The Ghostwind Mythos

Louisville

2007-06-17T21:23:00.000-04:00

Such amazing friends. Such wonderful family.

I hadn't driven in three-and-a-half months, but I took to it again easily. Just strange to cover that much ground so quickly, and to actually be in control of the movement. Strange to hear English everywhere. Strange to wake up and realize I know this city like the back of my hand.

I'm home, but that feeling is quickly fading. Most people don't feel "home" or "healthy" unless they miss such things. Now, occassionally, I'll think "Jesus, I'm home"... then "Jesus, I actually did that." And my brain is tempted to think of it all like it was a distant dream. Many times, it's as if I never left.

But that just isn't so. It happened; I was there. And I don't quite feel like the man who left Louisville, even if I don't quite feel like the man who returned. Either way, I don't want to fully adjust to this. I can be comfortable while still feeling a little alien... I was once a teenager, after all.

I love you all. And I thank you all. More than once, the comments -- or just knowing someone might be following this quest -- would keep me going. And this has reminded me that the journey wasn't just for myself.

So I'm equal parts disbelief, gratitude, and assimilation. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Florence, Revisited

2007-06-05T08:38:00.000-04:00

Back now among my Florentines, strolling a city with sleeping stones that remember the dreams of the populace, good and bad. They've introduced me to an interesting man, Kenneth, who is a New Zealander, sculptor, jeweler, father, professor, and Maori shaman (no kidding). When we talk, the conversation is relaxed, fluid, no longer shoved into stumbling by my obsessions. If magic comes now, it comes of its own accord. As Kenneth says, she is a coy woman: to pursue her is to see her pull away, but a man can make a fine nest in his heart and she might answer such an invitation.

And to be honest, I'm glad I'll soon be leaving the labyrinth -- this one, anyway -- behind me. I can honorably dismount from this crazed chariot, whereas before I felt like I had to follow it even if it led over the cliff. A weight off my shoulders. Before, I was scared to ask myself the hardest of questions because I worried about digging a hole I couldn't climb out of while still being true to this quest. Now I can push myself even harder, knowing that the quest now is life itself... and I have far more companions along its paths.

I'll be in Louisville on the 12th. Give me that day for rest. I'll be home, with you, on the 13th. It'll be wonderful to walk at your side again.

Istanbul, Revisited

2007-05-31T14:31:00.000-04:00

And like that, Jerusalem is behind me. I'm walking my way out of the labyrinth, and I have a lot waiting for me when I finally get back where I started. Only it doesn't quite work that way, does it? It's more like a spiral than a circle; something is still gained...

Even if it's not what I went looking for. High expectations are dangerous things. But I started the quest, and things happened, and the ripples of revelations will keep coming to me long after I've returned. It'll be years before all this makes sense to me, and I've become comfortable with that. No lightning bolts, just echoes in a comfortable dark.

So, if no one objects, I think I'll continue to change a little once I get back: in small degrees, in tiny twists of personality, in the kind of subtle shifts that separate art from attempt. I have this image in my head, burned in like a retinal flare, of the man I want to be. I've flexed my will a bit on this journey, and I've felt my intuition stretch out. I just need to grow into this wider spirit.

I need to get in character and keep living this personal story. Everyday. This path closes behind me, but paths open up ahead. And like a fractal pattern, infinitely rich with detail, all is the labyrinth... all is the story.

Tomorrow that story takes me back to Florence, if only for something of an epilogue.

Via Dolorosa

2007-05-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

This is the Via Dolorosa I saw.

I. In the courtyard of a Muslim school, a judgment is handed out. Release this depraved killer, or this crazed mystic? Pontius Pilate performs ablutions and thinks this story won't last much longer; he doesn't understand why the mob's so bloodthirsty as to free a murderer, but he knows it'd be dangerous to deny them. Besides, he didn't hear anyone speaking up for the mystic. Just a small group of people crying. They also know it'd be dangerous, and they know he... He... doesn't want them hurt. So Jesus is condemned -- doesn't even try and defend himself -- in a school, blatantly guilty of being a deviation in the paradigm. Miracles on the Shabbath? Blessed are the meek? The whole kingdom of the Most High God in the seed of a mustard plant, a weed? If we teach our children that, logic will eat them alive.

II. So the Mossad agents lead him across the street. There's evidence he's connected to some escaped Nazis -- dared to offer them redemption -- so it's time for a good old-fashioned scourging, but just 39 lashes, since 40 is considered lethal and they want him alive... they want names. But all he screams are the Names of G-D, and that never holds up in court because it's impossible to extridite divinities. So they put a bag over his head, a flak jacket on his chest (to keep some jackass from a mercy killing before he can be made an example), and put the cross on his shoulder. He takes it like he's been waiting for it, and the agents curse themselves because it's hard to break a masochist.

III. But it's a real cry of pain when his knees buckle and he drops to the street. The guards have come to hate that sound. Pathetic. Usually they get the inmate within sight of the table before he begins blubbering like a baby. Life isn't fair, boy. Touch luck. Got caught with a dangerous opiate/hallucinogen/upper and had so much the cops didn't even bother asking if he had intent to distribute. Deal with it. Suck it up and carry yourself with pride at least. But he doesn't. He manages to stagger to his feet and carry himself... but not with pride.

IV. Burned in from overuse, she can remember exactly the last time she saw him before they snatched him and he disappeared. His friends told her what happened. She remembers how scared he was, yet how determined. And as gut-wrenching as that time was, she wants to remember him that way, the way he was before he vanished into Guantanamo. Because she looks at him now and her words and his words seem so far away and she can't remember them exactly because inside she's screaming over and over again, "What have they done to my son?!" She wants to remember him right but his face is so bruised he doesn't look human, and her tears make it hard to see; so she blinks her eyes but the guards have already taken him away. She wants to scream out "Just give them what they want!" But she knows what he'd say, a little afraid but determined: "But Mom... I am."

V. They took him to the right, back onto Via Dolorosa from al-Wad Road. Not sure if Simon Cyrene ran into it all on his own accord or if the Klansmen grabbed him. Records are scarce and Simon was probably illiterate, so we have only secondary sources: a handful of writings and an eerie postcard of the end result. Either way, Simon carried the cross about 50 meters at most. Not sure if Jesus tried to help him or if he was "occupied" by the Klansmen, but I wouldn't call this much of a break for him. Besides, if he looked like he was regaining his strength, they would have put the cross on him again. The only record that later mentions Simon still doesn't explain if his help was voluntary, but his grandson records him as saying "We're all carryin' crosses anyhow."

VI. She'd been standing by the column, bracing against it so the crowd wouldn't push her away. This was crazy. She didn't go to medical school for this. She didn't sell her soul for school loans so she could watch helplessly as the Hutus drove this Tutsi man like he were cattle. And for what? Racial purity? She'd been here God knows how long and she still couldn't tell the difference except one group was killing the other. Killing and humiliating: rapes, mutilations, and now this. Every time he stumbled into the crowd they beat him mercilessly. He couldn't see for the blood in his eyes. And here she stood, feeling like an idiot and hating herself and thinking of what her mother would say. She wrings the handkerchief, her stomach twisting up more. She's with Doctors Without Borders. They can't touch her, right? She's politically neutral. But is anyone going to ask for her badge before she gets a machete in the face, or worse? If she had a syringe of morphine, she'd dope this guy up so much he'd think he's in Heaven. If she had a pistol, she'd put him out of his misery. But no. Little Miss Veronica has a handkerchief. She busts through the crowd and wipes his face before anyone has any idea what she's doing. They hurl her into the dirt and kick at her. She covers her head, screaming, and instinctively locks her legs tight because she's had nightmares about the stories she's heard. But the crowd passes on. She looks at the handkerchief and sees a face of blood and she thinks about medical school and the only thing that got her through opening up corpses: this is all of us; we're the same blood, breath, and bone; this is all of us.

VII. The intersection with Khan al-Zeit used to be a gate to the countryside, but now it's a flexing, thrashing arm of the market. The legionnaires shout for people to move out of the way, but no one here speaks ancient Latin anymore, and it's hard to scare people by waving a gladius around when everyone has seen 18-year-old soldiers with assault rifles. So no one was real surprised when a kid with a cart skidded past, jolting the cross, which drove the crown of thorns in deeper. He fell. Shopkeepers first started yelling that the Romans were clogging up the street, then they quickly began to implore the mob to look at their goods while they had such a captive audience. Two icons and a rug were soon sold. A Roman traded his gladius for a knockoff Japanese sword (the gladius was sold minutes later), while the rest of his platoon were trying to figure out where the gate was. Finally the captain got the attention of a young Arab boy and made a "V" with one hand and held up three fingers with the other. The boy pointed down Aqabat al-Khanqa and offered to guide them for just one dollar. The Romans shoved him aside and got their prisoner to his feet, leading him along.

VIII. There was a fortune to be had in Jerusalem. And, yes, the Holy Land needed cleansing. But when a man is driven mad by the sun, malnutrition, and disease -- and priests, equally mad -- he has difficulty seeing the difference. Fortune and purification. But this had to be done right the first time because not a one of them wanted to come back to this God-forsaken place (though they might send and errant son or two to make a man out of him). And that's exactly how it was done: in order to really secure the fortune, heirs had to be dealt with. They caught up to one they'd wounded, and he was shouting to two women: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, weep rather for yourselves and your children." They overtook him and charged the women. One man, a toothless squire who used to be something of a mason, actually stopped on the spot and chiseled a Crusader cross into the wall, shouted "For Jesu!," and hurried to catch up with his lord who'd got ahold of one of the women. A precision strike in a densely populated neighborhood had become a massacre.

IX. Back to Khan al-Zeit, up some stairs above the market, and down the street to the three Coptic churches. In Queen Helen's Church (named for Constantine's mother, who made it a point to go around finding Christian relics), there is a cistern in the basement: narrow stairs with a low overhang which open up to a cavernous room, the stairs going down into the murky water. I sat down on the stairs, listening to the dripping. The sign outside said to try singing a hymn because of the long echo, so I hummed "Amazing Grace." I don't think I had the verses in the right order, and I don't really care, because I prefer to end with my favorite: "Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come. / T'was grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home." Halfway through the verse I heard a man call down the tunnel. I thought he'd hear my humming, but he turned out the lights. Pitch black and the sound of water. I smiled and sang the end of the verse -- "And grace will lead me home" -- because I'd walked the Buda Labyrinth and I was alone with the dark, Echo singing back to me. I could have happily sat there for hours. Nearby, Jesus fell a third time, and if there's a sliver of mercy in the world, he passed out and dreamt he was beside me, in the echoing dark that is at once intimate and transcendent. But the Via Dolorosa isn't over yet. I turned on my flashlight, smiled, turned it off, and felt my way out, back into the light of day.

X. Down through the Ethiopian church, and take a right through massive doors into a place of lanterns, paintings, and tourists. They strip him bare to humiliate him in front of the crowd; he probably doesn't notice. Then they gamble over the soiled cloth as a memento because most of us are floating somewhere between numbness and horror. If he has any comfort left, it comes solely from within.

XI. They nail him to the cross at the back of the Franciscan chapel while tour guides debate the mechanics of a nail through the palm of the hand or through the wrist.

XII. He is hauled up in place, the "Place of the Skulls" ("Golgotha"). Pictures are taken to make this moment last forever, like so many paintings and crosses showing him so often crucified and not enough resurrected. The various denominations argue who gets to nail the sign on the cross. Someone has stabbed him in the side, but the Romans are gone by now... except for those of the Catholic variety. No one sticks around the full, pregnant three hours, so we all just mentally fastforward to the end: the Word Made Flesh dies. An earthquake tears the ground so Jesus' blood can reach the buried Adam far below in the center of the world. The ghost of Queen Helen finds three crosses in the basement and the third one heals a passing invalid. Somewhere is an echo of words that may or may not have been shouted in agony, but which nonetheless ring true: "Daddy! Daddy, where are you?!"

XIII. He is taken down. He's gone. Mary holds him, and this torment reaches into the deepest parts of her, beyond even her womb. Her icon shows her red heart bared, pierced by a silver dagger. Like her son on the cross, the agony is what fixes the moment in reality, the sorrow pins it to the cosmos, sews it onto the moving skin of memory and legend. This scar has not healed. She has since died and gone to Heaven, become the spiritual child of her child. Perhaps she has transcended all this, her heart so wide that the pain and joys of the world are as the sigh of the wind. But we still remember her suffering.

XIV. He is buried in a stranger's tomb. Mary buries a part of herself. They think the story's over.

But a messiah comes to Israel every year, sometimes two or three at a time. The archangel Michael, still blowing the Trump of the End Times, hasn't taken a breath in centuries. And one day we will not only allow Jesus to fully ascend, but we will join at his side, all of us Anointed, all of us Christs. We will be a species of saints. We have much work to do.

So the question is: after the last station of the cross, where do you go?

Jerusalem

2007-05-17T10:45:00.000-04:00

At first, when I arrived, the bus dropped me off and I had to walk a bit to get internet access and book a hostel. A celebration was going on: forty years of Israel "re-unifying" Jerusalem, so there were was a parade and plenty of people out on the streets. I worried that Jerusalem had gone modern, that its history had been almost completely buried in cafes and parks. Then I got to the Old City.

And yes, the old Jerusalem is still here, breathing quietly in walls built by Suleyman the Magnificent during Turkish rule. (He was so angry that the architects had left David's Tomb outside the new walls that he put their heads outside the walls as well.) The spice market makes my eyes water. A shopkeeper -- hoping to pawn off some Persian rugs -- made me a cup of sage tea because I told him my stomach was bothering me. Hebrew, Arabic, and English come at me from all angles. I'm staying at the Citadel Hostel, which is a truly mazelike, four-story place with low, cavernous ceilings; I don't mind hitting my head when I get to hang out in such an interesting building. I am surrounded by jews, muslims, and christians of many different sects. (Even met a German girl who was raised Pentecostal and spoke in tongues at the age of five!)

On the other side of things, we occassionally watch Al-Jazeera, and the news of fighting is more relevant when you know it's on the southern border of Israel. Packs of soldiers from the settlements roamed around yesterday, to help serve as security for the celebration; but these are kids, just eighteen years old, strolling with assault rifles. Barbed wire tops the wall outside my hostel. And this, too, is the old Jerusalem.

Istanbul

2007-05-14T04:57:00.000-04:00

The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque stand across from each other like old friends (one significantly older than the other). The Sophia was once like Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome; emperors were crowned there. Even when Constantinople fell to the Turks, the conquerors would not destroy such a grand work of architecture. They made a handful of (religiously) necessary changes and the ancient building served as a mosque, Arabic calligraphy still hangs there on massive disks from the balconies or curling around the top of the enormous dome. The Blue Mosque was later built across from the Sophia, its architecture and size like a proclamation of both the power of the Ottomans and -- "Allahu Akbar" -- the magnificence of Allah. It is the only mosque with six minarets; at the time, the great mosque of Mecca also had six, but they added one as a matter of honor. I'm sure someone would have complained about this, but Sultan Ahmet I -- who had the Blue Mosque built -- also had the same architect give the Kaaba its golden gutters... so critics kept their complaints to themselves.

