Lightbringer
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Entry 9: Seven Days
Seven days with only wine and some bread to eat, I would really give my soul for a piece of meat.
What we don't have is a coin of gold to pay, but what we would give is some wine if you want to stay.
- Umami, Seven Days
p.s. Co-keee
What we don't have is a coin of gold to pay, but what we would give is some wine if you want to stay.
- Umami, Seven Days
p.s. Co-keee
Labels: fiction, frogs, Lightbringer, ritual union, umami
¶ 4:55 AM 0 comments
Friday, April 10, 2009
Entry 8: albino bones
She smiles, this dark-skinned girl with teeth as pure as newborn elephant tusks, perfect, and symmetrical.
"You are God," she says. This frightens me, though I can't step away from the white around the deep black of her eyes.
She doesn't know how to lie.
I lie often.
This fucks me, for this doesn't encourage this innocent and astonishing being to trust me.
"You are God," she says. This frightens me, though I can't step away from the white around the deep black of her eyes.
She doesn't know how to lie.
I lie often.
This fucks me, for this doesn't encourage this innocent and astonishing being to trust me.
Labels: albino bones, innocence
¶ 5:56 AM 0 comments
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Entry 7: she believes in everything
I'm so close to catching the silver sun in my hands. Aya knows, and she smiles as she boils the river water for tea. Coming out of the pipes here, being careful not to slip on the wet steel, left us in a place with a canopy of trees high above, and beyond that, a purplish sky. The water from the pipes feeds the stream, but it has its own source, too.
I think about what it will be to hold that light. I'm eager, and I'm afraid. Do I still carry the innocence needed to embrace it? ¶ 10:24 PM 0 comments
I think about what it will be to hold that light. I'm eager, and I'm afraid. Do I still carry the innocence needed to embrace it? ¶ 10:24 PM 0 comments
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Entry 6: the orange people in the box
"Step out of yourself," she demands, and pushes me. "Come on. Let it go. I know you can do this. Reach."
There are orange people in the box, strange little humans. On one wall hangs a tiny screen. The dark, spiraling strobes and tunneling captivates the orange people, colors burning images into their cracked open eyes.
I CAN EXPLAIN.... A hazy mantra slips confused amidst a bundled burble of drums. A shadow waves its hand through fire.
"They're watching." The smallest of the orange people nudges his companion.
"Shh!" mutteres a few of the others.
The little one persists. "But they are."
His companion shrugs. "Does it matter?"
Carefully the god returns the cover to the box. She puts the box in the back corner of the top shelf of her closet. Not hidden, for she likes to take it down regularly.
Each day the contents give me something to think about. I often wish I could climb in the box with the orange people. It would help me remember, for if I did, perhaps she would live. She sleeps that strange sleep now.
¶ 4:08 PM 1 comments
Friday, November 05, 2004
Entry 5: Butterfly kept herself secret without being secret at all
There is beauty beyond the devouring.
There is beauty in the devouring.
There is beauty.
It is difficult for me. I can't feel Aya anymore, ever since she went below. She's usually shades of color in my thoughts, vivid azures and opaline yellows, cascading violet. I keep sending to her, but nothing. It drops into nothing. On the way out into the afternoon light, I squint. But it's not from the brightness. I fight the fear inside, the anxiousness. There's no Aya now. No buffer. No purity. There's just me. And my purity has been stolen.
Butterfly is strolling first on the sidewalk, a loping stride, Search and Escape trailing, their arms dangling, moving, not content, especially Escape. He pushes Search and Search jabs him in the side. Escape yelps. Butterfly ignores them.
I walk behind, breathing, concentrating. A single blade of grass grows out of a crack in the sidewalk. My father dies, falling over from a heart attack, in that crack. Around it scurry ants, not lots, but enough. Life. I'm in this child body. It's new. Aya won't die. She's so driven she'd never let that happen. True beauty breeds purpose, and vice versa. And my dear sisterfriend has purpose burnt into her bones. I'm following now, I was too slow when she first asked, I hesitated. It'll cost me later, I know.
Butterfly invigorates me. I thought I knew all the interesting kids, at least the ones that have been here for awhile. I do remember Escape blathering something many days ago, but he's always blathering, so I didn't believe. This girl kept herself secret without being secret at all.
