can start writing like crazy. Hurry, you’re burning energy.”

Sighing, I nodded. “Right. Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.”

0

Civilization

Rains stopped sometime in the early hours. Still dark, the winds howled around the house, beating down tree branches with its footprints and scaring the cats into wary, still watchfulness. Dawn brokered a gray, thin cloud sky but the wind remained a torment. Although anxious, he waited until the wind faded and the sun crept out before visiting Antville.

He’d watched his videos of the place several times since making videos yesterday and the day before. Antville had survived the first storm but it had been mild. Last night’s rain loaded heavy howler probably wiped them out.

But, no. He was delighted to see how wrong he was. They’d survived, and had also expanded. There now existed small walls embracing a town of busy streets and alleys. Small fields were sown in several directions around it.

It seemed implausible that they’d planted and cultivated so many fields so quickly. They must be operating on a different speed of time, although he couldn’t understand how. The sun was the sun, shining down on them for the same number of hours that it illuminated and warmed his world. How tiny their seeds must be.

Then, remarkably, a small puff of smoke drew his eye. Boggling him, he realized, it’s a car. Two ants were in it. Other ants spread out to let it pass.

Another antmobile approached from the other direction. Two cars. The two headed toward each other at a fast ant’s pace.

He saw the accident was going to happen.

He hoped it wouldn’t, and wished there was something on his end he could do.

But the two ant vehicles met head on.

It was a slow speed. No ants seemed harmed. Crowds quickly gathered. The two ant driver emerged from their vehicles. After a few seconds of gentle touching, their antennae and legs began wild flailing. Other ants joined in.

It was amazing how quickly the ants were becoming civilized.

1

Time Lag

It always happened to him. Something occurred. He saw it but couldn’t think of it for several seconds, and then couldn’t act upon it for several seconds more.

It ruined sports and games, or anything that required participation. “Pay attention,” people yelled. “Why are you so slow?”

He didn’t know and couldn’t answer. And when the lights changed from red to green and he couldn’t press on the gas pedal to go, all the honking behind him did nothing to change anything.

0

Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is another hit from Wayback because I’m thinking about progress. This one, ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair’), was written by John Phillips but released by Scott McKenzie in 1967.

The song attracts me today because I heard it on the radio this morning. Some of the lines include, “All across the nation, such a strange vibration, people in motion. There’s a whole generation, with a new explanation. People in motion.”

Yes, I thought. That’s one of the things about the last Presidential election in the United States. Donald Trump preached a movement back. He appealed to people stuck in time. They weren’t in motion and weren’t moving forward. If they were moving, they were going backward to when men had more rights and white men had the most rights and privilege of anyone, and the wealthy were on pedestals as capable people. While these voters and supporters wouldn’t say they’re against these things, the man they selected is against regulations that protect people, animals, the environment, and the poor, sick and needy. Tearing down the public school system through Betsy DeVos isn’t a move forward, as that billionaire who never attended a public school will try to do. He’s gutting every system save defense while he promises new jobs and to rebuild the infrastructure. Yet, he also is going to cut taxes, reduces revenue, so there will be no money to pay for that infrastructure. He preyed on them with fear and promised he will build a wall to protect them. The Trump Wall will be beautiful, he claims, a big beautiful wall.

Many of those voters are in impoverished areas where industry has disappeared or pay minimum wages. The areas are dominated by elderly people, and the disability rates for these area are higher than the national average and increasing at a faster rate. These are the very people that the social net Trump is tearing about helps the most. Trump said he was draining the swamp and that he would change business as usual. His attack on Syria and his selection of wealthy cronies and family members to staff his White House show very much that it’s still a swamp. He criticized Obama for golfing too much while he golfs almost every weekend.

He is not the path forward. I’m going on without him and his supporters. Yes, the song may be fifty years old, but the sentiment that there are people moving forward and causing change is older yet. Yet, for some, it’s all new, strange and dangerous.

0

A Big Thing

He was weeding when he noticed a little thing, the little thing being a large manifestation of small, black ants. That so many ants were out there, on his gravel path that hooked around the house’s side, amused him. There were but a few weeds here. Other than the weeds, there was the path and some protective, decorative bark used as mulch.

But on a pause to wipe his brow and scratch his nose, he stared down at the next section designated for weeding. The small weeds were not random; they were orderly rows. The ants were not meandering around them, but tending the plants.

His conclusion struck him dumb. He hold onto it and nothing else in his mind for a few seconds before saying, “The ants are cultivating plants.”

This, he thought, was a big thing. He wasn’t very educated but he thought he’d read that settlements becoming agrarian was a major step forward step in human civilization. Breathing the warm air over his find, he thought about what he should do. He wondered if this scene was being repeated around the world. Retrieving his cell phone, he recorded the activity for thirty seconds and marveled about it.

He couldn’t weed there any longer; he became a little sick about what he might have already destroyed. He worried about what might happen to the ants and their farm. A storm was due tonight. Clouds were already gathering. He could imagine what a heavy rain would do to their world.

But it was their world. They’d come this far without him. He would leave them be and let the ants take control of themselves. They seemed to be doing well so far.

Besides, it gave him a good reason to abandon his weeding.

0

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