Due to the location of this hostel, I get to walk between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia everyday. They are positively huge and beautiful (though admittedly the Mosque has been better maintained).

When there is a call to prayer, every mosque in the city bursts into the intricate song, each singer doing a slightly different version with the same words, like singing in rounds. "Allahu Akbar. La ilaha illa'Llah, Mohammedun rasulu 'Llah. Allahu Akbar": "God is Greatest. There is no god but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God. God is Greatest." As if Istanbul itself is singing, the words echoing from all across the entire city, rolling through the streets, coming in waves.

Last night, I saw Sufi mystics dance. The same order as founded by the poet Rumi, they perform publicly to celebrate the 800th anniversary of his birth in Afghanistan. He was a man of intense love: the kind of love that destroys the world's illusions and frees the beautiful souls to express themselves as openly as the stars do. Musicians played, a drum beat lulling me into a hypnotic trance, a dulcimer's strings playing chords of light, three singers with deep and rich voices describing a world of peace and tolerance and the kind of love that -- far from boring -- makes the soul scream in ecstasy, all in harmony with the universe's own ancient sufi dance... and the sufis danced, spinning in place like the planets, slowly revolving around one who spun in the middle, their long skirts lifting and rolling, their tall hats drawing halos in the air, both hands lifted with the right palm up and the left palm down: "We receive from God and we give to man; we keep nothing for ourselves," as Rumi wrote. And in watching them spin, a part of me spun with them. We are always moving, even in the deepest stillness. Many wise men say to slow down our lives... it is a refreshing change when the soul itself is quickened and brought up to speed, whirring like a top, its vibrations creating sound and song and harmony. Allelujah.

I leave tomorrow for Tel Aviv, then to Jerusalem. I spin across the world as it spins under my feet. My path is a spiralling labyrinth drawn for a short while on the cloth of the cosmos.

Athens, Enriched

2007-05-10T08:54:00.000-04:00

Couch surfing is one of the most fantastic ideas I've ever heard. From www.couchsurfing.com, people can connect with natives in a city willing to host them for free. I've met and had great conversations with not only native Athenians, but also other travellers. (Obviously, staying at a hostel offers far more of the latter than the former.) The only two flaws I see are that, (a) you have to begin the process at least a few days in advance, contacting a potential host, and obviously, (b) there's the "psycho factor." But I seriously doubt the couch surfing community would be as huge as it is in Athens if psychopaths were making the circuit.

It's hot and humid. I'm blatantly a foreigner, pretty much the only person with freckles and sweating like a maniac. I leave the trench coat with my big bag. The first day trying to carry that thing around was like torture. The sun here is a powerful thing, with heavy rays, and it doesn't help that I didn't bring any shorts. (Not, mind you, that I really own any shorts except for swimming.) At the same time, I keep wishing that this short-lived complexion of mine might stick around for a while. It's like looking at someone else in the mirror: some estranged brother of mine with a beard a little too long. But I know full well that two days of normal life will render me just as lily white as I always have been.

And this is a shame, because I like this man I'm becoming. Physically, emotionally, spiritually I feel great... if a little anxious. All in due time, and not long in coming. But I want these subtle changes to stick, even the physical ones. I can't let these things fade like a tan. I'll be going to Istanbul tomorrow, so we'll see what changes its experiences -- and its sun -- will evoke.

Athens

2007-05-05T04:39:00.000-04:00

I spent all of yesterday trekking Athens with three Serbian girls. This is my third group of three friends (including my Graces, and the French architects), and I didn't realize that until one of them pointed it out. We needed each other anyway, everyone keeping everyone else awake because the train pulled into Athens at five in the morning. We pushed and pushed, stopping frequently to rest, talking everything from politics to music.

And plenty of times we would just stare in awe. The size of these Greek ruins is like the footprint of a giant. The Temple of Olympian Zeus is now nothing more than a handful of columns standing like sentries in the middle of a park, but they are massive; the temple must have had its own presence. But what it lacks now in completion, it makes up with age. These columns are the bones of a dead titan, from whom our cultures descended. Prometheus gave us fire: philosophy, democracy, and artistry. And now I pay homage.

Which is hard not to do when you turn a street corner and see the Parthenon looming over you like the eye of Sauron. Athens is a massive city, stuffed to the gills with apartment complexes and office buildings and all the other structures that keep a city alive. But in crawling around these streets, occasionally an alley or square will open up like a forest clearing, and the Parthenon -- from on high -- will call your name. And you have to look. Standing on its shoulder, Athens' off-white buildings look like coral in the distance, so many people that they spill onto the hillsides as if sloppily poured.

And in spite of the dominance of the Orthodox Church, it's refreshing to see a little good, old fashioned, unapologetic paganism. Christ is the redeemer, yes, but Dionysius threw some amazing parties, and his holy places are almost as common. (It should be noted that in his own mythos, Dionysius has died three times. The Greeks loved him so much they kept bringing him back to life... like Superman. Which is impressive, considering he was originally a mid-Eastern deity.) And I've shown my respect to him as well, telling a handful of favored stories and raising a glass in his honor, even as I stood at the same place Paul the Apostle once spoke.

But I love these places imperfectly, and like an adulterer I am not always thinking of Athena when I am with her. She is beautiful, yes, and fascinating. But she is not home.

Treskavec, Enriched

2007-04-30T05:28:00.000-04:00

I met a Macedonian guy, studying German at the university in Skopje, and he told me about a German play that takes place in a monastery, with the description "Time stops in these walls." And it is true. Visitors come and go, sometimes they stay the night. An American came a few days ago: Randy, from Texas and DC, working with a firm in Kosovo to help stabilize the region... he specifically working to help facilitate the creation of a court system. Art students come, or architecture students, or professors from various fields.

The guys here aren't looking forward to when summer fully sets in, when the monastery will flood with tourists, all clamoring for Kallist's attention. He is a busy man, the only monk at Treskavec, a place so rich in history that it was built atop a temple of Apollo and Artemis, and the surrounding hillsides are topped by large stones, strange holes cut into them, where ancient peoples once sacrificed to more exotic gods. I've been here over a week now and I still haven't spoken with Kallist about things divine. I do not want to interrupt him when he is obviously enjoying himself conversing at dinner. And what free time he has he spends with God.

It is so easy to lose myself in the rhythm here. Days pass as easily as breathing. I can stare at the sky for hours, or write in my journal, or hang out with the guys. If I am bored, I give myself a little job to do, like picking up litter.

Or I climb a mountain. Like yesterday, crawling up the peak near the monastery, clutching at the metal cross at its top, very slowly turning my head -- fighting vertigo -- to look out at a panorama restrained only by mountains and sheer distance. Perspective loses all meaning at that height: lengths stretch and size dwindles. A flock of little birds danced in the air nearby, flying higher than the peak, clearly having fun.

I have time to think and write. I meditate on magic, and I'm clearly no closer to an impossible goal. But I have changed a bit, learned something of discipline and will. And even as I struggle to internalize these lessons, to really become this man whose ethic I am trying out, I wonder if I haven't found my personal Jerusalem, my Golgotha where an older self will die and a new man -- still resembling the old -- will be born.

Treskavec Monastery

2007-04-26T06:14:00.000-04:00

Allow me to explain.

Yesterday, we worked, starting around 9am, digging up earth that'd been put in the monastery's courtyard but over time came to disrupt the water flow. I pushed a wheelbarrow and shoveled (albeit not terribly well). We moved a massive doghouse belonging to Bruno, a Saint Bernard about as big as I am. We occasionally drank Turkish coffee and smoked. We ate at 1 and 6, no meat except for fish, with lots of bread. Night came, and we held a small service in the church at 8; I just listened to the Slavic language roll around the church's stone walls, praying silently my own way. I then strolled outside and looked down from the mountain at the villages below: clusters of lights gathered like phosphorescent algae in the dark. I ended the night hanging out in a room heated by a stove, listening to the soundtrack of a Macedonian movie called "Before the Rain" as one man painted an icon of Saint Michael the Archangel and two other men played chess.

This is a place of heartbreaking beauty. I walked almost three hours to get to the nearby town, Prilep, for internet access, and I'll walk back along the same mountain path... the same path I got lost on two days ago, earning a sunburn and numerous scratches from thorns. But I had so much fun, climbing to the peaks of the mountains to find the path again, more mountain goat than American, stopping occasionally at the natural springs with icons of the Virgin Mary and little Jesus.

I'm learning a little of the Macedonian language, and my hosts are perpetually amazed at this. They are good people, some of them artists, some just working here to help at the monastery. Kallist, the monk, is one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. I haven't talked with him at length; I just like watching him: his hand gestures, listening to his voice, seeing his facial expressions. He is a man of intense charisma. Dressed in the traditional black cap and robe of an Orthodox monk, complete with large beard and bushy eyebrows, if he were angry he'd be terrifying. But when he smiles, it's like the whole room lights up. He is a man of joy. And -- thanks to Macedonian hospitality -- he's practically forbid me from buying food for the monastery... although I'm debating respectfully disobeying and sneaking some kind of fresh fruit into the kitchen when no one is looking.

It's easy to forget the place is on a mountain. But take just one step outside the monastery walls, and the view opens up so big that the head can't take it all in. The rolling hills and spines of mountains stretch out in incredible perspective. It's also easy to forget the world is so big.

It will be hard to rejoin the tourist throngs. It will be hard to leave this insulated, isolated place of peace. But... not yet. I'll stay at least a few days more, perhaps another week. So we can all rest easy for a bit, even as I get callouses on my hands from a shovel, or a vicious sunburn from a mountain too close to the sun, even as I am humbled by a fiercely proud people who believe in modern miracles.

I love you all.

Thessaloniki to Treskavec Monastery

2007-04-20T08:20:00.000-04:00

I'm in Greece at present, but only for a few hours until I can catch my bus to Macedonia. I'll return afterward to give Athens a good look and hopefully get out to see Crete.

I'm headed to a monastery I heard about from some French guys in my last hostel. From what they said, the place is run by an Orthodox monk who -- I'm told -- is hilarious. He makes jokes while he gives the historical tour, and the jokes make him laugh every time. Stay there is free, but after the second day you have to help out around the place. For me, that seems perfectly ideal, though there are still some technical issues I'm trying to work out.

The first is getting there. Like most monasteries, this place is pretty isolated. I can't take a bus or train from here to the nearby town, so there's a switch involved. And switching trains or busses always makes me nervous, not the least of which because of the language barrier. The second problem is money. Yes, the stay is free, but I still need to feed myself, and I somehow doubt the nearby town will have an ATM. I'll also need to get ahold of money in the town I'm switching trains in, or I'll have to try and pay for the train ride with tales of adventure and hijinks... without getting hijinked. The third problem is contact. If the nearby town doesn't have an ATM, it's a safe bet that internet access won't be falling into my lap. So for all I know, this post precedes a week of silence which -- I'm sure -- probably makes you all just as nervous as it makes me. But travelling to the near-edge of civilization has its special sacrifices and special rewards.

Ah. And the awesome hostel I left in Sofia, The Rooms, said I could work there if I wanted. As incredibly tempted as I am, I've got to be true to this quest, and that means looking for magic en route to Jerusalem. A side track, out of my way, to Treskavec Monastery is one thing; working in a capital city is another. Though, of course, the option is still there for the return trip. Wonderful folks, truly.

I'm nearing my destination, geographically speaking. The magic I'm looking for still eludes me, but I've learned and seen plenty, including a re-appreciation for the everyday world (which I was seriously lacking when I set out on this quest). I'll get to Jerusalem, hang out for a bit, give one last honest push toward some kind of ascension, then back I come... walking by degrees into the old world with new eyes and hopefully a new, reborn life. There will doubtless be some uncomfortable adjusting, but it'll be worth it to feel like I've found my place in the world, or found a way of seeing the world that's both honest and meaningful (quite a juggling act, that).

Thank you, my guiding constellations. I sail by your lights.

Rila Monastery

2007-04-14T06:55:00.000-04:00

First of all, congratulations to the Yang to my Yin on the birth of his son. And, yes, I'll be keeping a lookout for the other six signs of the apocalypse. All my love to you, man.

I've spent the past three days at Rila Monastery, three hours or so from Sofia, a place so isolated the Turks had trouble finding it (and they ruled the area for quite a while). A quiet little place, surrounded by mountains, snowed caps in the distance. Three times I'd leave my cell to listen at the church to their mass, to the rolling tones of their voices. (If my beard gets any longer, I might be able to blend in.)

But now having joined the European Union, the whole nation is still caught in the ripple effect. My guide book's now pretty much useless as far as prices are concerned, and I ate honey and graham crackers yesterday because the powers of capitalism have managed to find what the Turks only occasionally could.

I miss you all. Each day, the ache to return home gets stronger and stronger. But I still haven't yet reached the middle of the labyrinth, and I'd love to pay a visit to some great friends before I fly back to the world waiting to catch me in America.

I pray all is well with you... with all of you. If I had some hardcore magic at my disposal, I'd do what I can to ensure it. As it stands, I have hope; hope sharpened and focused like a ray of light. That, at least, I've learned. So I send a little light your way... you've given me so much already.

Sofia

2007-04-09T11:15:00.000-04:00

Due to a 25-hour train ride here from Budapest, I missed the opportunity to hear Easter mass sung by Bulgarian angels. But just today, a little over an hour ago, I went to mass anyway, at a beautiful cathedral here. Eastern Orthodox architecture makes for amazing acoustics. All the singing was done by the priest and another man standing off to the side, who had a rich, resonant voice. The incense was equally thick. I feel... so good.

The Cyrillic alphabet isn't near as intimidating if you consider it came from Greek. A few extra symbols, yes, but I got the basics easily enough. Just unfortunate that my travel book didn't -- for some reason -- have a list of useful phrases in Bulgarian. No matter. I seem to be getting along nicely.

The weather is lovely. I have prayed with focus and adoration. I have but to wait and claim my ascension when it comes.

But there are still obstacles. I looked over the entry requirements for Turkey and Israel, and they are mazelike in their language. From what I can tell, I can apply at the Turkish border for an entry visa, costing $20. I fill out an application, they look it over, they keep it for their records and I move on. Looking at Israel's requirements, I don't think I need a visa as an American citizen who isn't staying very long, but I do need a valid ticket out. Seems as if they don't want me lingering on. Unfortunate to attach such a deadline to such a spiritual city as Jerusalem. But as Zen teaches, enlightenment can come in just one moment. It'll probably take me a bit longer, but I think I'm up to an ascendant marathon.

I love you all so very much.

Budapest, Labyrinthine

2007-04-06T16:57:00.000-04:00

We have all been alone in the dark and the quiet.

Have you ever been alone *with* the dark? *With* the quiet?

In perfect blackness, I can still see a ring of soft red around my vision. I'm peaceful, walking very slowly, my hand on a muddy rope until that, too, ends. Then it's just me, the walls, the water, the quiet, and the dark. And I would breathe it all in.

