Not quite #fridayflash fiction: Ghosts

"Eeckkk!" said Lemon. "There's a woman. I just saw her crossing the floor." How can the place he occupies be described? If you focus on its texture for a while, it appears quite solid, but there are waves on all sides, up down, left, right, forward, backward. Everything appears identical at first. Waverings bits of light. If you think specks, they become specks. If you think waves, they elongate and snake - around and around. The appearance of the place sails through possibilies. The acoustics of the place was similarly open to persuation. Snatches of music, disembodies voices came and went, without seeming incomplete. They just shifted as the attention of the hearers did. Other sensory impressions wove in and out of an everchanging dance of perception. "Interesting." said Raft. "Describe her to me." "She is a shadow. All grey and stilted, as if there is something hindering her. Something holding her back, keeping her from manifesting fully. She walks heavily. But she seems quite thin." "Is that how you see her?" Raft asked. "Look again." Lemon himself wore the appearance of a small youngish monk in a robe. He kept his face round and blank of expression, and saw Raft as a bit of a rogue, a canvas across which wry smiles, raised eyebrows and frowns of irony painted themselves with ease. Each feature, the moustache, the beard, the slightly hooked nose had the potential for additional emotional punctuation. "Her hair is long, curvy and Titian red. It mostly covers her face but I think her nose is quite long, longer than average. She wears a gown of some sort." He squinted. "Above the chest, there is a glittery motif, but otherwise it is plain and seagreen." "Very good," said Raft. If you asked either whether they heard the conversation, they might not have been able to answer, but each voice was distinct, and spoke of the person as well as his words. "You see her also?" Lemon asked eagerly. "I've been looking at her for a while now. I'm surprised that you see her. Her name is Tiffany." , "You know her?" "She is... was my fiancee." Before, Lemon and Raft had not been acquainted. They gravitated towards each other, settled into a conversation and grew comfortable in it. They may have been at it for some time, but time itself wove in and out of their world. They were still trying to work out whether this was in fact their first meeting or not. "Why won't she talk to us? Wait... oh! Now, I see. She is..." "A ghost." "No. Yes. Must we use that word? Raft shrugs. He said several things, none of them verbal. "Why is she so sad?" Lemon asked. "Because she longs..." "For you?" "She longs for the warmth of a fresh wound, but all she has is a stale scar. She comes back out of habit. I can hear her words. I miss him. He is always with me. How can both statements be true. I have no trouble at all 'being with her' but maybe the real answer is that she is not always with me anymore." "How sad," said Lemon. "I always thought it was the other way around. That we haunt the living." Raft's face was a work of art, the interaction between his brow and his moustache all but forming full sentences. "That kind of traffic goes both ways. In our world, they are incomplete in some way. At times, she almost appears to notice me... Other times... Look, she fades again." Lemon shivered. He had the suspicion that for the moment his face was not bland enough. "Let's talk about something else," he said.

And the band played on...Remembering one of the true heroes of the Titanic...

He left Southampton on 10 April 1912 as the owner of second classed ticket No 250654, courtesy of his employment for the music agency C.W. & F.N. Black, an organization that specialized in supplying entertainers for ocean liners. The return journey was of an entirely different nature, identified as Body no 224, described as a brown-haired male wearing a green-facing uniform, brown overcoat, black boots and green socks. Recovered by the Mackay-Bennett, Body no 224 travelled from Halifax to Boston, crossing the Atlantic, this time aboard the 'Arabic' to reach a final resting place in Colne, Lancashire. In between, he had been the Head Bandmaster aboard the Titanic. A veteran of some 80 Atlantic crossings, Wallace Henry Hartley's most prestigious assignment before the Titanic had been aboard the Mauretania, a vessel that returned to Liverpool mere days before the Titanic's maiden voyage. There were two separate musical units aboard the luxury ship, a trio comprising cello, violin and piano, and a larger quintet with which Hartley performed. Under normal circumstances, the two groupings had different duties, but on the night the Titanic hit the iceberg, bandmaster Wallace Henry Hartley assembled them to play, first in the First Class Lounge and later on the Boat Deck close to the Grand Staircase. It was the first and only occasion of the trip where the eight of them played together. Many agreed that their selfless act played a huge role in maintaining calm and order as the emergency evacuation of the Titanic took place and at least some of the passengers who did make it, owed their lives to the band who just kept playing. According to witnesses, Hartley's last words were "Gentlemen, I bid you farewell!" None of the musicians aboard the Titanic survived the voyage... In Hartley's home town of Colne, a plaque marks the house he grew up in and there is a 10 foot high monument featuring a carved violin - his instrument of choice. Over one thousand mourners attended his memorial service, and 40,000 more lined the route of the funeral procession, which featured seven bands. Today there are streets named after him and proud Colne residents continue to maintain his gravesite.

