ALL I LOVED, I LOVED ALONE_for Milo James Fowler's 8th grade class

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement

Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.

He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career

You there, young man.  Why are you staring at me so as I sit at my table in this haunted French Quarter club?

What is that? 

Your teacher has assigned you a paper on me, and you thought to get the story from the "horse's mouth" as you put it.  How flattering.

Did you know that I traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1, 1830?

No, young sir, matriculated does not mean I dribbled when I drank.  Matriculate is to be be enrolled at a college or university.  You probably watched that horrid Cyrus female twerk with a dwarf, did you not?

Oh, how did I get Allan as my middle name? 

Allan was the brute of a man who took me in when my mother died from consumption at the age of eleven.  He and his wife gave me the middle name "Allan" though they never adopted me.

What happened between he and I? 

He inherited money, married a younger woman, and we quarreled over the children born out of his many affairs.  He disowned me.

Was I mad? 

You should really inquire into a career in journalism, young sir.  Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence–

whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

Was I murdered? 

How tender-hearted today's youth is.  I cannot help you there.  All I remember was that it was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.

Did I put morals into my stories and poems?

A writer need have no care of his moral. It is there -- that is to say, it is somewhere --

and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves.

When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the "Dial," or the "Down-Easter,"

together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend:

so that it will all come very straight in the end.

Young man, I have seen stuffed animals with eyes less glassy than yours. 

Did I get my poem and stories ideas from dreams?

Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.

So no, I did not get my ideas from slumber. 

Poets write their dreams in the day so they do not have to dream at night.  They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

You frown, young man.  You do not understand me?

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to your mind, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case,

 the powers of meditation busy and bury themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

Oh, young man, look coming our way: Alice Wentworth. 

You are in for a treat or perhaps she is.  You are a bit pudgy.  It must come from your joking ways.

Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine.

Yes, young sir, Alice is ghostly pale, dark of eye, and sharp of tooth. 

Keeping these impressions in view, you should be cautious in what you say before the young lady;

for I can not be sure that she is sane; and,

in fact, there is a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes which half leads me to imagine she is not.

Where are you going so fast, young man? 

You left your notes on the table.  Oh, well, Alice will have to look for finger sandwiches elsewhere.

 

 

FOR MILO JAMES FOWLER'S CLASS: WEEP NOT FOR THE UNDEAD

** Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's right movement advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement.

She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.


I am Margaret Fuller.

You may recognize my name from the adventures of Samuel McCord and that scamp, Victor Standish.

History has me drowned upon this date in 1850 aged forty. In 1853, when Captain Samuel McCord met me aboard the cursed DEMETER, I was still all too alive.

Shortly thereafter, I became a unique form of undead. But then, I have always been unique -- alive or undead.

My beliefs (feminist and Transcendentalist), accomplishments and fervent personality put me in the spotlight throughout my life,

but my "last" years, spent in Rome supporting the short-lived Roman Republic, reached an operatic level of passion and poignancy.

As foreign correspondent of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, I argued the cause of the Italian revolutionists in the dispatches sent home. In Rome, I assisted on the Republican ramparts and in their field hospitals.

I also married an Italian nobleman who was prominent in the Republican cause, and had a son by him. 

With the ramparts fallen and my husband in jeopardy, I reluctantly decided to return to America, 

despite premonitions of disaster and warnings from Emerson and other Concord friends that my socialist leanings and doubtful marriage would provoke public disfavor.

As if I have ever cared what the rabble thought. 

When my boat ran aground just off the New York coast, I chose to stay with my husband, who could not swim. Both of us were washed to sea and never found, (so history reports).

But Henry (David Thoreau) found me washed upon the shore not far from my young boy’s body.

The memorial to me put up by my family reads,

“Born a child of New England, / By adoption a citizen of Rome, / By genius belonging to the World.”

My genius has never been in question.

Edgar Allan Poe thought me such. He believed that the fallacy in my lobby for women's rights was that

"She judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there are not more than one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth."

Poe’s evaluation is echoed in comments by Emerson and Hawthorne — though they let slip that their attraction might be more than intellectual (as it was) when they both referred to me in print as “Margaret Fuller, the Sexy Muse.”

I now know all the people worth knowing in America,and I find no intellect comparable to my own except for dear Ada (Byron, Lady Loveless - author of the first computer language a 100 years before the invention of the computer itself.)