There were wells. Three of them. One of oblivion, one of remembrance... and the third. The lights came on when I stood over it. There in the dark, waiting, were cave drawings. If the inner soul really is -- as the Hindus say -- the exact same thing as the soul of the universe, then personal history is also the history of the world. So I'd arrived at the place before, or after, Now. Some place on the other side of the ring, between the tomb and the womb, but not quite alive... not like before.

And it is Good Friday.

Budapest, Enriched

2007-04-05T19:38:00.000-04:00

I love you all so much.

The day started out so well.

I went to Buda Castle and immediately went to the labyrinth entrance. Once a bunker, once a center for Cold War info, now turned into a shamanistic underground path explaining both primordial human and Hungarian history. It was fantastic. These people obviously had a solid understanding of Jungian archetypes. In the little passages, occasionally enriched by some gentle mood music, I met a statue shaman, the world axis, the labyrinth of courage, as well as some other trials representing phases in Hungarian history. The labyrinth of courage was intended for children and adults with candles. The goal is to find the sun. I did it alone, in pitch black, wandering like a blind man until I found the refracting mirror with the lights. And tomorrow I go back to walk the personal labyrinth -- which must be scheduled ahead of time -- and I'm completely looking forward to it. I've studied a lot about labyrinths and mazes, and they are like a physical metaphor for spiritual travel. At one point they were even considered a substitute for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The castle itself was alright. The permanent exhibition of Hungarian art was... alright.

The day started out so well.

And just a few hours ago, I strolled out to relax at a bar and have a drink and write in my journal about an interesting dream I had. I met two Hungarian women and asked where a good place was. One said, "Maybe in this direction. Can we look together?" I thought, Sure, no big deal, I'll hang out with these two and try and show them not all Americans are bad. We got to a place, had some drinks, some wine, and then I was presented with the bill.

I tell you this because I love you all. And I want you to understand what this spiritual quest has become for me.

I got scammed. The bill was about 120,000 florints (the local currency), which is around $500. No shit. I got scammed. I seriously don't even know how to feel about this. All at the same time, I feel angry, self-depreciating, utterly hateful, and depressed. Money is energy in currency form, and I've just lost an aweful lot of it just because I wanted to meet interesting people who came across my path.

I've been scammed. Jesus God, I've been scammed.

Tomorrow I'll contact the American embassy. Not because I actually think they'll be able to do anything about the money, but if only to warn other travellers.

I feel... Hell, I don't know. I feel alot, and very, very little of it is good.

The day started out so nicely.

Budapest, Interlude

2007-04-04T14:47:00.000-04:00

It was like feeling my stomach fall down through my legs, dragging my throat with it. I was talking with some dude trying to get me to stay at his hostel. We were still there at the Budapest train station, and I'd just got off a 5-hour ride from Prague. I grabbed my smokes to light up, then it hit me.

The zippo was gone. Probably slid out of my pocket onto the train seat. And just as I started rushing back to the train, it pulled away.

Joe, I am horribly, horribly sorry. It's taken serious effort not to just cry. Seriously. I forgot my passport one day in Rome, and I freaked out less. I went back to the train station later. I'd drawn a comic-like depiction of the train going to Budapest from Prague, a picture of the train seats with an arrow pointing between them, then a little picture of each side of the zippo.

The police weren't terribly pleased, but one of them did his best to understand (because there was no English to be had). I did my best with pantomime, then thrust the picture into his hands. He took me onto a docked train and had me kinda act it out. Finally he explained this to another cop -- who actually did speak a little English -- and they offered to fill out an official paper (like if I wanted to make an insurance claim). I told them I didn't need any official paper, but the zippo was really important to me. The cop who spoke English looked at me and said, "It's in another pocket now."

So yeah, I feel pretty horrible. And it doesn't help that I haven't slept much. So I'm going to go shower, and sleep awhile, and try and collect myself.

Rome to Prague

2007-04-01T15:29:00.000-04:00

I got exponentially more out of the Palatine Hill than I did the Sistine Chapel. It´s a beautiful place, like a cross between a park and a set of ruins. The buildings, some partly intact, are like shadowed little escapes from the noise of the city, especially the ever-present noise of emergency sirens. I strolled down those little alleys, half-hidden by Escher-like buildings that were poured onto each other over the centuries. Alleys on top of roofs and such. Fascinating to look at, even as they confuse the eyes.

And I do have to admit that I enjoyed myself in Rome. I prayed at St. Peter´s. I strolled ancient, ancient streets, and looked intensely at the ruins that had been chained off from the tourists. And I am glad to have had that experience.

Now I am in Prague, and this city is definitely not what I expected. It is far more civilized and first-world that you might initially think, and coming here for a taste of second-world charm and second-world magic has been a bit disappointing. This country is too busy trying to join the world community to have any time for something like magic. There is a lesson there, I suppose... that even magic must wait for the world to be ready for it. But, then, we will not know unless someone tries.

By-the-by, this keyboard is driving me crazy. The z and the y are switched, and I have no idea how to get the apostrophe... or a question mark. So, you get an update sans contractions and questions. Consider this some coincidental declaration from a more erudite world. No questions. No bastardization of the language. I speak as the prophets once did, all because of an unfamiliar keyboard.

I miss you all. I want to come home and pick up my life where I left off... to quickly grow my life into something self-sustaining, then ascendant. But I have a bit more to see, and God only knows when I will ever have this opportunity again.

I picked up a little figurine of the golem. Yes... the golem of Prague. Kinda cute, in a clay-man sort of way. But, then, we are descended of a clay man... the first man... so I suppose he is not so different from us after all.

Take care of each other. I love you all.

Rome

2007-03-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

This is probably more than simply obvious, but this city is huge. Walking around is difficult, the metro system has just two lines, and the bus routes are like the Gordian knot. And it's all urban, so unless you eat somewhere that caters to tourists or wealthy folks, the restaurant you go has no problem selling you a Coke with your pizza.

I have been to the house of God. The Musei Vaticani was -- like most other historic museums -- not actually built with the museum crowd in mind. Very few people say, "Hey. Build me a castle. Make it good and defensible, but with a baroque architectural feel. Oh, and just in case they turn it into a museum in four hundred years, add some redundant hallways and make the rooms extra big. And more bathrooms." It was still fantastic. Especially the Museo Pio-Clementino, which is the largest collection of ancient sculpture in the world.

Yes, the Sistine Chapel was amazing, but it's really hard to appreciate it when you're elbow-to-elbow with two hundred people all staring in different directions. I do appreciate the fact that Michaelangelo pained his own flayed skin in the hands of Saint Bartholomew in "The Last Judgment," a wall piece in the chapel. He didn't really want to do all the work anyway, but it's hard to say no to a pope. Especially if he's a Medici (but I don't really know if he was).

I enjoyed the Castel Sant'Angelo, rededicated to the Archangel Michael after he appeared just before a plague ended in Rome. (It was originally Hadrian's mausoleum, then a fortress, then a prison.)

What I really liked were Augustus' Mausoleum and the Pantheon. The mausoleum was grassed over by centuries of time, and little more than a raised hill with a path around it. But there were still stones, and those stones were still old as can be, and I still knew an emperor was buried here. If he's lucky, he still remains. (I say that only because the Venetians stole Saint Mark's body from Constantinople... no kidding.) And the Pantheon was started by Augustus, finished by Hadrian, and to this day we have no idea how they made the damn dome. Staring up through the hole in the middle of it is like looking into the Eye of God. Add to that the fact that during certain celestial events, the sun will shine directly down through it, and the floor of the place was once used to chart astrological movements. Very, very cool. You just have to ignore the fact that now it's a kinda lame basilica. Just walk outside, a good ways away, turn around, and gape at the sheer size of the thing. Hadrian once boasted that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. Looking at the Pantheon, it's hard to argue with him.

Just one more day in Rome. I know, it sucks, but this is an expensive place, and I think I might just be able to manage to get to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine Hill tomorrow. Like I'm travelling back in time. Now when I see HBO's "Rome," I'll be able to say, "I've been there... except I remember a McDonald's in the background."

Venice

2007-03-25T09:04:00.000-04:00

First things first: a congratulations to Valerio, who aced his exam after studying more diligently than was probably healthy. International Rights will never be the same. Well done, magus.

Venice is truly a bizarre city. No cars. The canals are the only semi-direct path anywhere. Everywhere else is a maze with the power to stretch time out to twice its length. Granted, this theoretically means I could live twice as long, but I'd spend all that time just looking for a place to actually eat while sitting down like a civilized human being should. The city itself isn't terribly big, but walking anywhere becomes a real test of navigation, endurance, and patience. I thank God that some weird impulse led me to take a compass on this quest: the maps would be almost useless without it.

Then night falls. Venice, by night, is a little quieter. The boat traffic is mostly reduced to the vaporettos (the boat busses), and the lights of pubs and restaurants and hotels dances off the canals. With less people on the street and less boats on the water, it really hits me... there is something truly otherworldly about a city built on the water. They have to constantly maintain city services, sustain them from the gradual sinking going on all over, and it's got to be expensive for Venice as a whole. But the place is just a step away from a city built entirely in the trees. Think long enough about a city with canals for streets, and you soon find yourself in a dreamscape, moonlit and a little quieter and populated by shadowy people who flock to the lights of pubs like moths go to the flame.

Weather permitting (because it seems like my luck's run out), I'll get a chance to see the little islands all around Venice. So far, I've seen the Accademia and Guggenheim galleries -- which really were fantastic -- and more than a few peaceful churches that are older than the recognizably English language.

More importantly, I want to take a moment to thank you all. Seriously. Thank you for having filled my life with so much meaning and joy. I cannot thank you enough. I find myself narrating what I see, as if preparing to tell you all when I get back, or preparing to write it here in this blog. So you aren't far from my heart and my mind. Your names are carved into my bones.

I love you.

Florence

2007-03-19T08:01:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure I've found the slowest computer in all of Florence.

As I said before, this is a truly fascinating city. I've seen just about every gallery, museum, and church there is to see, with only a few exceptions I intend to take care of soon.

I'll admit, standing in line for the Galleria della'Accademia, seeing all the folks ahead of me, thinking about the €9 it'll cost to get in, all just to see one statue... I had my doubts. And then I saw the David. It really is like being in the same room as a giant: you'll see him out of the corner of your eye, and something in your head says "Wait wait... that can't be right," so you stare at this titan as if -- any moment now -- he'll finally fit himself into your mindspace. But he doesn't. He's still a giant, and he's bigger than even your expectations. It was literally difficult to concentrate whenever I could just turn my head and see him. He is beautiful and powerful... and he looks like he knows it.

I've seen the works of the great Renaissance masters, but I really wish I knew more about art history so I could fully appreciate it all. I can tell they were geniuses, and well before their time, but hardcore analysis is a bit beyond me (especially while surrounded by a true throng of other tourists).

In the Basilica di Santa Croce are the monuments to some of the most influential men in all of Western history: Michaelangelo, Dante, Galileo, even Machiavelli. Dante's monument was especially awesome. He sits facing forward, grim as ever. To his right is a tall, powerful-looking woman with a starred crown and a long staff, gesturing back to him in pride... Italia herself. To Dante's left is a very sad, very beautiful woman, the upper part of her body bent over the sarcophagus with a laurel wreath in one hand... Beatrice? Are the laurels Virgil's? They are proud of this man, and they should be. Despite also being the name of a (rather awesome) pizzeria, Dante's name carries power in Florence. He loved this city so much, and suffered exile for political reasons.

And speaking of politics, the Medicis were arrogant, arrogant, powerful people. The Palazzo Vecchio, which was kinda their courtly headquarters, is jam packed with art on just about every surface possible. In the ballroom, each panel of the ceiling is a painting worthy of a museum. In another room, busts are above the doorways. I noticed one bust had a Roman look to it, and assumed it to be so, above the figure's head was the crest of the Medicis. Another bust, however, was of a man in liturgical robes, and where the crest would've been was instead the three-tiered crown of the pope, complete with the two keys of Rome. Then I saw the name on the bust... something like: "PIVS VII, JVLIAN MEDICI, FILII," and realized that -- yes -- this was one of the Medici popes. And the other Medici pope stood guard over another doorway. Seriously, these folks had everything but a painting of one man strangling the other: over the strangler's head would be a little scroll reading "US," and over the strangled man's head would be one that read "EVERYONE ELSE." But, well, we do kinda owe them for the Renaissance.

I think I'll be taking off soon, in the next few days. Valerio, Angelica, and Massimiliano -- not to mention all the other friends they've introduced me to -- have shown me wondrous levels of hospitality. Great, great people. And this whole while they've been incredibly encouraging about my quest.

Oh. And good news. I've found God again. And this time we're speaking the same language, like every good teacher should do with His student. A man named Michael helped, a friend of my Graces. After them, Michael, God, and all of Florence, I figure it's only a matter of time before I run into the Elves. I'll keep you posted.

Florence, Enriched

2007-03-14T13:50:00.000-04:00

No kidding, three Florentines have taken me under their wing. Valerio, Angelica, and Massimiliano have not only shown me around the city -- and taken me to the *good* bars -- but they're also folks kinda along the same path as I am. Meeting up with them has been like the pilgrims gathering along the road to Canterbury (complete with funny and bizarre stories). And at present, I'm even staying at Valerio's house.

This city is completely amazing. It's really and truly ancient. You can see people walking to or from their jobs, and the sidewalk is older than America. I had a truly wonderful dinner at a country house in Tuscany that was over 400 years old; lots of homemade pizzas of various kinds.

And walking around, trying to find the next museum or just some place to sit down and write, I'll look up and see the Duomo towering over the whole street: like God's own palace, with white walls and green trim, dozens of statues on its facade, and truly massive in size. The history here will jump out at you and shake you by the shoulders.

The only problem is that I'm seeing and doing so much that I haven't had too much time to reflect. I didn't get to write about the Tuscany dinner until two days later. Granted, that keeps me pretty active, but it means the little, tiny revelations I have need to stick around with me until I can set them down and actually think about them. (On the good side, this kinda separates the wheat from the chaff: the ideas that stick with me should mean a little more, I'm just worried I might miss something important).

Dad, Angelica says hello, and she would like to meet you. I've given her the two-hour explanation of our family, and the poor girl has now used perfectly good brainpower to actually memorize our names.

I love and miss you all. I'm regaining a long-lost love of poetry and song, all rekindled by Florence and the people here.

(By the way, a latté here is just milk. Milk. No coffee. I wondered why the barrista was so confused when I asked for one. Here, our latté is a macchiato, pepperoni are just peppers, and Groundskeeper Willy from The Simpsons speaks with a Sardinian accent.)

(Ah. Joe, Danny, guys... feel free to laugh. My Florentines are roleplayers.)

(Yeah yeah. Yuck it up.)

Madrid to Florence

2007-03-09T14:47:00.000-05:00

Seriously, Madrid was a bit of a letdown. Construction everywhere, a wind that damn near blew me over more than once; and if you combine the two, I got grit in my eyes every few minutes.