Do also visit this webpage dedicated to his memory for more info http://www.titanic-titanic.com/wallace_hartley.shtml

(for anyone sharp enough to notice, i AM plagiarizing myself with this blogpost. I originally posted it almost a year ago on my Xomba profile)

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Seeds

the seed opens
the seed closes
captures the tree
and folds it within
to release it
in another place
near or far
as a human's soul
jumps from body to body
so the tree's soul jumps
from seed to seed
and worlds are bridged
the seed opens
the seed closes
a universe inside...

And then there's a tree
that grew inside of me
Its seeds blew in
on the trade winds of a tragedy...

Its magic roots dug in
and its shoots just grew and grew
there's wisdom in its rustling leaves
and laughter in its fruity brew...


(This poem 'sprouted' from the fertile grounds of a dialogue between myself and Dan Pocengal on the nature of reality and all sorts of related matters)

Un-naming

As one of my writer friends frequently points out, I have a reluctance for naming characters that borders on compulsive. Check back my #friday flash stories, if you don't believe me. My characters are 'the mother', 'the muse', 'the guitarist', 'his friend'. In one story I named my main character J and said to the above-mentioned friend, "Well, at least I half named that one."

But maybe there is a little more than laziness or lack of inspiration at work, because ever since I was a kid, I've had this strong feeling to be 'free' and naming of course implies ownership. We get names from our parents, nicknames from friends (and enemies). Naming is a form of colonization. In the old Cape Colony, slaves and indigenous people could only participate in society by being baptized into the Christian faith AND BEING RE-NAMED IN THE PROCESS. In fact, slaves were also named upon arrival. Native Americans were called Indians by early explorers who mistaken thoughts they had discovered the East. The Xhosa tribe were named that by their rivals, the San and it means roughly 'The Angry People'. The San, on the other hand, refer to themselves as merely 'the people', a subtle implication that the claim to humanity from anyone other than the San themselves is slightly questionable. Naming is claiming. Naming is the encroachment of domestication upon the wild. Naming is taming, or sometimes making an attempt to tame the untamable. Naming draws borders. Naming lays claim and keeping something unnamed preserves just a tiny seedling of the feral and the formless within its soul... leaving it with the potential to transcend, to transform and to find its own path... A little vagueness leaves room for the imagination... and the infinite... gives the magic of the spaces in between some room to breathe.

I completed the chalk drawing this morning. I haven't drawn in chalk for a while... In keeping with the blog post, I am not naming the subject...

Not quite #fridayflash fiction: Angels and Monsters

The mother did not expect it to be true, but there it was, one thick green tentacle slithering across the Spiderman duvet, while a lumpy sac of pulsating torso heaved and hauled to achieve summit of her son's bed. My poor baby.

She had thought he was lying or exaggerating. Night after night the screams would interrupt the dark slumber of the entire household. He has a vivid imagination. Sure, vivid enough to make her see his monsters, crawling - At least it's not touching him yet.

She took a step forward, then hesitated. The tentacle squirmed into a new curl. Its tip lifted slightly. She stared.

It's not there. It cannot be there.

There were hairy things at the tip of the tentacle. They waved slightly, like miniature reeds.

This is your mind. Playing tricks. You're a grown woman, not a five-year-old.

It didn't help. You cannot unsee a thing like that. And she only wanted to help him. Getting to this point was difficult enough. Oh, the so-called experts who had not believed her. All children have nightmares. If she had a dollar for everytime she was told that. The first person to come up with a deal solution was an ancient Indian woman, who was a hundred if she was a day.

Add these herbs to his cereal and to yours also. Spend the night by his bed. If it is something more than the usual, then you will see it.

The herbs had the fragrant aroma of cinnamon and were surprisingly easy to digest.

Weren't all medicines supposed to taste foul.

The tentacle groped a fold of the duvet, briefly pinching Spiderman's arm. The mother took a deep breath. She was supposed to intervene, but how?

OMG. It's oozing onto the duvet. I better wash it first thing in the morning.

The boy trembled, but did not wake. The mother wished it was all a dream. As the tentacle reached for his shoulder, she jerked involutarily. The tentacle withdrew and curled slightly, like a caterpillar that had been prodded.

It heard me. It knows I'm here.

The monster repositioned itself. Of course. The mother shivered. Had she really believed she could handle this? Then she steeled herself. This was her baby. She would die for him.

"Why?" she whispered, hardly daring to speak. "Why do you terrorize my son night after night?"

The monster grinned through row upon row of serrated teeth. "Your son? Oh, the boy. what makes you think I'm after your son?"

The mother took a deep breath. Was it even possible to reason with a creature such as this? Hope surfaced. Yes. Maybe it was.

"Well," she said, all business. "What do you want?"