The afternoon sun flashes in her silver hair. Search is a tall boy and his long legs make his head bob. Anybody watching us must know we're on a mission, we have that extra kick in our step. Moving straight along. Up to no good, the adults in the neighborhood might mutter. And then they'd smile, knowing our "no good" was the best kind, true play, no malice. Even I was imbued with that now, even with the anxiousness riding beneath my skin. Even though I haven't been a true child for over a thousand years.
¶ 11:37 PM 0 comments
There is beauty beyond the devouring.
There is beauty in the devouring.
There is beauty.
It is difficult for me. I can't feel Aya anymore, ever since she went below. She's usually shades of color in my thoughts, vivid azures and opaline yellows, cascading violet. I keep sending to her, but nothing. It drops into nothing. On the way out into the afternoon light, I squint. But it's not from the brightness. I fight the fear inside, the anxiousness. There's no Aya now. No buffer. No purity. There's just me. And my purity has been stolen.
Butterfly is strolling first on the sidewalk, a loping stride, Search and Escape trailing, their arms dangling, moving, not content, especially Escape. He pushes Search and Search jabs him in the side. Escape yelps. Butterfly ignores them.
I walk behind, breathing, concentrating. A single blade of grass grows out of a crack in the sidewalk. My father dies, falling over from a heart attack, in that crack. Around it scurry ants, not lots, but enough. Life. I'm in this child body. It's new. Aya won't die. She's so driven she'd never let that happen. True beauty breeds purpose, and vice versa. And my dear sisterfriend has purpose burnt into her bones. I'm following now, I was too slow when she first asked, I hesitated. It'll cost me later, I know.
Butterfly invigorates me. I thought I knew all the interesting kids, at least the ones that have been here for awhile. I do remember Escape blathering something many days ago, but he's always blathering, so I didn't believe. This girl kept herself secret without being secret at all.
The afternoon sun flashes in her silver hair. Search is a tall boy and his long legs make his head bob. Anybody watching us must know we're on a mission, we have that extra kick in our step. Moving straight along. Up to no good, the adults in the neighborhood might mutter. And then they'd smile, knowing our "no good" was the best kind, true play, no malice. Even I was imbued with that now, even with the anxiousness riding beneath my skin. Even though I haven't been a true child for over a thousand years.
¶ 11:37 PM 0 comments
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Entry 4: My sister went in, I want to go after her
Search hands Butterfly a cigarette and she takes it, though I can tell in how she holds it carelessly in her hand, the red tip smoldering, that she doesn't really want to smoke. She's not one to swallow that kind of shadow.
Aya would though. Her reckless shout from atop Looking Glass Rock, on the edge of the world it seemed at the time, "Show me, God, you damn Universe, show that I'm real and I'm not just a glimmer of neuro-biological software or fancy quantum math! I dare you!" freaked the fuck out of me and changed us forever. For the Universe does listen, and will respond.
"My sister went in these pipes," I say. "I want to go after her."
Butterfly looks at me, her eyes blue, though one is a grayish shade lighter than the other. "At the age of 13, some doctors and my parents mixed my imagination with illness and I spent a year in a mental asylum. Now they think I have wisdom. It's made it easy for me to hook up with evil, you know, the advertisers, the commodifiers, the hunters of cool, they try to figure me out, figure out all of us kids, but they're all specializing in channel idents and image. I don't mind whoring myself out as a trend scout, they get it wrong even when I tell them the truth."
She squeezes my hand. "I'll take you. You are a Lucifer kind of devil. Bringer of light and carrier of darkness... Trying too hard to dance."
Sometimes I think we like the abandon. Or we love desire. Deep within her eyes I could tell she was aware of the game, this reality around us we'd created to communicate, but too often everyone sleeps at the controls, passive, like in a movie or a television show.
We leave her room, her with a small pack on her back, stuffed animals hanging on key chains from the zippers, sewn on patches of mushrooms and eyes and Om symbols and an owl, the inked words magic and truth, and a tiny spiral of love. We head further into the building, down a long corridor of steel and flaking drywall, into a big open room, a single curving gray wall with no corners and just covered with names, hundreds of scribbled or painted names.
It is usually good to disturb the shaman. I am feeling that Butterfly is like one for these warehouse squatters. They all watch her, rever her with their eyes, their waves of hello and quick jokes. I know I have startled her, and she is trying hard to grasp what I am without letting on that she is wondering.