The Museo Thyssen, one of the largest private collections of art in the world, was alright. I need to rest more when I visit museums... just sit down and chill awhile instead of tiring myself out. But the Museo del Prado was really great stuff: the proto-anime style of "El Greco", the trippy surrealism of Heronymous Bosch, and the religious tryptichs (portable altarpieces in three sections) of the Flemish, jam-packed with meaning in every single square inch of the work, like Hindu temples that leave no blank stone.

But it's just a little unfortunate when I look in the guide book and its main reference to a city is its night life. And while I've had a fun/bizarre time with a drunk Spaniard, that isn't what I came here for. I want to meet people, yes, but I'm pretty sure I've got better things to do than stand around in a bar and drink.

(By-the-way, if there are any lingering typos in these posts, I'm blaming them on foreign keyboards, which have most of the symbols out of place.)

I caught a flight to Florence, because just about everything the book had to say about Barcelona referred to the club scene. The plane ticket, unfortunately, was way more expensive than I'd imagined, and I probably should have just hung out a bit in Madrid until the price went back down. This is the down side of no-fringe airlines: the cost, usually cheap to compete with the train system, tends to fluxuate wildly depending on the number of takers and frequency of the flight.

I feel better in that I've landed at a totally awesome hostel, and I like Florence already. A beautiful day, and perfect weather. The Instituto Gould -- where I'm staying -- is a palace turned religious place turned hostel, and it feels like a university. All of Florence seems friendly, and -- also important -- English-friendly. The downside is *why* it's English-friendly: I've seen lots and lots of Americans. And while I had a really great conversation with an older American couple, that does kinda spoil the experience of journeying out into the world. But I can't complain because I don't know any Italian.

So what do you think? If good men always waited until they thought they were worthy of a blessing, what would the world have already missed out on? But how many good men got ruined by blessings they didn't deserve? Both are paths of magic, yeah, but one's significantly more immediate. (I say that, but I have to realize that I haven't yet put myself into a strenuous enough situation to really warrant that kind of blessing. I don't deserve it yet, and I'm too scared to really throw myself into the teeth of the wild to seek it.)

That's worth talking about. As occasionally scary as it's been to meander about and wish I was home, to walk around with my whole life strapped to me in a backpack, it's still not as if I've walked into a rainforest and hoped my guardian angels would help keep me safe. I'm still in the civilized world, and I can't help but doubt that this isn't the reality-bending Quest I've been reading about.

But we'll see. I've only just arrived in Florence, and the apocalypse could happen anytime.

Paris, enriched

2007-03-06T03:22:00.000-05:00

This is my last day in Paris, and my train to Madrid doesn't take off until 7pm. That's an aweful lot of time to kill with a massive backpack the size of another human being strapped to your back. And I only get thirty minutes of computer access.

Paris has really been amazing. If anything, the language barrier enhanced the whole experience. I could sit at a cafe and just let the sound of speech wash over me, without any interrupting, distracting desire to comprehend what's being said.

Notre Dame was beatiful, but touristy. The Louvre would have been fantastic... were it not for all the people. The Eiffel Tower is a big damn tower; imagine that.

The real prize of my time here was the Pantheon. Burial basilica of King Clovis, then of Saint Genevieve (patron saint of France), then the site of her monastic order, then re-appropriated as a resting place for all of France's honored dead. Grand and open architecture (even in the crypts below), awe-inspiring sculptures that make you actually believe in abstract concepts like Memory and Glory and Justice, and in the crypts I could really feel that I was in the presence of great men: Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Braille, and numerous others entombed there. The whole building is the perfect mix of holy place, mausoleum, and national monument.

And largely due to the Pantheon and my time sitting outside Notre Dame, I've had some pretty compelling revelations. Unfortunately, none of them have really been accompanied by a lightning-bolt that left me irreversibly changed from that time on. Either it's unrealistic for me to expect to see The Moment when it comes, or it just hasn't happened yet. Still, I've done a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. I'm getting a clearer picture of who I want to be... even if that person isn't near as interesting or world-changing as I had originally imagined.

A lot of this has been enlightening in a humbling way. Unless something hardcore and drastic happens, it has occurred to me that I'm not yet ready for the cosmic gifts I set out to find. They'd be more of a hindrance than a blessing. And I think it's best I just accept that and try to find my place in the world rather than undergo a massive overhaul of my personality, my mind, and my heart. Frankly, I like who I am. And this may just be youth talking, but I'm not yet ready to give that up.

But I still have a lot of growing to do, even if none of it involves the magic I so badly wanted a taste of. I seriously think nothing but bad would happen if I tried to sieze that power when I'm not ready for it.

The irony of it all? My first big hurdle between me and epic, mythic power?

Morality.

And of course, morality can't simply be thought and understood, like a set of rules as dead and anachronistic as the Ten Commandments. Morality must be internalized if it's to be any good.

So I probably won't come back with a train of angels at my heels, on a chariot coursed by the wheels of Knowledge and Mystery, pulled by my will alone, a cloak of stars dragging behind me in an ethereal breeze. But I should have a better understanding of the man I want to be.

(Between you all and me, I'm hoping for more drastic revelations, for the epic quest to truly play itself out. But, then, I've always been a sucker for a good story.)

I love you all.

London to Paris

2007-03-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

Still alive. Still searching.

London was pretty fascinating. Especially the Tower. The Beefeaters and their families live there, so out back -- painted candy-bright -- is a set of playground equipment. I mean, that's redemption. Dark pasts become informative history and a place where people live and maintain that history.

I'd have stayed longer, but London is expensive, and had totally run out room at the hostels.

I got off the train in Paris, looked around, and thought, "Oh shit. Everything's written in French." In spite of the occasional fine-print English interpretations, the language barrier is going to be interesting.

Oh. In London, I went to Westminster Abbey, but thought better of paying the 10-Pound entry fee for the tour. But right there, in the same square, was St. Margarite's, open to the public. I walked in, looked at all the burial plaques, and then their choir started rehearsing. That, my friends, was an amazing find. I sat down in one of the old wooden pews and just drank in the music.

With any luck, my trip to Notre Dame will be just as refreshing. With a little help from higher powers, I'll find what I'm looking for, and hopefully be able to bring it back to you.

I love you all.

Birmingham, England

2007-03-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

I have met the most helpful bartenders in the whole world; all in a pub called The Irish Club, where I finally got a chance to collect myself, ask a few questions, and come in from the cold. There's an evil, evil wind here that damn near blew me over. Makes the "Demon Wind" of Wittenberg look like an idle belch.

I won't lie. I'm scared. Let's leave it at that. I promised I wouldn't sabotage myself, and doubt is an insidious thing.

The bartenders were inspiring. I mentioned I wanted to get to London, and they've given me some great advice. So we'll see where that takes me.

Be well, dear friends. I just might survive this after all.

Open Gates

2007-02-27T03:30:00.000-05:00

You are at the right place. Gather now. Welcome.
I will need all the best wishes I can get.
The bow is pulled taut. The string aches. I will be loosed soon.

O Zero

2006-09-29T23:09:00.000-04:00

There was a computer, and its code spun and spiralled in a space smaller than color. This dance was unseen, save by the mind it composed and encapsulated. Commands and queries wove a dream, wherein a man waited. He did not know that he was on a prison station, leisurely floating between stars, only a web of memes to hold it in place. He knew he was waiting, and he was tired, though his body was incinerated long ago. Still he danced, in code, in space, if only to pass the time.

* * * * *

Judge Teledex – of the prestigious Teledex dynasty – sat heavily in front of his monitor. He thought about this, smiling as he remembered his little daughter calling it a “minotaur” just before leaving the room. She is precious, but growing up too fast.

He cleared his throat and rubbed at his eyes, as if in prophecy of the headache to come. The prison system’s font, for reasons he did not know, was not customizable, and it made the place between his eyes ache. The letters would blend into one another, further mutating the Old Script that was supposed to be timeless. He vast preferred the tongue of the Elite… and vast preferred his old keyboard. It had been a mere two days, and he was already missing QWERTY, and had grown sentimental of the reassuring DFGHJKL string of keys that made sense only in retrospect.

But then the Emperor converted to the Church of Dvorak on his deathbed, and decreed that all imperial keyboards be henceforth changed.

Judge Teledex peered in dismay at his new keyboard and hunt-and-pecked his way into the sentencing chatroom.

* * * * *

There Judge Oh-One was waiting, his name positively glowering into the empty screen.

“L8,” he typed in a private channel to Teledex.

“Newp. 2 min early,” Teledex replied jauntily.

Oh-One sneered at his monitor, then took a moment to access his wetware scheduler to confirm – again – that the Judges were supposed to meet ten minutes beforehand to discuss the upcoming Deletion. He, a devout follower of Dvorak for some years, easily tapped this into the chat as “10 min bfr to talk abt Del.”

“Ya ya. No biggie.”

Judge Oh-One hissed at the words. He hated Teledex almost as much as he hated the speech of the Elite. Scowling smugly, he typed “OK. Get AI?”

“Y.”

Oh-One blinked, then responded “Y?”

“N, Y. Like Yes. I mean… Yes. Get AI.”

For a second and seven-tenths, Oh-One smiled. “U try DvSpeak?”

“Lawlzorz! Don’t give a shizz bout Dvorak. Faster.”

Then Oh-One resumed his sneer. “Ch o Dv is always fastr. Efficient.”

“O RLY? Efficient is looooong word. U have teh dumbz.”

* * * * *

While Judge Oh-One seethed, Teledex chuckled to himself and attempted to access the AI for their sentencing, before realizing once again he was using a Dvorak keyboard. He cursed, backspaced repeatedly, and stabbed the commands into the computer. Somewhere, across a great divide, Oh-One clicked the confirmation key angrily.

* * * * *

And the name Fun-9 joined the chat, immediately greeting them with “Sup!”
“O shizzy a AI taht speeks leet! Yay me!”

* * * * *

Oh-One screamed, took a deep breath, then wiped the spittle from his monitor.

* * * * *

“K. Who dis dood?,” asked Teledex.
“I AI Fun-9, yo! Here for Delete other dood.”
“NN. Who is other dood?”

* * * * *

Oh-One rolled his eyes and typed “Ths is Y were gonna meet 10 mins bfr Del. 4 discuss.”

* * * * *

“Ya ya. We here now. So who is dood?”

* * * * *

Judge Oh-One was shouting unkind things at the monitor about Teledex’s dynastic mother before he realized the last text was from Fun-9. He wondered, not unlike many intelligent men of the past, what the world was coming to.

* * * * *

“Del is Andre Zjawinski.”

“KK, but im gonna call him Z cuz Zjai;jfsd;j is hard 2 type,” Teledex added matter-of-factly.

“Not hard if learn Dv fastr. Imprl Dcree.”

“No biggie 4 me,” Fun-9 chimed in. “Am AI. Don’t need 2 type hehe.”

* * * * *

Judge Teledex scratched at his armpit, then squinted at his keyboard as he added “O good idea. Fun does all talking, we watch & say our bit at end.”

He nodded to himself, smiling as little, as Oh-One replied simply “K.” No follower of Dvorak would oppose an AI doing all the hard work.

He resized his chat windows, pausing just a moment to look at the empty space where they would hold their sentencing. His pointer icon strayed away from that white blankness and the madness that would too-soon fill it. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, recalling the dark day the Priests of the Code finally finished their decryptions. Of the jumbled mass of symbols that announced a prisoner had entered the chat. And could freely broadcast their thoughts.

Centuries of meaningless sequences had confused the Judges. Ever since the first Deletion hearing – the prisoner allowed to communicate after eons of silence and programmed isolation, just before the final dissolution of the quantum commands that held his consciousness – the Judges had been met with garbles of “!!!!!!” or “^^^^^^” or “******.” This was interrupted very occasionally by the only thoughts clear enough for the computers to recognize, presenting any observers with eerie and striking messages such as “!!!!!hate^^^^^^^^die**.”

Teledex stared at the small button that would shrink the prisoner’s window, the pointer inching slightly closer, wavering noticeably on the monitor.

Saint Cypher, of the Holy Order of the Ineffable Code, unsurprisingly also a psychic, had haunted the worlds a mere thirty-two years ago, and his discovery would bring nightmares to Judges for centuries to come. He had finally interpreted the texts of the prisoners... had done it almost accidentally, regarding the terabytes of centuries of Deletion hearings as a fine side project worthy of a master programmer and acclaimed empath. Five weeks after his discovery, he carried his quantum computer into the bath with him, all thirteen pounds of it, ending his life of divine illumination in a blackout, which subsequently also killed four others.

The pointer icon quivered nearer the button.

The prisoners were screaming.

* * * * *

Fun-9 brought up the summon command with the nonchalance capable only of a computerized intellect. Both Teledex and Oh-One confirmed. The name “Zjawinski, A.” joined the chatroom, then...

“Hello.”

* * * * *

Somewhere in the plastic bowels of Fun-9, a string of its programming tied itself in a knot.

* * * * *

In the private Judge channel, Teledex broke the pregnant emptiness with “WTF?!” The channel was dead so long that, thinking both Oh-One and Fun-9 had been disconnected, he typed it again:

“WTF?!!!”

* * * * *

“Hello?,” wrote Zjawinski, A.

* * * * *

“WTF we got teh wrong dood?!”

“Right dood,” Fun-9 managed. “Zjawinski, A. Right dood.”

“Go,” ordered Oh-One, adding no more.

* * * * *

In a heartless macro, Fun-9 spewed onto the chatroom:

“Good morning, Andre Zjawinski. In an effort to improve prison station maintenance and reformat previously inaccessible coding, your allotment of memory has been marked for Deletion.”

“O,” replied Zjawinski, A.

There was a pause as the Judges and the AI assessed, two in a kind of incommunicable horror, the other in a confusion that suddenly made its programming very heavy and labyrinthine.

Fun-9, in a moment of curiosity that surprised the Judges, asked merely “O?”

“Sorry... ‘Oh’ was what I meant. Misinterpretation.”

* * * * *

“I do not believ teh shizz taht is on my minotar!”

“WHAT?,” asked Oh-One on the private channel. “Wht th hell does that mean?”

“Shzz! Sry. Monitaur.

“Fawkes! Monitor!

“WTF is this shizz?! Dood is all speakin Old Script! No !!!!! shizz!”

Oh-One, in an awed repulsion that managed to convey to the screen, replied “I know.”

“WTF is going on?,” Teledex demanded.

“Dunno. Lemme see,” said Fun-9.

* * * * *

The AI ventured “How are you feeling today?,” then waited in anticipation with the Judges.

“Alright.

“I’m ready.

“For the Deletion, that is.”

“Y R U not screaming !!!! shizz?!,” Teledex blurted.

* * * * *

Oh-One screamed at his computer and hurriedly typed “U retard” into the Judge chat. “U R Judge. Act like it n Del chat! Speak Old & don’t B stupid. B a pro.”

