LET ME FALL_ WEP post

It's time for  the AUGUST challenge, 
CHANGE OF HEART.

 http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

LET ME FALL 
{872 words}

"Let me fall,

Let me climb,

There is a moment when fear

And dream must collide."

 
I am the last of my race. I am Tuatha de Danann. And, no, human, that does not mean elf, or fae, or damned. I take that last back. 
I am damned.


"Someone I am

Is waiting for courage,

The one I want,

The one I will become,

Will catch me."


I have no memories of my youth. Youth. The word is a mockery to me.

Though I look a young woman, I have lived centuries which I do remember. I remember when the sphinx had a nose,

when the pyramids were caressed by shimmering limestone,

and when courage and honor were not hollow words.

Yes, that long ago do I remember.


"Let me fall,

If I fall,

Though the phoenix

May or may not rise."


Then how do I even know I am Tuatha de Danann? The knowledge sings to me from the depths of my spirit in the night.


Its melody mocks with teasing glimpses of a time long gone, yet unborn.


"I will dance so freely,

Holding on to no one;

You can hold me only

If you, too, will fall

Away from all your

Useless fears and chains."


How do I know I am Sidhe? It is the face which mocks me from the mirror.

High cheekbones which seem intent on bursting up and out of flesh which shimmers as if coated with stardust.

A living waterfall of honey-wheat hair, looking more like a lion's mane than any other earthly term I could use.

Large, slanted fae eyes, chilling even me with their lack of warmth or mercy.


"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

There is no reason

To miss this one chance

This perfect moment;

Just let me fall."


But enough about me. What do you think about me? On second thought, do not tell me.

What care I what humans think of me? But I lie. I do care. At least about what one human thinks of me.


Roland Yeomans. DreamSinger. 

He is Lakota myth come to life. 

He is the shaman who sings dreams to life. And he will tell me my beginnings or die.



"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

I won't heed your warnings;

I won't hear them."


My mind is churning with images humans could not comprehend as I sway up the steps of the Art Nouveau house,

that is just one of the doorways into Roland’s psyche.

Just its name alone is punishment to think, much less speak: Jugendstilhaus in der Ainmillerstrabe.

Once it had been the home of the infamous Countess Franziska zu Reventlow,

her erotic lifestyle and cosmic nonsense had inspired and broken the hearts of an entire generation in Munich.

Now it has to settle for being the most elite restaurant in the city.

No knocking on the door. 

This restaurant is much too elite for that. Only a rare electronic key will work … a key based on the silicon ingrams of Roland’s own brain.

I have mine in my longer than human fingers. Roland had sung this establishment into being along with most of Munich back when he used the pen name, The Brothers Grimm.

I slide the key through the black slot whose color matches my short-skirted version of a S.S. uniform.

True, I am some seventy years out of date. But what is seventy years to a Tuatha de Danann?

A mere hiccup in time.

I remember Wagner trying to teach me German ... among other things. I go cold inside. 

I remember too much, feel too little.

I enjoy the glares of the pompous patrons as I roll my hips to the back table reserved for DreamSinger alone.

The maitre d' nearly breaks his neck getting to me, but I am already seated, making sure my short skirt is hiked up suitably indecent to induce doomed desire.

He stands trembling over me as I take out my copy of The Spirit as Adversary of the Soul by old Ludwig Klages from my skirt pocket.

I am almost through with his nonsense. Seeing how close he can come to the truth, while stumbling right past it always makes me chuckle.

The maitre d' isn't close to chuckling. "Fraulein, you simply cannot wear that uniform in here!"

"Sure I can. What is the matter? Afraid those power brokers to our right will find out your grandfather wore this uniform for real?"

He spins around so fast he leaves an after-image. Roland clears his throat across the table from me.

“He cannot help his past.”

I study this strange man. His eyes. By the White Lady, his eyes. 

They look as if they have seen all the pain in the world … and have felt most of it.

“I’m tired of this dancing, DreamSinger. Who am I?”

Roland looks truly surprised. “I thought you knew. You are my muse, La Belle Dame sans Merci .”

"Is that my name or my nature?"

"Both."

I sit back in my chair. I had been right, after all. 

I am damned.

To read more adventures of Fallen, buy THE LAST FAE in Kindle, Print, or Audible:

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DQ9YBNY/

REWARD THE VALIANT HEART OF THIS NARRATOR

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/

SETS SAIL TODAY IN AUDIO!

It is 1867 in an America a layer of existence 

from this one.   

General Sherman was denied his march through Georgia by forces beyond his ken. 

Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated, though he wishes he had been killed instead of his beloved Mary. 

The battered Indian tribes of America have a strange refuge courtesy of the cursed Texas Ranger Captain Samuel McCord.   