McCord has his moments, but he is restrained by his Victorian ideals and code that he will not cast aside. I love him for his nobility. It will be the death of him.

What will be the death of you? I wager your friends know even if you do not. I leave you with a bit of my own verse:

“Let me gather from the Earth,
one full grown fragrant flower,
Let it bloom within my bosom
through its one fragile hour….”

Of my past, I neither rejoice nor grieve, for bad or good, I acted out my character.

NEW DREAM AWAKENING

This is but a preliminary cover done by the incomparable Leonora Roy

for the new Victor Standish novel, THE RIVAL,

whose rough draft is just now awakening across my keyboard.

Victor Standish discovers to his dismay that the key to saving the future of New Orleans lies in its past.

The year 1834 to be exact.

The year he barely survived when DayStar threw Victor and Alice back there the first time.

{In the last chapters of UNDER A VOODOO MOON :
http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-VOODOO-ebook/dp/B0064CKPJ4/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_2 }

Now, he and Alice are back. Undead enemies they first met in 2005 are meeting the star-crossed lovers for the first time :

Abigail Adams, Empress Theodora, and the dreaded DayStar, he whom many believe is Lucifer himself.

And two startling new enemies join their ranks :

President Andrew Jackson, recklessly pursuing plans to allow his revenant wife, Rachel, to turn him into one of the living dead so as to be with his beloved forever.

Meilori Shinseen, (that's right - the namesake of the haunted French Quarter jazz club)

18 years before she is destined to meet Captain Samuel McCord aboard the cursed Demeter.

Their allies only make things worse :

SERGEANT Samuel McCord

and the recently dismissed cadet from West Point,

the dashing Edgar Allan Poe, who falls in love with the surprised Alice,

calling her his Annabel Lee (which is the title of the last completed poem by the artist).

How will Victor keep this younger version of his mentor from meeting Meilori before she becomes the kind of woman McCord can love?

And just as maddening, how can he keep Alice from succumbing to the charm, gallantry, and poetry of Poe?

As Alice tries to unsuccessfully calm Victor’s unfounded fears, one of her own appears :

a warm-blooded, living girl from Victor’s past, flashing long lashes and legs at the teen who is her whole world.

What is an undead ghoul to do against such competition?

And how did an orphan girl born in the Detroit of the late 20th Century end up in the New Orleans of 1834?

Some mysterious Entity is playing with both Victor and Alice.

Suddenly, the dangers of 2005 don’t appear quite so deadly to the star-crossed pair.

(LOOK FOR IT SUMMER OF 2012!)
***

PRIZES!!

Now, Wendy Morrell has given me a birthday present of a post about Victor and his contest. I am humbled by my good friends!

http://quillfeather-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/roland-d-yeomans-is-having-contest.html

Hart Johnson did a wonderful post on THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH.

It is such a gracious gesture, I am, for once, without words.

Check it out!

http://waterytart23.blogspot.com/2011/10/legend-of-victor-standish.html

We all love prizes.

And THE FRIENDS OF VICTOR STANDISH contest has a Santa's bag full of them.

The drawings are tied to the AMAZON SALES RANKING for THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH :

1.) When Victor reaches 120,000 :

AUTOGRAPHED ALEXANDER SKARSGARD (Eric Northman of TRUE BLOOD) photo!


2.) At 100,000 :

AUTOGRAPHED MEGAN FOX photo!


3.) At 80,000 :

AUTOGRAPHED BRAD PITT photo (BONUS : CATE BLANCHETT’S too!)


4.) At 60,000 :

AUTOGRAPHED ANGELINA JOLIE photo!


5.) At 40,000 :

A 16 X 20 limited, numbered fine art print, MOONDANCE, AUTOGRAPHED by the stunning artist (in two ways), OLIVIA DE BERADINAS (#1650 of 4000!


6.) At 20,000 :

THE GOLDEN COMPASS movie poster AUTOGRAPHED by

DANIEL CRAIG

NICOLE KIDMAN

SAM ELLIOT!


7.) At 10,000 :

THE COLOR PURPLE movie poster AUTOGRAPHED by

STEPHEN SPIELBERG (director, producer),

QUINCY JONES (composer, producer)

KATHLEEN KENNEDY (producer) and FRANK MARSHALL (producer!)