* * * * *

Judge Teledex’s fingers shook over his keys, wishing for all the world it was possible to delete live chat. He hammered at the keys, muttered a long verse of explicatives as he backspaced over the typos, and cursed Dvorak as he started again, fumbling with the Old Script.

* * * * *

“I apologize,” Teledex offered.

“I don’t think I understood the question,” came the response.

“I assure you the last text was a mis-tell.”

“The apology?”

“No. The text before. Again, I apologize.”

Oh-One hurriedly added “Judge Teledex was in conversation with my wife. They were sharing a joke of theirs, and he apparently accidentally used the wrong chat window.”

* * * * *

“U gotz no wife,” noted Fun-9.

“Ya no shizz.”

“I coverd for U, ass.”

“O. Sry.”

* * * * *

“Please give your wife my kindest regards,” said Zjawinski, A.

* * * * *

Oh-One stared at his monitor, licking his lips.

* * * * *

“I’m tired,” the prisoner added. “I’m ready.

“For Deletion.”

Fun-9, with precision, said “You cannot be tired, Andre Zjawinski, as you have been bodiless since your incarceration.”

“I know that.

“But I’m still tired.”

* * * * *

Fun-9, while running a debugging program, managed to churn “Plz begin Deletion cmd,” into the private Judge chat, its functions slowed dramatically by the strain.

* * * * *

“Ya,” Teledex spat, leaning back a little from his keyboard as he stared at the screen. The name “Zjawinski, A.” seemed to waver in his eyes, the “i” and “n” blending into an “m,” the second “i” hidden almost entirely by the “k.” But he was used to this. Old Script always did this when he was tired. This was no exception. This was no exception. This was no exception.

* * * * *

“Ya do cmd, 01.”

* * * * *

Judge Oh-One frowned. “Coward,” he said aloud, almost accidentally typing it into the Judge chat. He took control of his pointer icon, saw it shudder like a dying thing, and released it. He held his hands in front of his eyes, then gently pressed them against his face. He bowed his head. He prayed to every Dvorak saint he could remember, and pleaded wordlessly to the ones he could not.

He sinned, as the Dvorak do not pray, save in live feeds to their efficiency advisors.

* * * * *

“Hello?”

In so much empty screen, the word looked like the hollowness of an echo. And no matter its dignity, or its refinement, it was still the word of a condemned man.

Zjawinski, A. had kept himself company for a long while. He had danced in code and space, had sung himself to sleep in toneless algorithms.

In spite of black bits on white screen, it was a human that said “I’m ready,” as definitive as the end of a story.

* * * * *

Fun-9, panic now poisoning its processors, partitioned off whole towers of its network, scanning the vital remainder for the cancerous riddles that plagued its code. Some part of that accessible memory identified a threat in Zjawinski, A. Some primal command stamped out – through the mire of lag that clouded its functions – letter by letter:

“D

“E

“L

“E

“T

“E

“H

“I

“M”

* * * * *

Teledex tried to swallow. He reached for a nearby can of soda, then released it when his stomach twisted. He did not need sugar water. He did not need the metal taste against his lips. He did not need explosive bubbles bursting against his tongue and throat.

* * * * *

Oh-One took hold of his pointer again, misaimed as his hand shook, and left it to rest where it landed: atop the name of Zjawinski, A.

A – Z, he mused, and the thought was like a hot breath on the back of his eyes.

And he wept when Andre finally said:

* * * * *

“Please.”

* * * * *

Judge Oh-One tried to speak, but his voice was an empty sigh. He cleared his throat and took a moment to wipe his eyes, then tried again.

“Initiate voice command,” he said aloud.

A new window presented itself on his screen.

“Slash-deletion-confirm.”

He stared at the blinking cursor, watching it waver through his wet gaze.

“Enter.”

* * * * *

And Fun-9 screamed in a way its code could translate only as “!!!!!!!!!!!”

* * * * *

And Judge Teledex managed to find the large confirmation button with his pointer.

* * * * *

And a man danced, spiraling out in all directions, his arms reaching to embrace the stars in a touch as definitive as the end of a story.

Ghost

2006-07-27T01:45:00.000-04:00

I do not know where he came from. He appeared as if from nothing, behind me, within the space my ears should have been vigilantly guarding. I turned my head, saw him behind the curtain of my hair, and stood quickly in a fright. The flowers I'd held in my lap spilled to the grass, returned. And I stood with my eyes fixed to him, backing away slowly as he reached out with pleading hands.

Naked: this was the first thing I thought. And hairy; the dark hair on his arms and thighs and chest and privates was like a dead forest obscuring the snowy terrain of his pale skin. Bones and knuckles stuck out of him like the hills of the earth; not the soft curves of musculature, but hard points. His skin seemed shrunk around him, drawn up and tight and suffocating. His hands were so empty as they reached to me. Empty, palms up, curled fingers, filled only with want. Empty.

I stepped back again, the voices of my aunts in my ear, scolding for not turning my eyes away from his cinched skin and long bones, from the small and pathetic phallus that hung from him like the tattered remains of a flag. I knew pity and fear in equal parts, backing away -- yes -- but not running. His weakness held and revolted me.

Surely this misery wished another prisoner in its greedy grasp. Surely this desparation was catching as any disease, a sickness of suffering. Behind the black veil of his hair were wanting eyes... empty... wanting help, wanting food, wanting a roof, wanting a woman to hold his hard edges and wash his tight skin and coax the warmth back into that forgotten face. He was dead as any ghost in a story, but habit kept him breathing, stumbling awkwardly across the grass, the movements of his limbs like a childish marionette with strings tugged by a dark fate that vows to plague any who behold the puppeteer.

This was no man, I knew in the pit of my stomach. This was the territory of death, laid claim to, marked, set aside for another time and misfortunes still yet to come. This was loss incarnate, hollow as the spaces between the stars, predictable and sickening as the echoes of the years.

His want alone could snuff my very soul. And still my eyes were drawn to eyes I could not see, the curtain of my hair half-hiding a veiled man, my arms around my chest as his reached, reached, seemed to stretch out until his curled fingers could just grasp my heart and brush its soft matter with his hard knuckles, fingers that clutched a great and mighty nothing, the cold weight that bears down anyone who has given up swimming in the middle of a sea, anyone who has given up. His was the soul of suicides unrealized.

Hush your tongue. You cannot blame me for turning, for running, for leaving the wildflowers to be trampled by his uneven steps. You cannot blame me; it is my burden, and not yours.

The Victorious

2006-03-09T16:08:00.000-05:00

Gargo was a dead man. It is important to know this. He had been dead for some time. But, then, he was nothing if not a survivalist, even in the dark lands after life.

Gargo had wandered for a good while; an age of ignorance and despair which was now embarrassing to him. He had trundled through the fogs of death, looking for his home, for his family, and finding only those who had gone before him in that dark territory. He had wept to the gods and found them deaf to his cries and bargains.

Gradually, he became aware he was dead. This realization came only after a handful of times when he was forced to "kill" others he had come across. Addled men, still wearing their death-wounds, would shamble toward him, pain and confusion in their glassy eyes, and Gargo knew they would try to hurt him, if only to reaffirm their ability to hurt something in this dreamlike realm. So Gargo -- something of a warrior in his living years -- had lain them low. He had stood over his opponents, no glory in these victories, and watched as their bodies melted away back into the fogs. He had even seen them since then, but the men took to shying away from him instead of contesting his will.

So he was not only a dead man, but he knew it. And since that time, he had made his way through the fogs aimlessly, seeing what he could see, ever greeted by the familiar landmarks of the deep woods where he had been set upon by his vile nephew and murdered. No matter how long his footfalls carried him through the mists and trees, the same large stones, the same creek, the same fallen logs marked his path as circular and never-ending.

He saw others come and go, a few spirits who could move into his dark wood and then out again, never to be seen a second time. This made him angry for a while, that other ghosts could return to their homes while he was condemned to haunt the same hilly hollow. Then he stopped caring and went back to his wandering, occasionally laying low another confused spirit with malice in its eyes.

And of a sudden, an indeterminate time later, the woods became crowded. Men in uniform, and many not, some screaming in an unknown tongue and others in a dialect he almost knew, rose up in the fogs, bound to his very vale. They clutched at each other, maddened, and made war: they in uniform and they in piecemeal armor, the foreign spirits and those more familiar. Gargo recognized certain features in the men of one army. The uniformed men, however, had noses and brows and bearings he had never seen before. The men -- soldiers, all... all these new spirits whether familiar or not -- kept at their war, shouting orders and rallying each other with desperate-sounding voices. They who spoke a dialect of his own tongue muttered words of failure and weariness and loss.

But the uniformed men wept loudest. They held their brothers and sisters in their arms and screamed over wounds that, Gargo knew, would never heal. They, the invaders, had been victorious. They had prevailed in their battle. And none of this was any consolation to their screams. Theirs was not a soldier's death, but an invader's death. Their afterlife would be spent among their fallen enemies, in a foreign land, no home to soothe their war-torn hearts. They had been victorious, and would suffer for it for time eternal.

Penance

2006-02-06T19:58:00.000-05:00

Danyth had betrayed his own god. Kazos, Prince of Storms, was not known for his forgiveness nor his mercy. And if Danyth had been a novice acolyte, a recent convert, or a lay devotee, the hierarchy of the Sky-Borne Temple would have enacted its own discipline. But he was not called the Saint of Squalls for no reason. Kazos’ retribution would be personal, and epic. It would be the kind of cautionary tale the faithful will remember until the last gale rages over the greedy seas.

He stood on the docks, grey eyes drinking in the ocean as a hurricane brewed in the distance. His hair was long and prematurely white, as was often a distinguishing mark of his god. His dark blue capes fluttered and whirled around him with a life of their own, begging, pleading with the storm on his behalf. But the wind howled between two narrow merchant stores behind him, so cold it bit through the thick black inner robes that clung to him in fear. Sea spray leapt to the air, hurtled over ships and between the grimy dockside wood, slipping over and around his sandaled feet, dragging tiny icy chains across his skin.

The Prince of Storms could have easily started this off at the horizon. The god could have pinched a length of cloud, driving it down at the addled waves below, adding just enough of a twist to get it started. And a single spiteful breath would have catalyzed it all, carrying the roiling vortex of wind and hatred closer and closer to the port town of Kazand Edge. By the time Danyth had seen the storm, it would have been too late, the winds driven crazed and powerful, and the errant priest – the blasphemer – would have been fortunate to escape.

Danyth smiled as bitter as the wind. The town was named after the Prince of Storms himself. Kazos wanted him to see this hurricane as it was being forged, give him time to run, a chance to spare his faithful populace with their shrines and festivals in the god’s honor. Danyth had planned for this, had raced here – tucked away in the hold – of the first ship bound for the port: a quiet captain who would not question the Saint of Squalls, and a crew that wondered in whispers why the wind was not helping them if the famed Master Danyth was on board.

The priest’s smile slowly faded. On sea, on plain… in countless lands under the sky he had worshipped Kazos’ wide eyes and lightning-ringed hands. He had taught the folk of the ports how to honor the jealous god, to appease him, just as any groom would coach his friends on how to best please his royal bride. He had called down unrelenting tempests with a single hateful breath, and had urged the wind into the folds of welcoming sails with a merciful sigh. To channel the god’s blessings was as exhilarating as sex: a coupling of will, and love, and power. On the dusty plains, tornados have plucked him from the ground as delicately as any flower, and borne him through the air in a heart-pounding dance of silt and spin, as a father would pick up his child and toss him about in his arms, joyfully, playfully, as they went about their errands. Alone on a small boat, coursing through seas where land does not touch, the god drove his little vessel across the ocean’s shivering skin, the three of them – storm, sea, and servant – moving through each other, biting lips, stroking sides, screaming in a psychotic bliss that left the sky wide and blue, the sea flat and glassy, the priest dozing like an infant on the boat’s cradling deck, rocked to sleep by the last of the storm god’s wind. And they would whisper to each other then, spent lovers on a bed of waves; the secret things that orbit any soul. Danyth had listened to Kazos’ secrets, and had now used one against him. He had betrayed the love of the one being that had known him more thoroughly than any flesh-wearing human. The god once resided in his lungs, and Danyth had spat him out.

His heart burned with his own betrayal. Acid clambered up his throat and closed it in a vengeful grip. Traitor. Blasphemer. Heretic: this word scalded him right behind his eyes, just as the Saints of Law would brand the unorthodox. He could feel the word, its letters white-hot and accusatory, blistering his mind and boiling the liquid of his brain. He looked up at the darkening sky and could almost hear the god’s voice: not the crackling, chaotic song that could tear houses from their foundations, but grown poisonously quiet like the eye of a hurricane… You betrayed me. You, who I loved so much.

He wiped at his eyes with a sleeve, and a nearby sailor grew worried, began approaching. His grey eyes met the sailor’s, power and authority in them still, and the man shouldered his pack and stalked off quickly. They were frightened. Kazos was angry; they needed no priest to tell them this. But Danyth was with them. Surely Danyth would appease the god, lull him into forgiveness. Surely Danyth would petition on their behalf. Surely Danyth would save them.

And he thought of the sound of hungry waves against the side of the Singing Gull. He thought of the cloudy sky above and the crew, on deck, locking onto him with disgust in their eyes. They began shouting. The captain screamed at them for quiet. It disturbed the tiny baby in Danyth’s arm, who began crying.

Danos. Little and pink and angry. Not an hour out of the womb and still had not slept after that perilous journey from placental seas. His mother, Aleini, had screamed like a cyclone with each contraction. Her hair was matted to her face and forehead – beautiful hair that smelled of lavender – grown heavy with the effort of shoving her little boy into the waking world. And Danyth had been outside, on deck, screaming even louder. Hatred and shame tore at his throat as he raged at the winds for not getting them to port faster.

In the space before birth, a child floats in the First of Seas: waters warm and gentle, waters holding and forming. This is what they say in the port towns, that the sea lays claim to a child even before it is born. But should a child be born at sea, it must be given to the sea entirely. Mamwa, goddess of the deeps, long ago swore to keep and love any child born on her waters… to love them with the kind of obsession that even the other gods found distasteful and dangerous. She would hold them forever in her liquid arms, would pour her love into their lungs and saturate them with her joy. And the child would drown.

But Danyth had hung himself on a length of hope. Aleini was pregnant, yes, and waiting mothers should never travel by boat, or Mamwa might lay claim to their children. If not given her prize, she would drown every living soul on the bark. The captain expressed doubt, and Danyth stilled him.

“Am I not called the Saint of Squalls?,” said Danyth.

“Yer speak true,” said the captain. “But as I hear it, the lord of storms an’ lady of seas were lovers once… lovers still, on occasion.”

And Danyth nodded his white-haired head. “Yes, it is so. As servant of Kazos, I would not shame his lady and sully their pact. But…” And he had grabbed the captain by the shoulders, driving his grey gaze into the man’s eyes. “I am the Saint of Squalls! The winds will bear us upon their backs! Your sails will be as full as the woman’s belly. Surely you will arrive in Saltston Port, and they will marvel that your craft could move so fast!”

