Blink

The first Earth-men came in a generational seed ship, on a journey that had lasted untold centuries. Weary but relieved, they set down in a verdant valley near a tiny village. One of the men was chosen to make first contact.

"Greetings," he said to the village elder. The wizened, vaguely humanoid figure blinked. The man was gone, as were his fellow shipmates on the landing craft. Soon after, the vacant hollowed-out asteroid of the seed ship slowly drifted into the planet's star, a vibrant comet crumbling into gas as it entered the corona.

A few millennia later, another craft abruptly appeared in orbit around the planet. This time the ship itself landed, touching down in nearly the same place as the seed ship's landing craft, which was now a crumbling ruin of rust and plastic. The captain of the ship approached the same village, and the same elder met him.

"Salutations," the captain said. The elder blinked again.

A few centuries later a man stepped onto the grass of the planet from a platform on Earth. He looked around, and saw the corroded hulks of the landing craft and the starship. Un-dissuaded, he made his way to the small village in the valley in much the same manner as the first two men.

The elder was waiting for him. "Good morning," the man said. Blink.

Several thousand more years passed. One morning the elder was enjoying a hot cup of soup when he happened to glance up. A human was sitting across from him apparently waiting to be served. Annoyed at having his meal interrupted the elder blinked without waiting for the man to say anything.

The man raised an eyebrow.

The elder put down his soup and smiled.

Another Excerpt

At half past nine she called Decker's, outside of the morning rush but still early enough to get to Boston before the evening rush there. Quarter of, she lit up. Ten til, on her third, a Crown Vic swerved up. Jerry was driving.

"Jesus," Sharon gasped and the cigarette fell out of her mouth. "Jerry, this is your second day. Get the hell over, I'll drive." He opened his mouth, but she'd already come around the car and was pulling his door open. As she got in, he dragged himself to the other side of the bench seat and collapsed against the pillar.

She glanced at him as she yanked out of park. His eyes were bloodshot, the right still half-closed. "I gotta move the seat," she stated, trying to get him to talk, but he was asleep.

He awoke a couple times on the way down 91. There was the bridge over Gorham Creek. Then the interchange at NH 9; the triple stack and the curve around the cliff face. Here the turnoff for Jake's, and a life ended.

Sammy and Me

There's a new bartender, and Jack can't remember her name. She doesn't know about Sammy, although she probably knows about his kind. She gapes at the short, chunky, balding Jack and the short, stocky, extra hairy Sammy as they sit down at the bar. Jack smiles back.

"Lemme get a Pabst and a splash of tangerine vodka in soda for Sammy," he says. Realization flits through her head, and she hustles away. Sammy smiles. The drinks here make him feel good. They let him put the hard part of the day out of his head. Jack has told him why he does what he does a number of times, but it's hard for Sammy to remember what Jack tells him for more than a few months.

"Orange drink?" Sammy says, his voice guttural out of his simian throat, lower than what one might expect for such a small body.

Jack nods, "Orange drink Sammy, your favorite," he replies.

Sammy bounces up and down on the bar stool as Rebecca, that's her name Jack thinks, sets the drinks down in front of them.

Stacy another regular comes in with Tom, her boyfriend of the month. She pats Sammy on the head as she walks over and sits down next to him. Tom doesn't like Sammy. Jack can't for the life of him figure out why. Sammy is nothing but 120 pounds of friendly, enhanced chimpanzee. Best Jack could figure was that Tom doesn't like the way Stacy is playing with Sammy's hair. Sammy doesn't mind the attention at all, he's used to being stared at, patted, stroked. Jack takes another sip of his beer. It bothers him that she drags Sammy into her silly relationship drama like this. He nods at Stacy. "How you doing tonight hun?" he says, trying to draw her attention away from Sammy's fuzzy head.

"Been better," she replies. "Tom got laid off at the plant."

"Bunch of fucking chimps took our jobs," Tom says. Jack looks over at Tom. Most everybody in the bar is looking at Tom since he just about shouted; he isn't drunk yet, but his eyes are bleary with undirected rage. Why the hell did she bring Tom here when she knew Sammy and me come here every day after work, Jack thinks.

Jack looks at Sammy since he can kinda understand most words. Sammy is just sitting there sipping his drink, a pleased, oblivious expression on his face. Jack turns back to Tom who is walking towards the bar.