8.)At 5,000 :

AVATAR movie poster AUTOGRAPHED by

JAMES CAMERON

SIGOURNEY WEAVER

SAM WORTHINGTON

ZOE SALDANA

STEPHEN LANG {Listen up, marines. Pandora will eat you up and shit you out like little ju-ju beans!}


9.) At 1,000 :

THE ROCK movie poster AUTOGRAPHED by :

SEAN CONNERY

NICK CAGE

ED HARRIS!


10.) At 700 : {For Fan Boys everywhere!}

Double-sided SERENITY movie poster AUTOGRAPHED by :

JOSH WHEDON (who is now directing THE AVENGERS!)

SUMMER GLAU

NATHAN FILLION

RON GLASS

ADAM BALDWIN

JEWEL STRAITE

ALAN TUDYK {of TUCKER & DALE versus EVIL fame}!


11.) At 500 :

FROM DUSK TO DAWN movie poster AUTOGRAPHED by :

QUENTIN TARANTINO

GEORGE CLOONEY

The beautiful SALMA HAYEK

HARVEY KEITEL

CHEECH MARIN

JULIETTE LEWIS and the most of the rest of the cast!


12.) At 250 :

STEPHEN KING AUTOGRAPHED copy of ROSE MADDER!


13.) At 100 :

AN AMAZON KINDLE FIRE!!


14.) The fun's not over yet!

Should Victor reach #50 in sales ranking :

A CHARLES SCHULZ AUTOGRAPHED WINTER DREAMS PROGRAM!!


CAN YOU BELIEVE IT ...

STILL MORE!!


Should you guys help me pull off a miracle and get Victor to #10 in the Amazon's TOP 100 sellers ...

J. K. ROWLING'S AUTOGRAPH on the double-sided movie poster of HARRY POTTER & THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (also SIGNED by ALL THE MAJOR STARS) will be given to some lucky entry!



AND WHAT IF VICTOR DOES THE IMPOSSIBLE AND GETS TO #1?

HERE IT COMES ...

WAIT FOR IT ...

AN AUTOGRAPHED BRITISH LORD OF THE RINGS : FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS MOVIE POSTER

SIGNED BY PETER JACKSON, VIGGO, SEAN BEAN (I knew you'd like that one, Francine), ORLANDO BLOOM and most of the other cast!!

HOW COOL ARE THESE?
***
ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO WATCH THIS TRAILER?

DREAM SEQUENCE BLOGFEST : THERE IS NO GOODBYE

It is time for Amalia's DREAM SEQUENCE BLOGFEST :

http://hellia.blogspot.com/2010/04/dream-sequence-blogfest-in-honor-of-100.html

Long ago in what seems almost another life, I wrote two novels for a hospitialized girl in her early teens. Her mother thought Harry Potter godless. The mother and daughter both turned to me, knowing I had written some Xena scripts for a young customer in the hospital.

My own mother was dying, my business was struggling, and I was on foot since someone had put sugar in my car's gas tank. But plotting the novels would give me something to do while walking the five miles to my store. I could type on my laptop in between customers. I agreed.

This scene is from the first novel, THERE IS NO GOODBYE. The 13 year old Blake Adamson has lost his heart to a fae named Fallen. He has sailed across the Time Stream, meeting the 3 Faerie Queens bringing Arthur's body to Avalon. And in fighting demons in present day Wellington, New Zealand, he has just suffered a fatal heart attack :

For long moments, I drifted aimless through the blackness as if upon a lazy underground ink sea. Floating, floating, floating. Then, suddenly, I surged along as if propelled.

I felt my body again. Not a good thing. My chest was gutted out, with the echo of a threat that another terrible charley horse was going to seize my chest with merciless steel fingers.

Guess I couldn't even die right.

I stirred uneasily. A weird, trilling music tugged me fully awake. The sound of it made me shudder as if caressed by a corpse. It seemed like the wailing of mourning unicorns at the death of the dawn.

I shifted about some more. Man, what was stabbing me? Jeez.

It felt like I was laying upon a thick bed of thin sticks, with thorns on them, yet. Thorns? My eyes popped open, as ice water took the place of blood in my veins. Not really wanting to but compelled by something inside me, I turned my head to the left.

I went stiff. King Arthur. His bloodless, bruised face was right up against mine.

Chest or no chest, I sat straight up, my whole body going as cold as the strange music all around me.