Aya would though. Her reckless shout from atop Looking Glass Rock, on the edge of the world it seemed at the time, "Show me, God, you damn Universe, show that I'm real and I'm not just a glimmer of neuro-biological software or fancy quantum math! I dare you!" freaked the fuck out of me and changed us forever. For the Universe does listen, and will respond.
"My sister went in these pipes," I say. "I want to go after her."
Butterfly looks at me, her eyes blue, though one is a grayish shade lighter than the other. "At the age of 13, some doctors and my parents mixed my imagination with illness and I spent a year in a mental asylum. Now they think I have wisdom. It's made it easy for me to hook up with evil, you know, the advertisers, the commodifiers, the hunters of cool, they try to figure me out, figure out all of us kids, but they're all specializing in channel idents and image. I don't mind whoring myself out as a trend scout, they get it wrong even when I tell them the truth."
She squeezes my hand. "I'll take you. You are a Lucifer kind of devil. Bringer of light and carrier of darkness... Trying too hard to dance."
Sometimes I think we like the abandon. Or we love desire. Deep within her eyes I could tell she was aware of the game, this reality around us we'd created to communicate, but too often everyone sleeps at the controls, passive, like in a movie or a television show.
We leave her room, her with a small pack on her back, stuffed animals hanging on key chains from the zippers, sewn on patches of mushrooms and eyes and Om symbols and an owl, the inked words magic and truth, and a tiny spiral of love. We head further into the building, down a long corridor of steel and flaking drywall, into a big open room, a single curving gray wall with no corners and just covered with names, hundreds of scribbled or painted names.
"Write yours," she says. She's kneeling, her pack before her, and from a pocket she pulls forth a silver marker.
"I gave up my name long ago," I say. "I'm no one."
"Better invent one then, one you can hold onto," she grins as she swirls her 'B's and 'u's and 't's and finally the spiral of 'y'. "It's the only way back."
Something was manufactured here once, it still smells of grease and sweat, though the room is empty of any machinery. There's only old sleeping bags and more kids and a bonfire where they are roasting frogs. We're offered some, and I eat, but they are dingy and listless. On the bite of my third I stop to spit its poor body into my hand, and toss it into the fire. I never like to eat amphibians, they seem to know too well that the world is fragile--they are beautiful and kind, patient, yet are decimated the quickest by pollution and ignorance. The smoke of the bonfire and its sparks, they just go up, into darkness. I see no opening or stars but somehow the smoke must chimney out for the air tastes clear and I have a feeling these frogs are weakened by whatever was here before, not what is here now.
It is usually good to disturb the shaman. I am feeling that Butterfly is like one for these warehouse squatters. They all watch her, rever her with their eyes, their waves of hello and quick jokes. I know I have startled her, and she is trying hard to grasp what I am without letting on that she is wondering.
I tug a half burned stick from the fire, tap the orange coals of its tip on the concrete, scattering heat and sparks, one bright hot piece of wood skittering close to a bare foot of one of the kids, who jumps.
Satisfied, I take my smoking stick to the wall and write, "Lightbringer", accepting the name she's given me.
Labels: butterfly, escape, fiction, innocence, Lightbringer, magic realism, novel, search, souls of stars
¶ 2:05 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Entry 3: The Pipes
Butterfly laughs. "Everyone wants to go in the pipes."
From a purple sack puzzled amid the pillows she pulls out a clay jar and dumps powder into the nearest bowl burning with blue and silver. The flames flare in a flash of white, the bowl hissing, animated, and then a hush as it settles to a somewhat larger blue-silver flame than before.
"A guide might help me go in and go through," I say. "These ones," I point at the kids who led me here, young men but not quite,"They assure me you're good at navigating."
"Do they?" She laughs. "What a bizarre assumption. I'm nobody. I just like to play in the pipes like everyone else."
From a purple sack puzzled amid the pillows she pulls out a clay jar and dumps powder into the nearest bowl burning with blue and silver. The flames flare in a flash of white, the bowl hissing, animated, and then a hush as it settles to a somewhat larger blue-silver flame than before.
"A guide might help me go in and go through," I say. "These ones," I point at the kids who led me here, young men but not quite,"They assure me you're good at navigating."
"Do they?" She laughs. "What a bizarre assumption. I'm nobody. I just like to play in the pipes like everyone else."
Labels: escape, fantasy, fiction, Lightbringer, magic realism, novel, search, the blue lady
¶ 11:39 AM 0 comments