"Hey, no," he manages to get out before Tom hits Sammy over the head with a beer bottle. It smashes, splattering Stacy and Jack with skunky beer. Rebecca is hollering and dialing the cops on her cell as she runs over with a bat, Stacy is beginning to scream, Jack is leaning over to where Sammy had fallen but wasn't, Sammy is launching himself from the top of the bar, fangs bared.

He slams into Tom full force with his legs straight out behind him. Jack is pulling himself off the bar stool. He flicks beer out of his eyes, and Tom is, Sammy is screaming, and Jack is trying to find the two of them in mess of tumbled chairs.

There's no blood. Sammy isn't biting, he's pounding Tom's head against the floor, and then he leaps off and runs to the other side of the room. The few other patrons have cleared the floor, and are giving him a wide berth. Jack stops to check Tom's pulse, still there.

Sammy is muttering something over and over again. Stacy is screaming and crying blubbering Tom's name, and pushes Jack out of the way as she rushes to him. Jack slowly walks over to Sammy with his hands up and his eyes down at the ground like the naturalization rep taught him.

"Sammy?" Jack whispers as he risks a glance at Sammy's face.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Sammy murmurs over and over again.

"It's OK, Sammy, it wasn't your fault." He checks back. Tom is still lying on the floor, and Jack can see a little blood pool beginning to stain his pale hair. Stacy is crouching over him crying. Everyone in the bar except Rebecca, Stacy and the unconscious Tom have hurried out. Rebecca is still on the phone, waving her hands as she talks. Jack turns back to Sammy, who is still whispering and shaking.

There's a back door, a gravel path, the parking lot; Jack holding the whimpering Sammy's hand as he opens his truck.. Jack knows what happens to enhanced chimps that are violent, and he doesn't want that to happen to Sammy.

"Get down on the floor Sammy, and put this over you," Jack says, handing Sammy the blanket that every real pickup has.

Sammy complies as Jack eases the gas, and heads out of the lot. There's a long stretch of country road that runs behind the bar and parallel to the interstate for thirty or so miles, twists south towards Mexico, and peters out as a dirt road a few miles shy of the border.

There's a small town just over the border he partied in when he was a young buck. Two bars, a few small hotels. The cops were dollar-friendly... Jack revs the engine bouncing over a cattle grate, and glances at Sammy.

Sammy is looking back. "I'm sorry," he says for what had to be the fortieth or fiftieth time, his face earnest.

Jack wipes his eyes.

"I'm sorry too Sammy, really, I am." He slows down as the blue and white lights start flashing in his mirrors.

Chuck Close

I have a special affinity for the pop artist. His work, now easily reproduced with the digital medium, is nonetheless stunning in person. Much as some musicians need to be seen in concert to be appreciated, Chuck Close's art must be seen up close (heh) to be truly understood.

Here is a man, nearly paralyzed, who creates photo-realistic paintings logarithmically bigger than the subject matter. From a distance each work seems to be nothing more than a well done oil painting, but as one approaches the truth can be seen. Whether an attempt to recreate our finely crafted biological optics, or representative of the mechanics of photography, his art is surreal yet precise.

My personal connection? As a child abruptly saddled with the necessity of glasses, I was amused by the ease in which I could stand quite close to his paintings and by simply removing my glasses see up close what others had to stand far back to observe.

I just stumbled this image. I know nothing about it, whether it is old or new, or the name of the photographer, or the location it takes place.

Yet to me it sums up the position that Obama is slowly taking; that of the appeaser or worse, supplicant. The three men, their faces cut off and unseen, each represents the ones Obama is beholden to.

The two well dressed men are the politicos and corporate interests respectively. They wait for an answer to their demands, and Obama faces them in a less than optimal position. The politicos have gotten him elected, the businessmen have provided them the capital to do so. They wait for his response.

The man on the right, his hands in his pocket. His relaxed pose and simple clothes shows his lower class standing, but his posture is expectant. Maybe he voted for Obama, maybe he didn't. He just wants to know what Obama's response to the other two will be. Will he stand for his vote? Will he work for him despite his lack of support?

They all say one word: "Well?"

Edit: Heh, didn't catch the sandals at first glance.

