021620c

fire
coats
bodies
hard to tell
how they're formed but dance
don't call them salamanders please
they visited Australia this year where the next?

060219

A River's Tale

Many lands feel the river's touch. In the land of the Noceri the river sheds its load of post-apocalyptic debris and takes on a new name. Upstream the river is called Rougerin; after its passage through Nocerland it is the Ouestry. The Noceri are fisherfolk. This has been their bane. They have a saying that what you eat you become, and certainly what they pull out of the river with their long-handled hooks and what they strain out with their fantastical nets, is stranger than any tale can tell. Once, struggling man shapes came floating down each spring. They could not have been men, for as the Noceri put it, a river produces fish, and fish is dinner. Nevertheless they were noisy fish, and their lamentations have become some of the best folk songs of the Noceri. The Noceri waste nothing. It is well known that the Noceri speak only truth. The man shapes are gone now, and from July through January the Noceri must live on salt fish, dried fish, pickled fish, hard fish cakes, slippery fish candy, and fish preserves.

It may be the cleansing action of the fisherfolk, or simply the distance from its source, but the river leaves Nocerland in a rarified state, fit for swimming, and those who live where the lazy river winds across the plains of rushes, reeds, horsetails, cattails, lizardtails, goattails, and mare's tails do just that on a daily basis. They do so, that is, until the river reaches the Plain of Ghoz. Ghoz was a foolish God. Ghoz angered the river, or so the tale relates, and the river departed his homeland, never to return.

One spring the floods rose until they lapped at the very sill of the hut of Ghoz. On the plains, even a God dwells in a humble hut woven of the strong purple grasses. Ghoz surveyed the devastation wrought on the plain, as even a small god should, and when he returned home his hut was gone, and with it his wife and child. Ghoz was consumed with grief and fury. He tore out his hair, he stabbed himself repeatedly with the sharpened willow stick that was his token, and he cursed the river, forcing it to depart. Some claim that the purification of the river engendered by the fisherfolk of Nocer permits the Ouestry's spirit to leave its body, and they label the tale of Ghoz a falsity. Whatever the case, the river is sundered where it enters Ghozland. The false river remains in the plain, bereft of that life-giving property common to all rivers. Thus the Ghozlings have turned their back on the river, because it is soulless, providing no sustenance, and they graze their cattle far from its desolate banks.

The spirit river rises perilous into the air, and none have dared it, or if they have, they have not returned. Where the two rivers that should be one go after they pass the Land of Ghoz I cannot say. Perhaps one or both still reach the distant sea. Would that our story could tell of the spirit river, its nature, purpose, and destination. If this was a campfire tale of the Noceri, the spirit river's tale would be one of the most truthful. Alas, the Noceri do not know the spirit river. However, one thing is known: the separation between Ouestry above and Ouestry below moves steadily upstream. One day, perhaps, the unravelling of the two rivers will reach Nocerland, and when it does, the Noceri may make tales of its days, its nights, its beginning, and its end. Until then, we must make do with the lies we have.

100518c

after
humanity's end
the spirits of plants and places
lingered on
hungering for someone to worship them
fading as Earth's memory faded
long gone when the new speakers and thinkers
saw spirits in everything

022618

The Whiskies

The photograph shows a polychromatic blur in front of the old green couch. No details can be discerned, but somehow the impression of movement is inescapable.

The whiskies do not invariably come out in the late afternoon. That is a misconception too oft repeated by those who do not trouble themselves to learn the facts. Nevertheless, if one wishes to observe their quaint antics, 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. would be a good choice of time. It was my daughter who named them the whiskies. The appellation’s frivolity is balanced by its aptness—the whiskies whisk.

Dad thinks he found ‘em but it was really me. He reads the paper every afternoon in the living room, and I play dolls on the floor behind him. He doesn’t mind if I am quiet. The sun shines in through the big window and I like to watch the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams. I imagine they are great lords and ladies at a royal ball. The whiskies like the sunbeams too.

The whiskies cannot be seen by the unaided human eye (though I hope to photograph them using a device that employs both infrared and ultraviolet light). Their gyrations disturb the Brownian trajectories of the floating motes of dust and so one may perceive them indirectly. They move forward and back in a repetitive fashion not unlike that of a small broom.

You can’t really see ‘em but you know they’re there. They sweep up the sunbeams and I don’t know what they do with them. I think they have very long hair, and they use their hair to do the sweeping. I’m not really sure, but I think they drink the sunbeams. They always seem thinner after it’s been cloudy for a few days.

My daughter thinks that the whiskies somehow consume sunlight. If this were true, it seems that the room would dim when they are here, but my radiometer indicates the opposite. The physical mechanism for any whisky-induced increase in light intensity is obscure, but I am confident that additional tests will allow me to determine how it is accomplished. It seems to me that the whiskies might respond to an influx of additional energy, and this is the focus of my current research.

When the sun gets real low late in the day, the whiskies cluster so thickly in front of the green couch that you almost can see them. That’s when their whisking seems so much like a dance that I want to join in. I’ve been afraid to, because I didn’t want to scare them, but yesterday I was sure they were inviting me, and I almost ran out on the old Persian carpet with them to dance. Today I will.

I am going to try a new experiment today. I will flood the area in front of the couch with infrared and ultraviolet light, while running a current through coils I placed beneath the floor only this morning. I have rigged my best camera to expose a plate for the briefest instant when the energy input is at its peak. I am hoping to see, and capture for posterity, something truly remarkable.

The house has long been deserted, and no one has been able to tell me the present address of Professor Carstairs. The old-timers agree that he took a westbound train two weeks after the mysterious disappearance of his daughter, and that is all they can tell me.