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archives push me to post webmail :: xenii mail the hive :: for trading and raiding polymorph :: a cosmographia universalis chrisnelson.ca :: chiefwagonburner has a blog fortune cookie distro :: x's distro
Glad to hear about your successful tour Jimmy. Some racist people in authority harass you and a rabbit blesses you - I know which one I would go for. You do realise that Mytila and you will be seen as grandparents by future hordes of rabbits. All the ones that spring from the fountain that your tires spared you are responsible for. I'm sorry Awwa but I didn't understand too much of what you were saying just there. But that's ok for by all accounts there are few people who understand me and even fewer who want to! Fortunately two who do are my son and daughter. Well not entirely but enough to be getting along with. The story was really a prologue. I wouldn't expect a reader to make sense of certain things that would be explained/expanded later on. One of the ideas I have fixed in my head is that a reader has to be hooked in the first couple of pages if the writer hopes they will read on. Hence my thinking is that the first few pages are the only ones that a writer should write for others. Everything else is written for the author herself. Unfortunately the first few pages can sometimes hijack a lot. Anyway as I was saying this was a prologue to the story of a seed that if it touched the ground etc. etc.. I say was because it is no longer (re: hijack above). There are such things as false starts same as prophets and vacuums. The new prologue is truer to the spirit of the sprouting and when you consider that it takes place in the moonlight it might just be one end of the string that will pull up a rope that will pull down the vine onto paper. There have been a few dark patches over the last ten years, when the seed first sprouted. Negotiating some of these patches over the last four years or so has been sometimes made easier by the support I received from the invisible university otherwise known as the Internet and especially some rooms in it viz bpe, noy, the chair and most recently Xenius as well as private lessons in pms and e-mails. To all who have given so selflessly of themselves - Salute! Salute! Salute!
Ashok Coop, I was just noticing in Brain Candy yesterday that the lead scientist's name was Chris Cooper. It gave me a little giggle.
jimmy I've got a little bit of funny to share - there's an FTC commissioner named Orson Swindle! He's quoted in this little article on spam. Now, if my name were only Mary Bureaucrat, I'd be set for life!
coop  The name of a new music project based on the imagery, literature and writing style of the hopefully not completely defunct Black Mercury project. v1.0 I am currently also working on a website which will reopen the Mercury files to the public. I have to work out logistics...i.e., how will they post? Etc.. I've seen lots of collaborative writing projects online and I've even participated in one (though I can't find the link). I think it could work. I'm scrapping the arthead.xenius.org subdomain. All of my friends professed extreme interest in getting their work online, but we're all too much alike. None of us did anything about it. I wish war was more like this...you know "what if we had a war and nobody showed up?" If war was left to artists though, there would be more reasons than there are human beings why war would never occur in the first place. I've been amassing more musical equipment; effects processors and stuff. More musicians are expressing interest in collaborations, which is neat, since the only examples I have of my work make sharing them the equivalent of a painter sending examples of her work on napkins and scribbled in pen. This is o.k., I guess, but there is always that ego tugging, saying "this isn't really what I sound like!" Texas was a great experience. A lot of people were excited about us, and we went on dry (no effects, no razzle dazzles). I got the expensive condenser microphone I needed for my vocal quality as well as a classic tube filled amplifier for my guitar, and the money we made payed for our rented equipment and a generous amount of alcohol for the after party. I am seriously considering guitar lessons, preferably by a jazz instructor, though I may have to do prerequisite study before I can even take those lessons. Also: I hate jazz guitar! I don't see myself being a jazz guitarist or really having the umph to get that far with all of my distractions, but I have an enormous amount of respect for these guys, they're the best guitarists in the world (next to Flamenco guitarists, probably). We played again a few days later at a party, and did several spontaneous jams that were pretty exciting. We do our best work when we're not being recorded, which is sad fantastic. Someone jokingly screamed "play some Skynnard!", so I did immediately, and the rest of band joined in and soon there were 15 people all screaming the lyrics of "Sweet Home Alabama" into the microphone. Of course, we got too excited about this one and the cops showed up, but it was a fuckshow lovely evening with or without the anthropol. Smile. This post has been all about me, me, me. What about you?