A global war of vampire kingdoms is going on beneath the noses of the living world - 

and it is interfering with the honeymoon of the alien empress Meilori Shinseen. 

She ruled the Aztecs when a political execution took place on Golgotha. 

Meilori commissioned the sphinx to take her mind off repairing her starcraft. 

The warring vampire rulers have mistaken her boredom with ruling the nations of man as weakness. 

They have made a grave error, emphasis on the word grave.   

What is a not-quite-mortal groom to do? 

Survive as best he can.   

Vampires, vengeful spirits of the earth, aliens among us, and 

a man with the blood of death in his veins trying to keep it from being spilled before his honeymoon is over. 

Come join the maiden voyage of the first air/steamship, the Xanadu, 

where murder, intrigue, and betrayal reign supreme...and that is just in the newlywed's bedroom.   
Joining the newlyweds are 

Mark Twain, 11-year-old Nikola Tesla, his faithful black cat, Macak, 

Horace Greely, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, 

and the mysterious Greek physician Lucanus.   
 Lurking in the shadows, hoping to kill them, are 

the insane Abraham Lincoln, the crippled General Sherman, the vampires, Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin,

 Empress Theodora, ruler of the Unholy Roman Empire, and the vengeful Captain Nemo, following in his Nautilus.   

Steampunk intrigue 

and adventure 

was never so much fun.

The NEW McCarthyism

{Joseph Welch (left) being questioned by Joseph McCarthy}

Joseph Welch was the attorney for the U.S. Army as it was under investigation by Sen. McCarthy.

His confrontation with McCarthy during the hearings, in which he famously asked McCarthy 

"At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" 

is seen as a turning point in the history of the sad history of McCarthyism.

Nine years ago, James Gunn made some disgusting jokes on Twitter.  

NINE YEARS AGO.

At the time, he was working for Troma Pictures.  Walt Disney Studios it wasn't.  

He shaped his tweets to fit in.  

Hey, have you never tried to do that on the job?

Check the trailer for its Tromeo and Juliet 

on YouTube.

I couldn't make it to the end.  

But when you are starting out as a director, you take what jobs are offered you.

A person who objected to Gunn's political views shouted out those tweets 

from nearly a decade ago, and Disney literally fired him overnight ...

without giving Kevin Feige warning so that he found out from the news outlets.

Odd, in that Gunn had told Disney about his tweets when they first approached him to work for them.

Now, Ian Cheong on Twitter, 

has released photos that depict Gunn at what’s apparently a To Catch A Predator-themed party.

 Which, for those who don’t know, 

is a party based around a popular NBC investigative series that ran from 2004-2008.

Really?

Because I go to a movie-villain themed party does not make me inherently a villain, does it?

Poor Taylor Hamlin won her crown only to lose it a day later 

when an anonymous narc sent photos a year old from Hamlin’s social media to festival organizers.

I wonder if Anonymous was one of the runners-up or related to them?

Sigh. 

Now, Ruby Rose has been bullied off 
Twitter

due to the snarky attacks

that she is not lesbian enough?

What?

She came out when she was 12!

Bullies 

have tasted blood in the water.

When will this sadness stop?

Do we condemn people these days
 by social media?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

IT STARTED OUT NASTY

AND HAS STAYED THAT WAY ...

BY PROCEDURE established in the new Constitution, 

the first President was to be chosen by “electors” named by the state legislatures. 

Each elector was to cast one ballot with the names of two choices for President. 

The person with the most votes in the final tally was to become President, the runner-up, Vice President. 

In the event of a tie, the decision would go to the House of Representatives, a prospect so disturbing to Alexander Hamilton 

that he “deemed [it] an essential point of caution” to see that John Adams 

did not wind up with such a strong showing in the electoral count as to embarrass Washington. 

He was not against Adams, Hamilton explained privately. 

“Mr. A, to a sound understanding, has always appeared to me to add an ardent love for the public good.” 

But Hamilton was taking no chances. 

Working quietly through the winter, he did what he could to convince leading politicians 

in several states to withhold votes from Adams. 

The scheme succeeded. 

When the electors met in February 1789, Washington was chosen President unanimously with 69 votes, 

while Adams, though well ahead of ten others, had 34 votes, or less than half. 

Adams was humiliated by the news, his pride deeply hurt, but of Hamilton’s part, he knew nothing.

On October 19, 1796, a mysterious editorial from a writer named Phocion appeared in the Gazette of the United States, 

 a popular Federalist newspaper in Philadelphia.

At the time, Vice President John Adams was pitted against another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, 

in a race to succeed George Washington as president.

 Phocion’s letter was what we would today call an “attack ad.”