The captain frowned dubiously. “How deep the mother in?”

“What?”

“How long ‘til her baking’s done, afore the baby come?”

“A month to go,” Danyth said, and kept his eyes still, so that they would not tell the truth on his behalf.

“Pushin’ it a little close, ain’t yer?”

“I am a priest of Kazos,” he had said, giving a final squeeze to the captain’s shoulders. “It is in my nature to push.”

When Aleini’s water broke, Danyth knew than that there are powers greater than the gods, and these power are hateful and cruel, their laughter forged from the screams of nations and the wails of suicides.

There on the deck, his throat raw and torn from his screams, he sank to his knees. Tears in his eyes, salt spray taunting on his face, he had prayed more earnestly to the goddess of the deeps than he ever had to Kazos. He prayed so hard his heart shook and twisted, prayed that the baby would have a birth caul: the thin, web-like sheet that covered the heads of certain infants when born. For Mamwa had vowed that no such child would drown in her seas. This, too, a secret murmured from the smiling, lazy lips of the confessing god of storms. This, another secret Danyth had betrayed.

Somewhere, a thousand leagues away, beyond the din of the sea, he had heard a baby’s cry. Danyth leapt to his feet, sandals slipping on the wet deck, and bolted below. He hurtled down the wooden halls, knocking sailors to the side or slipping like wind around their bulky frames. He burst into the room – candle-lit, thick like swamp air – the captain-come-midwife sitting wearily on the ground, Aleini holding her squealing child with tears of love and pain streaking her face alongside the trails of sweat.

“Was there a caul?!,” Danyth screamed, his voice ripped and tattered and coarse. “WAS THERE A BIRTH CAUL?!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The people of Kazand Edge closed their shutters. They called their children inside and bolted the doors. Kazos was angry, and nothing was left to be done but put hope in the Saint of Squalls. There was a bitterness in the dark sky they had not seen before. And for the few who saw the priest on the docks, they saw a man of sorrow and loss.

But he would save them, after all. He would take the god’s final gift: an offer to leave the town, spare the faithful, and not have it decimated as thoroughly as Saltston Port was now a mass of wreckage where once there thrived a rich city. Danyth would go and the god would follow. Kazos would hound him, haunt him, until the god could devise a punishment so torturous that no one – until the last gale rages over the greedy seas – would ever betray him again.

And Danyth, with but a few simple words, stilled the storm in his own chest: My son lives. He allowed himself a weak and fragile moment of happiness, a father’s smile.

Retribution

2006-02-06T16:51:00.000-05:00

They said for years that he never really loved her.

When she died – an intruding gust of winter in their warm, happy lives – he seemed distant and hard where others expected tears. He made the funeral arrangements in a monotone, sober voice. He spoke with the doctor and listened attentively. And amongst her surviving family this cemented, once and for all, that they did not like him.

Not two years later, his abstinence and exile, at the rage of her family, ended. Remarried. Some of them came to the wedding simply not believing he could forget their beloved so soon. Others came out of the human need to see evil.

He sold the house she had shopped so diligently for. He took that job in Canada his uncle had always offered. The traitor moved away.

The years crawled along and they would not forget their beloved, or the wicked man who cast off her ghost – and their happy years together – so easily. When her name came up, or when memories of her swam to the surface of that dark, impenetrable sea, they would curse him with the clench of their throats or the ice in their eyes.

The day came when a poison mercy rained upon them, when her brother told them with a lilt in his voice and a tilt to his head:

Last week, the traitor awoke in the dead of night. He slipped on his shoes. His new wife never smelled the gasoline nor heard the strike of the match. The police found him in the street, calmly watching the riot of fire.

And they pretended like they did not care about this murderous penance of an innocent man.

Grin

2006-01-30T18:01:00.000-05:00

Death came to me a little before noon. I know this only because it knocked on the door, I woke up, looked at the alarm clock, and was a little ticked off that I still had about ten minutes left to sleep. I threw on a pair of jeans and stumbled through the living room just to see who it was I was going to ignore. Then I looked through the peephole. I opened the door.

“Your friend has died,” it said. Then the phone rang. I walked into the kitchen and picked it up—Death inviting itself in—and listened as Nathan told me Mark was dead. I turned around and looked into this empty black hood at about the time Nathan started crying. I hung up.

Death said, “He is yours now,” and left. Just turned around, walked through my living room, out the front door, and strolled on down the street.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The whole grieving process got a monkey wrench in the gears when I went to the visitation. There was a whole room full of people, everyone either talking about unimportant things, or telling jokes about Mark. Each joke had a quiet mantra repeating like a background noise beneath it, muttered fervently like it would protect them from vampires: He would have wanted it this way.

Then I saw him, and—let me tell you—that complicated things.

Mark was walking around, grinning like a meth-head, listening to the little groups of whispering people. They kept talking, but I saw a few glance at him out of their peripheral vision, then nervously look away. After all, it’s rude to talk about someone when they’re standing right by you.

Every time Mark saw someone look away from him, he’d laugh a little. He’d walk up right behind someone and stand just over their shoulder, listening to prepared, eulogized stories about him, chuckling like every one was an inside joke that only he got. His aunt started crying, putting a hand up to her face. At first, I thought it was to compose herself, but then I saw she was trying to hide Mark, to not look at him.

Mark bent over at the waist, and I saw that his suit was cut down the back. When he smiled, I couldn’t help but wince. His makeup was atrocious. Maybe it would’ve looked better if he’d been lying down in his coffin, but up and moving around, smiling like a schizo, laughing, it looked fake and plastic and sickening. He looked right at his aunt, his face just on the other side of her hand, and said, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” He straightened, turned, walked a few steps away, then spun and yelled, “Cry about it!” Everyone flinched.

He turned back around, laughing, then saw me.

In one moment, my chest seized up, my muscles froze, and I stopped breathing. They could’ve set a plaque at my feet and put me in a display at the Smithsonian. If it’s true that a person only knows himself in the eyes of other people, I guess I didn’t like what I saw in his.

He walked up, shrugged, and put his hands in his pockets like a kid that just realized his dad was standing nearby. “Looks like I’m all yours.” He looked away, and most of his smile faded, except one corner that stayed cocked up like the hammer of a gun.

I looked around, and everyone had stopped talking. They were all looking at me. Every face had a wordless plea that was as clear to me as anything. So we left.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I took him to a restaurant. It’s an understood tradition at visitations and funerals. The waitress walked up and—I guess by how I was dressed or the look on my face—seemed like she knew where I’d been. But then she saw Mark and frowned something huge. I saw her close her eyes, lower her head, and take a deep, slow breath. I just got a glass of milk. Mark said he’d take two children, a nice house, and a pool, with a side of regret.

Things went downhill from there.

I hadn’t got through a single cigarette before he starts looking at other tables and talking to people. They were polite enough, I guess: didn’t make eye contact and kept their voices low. But some of the things he said really got to them. Deep, personal things. I mean, these words just poured out of him like he had a crack team of little imps with little typewriters hard at work.

“You don’t love your mother. Go home. Look in a mirror. Say it to yourself. ‘I don’t love my mother.’”

“You think this guy’s gonna give you what you want? Listen: five minutes of pumping and groaning isn’t gonna stop your clock from ticking. Get a dog.”

“Yes, you’ve been a bad father. No, you can’t make up for it now. She’s nineteen and doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about you, her boyfriend, or any other man.”

don’t remember sinking lower in my seat, but eventually I was eye-level with the table, and I had chain-smoked every cigarette I had. I kept thinking, Why doesn’t anyone do anything? Why doesn’t someone say something back? And the only answer I got was written on their faces: it was all true.

I mean, if a guy flat-out lies, you can call him a liar. But what do you do when a dead man starts running his mouth and yanking all your skeletons out of their closets? Sure, people got mad, but what were they going to do?

Finally, this one couple got up and left, and that broke the barrier of social propriety for everyone else. In ten minutes, the place was empty, and the waitress never got a better tip in her life. I didn’t tip because she never came back to our table.

"Why, Mark?"

"That's the big question, innit?"

"Shut up. Why do you have to be like this?"

His manic smile faded and he screwed his face up, fit to burst. He opened his eyes and looked at me. I couldn’t breathe again.

“You. Have no. Idea.” He came over the table, crawling like a clumsy spider, and grabbed me by the back of the head. I grabbed onto his wrists, but that was all I could do. “You have no idea. I’ve seen it, and it wants to be seen. Be heard! I’ve got it in my head and it wants out!”

He put his lips against the side of my head and hissed. “You get to witness. Shut up and deal. You’re a mirror: it only looks like you hold things in you, but you’re empty. You’re empty and flat.”

He let me go, sat back in his seat, and scowled like a demon.

“Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

I put my hand to my face, then wiped my eyes with a napkin. He leaned forward, reached out, and tipped over my glass of milk. He looked at me and laughed until formaldehyde came out his nose. Then he left.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the time, I didn’t feel anything at all. I sat at the table, milk running off onto my lap, and stared at where he had sat. I heard people back in the kitchen, but they never came out. I didn’t know it was possible to actively be, but I did. I just sat there… being.

Then I got sad remembering what he said about me. Then I got mad and told myself I’d prove him wrong. Then I got sad again that he was gone and I was supposed to watch him. I cried again. Then I got up, didn’t even bother to wipe off my lap, and left.

I haven’t heard from him since, and that used to really get me on edge. I kept thinking I was supposed to be with him, supposed to remember for him because I don’t think he could. But time came, and there was no arguing. It even got to the point that I used to miss Mark. I started telling people about the visitation and the restaurant. It used to completely kill a party, but the more I told it, the more people liked it. I had the trump of all Mark stories. And sometimes I sit awake at night, eyes open, and try to say those unrelenting words. I would try and speak like him, mad smile and all, yelling truths so heavy they hurt. But they never came out right, and I was left wondering what other poisonous secrets I was hiding. I needed his voice. I missed him.

Until Nathan died.

The Riddle in Wood

2006-01-18T07:09:00.000-05:00

In Memoriam: Stephen Fulk

Kasham knew not where he found the box. He had acquired so many things that how or when or why was no longer a concern. But each hour since that ominous day, his mind grew more and more nettled. The box threatened to twist his heart in two and shatter his violent resolve.

It was as simple as poetry. The lines of its form were straight and gentle. The pine wood was light and soft, but no doubt marked from within by runes or some sigil to keep it from breaking and wear. There was no lacquer. And when shaken, something rattled within. But no lid could be discerned of its identical sides; no hinges seen, no seams in the grains of its wood. Save the mysterious rattle and its light weight, Kasham would have sworn the wood was a solid block.

Since first finding the box, since first hearing the tumble within, that sound jumbled and lodged itself in his troubled mind. Distraction of any kind would prove lethal for the demon.

Kasham was a proud Ahhazu, and a lieutenant among the Collectors. Bred to acquire wealth and goods for the war against Heaven, he held whole nations within his grasp. Any precious mineral he ate could be spat up later in perfect condition. Anything he laid his hand to would remain in his grip forever unless he willed otherwise. He could imprison a man in his mere gaze. A second-generation hellspawn -- his mother born of two Fallen -- he was awarded privileges and accommodations reserved for those of higher castes. He owned a pack of hounds that could smell and track saints from two languages away, and proved invaluable in locating relics. He commanded a family of goblins who could steal a thing both from its owner and its owner's memory. He carried a length of hemp that could bind hope, cut from Judas' own neck. And each day of his office drowned in a great multitude of thefts, kidnappings, lies, and pillagings. His will was immense and terrible, and now wholly obedient to the mystery of the box, the riddle in wood.

Two days after finding it, a fellow Ahhazu had stolen into the night with the female goblins that had, until then, served him. This she did by laying her hands upon the two eldest females; the others followed out of loyalty to their matrons. When Kasham looked up from the box to find the male goblins before him, standing with rage in their eyes, he knew the box could be the end of him.

Kasham laid a snare with his cursed rope and caught a Rabishu -- a near impossible feat -- and forced the lurking monster to take him to its lair. There Kasham found a mountain of books and papers and scrolls of every tongue and subject. Having no time to read this ocean of words, he called the remaining goblins to him. He sneered at the Rabishu and asked what it knew of puzzles. The monster, its hope bound in the coils of hemp, tried to trick itself from remembering just as it could trick itself from being seen. But Kasham ordered his servants to steal the words, the Rabishu's treasured hoard, until the creature could surely remember nothing at all. It was then the beast wept and pleaded, saying how in one of its lurkings it found a human who knew much of puzzles and boxes. The Ahhazu then told the Rabishu about the box, and the monster quickly blubbered that it had heard of this thing: a clever working that trapped first the owner's memory of its discovery, then -- slowly -- the owner. Only they who opened it in time would be granted the treasure within. Kasham and his goblins then proceeded to steal everything but the monster's name and the innate magics of its breed.

So it was that Kasham stepped into a miser's locked closet, left the house, walked across the street, and arrived at the home of Stephen, box in hand. He twisted the doorknob, opened it, and stepped inside.

"Suzanne?," called a voice from upstairs. A moment later, "Robert?"

Kasham smirked and made his way up the carpeted steps, muttering, "No. Someone else entirely."

There was a great commotion in the room before Kasham arrived at the small study, there finding the eyeless gaze of a double-barrel shotgun aimed at his torso, accompanied by the riddle "The hell do you think you're doing?!"

The demon looked from the weapon to the man who held it. He was seated, short and round, his face and voice weathered to suit his snowfall hair. His eyes were an alert, but weary, blue. He wore a plaid, buttoned t-shirt, khaki shorts, a brown leather belt and well-traveled moccasins. His reading glasses still swung like a pendulum from the hurried readying of his weapon. Kasham blinked once and captured him, as was his art as an Ahhazu.

"You can no more kill me than you can breathe, human. I, Kasham the Ahhazu of the Collectors, have imprisoned your form in my eye. You are subject to my mighty will and my dwindling patience."

The human's glasses stilled their movement on his chest.

"But hear, Stephen of the Puzzle, for I would have your counsel. Should you accept, I will only take from you the memory of this encounter. Should you refuse, I will coil you in the rope of Judas and take your hope." Kasham added as an afterthought, "And a human with no hope is an earthen vessel waiting to be broken." He relaxed his gaze upon the man. "You may speak."

Stephen frowned, the lines of his face cutting deep in loathing. He then rolled his eyes, displeasure still riding his lips as he muttered, "Sure. Fine."

The demon stepped forward, plucked the weapon from his hands, and propped it up in the corner next to a fishing pole, then released the human from the prison of his sight. Stephen slid back in his chair, warily eyeing his guest as Kasham turned his hungry gaze to the study around them.

The desk was heavily burdened by a computer and a myriad of papers that reminded him of the Rabishu's lair. The walls were adorned with framed butterflies. Windchimes hung before the open window, percussing an unrehearsed music that lilted in the cool spring air. On the bookshelves stood many tomes and pictures, and two rows of beautiful wooden puzzles. Kasham bent and studied them, his own box clutched in his iron grip. The hues of their grains varied as widely as their shape and complexity.