jimmy The Border Patrol Driving back from TX with Mytila was interesting... We finally made it through Texas and through New Mexico. On the way out, signs let us know we still had a border patrol checkpoint to pass through, so we got our identification out and ready. When we reached the station, we saw an officer approach each car, ask their citizenship and wave them on. Simple and easy. Then there was us. The officer bent over to see into the car, checking out the piles of clothing, books, cds and bags in the back seat. "Citizenship?", she asked. Mytila and I answered simultaneously: "United States." "U.S." "Do you have your immigration documents?", the officer asked. Confused, Mytila and I looked at one another. We held our identification out in plain view. It was just our driver's licenses. The officer seemed exasperated. "Your papers. Your immigration documents." "Um...no?" I said/asked. "Ok, you guys need to pull over to the left please." Mytila and I were slightly worried but had nothing to hide. We were calm. I mean, immigration papers? Aren't those for immigrants? A male officer approached the car. "Will you folks step out of the car please and come with me?" He took us into the building and sat us down in front of a two-way mirror as they ran our licenses. As we were walking into the building, we passed by the officer who had stopped us and heard her saying to another officer, testifying to what she had "heard" us say. About 5-10 minutes passed and he called me up to the presumedly bullet-proof window. "Great", I thought. Here we go. It was such a helpless feeling...here we were in this small town in the middle of bum-fuck and these officers had the power to excercise any perversions their minds could generate. "Where were you born?" "Puerto Rico", I said, remembering quietly that Puerto Rico is indeed U.S. territory. "So you're a naturalized U.S. citizen?" "Yes sir." "Ok, have a seat." They called Mytila up and asked the same, and she came back to sit next to me. We joked a little together, nervous but together. "So you guys are both U.S. citizens." "Yeah" we chorused. "So...which one of you said 'Iraq'?" he called through the window. "Neither of us." Ok, now we were thoroughly confused. The officer rolled his eyes and exchange knowing glaces with another of the officers. He then left the bullet-proof office and came to where we were waiting. "We're sorry about this", he said politely, "I guess when you said 'Puerto-Rico' and she said 'United States', our officer heard 'Iraq'." I hadn't actually said "Puerto Rico", but since this was an acceptable reality to him I did not argue it, as he was after all, letting us go. "Sorry about that", the officer who had stopped us said. "I'm a little hard of hearing and it's noisy out here", she tugged her right ear in illustration or pantomime, "I heard you say Iraq". Mytila argued the point slightly, correcting her, and letting her know what we'd actually said and this worried me a little, since the officer who had let us go was convinced I had said "Puerto Rico" and the truth wouldn't jive with his acceptable story, but he didn't catch it anyhow. I mean, who says "Puerto Rico" anyhow? Can you be a citizen of Puerto Rico? Until now I didn't think so, but who knows. Perhaps at one time before its absorption into US territory, you could, and those people are still alive. Wrong Way Driver The freeways from Texas to California (the 10 and then the 8) have two lanes. The Eastbound has two lanes, and then across a large isle of dirt or sand or dense green foliage, the Westbound (which we were on) also has two lanes. It was night time. The speed limit was 75 mph. By the time we discovered that a car was speeding toward us at or over the speed limit, it was too late. It flew past us going the wrong way in the 'fast lane'. We were in the slow lane, or else we would be dead. There are no other alternatives for a 150 mph head on collision. We held hands almost the whole way home after that. We don't know why anyone would do that. A simple mistake? Did they think they were on a 2 lane freeway, or a regular surface street? If the former, than whoah, put the bourbon down and read the street signs. If the latter, it's a good thing we weren't in England, or we would be dead. We hopped on the cell phone immediately to call 911, because this whole affair was sure to end in tragedy, but there was no service. The way this freeway was, the way it would bend slightly as though taking a breath occasionally, one would not know they were about to be slammed by a wrong-way driver until it was too late. We were really quite lucky. Rabbit We drove right over a rabbit at 75 mph, missing it completely. What Willard Van Orman Quine Says about Rabbits and Stuff "Does it seem that the imagined indecision between rabbits, stages of rabbits, integral parts of rabbits, the rabbit fusion, and rabbithood must be due merely to some special fault in our formulation of stimulus meaning, and that it should be resoluble by a little supplementary pointing and questioning? Consider then, how. Point to a rabbit and you have pointed to a stage of a rabbit, to an integral part of a rabbit, to the rabbit fusion, and to where rabbithood is manifested. Point to an integral part of a rabbit and you have pointed again to the remaining four sorts of things; and so on around." -Quine Of course, he goes on to talk about "that single though discontinuous portion of the spatiotemporal world that consists of rabbits" in much greater detail.