 The letter in the Gazette written by Phocion said, in terms understood by most readers, 

that presidential candidate Jefferson was having an affair with one of his female slaves.

The identity of Phocion?  Alexander Hamilton.

Jefferson lost.

While Adams knew nothing of Hamilton's machinations, 

(Who was hoping to become America's Napoleon)

Jefferson vowed he would be the third president ...

even if it meant treason.

Jefferson in his four years as Vice President 

had so effectively separated himself from Adams and the administration 

that he could not be held accountable for anything that had disappointed, displeased, or infuriated anyone,

While America was at war with France, 

Jefferson sent secret federal documents to the French Foreign Minister, Charles Gravier, Count of Vergennes

to  undermine Adams' attempts at peace in order to promote himself as the Champion of Peace with France 

and so win the Presidency ... which he did.

And Presidential Campaigns have only gotten dirtier.

I have little hope for
the upcoming election.

DARK SECRETS OF PAST PRESIDENTS

Ghost of Mark Twain here at Roland's with Midnight a'studying me from the fireplace mantle.

Crystal Collier (from yesterday's comments), 

Roland, and I share the same distrust of any politician.  Roland's studied history, and I have lived it!

Take the presidents ...


DID TEDDY ROOSEVELT ORDER A MASSACRE?

When old Teddy Roosevelt was sworn to office the Phillipine-American war had been raging for two years already, 

Roosevelt had been in office for not even a fortnight when he heard the terrible news 

that 50 US soldiers had been killed on the island of Samar. 

This being the biggest single military loss since the battle of the little Bighorn 25 years prior, 

Roosevelt sort of lost his calm and ordered General Jacob H. Smith to "sort this mess out once and for all"

 thus leading to the massacre of thousands at the "Balangiga massacre" namely most being civilians.
 
Smith was quoted saying to his troops, 

"I want no prisoners. I wish for you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the more it will please me." 

Smith was noted for being a brutal man having played his part in the Wounded Knee massacre, was this the reason Smith was chosen for the task? 


It is noted that when the General was court martialed and found guilty of this massacre 

Roosevelt reprimanded and retired Smith. 


DID ANDY JACKSON INDULGE IN THE FIRST ETHNIC CLEANSING?

He expelled 100,000 Natives from their homelands. 

As a soldier Jackson had already acted mercilessly towards the natives, killing and exiling large numbers of them, 

and as US president he signed the "Indian Removal Act,"

which was effectively a death sentence for thousands more. 

 This law permitted the relocation of Native American tribes 

such as the Cherokee,Seminole and Chickasaw peoples in order to create territories for white settlers. 

 The move was so rapid and so badly organized that an estimated 25% of those deported 

died of hunger, hypothermia or exhaustion. 

This terrible chapter in US history is known as the Trail of Tears. 


DID HONEST GEORGE START A WORLD WAR?

 The history of the USA begins with George Washington. 

At the age of 22, when he was still a British Officer in the American colonies, 

Washington was involved in an incident that is still debated by historians today. 

 In May 1754, the French sent a diplomat out to secure the territory, 

but Washington ambushed the Frenchman, the French negotiator and up to 13 of his soldiers were killed. 

 This incident caused theFrench and Indian wars in North America, which culminated two years later into the Seven Years War (1756-1763), 

A bloody conflict between the great European powers of the time.

 Many historians consider this the first world war as it was the first to be fought in America, Europe and Asia. 


WAS RONNIE REGAN A F.B.I. INFORMER?

 From Hollywood actor to the most powerful man in the world. 

  In the years following WW2 he spied on his fellow actors in Hollywood for the FBI, 

reportedly under the codename T-10.

 Film actors were part of the Screen Actors Guild union 

and in the mind of the former head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, every union was a secret society of communists.

 In return, the FBI actively supported Reagan's political career right up until his presidency.


JOHNSON NAMED HIS JOHNSON "JUMBO"

Why the poor man envied Kennedy his affairs and commenced to have more.  

 Johnson would make passes at secretaries, 

and it was known that any who accepted would be promoted to private secretary,

 two words that in this context, children,  should probably have air quotes around them anytime they are uttered. 

By the time he was done, virtually all of his secretaries, plus his two mistresses, got the Johnson Treatment.

The man had issues and would whip out his "Johnson" (or Jumbo as he called it) in public.  

During a Cabinet meeting, when asked why the U.S. went into Vietnam, 

Johnson reportedly whipped it out and bellowed, “This is why!”


WAS OLD GROVER A DATE RAPIST?

Old  Grover Cleveland – A presidential secret that most people don’t know about him is that

He was accused of being a rapist. 

Maria Halpin, a store clerk, claimed he violently raped her after a night out.