I looked to my left and right. I sighed deep. Just like I had feared. I was on that black barge, heading to Avalon, the misty Isle of Lost Souls. And even worse, I was laying right next to the dead King Arthur. I tried for a swallow and didn't even come close.

Did that make me dead?

A hollow laugher echoed from the fiery mists to my right. The tall, eerie figure of the Faerie Queen Hesperides suddenly floated in front of me. Her long raven hair framed a face not even Dali could have loved. Her thin, cruel lips curved up in a mockery of a smile.

"No, Last Defender of Camelot. Not quite dead."

I tried for a brave smile and did as lousy a job of it as she had. "Yeah, but the night's still young, huh?"

One second Hesperides was alone, the next, Meropis, tall and hair like a hot sunset, was beside her sister. Ice crystals formed a strange halo about her head. She was the next to fake a smile. The gesture seemed foreign to her. Goes to show you that you have to do things every few centuries or so for them to appear natural.

"Humor from the dead-but-not-dead? How pathetically quaint. Are you tired of life?"

I smiled crooked, "It makes my eyes water."

Then, as Meropis seemed to be debating whether to throw me overboard or not, High Queen Ogygia, her long hair the brightness of a full moon, appeared right in front of me. She turned fluid to face her sisters. Happy she was not.

"The young knight is a guest. My guest. I brought him. Treat him badly at your peril. Have a care, sisters. You two still wish to live. I do not."

Hesperides and Meropis showed me that I could still be wrong. They became even paler than they had been. Ogygia turned back to me, smiling a true smile.

Yep, this was my night to be wrong, alright. I hadn't thought it was possible for a Faerie Queen. She gently stroked the Alpha piggybacking the Omega on the necklace Solomon had given me.

"In your end is your beginning," she sadly murmured.

I jerked as if slapped. "What?"

Her eyes of winter come to life grew wet. "The words will make sense when the season is upon you."

I arched an eyebrow. "I can see you've spent time with Solomon, ah, Myrlin."

She cocked her head. "From the One comes two. From two comes The Three. And from The Three flows everything."

I sighed, "This is a lesson, right? Well, I can understand why they call them lessons 'cause my understanding of 'em lessens and lessens the longer this night stretches on."

Hesperides sneered, "Have mercy on the child, sister. He is at his wit's end. And truth, he did not have far to go."

Ogygia ignored her with an ease that comes from years of practice. She smiled, then frowned, looking at my chest. She clucked her tongue. I stiffened. For a moment, she had sounded just like -

"My daughter, the lioness," she murmured in tones of weeping ice.

"Fallen's your daughter? Oh, man, just wait til I tell -"

Seeming intent on never letting me finish a thought or a sentence, Ogygia shook her head. "The time to tell her is yet to come."

Her voice took on an edge you could cut diamonds with, "And it is for me to say, not some errant knight yet to shave."

I cleared my throat, more sad than scared, but just a little fearful, seeing tiny lightning bolts arc from her fingertips. "Please forgive me, your majesty. I would never hurt a friend."

She jerked as if stung, then smiled bittersweet. "Friend? You would call me friend? Then, I shall share a secret with you, dear knight, : Faeries cannot forgive a hurt."

I made a face. "Then, I'm in for a world of hurt from Fallen."

Her eyes became deep hollows. "More true than thou knows. It shall be the death of thee."

"Oh, for awhile there, I was worried."

Her eyes flashed hot. "Have a care, youngling. I do not take to mocking well."

"But I was being truthful, 'cause you see if Fallen's the one to kill me, then DayStar can't be the one to do it, can he, now?"

Meropis snorted, "How little dost thou understand the many faceted nature of thy destiny, whelp."

I shrugged, "Hey, you're not telling me anything I don't know, lady. I have a hard enough time with Algebra, much less fate."

Meropis looked at me as if I had been something stinky she had stepped in. It would have hurt had I cared what she thought of me. She stiffened as if hearing my thoughts. Her lips grew into a tight, white line. Forget the "if".

She murmured, "You are one of those mortals who would be tremendously improved by death."

She was doing a good job of scaring me, but I was darned if I was going to let her bully me. "Your Majesty, if I promise to miss you, would you go away?"

Ogygia's face brightened with a small smile, then she said low and hard to her sister without even looking back. "I can arrange for this barge to carry two corpses, perhaps even four, for as I said : I no longer care to live."