jimmy Ashok has spotted me and perhpas you Jimmy, and perhaps knows the bliss himself, yet for a few offspring. I believe (please correct me Ashok, if I assume), that the tale is a sort of parable. It may describe those of us who will be spared offspring, or never have that opportunity. A story to make sense of why some things happen, and other things do not. Perhaps there are no guilty parties, as Western logic, would assume there be. Perhaps the story assuages the mothers of children gone awry. A seed that is not sewn. Perhaps there is a Star Wars conection, whereby the seed of the Death Star shall never touch Earth. I can not pretend to fathom. I imagine that the genetic information may yet be powerful. Leave as much seed at the local sperm bank as they will allow, as you are capable of! All of the single guys need apply! There is an imaginery bliss, seductively conduit to just day dreaming. Never assuming parental responsibility. What I am left with is, some people will not bare other people. And in some kind of Hindu or Zen way, that is for the best. All of the way and including that those who don't produce offspring, may be the better off for the experience of the dream in the inner garden. Perhaps they have a perfectly wonderful existence wrapped within a dream, within an enigma. Ashok, please coorect me as you will. It was a delightful story, though thoroughly disturbing! And for other matters, I love the fruity Z! Thanks Anagram! Peace You Yokels! Awwa \A/
Aw This was a very intriguing story, Ashok, though I'm not quite sure I was able to absorb all of its intricacies. There were various turns of phrase and strings of words that made me sort of cry out at times (with delight), and others which were so blatant that they made me crinkle my nose, asking "is he fucking with us?"  Anagram made this for the Mercury Letters back in the day. High-larious!
jimmy Shiv the storyteller had just finished a story when Shoki’s mother called for him. The small group of boys around Shiv were already making plans for the next adventure breaking up into smaller groups. Shoki ran off inside to his mother. He liked it when Shiv held court outside his home. It guaranteed the best seat, right next to Shiv. This was an unspoken understanding among all the young listeners, whoevers house it was outside had the best seat. Shoki at six, one of the youngest and thinnest of the group with perpetual red eyes, did not get to the front of the group often when shoving was involved. The only other time he was propelled to the front of the group was when they needed a bloodhound. Shoki could follow a smell to its origin like no one else. What puzzled the group though was Shoki’s reaction to intense smells. A strong pong did not make Shoki wrinkle his nose, it frightened him and strong sweet smells brought on happiness. Sour smells triggered a bout of itchiness and the group still remembered the time Shoki had nearly gone crazy scratching. The offending boy was still called itchy bum at times. The story whirling in his head Shoki asked his mother who he was staying with. Monibhan was visiting her aunt and was away for a few days. The eighteen year daughter of their neighbour she looked after Shoki most days while mother went to tend the queens garden. There were rumours among the men of a terrible secret in that garden. No men were allowed there, not even the king. This taboo was enshrined in antiquity but enforced by the mindless mutterings that one could sometimes hear from the part of the palace called the hive. Mutterings with phrases repeated over and over again with the smell of madness in them. Shoki’s mother was in a quandary. With Monibhan away and Shoki’s sister, older by two years than him, not having returned from delivering her father’s food there was no one Shoki could stay with and she had to go to work. It was the season of the young. At this time every year only two chosen gardeners tended to the bare essentials in the garden. From the laying to the hatching the garden was allowed to run wild. The two gardeners chosen were always from among the most subservient of all the women who worked there. A constant vigil was mounted on the clutch of peacock eggs, the two chosen taking half a days watch each. Every year it was the always the same, the queen made sure she was the first and only thing the hatchlings saw. Rumours abounded that the queen was building a peacock army fanatically loyal to their mother. There was only one thing to do, she would just have to risk taking Shoki with her and make sure he did not go near the centre where the beauty lay within. For the secret of the garden was not some terrible horror, but a thing of beauty. But a beauty that was deadly to men driving them mad. Whether it was something particular in males that made them susceptible to it or whether