 She then had a child, the paternity test was never known, but he did pay child support ...

after placing the child in an orphanage and putting the store clerk in an insane asylum!


OLD HARDING WAS AN INSPIRATION TO JOHNSON

Twenty-ninth president Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923) repeatedly made love to a young girl, Nan Britton, in a White House closet. 

On one occasion, Secret Service agents had to stop his wife from beating down the closet door!


TO JEFFERSON ALL MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL ... UNLESS YOU WERE HIS SONS.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation 

(why do I not have a foundation I ask you?!)

from DNA and historical evidence believe that, years after his wife’s death, 

Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of his slave, Sally Hemings, 

mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings. 

Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson's 1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other entire slave family.


PRESIDENT WOODY ALLEN, AH, I MEAN GROVER CLEVELAND

 A longtime close friend of Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland, at age 27, met his future wife shortly after she was born. 

He took a keen interest in the child, buying her a baby carriage and otherwise doting on her as she grew up. 

When her father, Oscar Folsom, died in a carriage accident on July 23, 1875, 

without having written a will, the court appointed Cleveland administrator of his estate. 

This brought Cleveland into still more contact with Frances, then age 11.

 Sometime while she was in college, Cleveland's feelings for her took a romantic turn. 

He proposed by letter in August 1885, soon after her graduation. 

 They did not announce their engagement, however, until just five days before the wedding.


Well, children, I'd tell you more but I've gone and depressed myself and bored Midnight! 

MARK TWAIN FOR PRESIDENT!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LY15Y0W

After reading President Trump's latest cyber-chirp as he calls them, 

the ghost of Mark Twain couldn't resist entering the fray!

"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."

 "The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet."

 "Yes, you are right -- 

I am a moralist in disguise; 

it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions."

Letter to Helene Picard 

"When you are in politics, you are in a wasp's nest with a short shirt-tail." 

"Do not worry, children, I shall not often meddle with politics, 

because you have Roland who is already excellent 

and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect."

WRITE WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW

Tonight, the exterior of Meilori's 

resembled the LaLaurie Manson, 

the site of the gruesome torture and murder of countless slaves by their owners, 

Delphine LaLaurie and her physician husband.

Perhaps that is why the shadows around me had sharper than usual teeth 

as I brain-stormed how to promote my new collection of short stories, 

Silhouettes in the Key of Scream.

Any of you want to help?  

I have a couple of new ideas on how to do it, 

but I need a little help from my friends.

{Courtesy Allan Warren}

Since Meilori's exterior was what it was tonight, 

I was surprised when the ghost of James Baldwin sat down opposite me at my rune-carved table.

Maybe I shouldn't have been since it was his birthday four days ago.

Besides, Mr. Baldwin never shied away from confronting racism 

as the New York waitress who refused him service as a teen found out 

when he threw a glass of water at her, shattering the mirror behind her.

He said, "Wilde speaks highly of you.  

He suggested I speak of writing to you and those who drop by this little platform you have."

{Courtesy Carl Van Vechten}

WRITING IS DISCOVERY

"When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. 

The whole language of writing for me 

 is finding out 

what you don’t want to know, 

 what you don’t want to find out. 

But something forces you to anyway."

SO MANY LIE TO YOU; 

DO NOT BE ONE OF THEM 

"Self-delusion, in the service of no matter what small or lofty cause, is a price no writer can afford.

 His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina 

he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are.

No one knows your name ... not even yourself if you are honest about it."

DO NOT BE SELF-BLINDED

 "One writes out of one thing only: one’s own experience. 

Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, 

sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. 

This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art."

DO NOT LOSE YOUR COURAGE

 "I find writing gets harder as time goes on. 

I’m speaking of the working process, which demands a certain amount of energy and courage (though I dislike using the word), and a certain amount of recklessness.

 Every form of writing is difficult, no one is easier than another. 

They all kick your ass. None of it comes easy."

TOUCH A HEART; 

CHANGE THE WORLD

 "If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. 

I’m an old‐fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world. 

What do I hope to convey?

 Well, joy, love, the passion to feel how our choices affect the world . . . that’s all."

TRUTH IS YOUR COMPASS

 
"You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

 I certainly can’t imagine art for art’s sake . . .

 that’s a European approach, which never made any sense to me. 

 I think what you have to do, which is the difficult thing about a writer, 

is avoid slogans. 

You have to have the guts to protest the slogan, no matter how noble it may sound. 

It always hides something else; the writer should try to expose what it hides."

 REMEMBER HEMINGWAY

"Write. 

Find a way to keep alive 

and write. 

There is nothing else to say. 

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; 

if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. 

What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

 I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: 

To last, 

as Hemingway says,  

and get my work done."