Hesperides obviously didn't share Ogygia's sentiments. She gently touched Meropis' arm and firmly shook her head. Meropis ground her teeth, but she backed away until the fog almost hid her. Not quite. That would have been too much to expect.

Ogygia turned and sighed, "And now, for the purpose of my bringing you here."

She slowly reached out to my chest, her hand glowing strangely. "To mend thy valiant heart."

I jerked away. "No. No magic. The Father wouldn't approve."

She looked sadly, first at me, then at Arthur. "If only Wart had felt the same way, he might yet be alive."

She turned back to me. "But even your Science says that there is more to the world than meets the eye. Or did you think that you were the only one that carried the gift of healing at his fingertips."

I looked close at her. "Natural?"

Ogygia smiled bitter. "As natural as one such as I can be."

Hesperides seemed to be studying me like one would a dissected frog in biology class. "Would you truly turn away from staving off death if you thought it would offend The Most High?"

I looked at her all puzzled. "If I wouldn't hurt a friend, why would you think I would hurt my Father?"

Hesperides flinched. "Truly, thou art the Son of David."

I shook my head. "Everyone seems to be sure of that, but me."

Ogygia sighed, "What I am sure of is that thy death would break my daughter's heart. Worse, it would herald the death of her soul."

My heart started to seize up again. "Don't say that, Your Majesty, 'cause even if you heal my heart, DayStar will still kill me."

She breathed, "To be is to become the value of a variable."

"What?"

She reached out quick and fluid, touching my heart with her glowing hand, sending strange warmth all through me. "In thy end is thy beginning, and thy answer will be The Dark Lord's question."

I shivered, feeling a tingling strength surge through my chest, no, my whole body. I shook my head and looked up sad. I tried for a smile.

"Now, I'm relieved, for a second there I was almost understanding what you were saying."

I fast snatched her withdrawing hand and lightly kissed it as I had her daughter's ages ago it seemed. "And Your Majesty? Thanks is too little a word for healing me."

Her whole face lit up. "As a very wise young boy once said : it was selfish of me really. Tell my daughter that she fought well."

Her eyes of frost held me, as if they were hands, as she cocked her head. My mind tingled and grew chill. And I knew that she was dipping into the shallow pond of my thoughts.

Her face grew so very sad. "You mean to leave her behind when you face The Dark Lord?"

I pulled up the corners of my lips. "Don't you think one of us should live, Your Majesty?"

Hesperides sneered, "You mean, besides the one you call Solomon?"

I weakly heaved myself on one elbow. "He's my friend, Your Majesty, and I trust him."

Hesperides spoke in the sound a glacier would make breaking away. "There is no wisdom in trust, child. Did you learn nothing from your voyage through the time-fog?"

I snorted a bitter laugh. "Wisdom from me? You're barking up the wrong tree there. I'm just a sapling. 'Course, Fallen would just shorten that to 'sap'."

Ogygia stroked my hair with her long, cold, oh, so cold, fingers. "But there is wisdom within you, child. Why else do you think the Turehu call you 'Aoraki', the cloud piercer? You pierce through the tinsel of reality far better than you realize. Tell me. What do you believe you learned in your voyage through eternity?"

I sighed. I truly didn't want to say. Not that I cared a whit about hurting her stiff-necked sisters. But I liked Ogygia. I even thought of her as a friend.

I squinted my eyes. As I had thought that last sentence, her face softened, and for a heartbeat, I could have sworn I saw tears in her eyes of winter frost. Then, I saw snowflakes swirl up from those eyes to lose themselves in the boiling mist. I drew in a shallow breath.

Alright, then, friends deserved the truth, but spoken in love.

At that thought, Ogygia swayed her head gracefully next to mine, like some magic swan, and whispered, "Speak not of Love to a Faerie Queen, dear child. You walk more dangerous ground than you know."

I smiled sad. "And how would that be different from the rest of my life, Your Majesty?"

I shook my head. "No. I mean, heck, you know my mind and heart already, so it would be just plain silly to speak anything but the truth. So - So if my heart has put me on dangerous ground, as you say, then at least it's love, not hate, that's done it."

Her head still next to mine, she kissed me lightly on the cheek, and her lips were more tingle than chill. "Oh, dear, dear knight, though Darkness seeks to consume thee, still thy heart remains true. Speak, and I wilt not hold it against thee."