On comics

Scott McCloud has famously suggested that as prose and art grow more realistic and complex respectively, they draw farther and farther apart. I no longer believe this to be true. I believe rather than two small figures withdrawing from one another, they become greater and greater giants, still holding hands.

An excerpt from "Man Falls From Sky"

I can make it, I can make it, I- I have got to get some goggles.

Stanley Jones forced himself into the most aerodynamic pose a humanoid figure could manage, and, closing his eyes, hoped he was heading in mostly the right direction. People think I circle around when I'm about to land because I'm showing off, but I'm just trying to orient myself after flying ten miles as fast as I can in mayfly season. Bad enough someone photographed me spitting out feathers last week.

Which is how he flew headfirst into a gaping dimensional portal without noticing it had suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Ha! Did you see that?!" Dr. Venom leapt in the air and kicked with glee. "The dumb bastard flew right into it!"

Sheila Wentworth, gossip column "journalist", superhero's friend-with-benefits, mostly of the story kind, and current hostage, was shocked. How did Stanley miss seeing that?! she screamed to herself. That idiot, I better not be late to the Musak Awards tonight!

While normal human flight is achieved by large aerodynamic forms of a mechanical nature, Stanley Whitaker, or The Champion as he was referred to in the popular press (Superdude in the Post and Herald) flew by conveniently disobeying the laws of physics, at least the ones in his own universe. In the one he had just entered, more related to our own but still a few veils of reality away, the laws of physics were far less forgiving.

Which is how he suddenly found himself without the ability to fly.

"Shit!" was what he managed to get out before he hit. From a distance his impact was rather impressive. As well as knocking down an old oak tree along the way, his body carved a several hundred yard-long ditch across several acres of Ohio corn, spraying cobs and stalks in every direction.

As startling and confusing this was to Stanley this was very cool to Toby Banks, a twelve year-old with an active imagination. An imagination which had just taken a back seat to a man traveling at Mach speed abruptly appearing in mid-air and plowing into his backyard.

RomCom script, where's my million dollars?

"Apples."

"What?"

"Apples. I like apples."

"OK," he chuckled.

"Shut up, I couldn't think of any else." She sipped her coffee. "Alright, shit, chocolate Labs."

He smiled, then covered his face as he started laughing.

"What?" She flicked coffee at him.

"You started me in a laughing mood, then told me that and I remembered something funny."

"Tell me, tell me."

"I had a, a friend with a black lab. And a brown, chocolate one from her boy friend. One night I was playing Scrabble at her place and the spastic little fuckers started fighting. So we don't pay much attention to them, they do it all the time right?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, so they're fighting, and we're playing scrabble, and all of a sudden they roll under my chair fighting. Just a rolling ball of dog, and I'm sitting there holding a 'Qu' piece with surprised expression on my face. All 'rarargargrggrrrthumpthumpthump'."

He laughed as she held her hand over her nose.

"Damn it, it's still hot. You dick."

Egg

"Nice of you to invite us," President Stone said.

The Earth cracked in half.

"We are fleas on the surface of an egg to them," Le'Fer'Tel'Bo said as wings unfurled from the dust of the shattered globe. "No species we've encountered can tell us what they are, and as far as any can tell they don't even acknowledge anything smaller than a star."

The wings beat the solar wind, and rippled in the star field.

Interesting.

Edit: fuck it, not worth the aggravation.

Night of Nights

You have them.

They echo in your head, your mind. That Night.

You remember the one, you danced/kissed/made love with Her/Him.

Or you were the spotlight, not the one in it, of it, the total focus of your friends even if you weren't because that is how you remember it.

Or the aligning of all, the perfect juxtaposition of brother/sisterhood.

---

R had a got an invitation to play with B, a veritable old man of the song and rhyme, of the blues, straight Delta rhythm.

An aside, the blues scale is simple, but subtly complex since it limits the range of the sax, the instrument R played.

He invited me, and being a failure at social interaction I followed.

It promised to be a wide departure from the usual Phoenix scene at any rate.

We arrived at the bar, and I went for the usual liter of Amberbock.

J was working that night, since R's choice in bars was mainly ruled by his second head, and had followed her after she had left our usual haunt.

This time it had led him into this opportunity.

The opportunity to play with B.