The monster smiled. Very simple. Only one thing draws us to little boys and girls. The prospect of dining on angelflesh. Little children are always watched over by angels. If that were not the case, we would leave them be.

"Really?" the mother asked. "If there was no angel, you would not come?"

By the very hairs on my tentacles I swear this.

The mother had much food for thought throughout the next day, but because she had slept poorly, it was not very clear thought. So the angels were to blame. Interesting.

Midway through the morning, she was back at the Indian woman's decrepid stall. She was very excited about this. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said to the Indian woman. "You were the only person to help and now I have a plan. I need just one more thing. Do you have a magical herb for seeing the guardian angel of my little boy. I must have a word with him. Or her."

A hungry look entered the old woman's eyes. Perhaps she thought of other forms of bartering that were less sure, but more rewarding. "Indeed I do," she replied.

Again the mother had to sprinkle some herbs over the breakfasts of both her and her son, but the ingredient for seeing angels was pungent and a little more bitter, as if the taste alone already carried a caveat.

That night a second vigil commenced and the mother did not have to wait long before a beautiful golden glow surrounded the bed of her son. He smiled in his sleep, a lovely innocent smile and the mother hesitated for a moment. Then she remembered the monster of the night before and her resolve hardened.

"Hey you," she said. She was becoming used to communication with supernatural beings.

The angel turned and smiled also. "Well, good evening," she said. "This is a surprise. I wasn't expecting company."

"I was," said the mother. "I am here to ask a favor. As a concerned parent, I have been noticing that my child seems to have more than his fair share of monsters around. I looked into the matter..."

"I am always vigi..." the angel began..

"No interruptions, please" said the mother sternly. "Like I said, I looked into the matter and it was brought to my attention that the real and true cause of the problem is YOU!"

"Me?" the angel asked, perplexed.

"Yes, you. This is why I must ask, no beg, a favor of you. Leave my boy alone. Don't come near him. He won't be needing no guardian angels in the future. without the likes of you around, there will be no... "

The mother collapsed before she had a chance to finish her sentence. She fell gently, almost as if something cushioned her descent.

"My thanks," said the boy's guardian angel. "The problem with the adults is that they no longer recognize the shape of monsters. That one had its bulk curled all the way around her reason and it was squeezing the life out of her good sense, but she couldn't even see it. I don't know what I would have done."

"It's nothing," said the mother's guardian angel, "I was here all along. I've got it sorted."

"Good luck on the job."

"And you also. Looks like you're going to need it." The mother's guardian angel kicked something invisible. "And you, old flea-bitten, blunt-scaled excuse for a nightmare? Still haven't given up after all these years? You're not pulling that one on me again." There was a sigh that could have been the bed creaking or a window frame cracking under a sudden gust of wind. No one human heard it.

(Okay, it's a bit long for a #fridayflash, but this is where the 'not quite' would apply... I'm not sure if this is a children's story or an adult story... maybe a children's story for adults ... and it is anonymously dedicated to someone's mother)

The Honesty Paradox

We are all Heaven's exiles. Kicked out of our true home at the very start of our earthly lives so it goes without saying that we begin with a whole load of rejection issues...

To wonder: will they accept me? does anyone really want me around? is normal, but we secretly believe we are the only ones who feel this.

We hear the world, but there are always ghost voices hiding in the texture of things, a veneer of meaning that becomes the map to guide us on the road back, maddeningly clear at times, but when we try to explain this to another, the response is so often "Huh? Huh?"

The way to see this as a union of two systems - an illusion of flesh and a reflection of spirit, neither absent, neither complete. The ratio is different in every single person. Did I mention this? Those two cannot occupy the same space - we have to negotiate an arrangement. What we really are, is perhaps the spasms of that struggle between 'here' and 'there'.

Emotional honesty fosters the connection with our true spiritual home, but try introducing too much of that honesty into the flesh and blood world around you and society very quickly vomits you up and cuts you off from the pseudo-comfort of the herd of sheeple.

Herein, of course, lies the paradox and the pain. Honesty reconnects you to heaven, but disconnects you from the world around you. It hurts - knowing the truth, but living so close to that carefully tended weed garden of lies.

Not quite #fridayflash fiction: The Muse

She was conceived in the heart of a song that contained about as much tears, blood and visceral matter as most births.

Her arrival surprised the composer, who had been expecting a melody only, not a whole woman with long drapes of birch colored hair streaming down her slightly stooped shoulders. "Are those wings?" he asked.

She blinked, staring at the motion of his lips. Then she parted hers and mouthed a pattern that was close to identical. Open, close, tongue brushing teeth, open again, close, open, close. No sound came. She did not appear to expect any.

"No," he said, rounding the O.

She imitated the motion. Still no sound.

"You cannot speak," he observed. "Can you hear? You are beautiful."'