My head was spinning, the way she kept changing the way she used personal pronouns, and all. I knew that there had to be a reason for it. Maybe Solomon's gift of Tongues had me hearing shades of meaning and warmth and, perhaps, even love, in the language of the Faerie Queens.

And maybe I was going a little bit crazy. Either way, I wasn't going to live out the night, so why work up a sweat about it?

I cleared my throat. "M-My love for you, Your Majesty, is of ... friendship."

She looked at me with such a bittersweet emotion, that it tugged at my newly healed heart, as she murmured in the voice of the awakening dawn, "Oh, I know, child. My daughter. She hast thy heart. And thee hers. I will write a song of it when your paths have wound their last."

And this time, I was sure that I saw tears form in her strange eyes. She blinked them away, and they flew up into the mists as snowflakes. I watched the snowflakes swirl in weird patterns, then disappear into the fiery clouds of fog around us. Her eerie voice tugged my head back around.

"Now, what is this truth that thou wouldst not hurt me with?"

I took in a deep breath. "I think that I learned this one thing : that when you focus on yourself, and your passions, at the expense of others, it ... it seems to always end up ugly. But I'm just a kid, not the 'Yardstick of the Universe', or anything."

She shook her head, and her lightning-white hair rippled like living electricity. "Indeed? No more than a child? Is that what thou truly believes? But no matter. Thou needs not have feared, Last Defender of Camelot. Thy words art truth, and not as simple as thee believes. Remember them, and though thou shalt die, thou wilt not lose. Remember ... remember ... remem ... re ...."

Ogygia's regal, alien face slowly began to blur as her words trailed away into the mists that seemed to swallow me. No. Not yet.
******************
And so ends Blake vision of the 3 Faerie Queens. And if you're wondering about the young girl I wrote the two novels for : some sleeping beauties never awaken. At least not on these shores.

Here is a video of Poe's DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

AND A STAR TO STEER BY

I must go down to the sea again, to the
lonely sea and sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to
steer by.
- John Masefield.

What star do you steer by? When you live? When you interact with others? When you write?

Everybody knows something, but is what they know true? Can you hear Pilate ask his infamous question? I can.

I mean, flames look like objects but in truth are processes. In like manner, so are we humans. We judge others by appearance, by action. But how valid is that?

The human mind is a mysterious realm. A man can't always be judged by what he does. He may keep the law to the letter, and yet inwardly be worthless. The lights go out over the city, and his actions do a 180 degree turnaround. Another man may commit a sin against society and yet accomplish through that "sin" a true act of compassion and heroism.

Nor are words to be trusted -- if politicians haven't already taught you that. Universal peace is much talked about. I can't help but think that foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

That last thought got me thinking along strange lines during my exile during Rita and Katrina, and I wrote a story for my amusement alone. What if the Earth were invaded, and Good was too busy hunting terrorist plots and pointing nuclear missiles at each other to notice? What if it were up to Evil to defend the planet? As in "Not in my sandbox you don't!" And so taking that premise, I had a fallen angel awaken in a British asylum with no memory of having gotten there -- an asylum run by alien invaders. I called it "THE LIES LOCUST TELL."

And to make it doubly interesting, I told it in first person through the eyes of the fallen angel. Ever try to express yourself realistically as an angel, whose perspective spans eternity? I found out how hard amusing myself could really be.

Here are the first four pages of my story to give you a chance to see if I did a credible job at looking at life through the eyes of a fallen angel :

THE LIES LOCUST TELL
The spark of an anguished soul flew past me in the night. I shivered as her light drew back the curtains of my mind. I would have cursed her had she lingered. But Death was impatient. Words breathed through the mists of my awareness.

"Darkness yet in light. To live half dead, a living death. And buried but yet more miserable. My self. My sepulcher."

My mind roughly brushed aside the dry leaves of Milton's broodings. No time for self-pity. Yet too much time for all eternity. Enough! I was here for a reason. And as always that reason was death. Always death. The why was unimportant. There was always a logical why for Abbadon.

The where, however, was another matter. And when might illuminate the present darkness of my mind as well. Keeping my eyes closed, though tempting, would but delay the inevitable. I opened them.

Only a peek through slit eyes. After all, my ears told me that I was not alone. I frowned. A hospital room?

I reached out with more than my ears. My spirit shuddered as the ragged claws of madness raked it from down the hall. An asylum. A Sidhe inprisoned within a madhouse. How utterly fitting.