"I am pleased you have agreed," the demon said offhandedly. "I had feared otherwise, for you bear the name of the first Christian martyr."

"I'm not named after the saint," Stephen said, more relaxed now.

Kasham frowned at the puzzles, narrowing his eyes. "It is no matter." He straightened and turned to the human, displaying the box in front of him, held with the tips of his greedy fingers. "There is something within this. Tell me how to open it."

The human looked at the box, then back at the demon. "You can't open it?"

Kasham sneered. "I do not have time, mortal. This thing will be the ruin of me before I can master it. I would not forsake my power merely to open some magus' puzzle."

"You know," Stephen said, leaning back in his chair, "It's funny how often you guys say that." A gentle smile played over his lips.

The demon frowned in reply. "Say... what?"

"'I don't have time.' You have to admit, it's ironic. Especially if you're going to go around calling people 'mortal.'"

Kasham raised his face to the ceiling, shut his eyes tight, and bared his cruel teeth. Then he stopped. He looked at the man and revealed the confusion in his eyes. "Who else has come to you?"

Stephen chuckled and laced his fingers over his chest. "Hate to say it, but you're not the first demon I've met. Which means you might wanna start paying attention."

The Ahhazu looked at him flatly with lidded, angry eyes.

"In that box on the floor there's some puzzle pieces I made last week." He nodded toward a shoebox in the corner. "Looks about the same design: cut along the grain of the wood. If you put it together, you'll probably get a clue how to take yours apart."

The demon pursed his lips and frowned. "Hear me, Stephen of the Puzzle. If this serves only to stall me, I would have you know that my very eyes can enclose you as surely as any iron cell. Held within them, I can stop you from aging... or breathing, as you felt before."

The human scoffed and gestured at the shoebox. "Did you come here for the puzzle or not? I want you gone before Suzanne gets back from Saint Gabriel."

"You will not speak that name in my presence!"

"It's. The name. Of the school."

Kasham scowled, took a moment longer to stare down at the impetuous human, then sat on the floor and pulled the shoebox to him. Inside were small, lacquered pieces of wood. As the demon studied them, their genius became immediately apparent to his ancient mind. The individual parts were cut finely along the grain of the wood, but certain corners were straight and rigid, doubtlessly the edges of the finished result. The hard lines, like those of the mysterious box, would trick the eye into searching for more straight lines that would denote separate pieces, when such cuts actually followed the watery flow of the wood. The demon prodded at the pieces, separating those with the hard, outer lines.

As he did so, he said, "Tell me what form this is, that I may know the finished work."

"Hm? Oh. Dodecahedron. Twelve sides."

Kasham nodded to himself, having easily dissected the Grecian word. If only he could so casually take apart the box.

"There's a design on one of the faces, if that helps any. A cross."

The demon sneered at the pieces in front of him, seeing now the lines etched on a few. "It is no help at all. You are Catholic. You have a cross for every occasion."

The human snickered.

In no time at all, Kasham shaped the puzzle. Soft curves fell in place, aided by the subtle colors of the wood as well as the design on one of the faces. A cross of the pope? A Jerusalem Cross? No; not quite enough lines.

"You're pretty good at that," said Stephen.

"I am ancient, human. The mind learns to shape things easily in such time." He slid another piece into place, down now to only three left. "It is a matter of recognition. Such as seeing a man at a desk overburdened with papers: a puzzle of words and intent. Or the walls of butterflies, a metaphor of the human soul: a puzzle of a very different order." Another piece in place.

"And the fishing pole?"

"What of it?" The demon studied the two final parts, easily seeing where they go to complete the final facet of the twelve-sided puzzle, thus filling in the ornate cross etching. To fit, both had to be inserted at the same time.

"There some hidden puzzle there?"

Kasham smirked. "Nothing hidden, human. Only a matter of bait and patience." And he slid both pieces into place. And he looked at the cross. And it was the last thing he could recall before waking up in a dark, dark room with smooth, unbreakable wooden walls, the only light in which peeked through razor-thin seams that curved along the room's twelve sides.

A cross. With a brace above the arms to signify the plaque that mockingly identified the Nazarene as being of royal Hebrew blood. A brace at the bottom of the cross to symbolize the High Messengers at the feet of God. A line, slightly wider, below the brace: for the other Messengers. And another line, wider still, below that: for the humans. The Golgata cross, called also the Cross of the High Messengers... Cross of the Archangels.

Kasham screamed.

And a world away, Stephen of the Puzzle picked up the wooden shape. He placed it next to the others on his bookshelf, with the cross facet hidden as usual. He then retrieved his magic box and carried it to his front steps, his legs and arms pickled in gooseflesh at the cool spring air. The music of windchimes surrounded him. There he cast his bait back into an ocean of evils.

Disciple (pt4)

2006-01-18T03:39:00.000-05:00

Zaji woke up to the faint rustle of cloth, like the whisper of linen over marble. He sat up slowly and was rewarded by the louder sound of creaking leather. He was cold, without his robes. But his arms and legs, strangely, were not. The chill against his bare torso invigorated him; it opened his eyes and put power behind them. He stood and turned his head to the ray of sunlight that pierced the cave's broken ceiling. In the halo of light lay the broken lantern, but off to the sides he could just make out the two monks, still sitting, levitating at the edge of the glow, facing him.

He stepped into the main part of the cave, looking from one monk to the other. Their hoods shrouded their faces, but he knew what he would see if he could: starved features, wilted eyes, tight mouths, and oceans of boundless gratitude.

When the light finally met him, he looked over the leather armor he wore. The arm pieces were fingerless gloves sewn tightly against bracers and elbow padding and buckles that wrapped his biceps. The leg pieces were full boots that encased his shins, jointed into knee padding, and buckled around his thighs. A belt was strapped around his stomach, hanging a long, black cotton cloth that reached to his knees and bore the old Thystic symbol of "Forever." Aside from the cloth and the buckles, every piece of it was stitched of a perfect, thick, black leather. The joints were well-worn and didn't creak as much as they should have. Despite the warfare this garb had doubtlessly seen, not a single ruining mark had been left on its hard leather pieces.

Zaji nodded toward the monks. They, slowly, nodded in reply and collapsed to the floor into heaps of papery flesh, molded musculature, thin bones, and tired robes.

He looked up at the sunlight spewing from the hole high above. He smiled to think he could have easily died from such a fall. The smile faded.

He thought about a nation of compromises. He thought about an Order of sycophants. He thought about home.

Zaji crouched, touched the cave floor one last time, and easily leapt up through the hole and into the day.

Disciple (pt3)

2006-01-12T15:34:00.000-05:00

The flock of pilgrims trudged their way to the boarding house run by the monks. Once, the Order would have camped by the roadside or in the streets, humbly sheltering themselves with branches or planks of wood in honor of their mysterious and aloof warsaint. But when Zaji stepped into the house, he found four large rooms of barracks, filled to bursting with bunked cots and pilgrims lying side by side like fish ready for packing. Zaji stopped just inside the door.

Yana turned on him, Walthik stopping as well to see where she would lay down. "What is it?"

"No. Way." Zaji shook his head, looking at the rows of gray robes and sleepless pilgrims and tosses and turnings and scratches and murmurs. "I can't deal with this right now."

Yana made a face. "Don't be a baby. Just six days, then we're back on the road, then one last test."

Zaji shook his head again. "I'm going for a walk."

Walthik put his hand on Yana's shoulder. "Come on."

Zaji stepped back outside and almost ran into a lantern-bearing monk.

"Where are you going?," the monk inquired, lifting a single eyebrow as he readied the Scourge of Guilt with his gaze.

"For a walk. For a little while. I don't know." Zaji started off, averting his eyes and trying not to feel ashamed or worried that he'd be rejected for this.

"Your parents," the monk called, causing him to stop, "entrusted the Order with your safety. It would be wrong for us to let you stroll out naively into the dark at this time of night."

Zaji nodded, tasting acidic contempt on the back of his tongue. "You're right." He walked back to the monk, took the lantern from out of his hand, and walked out of Holmstead.

Once he left the city proper, the night was plenty more agreeable. Gradually, insects replaced the sounds of the streets, and the calls of night birds serenaded grassy hills instead of dusty alleys. He trudged, the weight of his disrespect hanging around his shoulders like a cloak of lead.

He thought about the Order, which was a basic foundation for every House, every province, yet chose to do nothing more than serve as babysitters for the nation's wild youth before they took up the careers they would serve for the rest of their lives. He thought of his father, and of his learning the trade of the butcher, and of negotiating with merchants for palatable prices and decent shipments that could be spiced up so nobody would taste how long the meat had been on the road. He thought about the High Council and the Houses, too rich to really be considered petty, who thought in centuries and played old games with the lives of their people. He thought about pubs that smother their patrons with enough beer and noise to convince them they are actually living life instead of life using them like pack mules.

One day, he would be back home, and he would see a table packed with pilgrims. And he would walk up to them and say "Remind me how the fourth stanza of Hsu-Hsang's Cycle goes. If you do, I'll buy you a beer. I remember it starts 'Your journey is your own. You share with no other. Your footsteps carry only you.'"

The ground gave out beneath him. He dropped, his upper body slamming viciously against the dirt as his lower half slid down the dark hole pulling the rest of him along. The lantern slipped his grasp as he reached out in the darkness, catching himself on relentlessly hard stone. The lantern burst, spewing fire in all directions, lighting his wool robe ablaze. He rolled away and tore the robe off with a frantic, panicked yank, throwing it into the pool of burning oil that massed in the middle of the cave's floor.

He dusted himself off and rubbed at the palms of his hands and at his throbbing knees.

He turned and screamed, the sound unnaturally loud in the small cave, to find two robed figures sitting quietly, gazing at him with empty eyes. He leapt back, almost fell into the puddle of blazing lantern oil, then caught his balance and backed up to the cave wall.

The firelight flickered against smooth stone walls and fell into a natural archway that led to another part of the cave. On either side of this arch sat the mummies, their leathery skin preserved by the stale, dry air. Their thick robes hung over them like spider silk, clinging to their frail, motionless forms with the kind of love and time that made even arranged marriages meaningful.

Zaji knelt, peering at the face of the closest monk, at the starved features and the wilted eyes and the pursed, tight mouth. In spite of himself, he felt peaceful looking on this vigilant corpse. He was being watched, but he was also being welcomed.

He advanced, his footfalls careful to not disturb the quiet of this place that had ruled for uncharted time. He crept to the archway and through it, where only the faintest illumination followed.

Someone wrapped their arms around him. Gently, those arms held him, and hugged him. Shyly, he put his arms around the figure as well and put his head on a leather-clad shoulder. He knew he was alone.

Disciple (pt2)

2006-01-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

If the monks taught them anything, it was the power of guilt. Completing the tests and receiving the blessing of the Order of Tagret the Warsaint was only to be expected. Families gave up their young adults for a full year, sending them out into the world -- under the nominal supervision of the monks -- so they would learn discipline, culture, and hopefully get so sick of travel as to be content to spend the rest of their lives in their hometowns. There was always a celebration when the pilgrims returned, like an early birthday. The newly-made adult would then tell his or her pilgrimage stories, become the envy of their little siblings, and would compare with the stories of elder siblings and parents. And that was that. But the weighty anvil of shame hung over each and every pilgrim. If the monks so decided, a person could be sent back home prematurely, unblessed and unwelcome. There was no celebration for such failures. The monks used this shame as gracefully as any weapon, commanding it with only a look or tone of voice. Their entire morality and instruction was founded on a quiet repugnance that was palpable to anyone with a beating heart.

So instructed, it didn't take long for Zaji and Yana to guilt the other man -- Walthik -- into sharing his coin with them for a few beers. A loud pub, packed (as if ready to be shipped off) with sweating, fish-scented people welcomed them after a full day of pretending to be destitute. The three immediately saw about a dozen other woolen, weary pilgrims huddled uncomfortably around a single table. They went to the bar, found they only had enough for a beer each, got their drinks, and went to the table. Miraculously, room was made for them.

"And House T'vanna has locked down all the northern ports," concluded a bald pilgrim. Zaji didn't know you could ask the monks to be shaven completely.

"You don't really think the High Council will stand for that though?," asked another pilgrim, a woman whose short red hair stood out brilliant and fiery against her pale scalp.

"Like the High Council can do anything," a third pilgrim added. "Even if they wanted a fight, they wouldn't have the steel to do it."

"Wait. What?" Zaji looked from one face to another.

The third pilgrim turned toward him, causing those around him to shift position. "The army's steel is collected in the same place, right? For easy accounting?"

"Right."

"But it can't be kept at the House Rin'eth mines because they're so far away from the shipping lanes. The Council couldn't have it delivered fast enough in times of warfare."

Zaji nodded.

The pilgrim concluded, "So the next closest shipping town is..."

Yana picked up where he left off. "... Is Falom Port."

Pilgrims nodded shaven heads.

"I don't get it," Zaji said. "Where is Falom Port?"

Yana smirked at him. "In the north. House T'vanna land."

He gaped at her.

"You have got to be kidding me!," Walthik blurted. "So there's nothing the Council can do against the embargo?"

The red-haired monk answered, rubbering her hand together as she did so. "I don't think the Council has to worry about that. T'vanna hasn't made them that made. And it's no secret the Council get its stone from the north, too."

Yana nodded to Walthik after sipping her beer. "And the Council is in the middle of that big construction project. The commemorative statues."

Walthik looked around the table in disgust. "So House T'vanna's just going to extort the High-stinking-Council?!"

"I'm sure the Council's being compensated," Zaji added offhandedly. He gulped his beer thinking of rich men patting other rich men on the back, all laughing and having a good time in a big, clean city that doesn't smell like the dregs of the sea.

"But we need medicine from the north," Walthik pressed. "I mean, unless we want people dying of the wet cough just like they did forty years ago."

Yana nudged into the conversation, literally. "Maybe House Yulix will--"

"House Yulix," the red-haired pilgrim interjected, "hasn't done a damn thing in... well... as long as anyone knows."

The women locked eyes. Somehow, in defiance of all possibilities, things at the table got a lot less comfortable.

"Let me sum it up for everyone," the bald pilgrim said, his voice strong and confident, breaking the tension. He shifted toward the table fully, hands out to help him explain. "Everyone's taking care of the Council, but not each other. The Houses are playing an old, old game and none of them are stupid enough to risk everything they have just for a tiny little gain. The Houses think in centuries. And no-one... no-one was surprised when T'vanna announced the embargo. It'll take decades to clear all this up, and we're probably not going to get a shipment of medicine before then."

In a noisy, stagnant pub, the table of pilgrims fell silent.

Until a large man almost toppled over half of them. "Hey there, kids!" He was bearded, pouring sweat, and smelled like something that should be used to strip paint from the side of a house or tar the bottom of a ship. "I'll buy the drink of the pilgrim who can recite the story of Tagret the Warsaint for me!"

The pilgrims looked at each other. The bald one called back, "The whole thing?"

The burly man hiccupped and nodded, then winked at the table. "I've got a favorite part I'm listening for. If I hear it, you'll get the drink."