women could bear more beauty nobody knew why it affected only males, but each camp had its own believers among the women who tended the garden. From time to time the women would find a man wondering in the garden muttering a meaningless phrase the light of madness in his eyes. There were always those who had to find out for themselves believing they were somehow different. The muttering man would led to the hive and yet another meaningless phrase would join the cacophony of meaningless phrases and the taboo would grow stronger. Mother quickly dressed Shoki in his sisters clothes. A bright green ghagra, an ankle length flaring skirt tied at the waist with a drawstring, and a red blouse with sleeves up to the elbows. A white semi-transparent chuni, head covering, completed the dress. Mother felt a small amount of satisfaction at the thought of Shoki’s hair. At his birth it had been decided that his munan ceremony, the cutting of hair for the first time, would be in his seventh year. Munan was always in an odd year. Seven had been felt to be long, most boys had their munan soon after their first birthday, but Vedyawati had insisted. The most educated woman there at the time, the wife of the local teacher and mothers best friend she had had her way. Mother was glad. It was lovely hair. Tying it in a loose bun at the nape of the neck she instructed Shoki to behave like a girl. To Shoki this sounded like a great adventure. He had heard so much about the different birds and butterflies from Monibhan who sometimes visited mother in the garden. Monibhan liked to tell stories about peacocks and big butterflies when she was in a good mood. Then she would sit Shoki against a pillar and sit opposite him against the pillar’s twin and tell stories. Excitement filled Shoki at his first sight of the secret garden. His mother could hardly restrain him so eager was he to dash away. Tame animals, peacocks, butterflies and other birds everywhere! Trees to climb and all the hiding places in the world! So many places to explore. What Shoki saw as a endless adventure playground a gardener would have seen as a mature masculine garden. Surrounded on three sides by tall thorny hedges growing right up to the palace walls the only safe entrance was from the north, through the palace itself. The south wall of the palace was forbidding. Rising straight up the height of twenty men, it was broken only in two places. A small door and a small window at ground level both towards the east end of the wall. Through a labyrinth of passages, from a side entrance in the east wall, the gardeners were led blindfold to the garden. Usually the garden meant satisfaction of a job well done but today mother’s mood was determined by the pressing need to keep Shoki safe, both from the danger within and from discovery from the queens guards who sometimes used the garden to relax in. ‘Stay away from those hedges’ mother told Shoki pointing to an enclosure at the centre of the garden, ‘and stay away from any women. If anyone speaks to you do not answer just run away and hide’. Just as mother was straightening up from whispering the advise in Shoki’s ear she noticed the queen and her Mistress of Poisons approaching them. Talk about bad luck. Mother greeted the queen and then as expected by protocol said to Shoki, ‘This is the Queen. Greet Her Highness like you greet your grandmother Veena’ calling him by his sister’s name. Shoki put his hands together and bowed his head. Mother breathed a silent sigh of relief. ‘Come to help your mother today?’ the Mistress asked. Shoki glanced at his mother and then turned and ran away towards a small hill with a cluster of rocks at the bottom, a natural magnet for a little boy. ‘She is very shy Your Highness’. ‘She runs very fast’, said the queen and went on to discuss the impending birth. Just as mother was tuning away, having been dismissed, to go to her duties, ‘I’ll be having my evening drink of water a bit later on in the Eye’, the queen said, using the secret name for the inner garden. ‘Have your daughter bring the water’. Mother’s shoulders slumped but she dared not turn back to face the queen. She managed a small nod through the gush of worry and anxiety that engulfed her at these words. The queen had indeed recognised Shoki as a boy and the punishment stood. He would join the hive with the rising of the sun next morning. Shoki had found a peacock feather that he was swinging to and fro as he raced from wonder to wonder. He had chased two little bunnies until they disappeared down their rabbit hole! He had climbed rocks and trees and tried to sneak up on butterflies oblivious to anything else. Three hours had passed when he heard his mother calling for him using his sisters name. She had been calling for some time before it sank in. He was Veena that day. His mother had been crying