I ran my long fingers along the rough sheet beneath me. A state asylum obviously. Even better. But what state? My awakening consciousness was stubborn in its ignorance.

I bunched up the sheet in my fist in hot frustration. A sharp intake of breath from the next bed. Her scent came to me. I smiled. Only a human.

And I?

What was I?

And with the question came a fragment of the answer. I was not the happier for it. More words whispered out of the darkness that was my soul.

"Come away, human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

I frowned. I had no patience for whimsy. Not even that of Yeats.

From the corner of my eye I saw the human in the next bed begin to shiver. No matter. The human was not important. Time and place. They were.

I flicked my eyes to the barred window. The glass. Thick, dense. Like the humans who made it.

Under my fingertips a pebble. I nodded. A mere speck of stone. But it would do.
The pebble shot from between my thumb and forefinger like a bullet. An electric circuit died, wailing its death song in tones higher than humans could hear. I smiled like a wolf. We would have visitors soon.

More the pity for them.

I drew in a breath from the cold breeze bleeding from the wounded window. The sharp tang of Autumn. Oak. Ash. Thorn. Decay. Rotting leaves, mottled in bright hues of strangled life. The dark and bloody soil beneath them breathed out its lineage. An aching sadness hollowed out my chest. The Misty Isles. Albion. England.

I whispered, the words on my lips feeling like dewdrops of blood on a wounded doe, "The lonely season in lonely lands."

"Oh!," whispered the girl sitting on the next bed. "You like Robert Bridges, too? No one reads him anymore, you know."

Not rising, I turned my head and studied her. A tiny field mouse of a girl. Bright eyes, so clearly wanting to be liked, so clearly showing they often hadn't been.
Those quivering eyes were mute witness to the fact that Man had plowed through her world. And unlike the poet Robert Burns, it had not cared overmuch. How human.

I rose slowly to a sitting position. "Fragile beauty is like that. Easily destroyed. Even more quickly forgotten."

She cocked her head as if studying me. And it was then I noticed the corpse-yellow bruise covering the left side of her face. I felt mine harden. Her frightened eyes darted to my chest then flinched away. I felt the breasts under my dingy hospital gown burn.

And I knew. I knew. I had been touched, fondled without invitation or delight. My body remembered though my mind still lay half-shrouded in fog. A male human had dared to touch my bare breasts. And even more, this tiny field mouse of a girl had come to my defense. And had paid the price.

"You were my champion I see."

She looked miserable. "I wasn't able to stop him."

"Few humans in your position would have even made the attempt."

She kept studying me. I wondered what she saw. One human in a generation saw me as I was. The rest of the herd saw only what they were looking for. And I? What was I looking for?

I turned to the face reflected in the barred window. Certainly not that. Not that.

High cheekbones, seemingly intent on bursting up and out of flesh that shimmered as if coated with stardust. A living waterfall of honey-wheat hair, looking more like a lion's mane than any other earthly word I could use. My eyes. I shivered looking at them though they were my own. Large, slanted fae eyes chilling even me with their lack of warmth or mercy. Their color the burnt-out ends of ancient days.

From beyond the wounded window I heard a mournful singing. Nightingales. Far off and forlorn. To do a service for a Sidhe was a fearsome thing indeed, never to be done lightly nor without cost. But before the field mouse found that out I would do her a kindness. I smiled bitter. A breaking of tradition, true, but I broke every rule I could not bend.

I brought the faint, bittersweet song to the ears of the field mouse and murmured lines from the poet she so liked,

"Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams;
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art."

She clapped her hands like a little girl. "Oh that was so beautifully done. Your accent is the oddest thing I've ever heard. Even more haunting than those nightingales."

She stuck out her hand. "My name's Clover."

"Of course it is."

"No, really. My Mum was a bit spacey I'm afraid. The last of the Flower Children."

"We might have gotten along then. I am the last of my kind, too."

She paled, lowering her hand and her voice until even I had difficulty hearing her, "Y-You haven't told me your name."

"Names are dangerous things, Clover."
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Louis L'Amour once wrote : the man or book who can give me a new idea or a new slant on an old one is my friend. Hopefully, this post has been a friend. I know that I think of all of you out there who have written me as friends.

And it is the midnight hour when that dread gate gapes open, and silent shades slip into the darkness to visit our dreams ...