He led her to the couch. Some of the hair slipped and he saw for certain why she was stooped. "They are wings," he said. "Are you an angel?"

She blinked, then got up and walked over to the piano. Some of the sheets of paper were filled with notes. She smiled, as if something about the melody delighted her. Then she found the pen and wrote, I DO NOT KNOW in large block letters. I DO NOT REMEMBER.

The composer's mind was conflicted. An excited you can write! battled with a protest that he used the music sheets for other types of writing. Trembling fingers, he found a notebook and passed it to her. He retrieved the sheets of paper, past her scribbling, he saw how the rest of the melody would go. The notes just seemed to fall into place and he wrote them down quite fast, lest he forget them, caught up as he was in the unexpected phenomenon of the winged woman.

"Why did you come?" he mused, more to himself.

I WAS DRAWN HERE, she wrote. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT MYSELF.

"Do you have a name?" he asked.

I DO NOT THINK SO, she replied.

"Do you need anything?"

A GLASS OF WATER.

The composer poured her a glass of water and went back to the business of music, which seemed to flow a lot easier in her presence than it did before.

She stayed and hours drifted into days, weeks, months and finally years. The composer wrote many songs, some of which he recorded himself, while licensing others to fellow musicians.

He became famous and aclaimed. The woman sometimes felt she could almost, but not quite remember a life before him, but she felt no need to return to it. Only two aspects blemished their happiness. The first was that no one seemed to notice the woman beside the composer. In the beginning, he tried to argue the reality of her presence, but he soon grew weary of persisting in a debate he never won anyway.

The second grief was hers. Although she fully comprehended him and could communicate fluently through writing, she never learnt to speak or hear anything. It was apparent to her, that their was some important factor in the composer's life that she could not take a part in. Sometimes, she would pore over his work with the intensity of an obsessive and would almost imagine that she could hear the melodies. She would press compact disks to her cheek bones or rub earphones against her lips or ear lobes, but nothing ever came out of these objects.

At the end of his life, as he lay dying, the composer said, "If one wish remains to me, it is this. That somehow you will now be able to share in my gift."

His body stilled and cooled and his spirit returned to the Source of all life. With tears in her eyes, she fingered one of those useless musical devices again. Something assaulted her mind with sharp pinpricks that went chi-chi-chi. There was a loud CRASH! that made her duck for cover and a SCREEEEEEEEEEEE! that grated her inside in a way that was very hard to deal with.

She sat up. Her ears worked. Suddenly these assaults on her nervous system became a joy as she realized that the composer's dying wish (and hers) had been granted.

"Are you the nearest of kin?" asked a nurse, and the words echoed in her ears before blossoming to comprehension in her mind.

"Yes... yes, I think so," her voice sounded odd to her own ears, although she experienced no difficulty producing those first words. That, too, surprised her.

She could not wait to be alone, to enjoy that which had been denied her throughout the composer's life. She stumbled outside and it took several moments before she worked out the reason for her lack of co-ordination. The wings were gone. Music flooded her being, intoxicated her, each note all but leaving her devastated. Was this the music of her beloved companion the composer? Why did it hurt so much? Was this what beauty does?

She kept walking into people, something that had never happened to her before. Each fresh note made her stagger, seemed to rip a hook into her soul, twisting the barb. Each note removed another layer of protection, until she felt naked in a hurricane of sound only. It hurt, and yet the beauty was not lost on her.

She wanted to write YES!!!! I HEAR IT NOW! I UNDERSTAND YOUR GENIUS! but there was no one at her back, no notepad and no composer. At that moment, she realized how truly alone she was within this storm of music.

She removed the earphones and pondered the device. For the first time she remembered the composer's wry smile and his kind blue-green eyes. She missed them. Balm for a wound was good, but being whole was better. Her hands squeezed the music player so hard it cracked. The noise around her became muted. She could not stop squeezing and each subsequent crack was softer than the last.

A vaguely remembered sentence surfaced briefly in her consciousness. You cannot go back.

And then, We are all on a path through life.

The shards of plastic and fibreglass were slowly turning to dust between her palms. She scattered them. Do we not all create out own path? The wind blew them into a line. Bits of copper glinted briefly...

If you want to make it
to this crazy world of mine
The secret's in the shine,
the magic's in the shine...

She began to follow the dust of the shattered music player. She could no longer hear her footsteps, but a path was being created.

After a while, her shoulder blades itched.

Blotches and shadows of people past through her, but she could no longer feel them. Sometimes their lips formed O's or their tongues brushed their teeth, but no sound accompanied the motions. She had become a ghost to their world.

She crossed a bridge that looked like a piano...

Soon her feet no longer touched the ground... She was flying home to wry smiles and kind blue-green eyes.

The secret's in the shine....

(t.y.m. - but this one hurt a lot to write, somehow.... i'm still recovering from it, emotionally)