and silent sobs shook her as Shoki ran up to her. One large and one small woman stood either side of mother. Shoki recognised the smaller one as the woman he had met with the queen. The smaller woman, with a smile that stretched only the left part of her mouth, handed Shoki a small copper pot of water. ‘Take this to the queen. She is behind those hedges there’, she said pointing to the hedges in the middle. ‘There is a gap on the other side’. Shoki looked as mother puzzled why she was crying. The larger woman took a step closer to mother and mother nodded helplessly. Shoki sped off on his errand wanting to get back to his mother. Stepping through the gap Shoki saw the queen standing in the centre of the garden within the garden. A small number of shrubs were bunched in the middle. About the same height as Shoki they seemed, at this distance, to have small black balls on them, five or six to a shrub. The queen beckoned with a jewelled finger and Shoki approached her hesitantly. Stopping just out of reach Shoki stretched out his hands offering the pot. When the queen made no move to take it Shoki took two small steps forward and looked up into the queens face still holding out the pot. Two black eyes, with long lashes, made further black by a surrounding of black kohl with shining specks ground in looked down at him. A small residue of white stuff was in the corner of one eye. The queen smiled showing somewhat yellow teeth. Shoki noticed that her eyes did not crinkle like mothers when she smiled. ‘Why is my mother crying’ ‘She loves you very much and wants to see you grown up’. The voice was soft. For some reason this surprised Shoki. ‘Look at these’, the queen was pointing to the shrubs. Shoki looked and suddenly recognised that the black balls were perfectly formed black flowers. The recognition sent a jolt through him. Never before had he seen black flowers! Putting the pot down he approached the shrubs his mother momentarily forgotten. ‘Smell them little brother’. Shoki’s eyes were drawn to the centre of the nearest flower as he bend forward. The centre seemed to be a total darkness nestling in a bed of black petals. He inhaled deeply. It was like nothing he had ever felt before! An intense bolt of joy shot through him with glimpses of impossible beauty, independent of form, floating in the air. The massive intoxication that followed half a step behind snatched him and swirled Shoki away in a heartbeat. He vaguely felt the queen catch him as he fell and lower him gently to the ground. Her cruelty did not extend to small things. The wind was picking up seeming to flow from all directions to the garden to be swallowed up by the Eye carrying with it voices, a slow lazy tornado. As Shoki lay there, head turned towards the shrubs, eyes closed except for the merest slits, the coming night announced itself in the first faint twinkling into existence, once again, of the evening star. The sky was darkening into a deeper shade of blue as the queen left followed by her guards bringing Shoki’s mother with them. Mother was crying and calling out Shoki’s name. Distantly Shoki heard his name interwoven with other voices, meaningless phrases, that somehow seemed to blend. Shoki lost consciousness. From far far away a soundless voice called. So smoothly it was not possible to say when, the voice became a dancing mote on the horizon. There was a hop! The mote became as large as a rock not so far away. Another hop! And another! With each hop the rock became more and more massive filling more and more of Shoki’s perception. It was going to crush him! Another hop and Shoki saw it loom above him filling his whole perception. It began to fall on him. Faster and faster it fell straight at him getting bigger and bigger. He could not move! It was going to crush him! Even through his fear Shoki started to make out a dense hugely tangled mass of dark green with pinpoints of startling colours dotted about. Suddenly Shoki found himself suspended in the air. There was a moment of stillness as he found himself high above a land covered with dark green vegetation. Then time started ticking again and gravity claimed its own. As he fell he saw that the vegetation was tangled up vines with flowers of different colours dotted about. This ride was better than the one the gang had discovered next to the waterfalls last year! Exhilaration replaced fear. Bafflingly tangled up vines rushed up at him as Shoki fell faster and faster whooshing past small fluffy clouds going about their business of making pictures for budding imaginations. A clutch of flowers bursting into life in a flash of light caught Shoki’s eye distracting him so he never felt the moment he plunged into the dream of a seed that if it touched the ground would destroy the world...
Ashok 
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