The Meadows

Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

Jeremiah 8:22

Shh. Did you hear that? Whispers across the desert.

 

Out in the windswept the valley, we huddle close. It gets cold in the desert. When that happens, we feel icy chill. The cold nose. The red fever. So much of it. We feel an icy chill. No doubt. No doubt.

In the night, our fingers wrapped around stone. We shake. We shake. We redouble our efforts. Doubled over in pain.
The fire is a blessing of course. The elders gather round. The people gather round to hear the elders.
Our tribe worshiped the knife. Just as we worshiped the fire the rock the wood.

There was no question that what we were doing was right. Was good. We were God’s own chosen outlaws. The Devil would come to shame.

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The Dust that Danced

The momentum of tradition stemmed back generations, but now these people were just tired.

Willow the Whisp (fiction)

In the Woods, in Bog-Near-Angkor, traveled Willow the Whisp.

 

Whisps, as everyone knows, are fragile creatures. In the Omni-ki beastiary, they are somewhere between Gulleys and Pixies. They have translucent legs which glow green, and hair made of slow, blue flame.

 

Every night (for the Whisp slept, invisibly, in the daytime) the Whisp woke from her bubble in the bog, and begin her slow, cool burn. In night’s coldest hour, when the world was still and wet and green with frost, the Whisp could be seen to smile and drift, illuminating muddy reeds, grubworms, and fish.

 

She’d burn a cool, blue burn until the sky would match the blue, and she would turn invisible in the invisible Ether, which Man cannot see. That was where Willow made her journey from Woods, into the BugBubble, which she called home.

 

This went on for as long as a the Whisp could remember. And Whisp wondered, in her Whispy sort of way, if he would make her pale journey until the end of All-Time.

Women

Non-Fiction

 

“And this one’s from my Grandpa, back in the World War II days.”

 

She handed me a photogtaph, old and yellowed. There was a smiling, presumably Japanese woman in the photo. She stood on an upside-down milk crate. She was smiling wide enough that she appeared chubby-cheeked. Her hands daintily lifted a her sepia skirt. Revealed was a dancer’s leg. Strong and vital. 

 

“Nice,” I said. 

 

“Read the back.”

 

I turned the picture over. A strident scrawl read:

 

Okinawa, 1945

 

and underneath that…

 

“LEGS.”

 

“Oh my God, that’s kind of great.”

 

“I know, right?” She took the photo from me. There were other objects, mostly pervo. She shoved coins with asses on them into my hand. Pins that read Don’t Touch Me (Unless You Want a Shock) and other items that literally came from the quintessential crazy uncle. 

 

——-

 

Fiction

Meet the Girl

“You clean my suit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You washed and pressed it, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My next question for you then is… are you a moron?”

“I… sir?”

“Tell me… what is this?”

“A stain, sir…”

“That’s right. A stain…”

She shivered, shaking to a chill that wasn’t there.

“I think you know what’s expected of you.”

She did. 

 

Welcome, please, welcome to the world…

You see marvelous things about you, and there’s no such thing as cheating.

 

I had a good Independence Day. Did you?

kookaburra

Scene from a play.

Francesca’s (or Frankie’s) Dreams

Francesca walks off, winding from stage-right to stage-left.

FRANCESCA

Everything is a part of nature. Everything. A winding road. A crooked house. Your mother’s feet. A ball. A rope. Tiny microbes in your body. Spiders. Time.

She enters Willard’s lab.

FRANCESCA

Willard! Willard!

Enter Willard, 30-50s. A gaunt-y man in a labcoat.

willard

Good evening, your highness.

FRANCESCA

What are you doing?

WILLARD

Certainly not practice scientific magic, if that’s why you’re asking, my lady.

FRANCESCA

Willard, how long have you been in my father, the king’s, employ?

WILLARD

Not too long. Not long enough. Precisely the right amount of time.

FRANCESCA

And in all that time, what have you been working on down here?

WILLARD

Must you know?

FRANCESCA

Tell me, or else I will tell my father.

WILLARD

Tell him what, you’re majesty?

FRANCESCA

(coy)

Whatever I like.

Willard

Your highness, I have been working on an inter-dimensional portal which will grant me control of all time and space.

FRANCESCA

What mean you, sir?

WILLARD

I mean only what I say and nothing more.

FRANCESCA

For what purpose can this device provide?

Willard

Pictures this, your highness. This device, deceptively simple but powerful in scope. A device like this? In the hands of our kingdom. A parallel weapon. We would rule three kingdoms. It would be a grand thing, certainly.

FRANCESCA

What can this device do, exactly.

WILLARD

Well, your highness, you put someone through, and they transform, strictly by appearance, into someone else.

FRANCESCA

A transforming device?

WILLARD

By image only.

FRANCESCA

What wonders!

So Many Things

There were so many things in life to do. So many lessons to master and people to understand. Money was scarce, but it always is. Money comes and goes. My thoughts and feelings instead are forever. It’s important to understand that…

Be not shy. Be not afraid. Create something new every day. Yes, I will create something every day. Yes I will. 

A negative times a negative equals a positive

Many (at least one!) have asked why this blog is called “DEATH” and why the motto is “Harnassing the Power of Guilt since 2011”

Well, there is a simple reason for that.

I believe in the power of taking our bad traits and turning them into something good. I think this is especially evident in books like Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and comic books like X-Men, where people are born with physical traits or emotional ideas anyone in their right mind would consider negatives or detriments in our life. But if you can take those things and spin them into positive things, then you win.

It’s like Bruce Lee’s thing, about taking your opponent’s strength and using it against him. Philosophical Jiu-Jitsu. Zen Genetics.

Anyway, we’re not all fucked just because the deck is stacked against us. It’s like my 10th grade Spanish teacher taught me: You succeed in spite of everything: You don’t fail because of everything.

Flim-Flam and Meow Meow!!

You’re welcome, internet.

You are, Number Six

Please pardon the sporadicity of this blog. By my nature, I am an incredibly lazy human being. It’s often hard for me to get up in the morning, much less get dressed and, you know, actually do things. If it weren’t for Death, I might not have a motivation to get up at all. But the fact that there is eventually an end to this thing called Life, that it’s hours are demarcated with normal bodily functions like eating and pooping, is usually the thing that wins out and gets my ass going. At least to the bathroom.

But enough about my ass. Let’s talk about this Gilman thing.

In a few days I’ll be leaving for Gilman, IL for the Writers in the Heartland Residency Program. I’ll be outside a small town of 1,900 people, living in one of these fancy looking houses by the lake. Just me, three other writers, and the people who run the residency program (unknown.)

Is it wrong that I’m picture it exactly like this?

How I got the thing is kind of a joke. My school adviser at the time, let’s call him Falvin Corbes, was giving me some advice, as advisers are wont to do.

Falvin: You know, you should be applying for things while you’re here. Scholarships, grants. Stuff like that.

Jordan: Well I have been. (LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!)

Falvin: You should apply for this one. Writers In the Hearltand…

(15 minutes of explanation later)

Jordan: Sounds fun. How do I apply?

Falvin: Well, actually, the deadline passed two weeks ago.

Jordan: (falls over)

Falvin: But you should still apply! It couldn’t hurt, right?

Jordan: Can’t argue with that logic!

SO, I applied. And, ridiculously, I won. So here I am, waiting to resist the cult-like overlords that exist in my imagination.

“I am not a number. I am a– ooh, paddleboats!”