I was hardly immune to J.

I was hard thinking of J.

It was the typical condition brought about by an vibrant, unreachable, Teutonic goddess.

And I was fine that I was only a friend, since she was fun to talk with.

I didn't care, because J had just brought me another beer.

R was waiting, suddenly timid.

He could be that way.

"Get up there," I said, attempting to psychically transfer my liquid courage.

He finally did.

They played.

J brought me another drink.

On her, unasked.

A full pint glass and mini pitcher of Miller Lite.

They were out of liter mugs.

R began to play.

Riffing off of the scale allowed.

He was in his Thing.

I envy him, his musical talent, his world I'll never know.

It is safe envy, the envy of one friend to another.

People began to dance, white people dancing which is quite possibly the most hilarious thing in the universe, but we don't care.

I didn't care.

Because after the mug and pitcher of horrible beer, I was going to dance with J.

The song was slow, and the night wasn't for slow songs, it was a night for fast, wild abandon.

She came back, joked, and I stood up.

I didn't care she had a boyfriend.

I didn't care she was leaving town in a few weeks.

All I cared about was tonight, her incredulous but happy laugh as she took my hand.

And we danced as R played.

I spun her around, and she stopped for a moment.

"I don't want to stab you," she said, which is a good indication of at the very least friendship, as she ran over and tossed the pen in her hand on a nearby table, and returned.

And we danced again.

Easily the most beautiful woman in the bar, and I was dancing with her as she laughed without contempt, a broad smile on her face.

And R was playing with an old master of the blues, preaching his gospel of the blues scale while I spun J around again.

And it was a Night of Nights.

A standard plot device

"I wish you types would come across the desert at more opportune times," the bureaucrat said. He was aware of how horrid his occupation was to spell for writers, that mishmash of vowels thrown together by the French to annoy the British after the Normans conquered them. Being British, or at least part Welsh, it pained him to have to remember it.

"What would be a good time?" the boy asked. He eyed the man sitting behind the desk with suspicion. More so because the desk was sitting at least a quarter of a mile from any distinguishing objects on the empty plain. He was annoyed he had not simply angled a few degrees in either direction when Sisyphus and he had headed away from the former's mountain.

"Any time besides this. I'm very busy. Well, you're here," the man behind the desk said, "so you're going to have to fill these out." He handed a thick ream of triplicate to each of them.

"I can't read this," Sisyphus said.

"Are you illiterate?"

"No, it's just that the last thing I read was archaic Greek, at least I think that's what you would call it. I'm not sure what these funny marks are, but I can't read them."

The man sighed. He was not even deserving of a name besides "ungodly-word-no-one-can-spell behind the desk", yet here he was forced to interact with named characters, at least in Sisyphus' case. "Do you speak Spanish?"

"No, what's that?"

"I have modern Greek," the man said with a raised eyebrow.

Sisyphus examined the proffered sheets. "Hmm. Phoenician. Close enough." He became engaged with the act of rapid scribbling across the paper.

"What's this word?" the boy asked the man who was becoming rather flustered.

"'Institutional'."

"What's that mean?"

"It means... wait, are you a minor?"

"What's that mean?"

"It means, it means that you are underage." A blank stare. "Too young."

"Too young for what?"

"To fill out these forms. Is this man your parent or legal guardian?" Sisyphus and the boy, having quickly picked up the pattern, glanced at each other and nodded. "Well, then he is the only one who has to fill out these forms."

"In that case we are done," Sisyphus said as he handed the forms back to the man.

"Really?" The man behind-oh fuck it. He was surprised. Usually it took quite some time to fill out all the forms required. "In that case, proceed."

The two walked a ways beyond the desk in the middle of the desert before the boy asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "What where the forms all about?"

"I have no idea," Sisyphus said. "I can't read a word of Phoenician beyond 'lavatory' and 'brothel'."

"Then how did you fill them out?"

"I doubt he can either."

Blatant Antagonist

The Lord of Snakes followed the boy across the endless plain.

He knew where the boy was heading, which was odd since the boy didn't know himself. So sure he was of the boy's intentions he strode with ease, even whistling a little ditty to himself. Serpents, rattlers and the like, paid him homage as he trod, yet he paid his good and faithful servants no mind except to occasionally crush a bowed head into the dirt with glee. He giggled as their tiny skulls crunch-squished into the desert dust.