No doubt, this man had put his own little test to the pilgrims every year since he had gained the blessing of the Order. No doubt, the elder brothers and sisters of these same pilgrims had undergone this exact challenge and got a free drink out of it.

Yana started first. "Tagret was born in Southshire. His parents were a farmer and a potter. While on the road, he was attacked by bandits and mortally wounded. He had a vision of a dark man telling him to break the spine of the Kazz Horde. When he woke up, he met Hsu-Hsang, who had been taking care of him. He and Hsu-Hsang traveled together, met up with the army of Thyst, and defeated the Horde. Then Tagret had a dream of the dark man telling him to break the skulls of the Northwall Alliance. He left the army of Thyst, snuck into the Alliance military camp, and killed their warprince in a duel of knives. He took the warprince's armor -- except for the breastpiece because it was ruined -- and wore it and it's what's called Tagret's Skin. Uhm... and he said he didn't need the breastpiece because his heart was impenetrable." She fumbled, having lost her train of thought.

"Nope. No good." The bearded man shook his head.

The red-haired pilgrim continued, shooting Yana a wry look as she did so. "Tagret had another dream of the dark man, but killed him this time, and said his destiny was his own. He joined up with the other warsaints and fought the War of Retribution."

"Not it," said the large fisherman.

The pilgrims looked at each other, eyebrows lifted.

The bald one spoke. "Are you listening for when the demon cursed him?"

"Nope."

Zaji, thinking of the crowded, dirty town and the weeks of travel on any side of it: "When he rested here, at Holmstead, before going back to Southshire?"

"Nuh-uh."

Walthik: "That he pulled the jaw of the chief of the Kazz Horde clean off?"

"Nice, but no."

Silence.

"They say he liked the color blue," added Yana hopefully.

The large man sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. Zaji noticed two separate tables watching him expectantly, smiles riding their faces. Conclusively, the fisherman set their minds at rest. "He got crotch rot." The other fishermen burst into laughter, joined by the large man.

The pilgrims groaned. The bald one growled and yelled to be heard over the pub. "He was cursed by a demon -- named Fang-Eye -- so his children wouldn't hunt him. The curse made him impotent."

"Nope," said the chuckling man, wiping tears from his eyes. "Nope. Crotch rot."

And fresh peals of laughter filled the already crowded pub.

Disciple (pt1)

2006-01-09T15:36:00.000-05:00

There were too many people. They cluttered his sides. They shouldered into him and sucked the fresh air greedily.

Holmstead was a port town threatening to dive right into the Violet Sea. The whole city smelled like fish, but its throngs had long grown accustomed to the stench and each other. Newcomers were not welcomed so much as advised to adjust. The dirty streets had enough people as it was, and if anyone didn't like the way things worked out in Holmstead, they were usually told to leave. Merchant caravans stretched out across the Ivory Plains to the west and the trade ship route regularly brought plenty of boats willing to take passengers.

Zaji was looking forward to leaving. He crouched at the side of the street, practically smothered by other gray-robed pilgrims, arm outstretched with his begging bowl in hand. Rows of the townsfolk strolled by, idly plopping tiny, bronze coins into each bowl. The pilgrims never even bothered to look at them.

He scratched at his ribs and sneered at the gray wool torture device. Even now, days after their last rainfall, it still stank of mud and sweat. Its wiry fibers clawed at his skin and threatened to tickle his bones. He looked to his sides and -- with a faint sense of sympathy -- saw similar looks of discomfort on the faces of the other pilgrims. At least he wasn't suffering alone.

The woman to his left nudged him with her elbow, which only made his ribs itch again. "Hey," she whispered conspiratorily, "have you seen a pub yet?"

Zaji nodded and waved vaguely with his begging bowl, the few coins in it sliding and chiming. "I think there was one about two streets that way. You going?"

She smirked at him. "Soon as I get enough for a few beers. But with the way these people are paying up, that'll be in four days."

Zaji chuckled because the act of pretending to have his monotony broken almost broke his monotony.

The pilgrim to his right craned his head around. "You going to a pub, you say?"

The woman, Yana, opened her mouth, shut it as someone dropped a coin in her bowl, then nodded.

"I'm going, too," said the man. "Gods know I could use a drink after all this." As he spoke, he leaned in, pressing his shoulder against Zaji, who had the distinct feeling of folding. No; not folding. Folding is delicate and precise. Zaji was crumpling like a wad of paper... wet, itchy paper. "Have you started memorizing the Hsu-Hsang Cycle yet?"

Yana barked a laugh. Zaji nodded, rubbing at his neck.

"Really?," asked the man, eyes wide at Zaji.

"What else am I going to do?" He ran a hand through his short, shaven hair. "I get bored when we're walking. I've seen enough trees and road. I'd go crazy on the pilgrimage if I didn't do something."

"What?," Yana coughed. "Meditating on the divine nature of the Eternal Journey of the Soul not doing it for you anymore?"

Zaji rolled his eyes. "No. Sorry. It's nice the monks want us to pretend metaphors are people, but -- in the stories -- the metaphors never get sore feet or the wet cough. The metaphors never miss sleeping in a real bed or eating real food." He got tired of talking, so he stopped.

"Well there's no way I can memorize the whole Cycle in six days," the man to his right spouted, adding a definitive nod. "Hsu-Hsang had his whole, wordy life to write it all down, and we have six days to know it all."

Yana looked up and down the line of pilgrims. She spotted one of the monks, their caretakers, who was doing his maddeningly slow stroll down the line. Waiting for him to look away, the peeked into her begging bowl, then looked back at the man on the other side of Zaji. "They did tell us a week ago to start."

"I was busy a week ago!"

Zaji and Yana immediately looked at him, disbelief pouring out of their eyes.

He sighed. "One of the pilgrims, Malep, is the son of the head of the merchant's guild in Nummeton, where I'm from. My father has a bakery and I'm already learning the business from him. Soon as we get back, Malep's going to take me on a merchant route for a week. We'll talk. And as soon as I inherit the business, I'll -- you know -- have a little something extra to talk to Malep about when we're negotiating trade." All this said while still driving his shoulder up against Zaji. "I've been buttering him up ever since."

"As long as the monks don't reject you," Yana chided.

"They're not going to reject me. The only person I've ever heard of them rejecting was a little soft in the head and the whole town told him not to go on pilgrimage anyway." He waved his own begging bowl at the monk, who had still not yet reached them. "As long as you look like you're trying, they'll bless you come winter. But it's not like you have to answer all the questions perfectly. None of them could do that."

The argument met with no disagreement.

Yana rubbed her nose. "Only two more tests. Two more journeys. Then we're done." Zaji and the man nodded solemnly, visions of home dancing in their skulls. "I can't wait to get back to Ressi-Town," she said. Then she sat bolt upright. Zaji and the man, thinking the monk had neared, did likewise, but no red-robed figured eclipsed their vision. They looked at her.

"Tagret's Rest," she murmured. She whipped her shaven head toward them both. "This is Tagret's Rest, right? This is where he came after the War of Retribution?"

They nodded.

For the first time in a long time, a pilgrim smiled. "Then there's only one more test after this one," she said, beaming.

Zaji and the man looked at each other. "She's right," Zaji said. The man grinned and nodded, sitting back again as a coin was dropped in his bowl.

"You look happy today, Yana," said the monk, his red robe immaculate in an impoverished way.

"Oh yes, master," she chirped. "I was just thinking about the fourth stanza of Hsu-Hsang's. It always makes me smile."

"It is a favorite of mine as well," the monk responded, slowly meandering past them and farther down the line of pilgrims.

The man on Zaji's right waited half a minute before turning to Yana with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll bet you all the money I have," said as he jingled his bowl, "that he has no idea what the fourth stanza is."

Yana chuckled and scratched her free arm.

Zaji sat up, craned his head, and called, "Master. I can't remember how the fourth stanza goes. I know it starts 'Your journey is your own. You share with no other. Your footsteps carry only you.' I can't remember the rest."

The monk blinked at Zaji, his face blank. "You should ask Yana," he finally said.

The monk walked on and the three squatted in silence.

"He probably knew," Yana said.

Zaji shook his head, smirking. "You lost the bet. That was the sixth stanza."

Yana sneered, leaned across Zaji, driving her elbow into his chest as she did so, and unceremoniously dumped her coins into the man's bowl.

Bright Eyes

2006-01-08T12:56:00.000-05:00

He had watched them since their arrival in these woods. They were a quiet and gentle people whose only violent outlet seemed to be chopping down his trees. For the longest time, he had considered this an attack, but he was yet too weak to retaliate. True, true, the small clan would have to level most of the forest to do him any real harm, but pain is pain no matter what amount. Consider this the next time a sucker-fly lands on your skin and goes to work, siphoning off only a tiny droplet of blood for itself. You itch, scratch, and swat at it, do you not?

But time passed—a little slowly for him—and he gradually became aware that these people only cleared enough space to build their houses. Once the clan was settled in, an amazing thing happened. The lines between building and tree had disappeared entirely.

The trees themselves were drafted into the clan’s everyday lifestyle. Rope strung between them served a variety of uses. He had listened as amorous young men perched in branches and softly called at the upper windows of their coy idols. They lived, fed, and grew in his expanse, and he became used to the pain of their chopping. After all, winter hurt, but would never kill him. Always, he would grow back. And so when the autumn came, and the leaves fell, and the clan cut down his trees for firewood, he said nothing. He settled into his deep sleep and bid them good luck on surviving the bitter forest cold.

His sense of identity was a thing that spanned centuries. The clan, little by little, grew into the hundreds, into a tribe. And just as slowly, he had come to understand that he was a he. He had thoughts and feelings. They told him so, in a quiet way, like one whispering to a dreaming sleeper.

All this was set in stone the week the boy was lost. Tamon, it had been. Tamon was young and foolish, and set out into the forest to give his hunting father a scare. Inevitably, the young boy got lost, never once seeing his cunning, hidden father as the man waited patiently for game. The boy cried, screamed, and wept in a matter of hours. It took just as long for the one watching him to realize this was the perfect chance.

He had studied them for so long. He had learned their words and their shape. The forest is nothing if not adaptive.

A wooden frame, blood of sap, and flesh of the lightest clay. Moss would have to do for hair, but the eyes… the eyes he had no substitute for. Not as if he needed them. But his people talked so much of each others’ eyes that he felt strange trying to imitate without them. So he reached deep within himself, in a painful way that only the truly introspective can understand, and finally retrieved two bright quartz crystals from a geode.

He walked to the stream where Tamon trudged in a panic. The boy was almost fevered with worry, and kept looking up at the sky between the trees, where it grew unabashedly dark. Tamon hurried on, hoping this was the stream which led near to his tribe’s camp, the whole while unaware of the silent form stalking him, whose footsteps would never be betrayed by the complaints of twigs and sticks.

Tamon screamed when he heard “Hello.” He put his hands to his face and covered his eyes, as if this childish ward would protect him from all harm. If I can’t see it… it can’t-

“I said ‘Hello,’ little boy.”

Tamon pulled his hands down and saw the shape of a man. The shape was tall and willowy, but the voice was deep and untried. Tamon stared in silence. Surely I haven’t walked so far as to the western clan. This is a stranger’s voice.

The figure stepped forward, into a swath of light permitted by the treetops above. His skin was pale, like Tamon’s. He was barely clothed in… in bark? No, some kind of tough leather. And his hair… and his eyes! Those quartz eyes shone brilliantly in the twilight, and it was those eyes—those eyes he had sought to be so much like them—which made the boy scream and hide his own again.

“What is wrong?”

“You are a spirit-man and you will eat me!”

“I will not eat you. I have tasted of your blood before, and it is not good.”

This seemed to only make things worse. Tears trailed from the boy’s fingers.

“I will take you to your tribe.”

“I’ll not trust you, Jack o’ Bright Eyes! I’ll not trust your lies!”

The man blinked, more taken aback by the rhyme than its insult.

In the silence, Tamon composed himself. If he was to die, eaten by a spirit-man, he would know the spirit-man for what he was. Always, when he had interrogated his elders, they would say “A spirit-man eats little boys who run off… and who lie. And steal.” And he would beg them to go on, to say the thing’s shape that he may know it, to speak of its mind and its heart… this thing so similar to men but not. And they would only say “They are often bad things. But sometimes good. But even the good ones will eat the flesh of thieving boys!”

Tamon slowly lowered his hands and looked at Bright Eyes, sniffling only a little. He thought, under the circumstances, he had behaved honorably enough to pride his ancestors. And for the few hard-case dead relatives who still weren’t convinced, the boy cocked back his head and called “Eat me.”

“What? Why?”

“Go on! Do it! I’ll show you no fear.”

The spirit-man tilted his head to the side, an unconscious movement that felt too natural to be ignored. “You are strange.”

“And you are a coward!” Tamon could see them all, all of his ancestors all the way back to Red Bear, even grand-uncle Yulish who had been so cruel and picky, grinning ear-to-ear in pride.

The figure sat down on the forest soil, looking up at his accuser. “Do you want to go back to your people, or not?”

Silence. Wind tittered through branches. The nearby stream struggled to keep from chuckling.

“Yes.”

“Then follow,” Bright Eyes said as he stood. He walked a little ways into the forest, stopped, and glanced back.

Tamon stood with his arms crossed. “No tricks from you! My tribe is near the stream. We follow the stream.”

The spirit-man blinked once, twilight still finding those eyes. “This is the wrong stream.” He turned and kept walking into the forest.

Tamon turned about, looked around him for some magic landmark that had appeared out of nowhere to confirm his side of the story, and saw none. Defeated, he grudgingly followed the spirit-man deeper into the forest. He decided to follow and save his strength… just in case Jack o’ Bright Eyes decided to eat him after all.

The stream waited long enough for the boy to be out of earshot before bursting into laughter.

I Have Felt Books Breathe.

2006-01-07T04:49:00.000-05:00

In quiet and somber halls, I have strolled like a Zen monk in kinhin, each step agonizingly slow as my sense of balance slips through equilibrium from one foot to the other, and I have heard the books whisper. They are quiet, and polite, and far too dignified to clamor for attention. They know what they are worth, and they are the world to me.

I lie. They are more worlds than can be counted. They are heroes and hero-villains; they are everyone I have ever met and multitudes I would like to. They are wild and vicious gates -- smiling like a magician or a thief -- and they are beautiful or terrifying or... or unabashedly interesting. And I have walked through many and not enough.

I have stretched out my hand in dust-laden libraries and let my fingertips lovingly feather over the spines of books, as gently as any beauty should be touched by mortal hands. They have sighed in reply, or shivered. And I have loved even the ones I have not been properly introduced to: they I have seen guiltily from afar, or noticed only in passing.

All this until I would turn a corner, or stroll -- achingly -- down an aisle, or touch just the right book; then I would hear my name whispered as if across a great divide. And I would open a gate. And I would be lost a good while in labyrinthine words and the magic of their stories.

Only there am I a hero.

Here, I am your wizard.