"Hisssss," they cried as he passed.

He stuck out his forked tongue in acknowledgment, and stepped on another.

the boy and Sisyphus

The boy walked across the open plain, dust trailing, and came upon a mesa. As he rested in the shade of a nearby boulder he observed a man pushing a large rock up a dry wash that led up the mount. The man was obviously struggling, and it seemed that...

...Yes, he lost the rock, and it came back down the slope, the man following behind, tumbling end over end, having lost his balance at the same time he lost his grip. With a shudder the rock came to a rest against the boulder the boy was resting under, enraptured by the tableau of man against gravity. The man gave a rather audible sigh, and brushing his knees off, sauntered over to the rock. He gave a nod to the boy.

"What are you doing?" the boy asked.

"Why I'm trying to roll this boulder to the top of this mountain," the man replied, giving the boy a look as if this was strangest thing anyone had ever asked of him.

"Why?'

"Because I... you know, I'm not quite sure why. Do you know?" The boy, having just arrived in the vicinity, shook his head. "Well, that's odd, I can't imagine why I'd want to keep doing this." He sat down next to the boy, who proffered his canteen. The man took it and drank long, with ferocity. Water trailed down his neck as he suddenly remembered that he needed it, and he gripped the canteen tightly as he chugged as if it would be the first in and the last for a long time.

Spotted

Blanked for the time being. View it here!

http://www.365tomorrows.com/10/17/spotted/

The Ninteenth of May, Two-thousand-nine

I finally decided after spending what I estimate was my entire state return on alcohol (in one week) that I have a problem that I need to face. It's odd to call myself an alcoholic when I haven't done all the fun things like wake up in the gutter, get my license revoked for too many DUI's, came into work drunk, etc., but then I realized that it was better to stop before these things start happening.

Notes from the first 48 hours: A 12 pack of fantastic tasting soda costs the same as a 6 pack of horrible tasting beer.

June 7th: It's a magnet in my brain, a constant weak force trying to get me to drink. It flares and subsides, but never goes away.

A little late?

So I'm planning on going to go back to school in the fall to begin the process of becoming a teacher.

For the longest time, I've pushed myself to do various things to redeem myself in the eyes of people I've let down. Well, yesterday standing in Barnes and Noble looking at the educator related material I realized that the first people I really let down were my teachers in school. I can remember handing my sculpture teacher my withdrawal forms, and her looking me in the face, saying "I won't sign this." She did anyways of course. I wish she hadn't, though I suppose it wouldn't have mattered.

I need to apologize to her, Mr. Matheny, Mr. Ballard, all the rest, and this is the best way I know how.

I'd like to return to Ohio to teach, as the state Arizona just decided to balance its budget by cutting over $300 million from education funding. I'm guessing another state would be more receptive to new teachers, especially strange ones like myself (year shy of 30, high school drop-out). The way I figure, I can at least teach from life experience.

On how NOT to do things at any rate.

nostalgia sucks

When I was a teenager, barely there, not quite, or in high school I heard the popular pop rock of the time, Gin Blossoms, Third Eye Blind, Soul Asylum, Blind Melon, others, and I'd think about cool twenty-somethings cruising around being cool twenty-somethings and listening to this music.

Now I listen to this music from my teen years with the realization that they were busting their asses working a crappy job, and listening to music from the eighties while wishing they were still teenagers.

new work

I am occasionally seeing in blue.

Why, I am not sure. I fall half-asleep on the bus, and upon waking everything has a blue tint to it. Not just the sky (obviously), but everything. People, bus fixtures, cars outside. This has happened to me before, sleeping in the cab on the taxi-line at the airport.

I have a theory.

When I I fall half-asleep on the bus, I usually am thinking about something. By half-asleep, I mean I am conscious, as far as I can tell. When I do so, it feels as if I think about something for ten minutes or more. When I regain my full senses, the bus has usually only moved less than a mile or so, certainly less than the distance required by my perceived time.

My mind has accelerated.

My theory is thus; when I awake my mind is still accelerated, and therefor the photons hitting my eyes are perceived as blue shifted. However, it would be assumed that they would be red-shifted instead since the photons would appear to have slowed down.

Hmm.