Long Walks in the Graveyard at Night

Long Walks in the Graveyard at Night

Here’s where I confess to something that may have you thinking I’m a Goth or something of that nature, or, at least weird – (but you already knew that, right)? 

I live across the street from a cemetery – an old but continuous cemetery, as in, it is still in use – fresh plots are dug there and there are many modern memorial markers (ranging from, in my opinion, the tasteful to the g-awful.  Who invented the idea of colorizing headstones)? There’s this one poor girl who died young (sixteen, seventeen, I think), whose parents decided to put every hoo-haw known to man on her grave, including a big, plaster Uncle Sam. 

If you do that to me, I am coming back to haunt you.  I don’t care if it turns out that the people who don’t believe in life after death turn out to be right, I will *find a way.*

Then again, I don’t think my family’s too keen on my “Dig up my skeleton and make art out of my bones!” idea. (I know they’d rather Uncle Sam me… Urg).

There are some graves there for the Civil War days, though… faded/worn out limestone where names are barely visible if at all.  They make me very sad because with such long-ago dates, I know that the people who knew those people, buried them and probably used to visit are dead now, too.  If anyone comes to these graves anymore, they’re historians and people making genealogy records – no one who actually knew the people buried there – their smile, their eyes, their voice, their scent… And now even their names are faded on forgotten stones. 

Anyway, there is no gate on this cemetery.  My area is a nice little town and doesn’t have vandalism problems.  Even if it had gates on the road-entrances, the “wall” is a hedge. And, no, not a hedge made of ninjas for you fellow fans of “The Tick” comics.  I’ve been walking in it at night. I even got a surprise when I once saw a cop car rolling through during the twilight hour, but I wasn’t stopped from walking, which surprised me.  The other night, I was on the paths and saw this incredible moon – a hairline sliver that was red… pinkish actually, but this creepy red moon… It’s pretty neat to walk in a cemetery on a summer night with the fireflies flitting about and a creepy moon.  It’s quiet, peaceful, and at my cemetery, there are lots of very pretty lights people put on the graves – solar-powered lights that charge during the day to hold a little vigil at night.  At least one of the graves has an actual candle that someone continually lights and replenishes. 

It’s sobering to think that this is where we all end up.  I mean, I got to thinking that the other night, under the sliver-moon about how these were people of all kinds of different persuasions and beliefs here (it’s an eclectic cemetery – a walk in the daytime reveals all kinds of symbols, poetry and languages)… and like it or not, whether we believe there is anything “after” or not (or like me, hope there’s something “after” but suspect that there might be a “your mind makes it real” thing that goes on in its final throes )… we all end up headed toward the same essential destination. 

I mean, I think of it this way – If there is something after, you’re going to be different than who and what you are now.  I can’t imagine that anything is in a static-state.  Wherever you wind up, the life you live in the now is the only chance you have to live that life, because if there is another side, things are going to be different there. This is why it’s tragic when people who are selfish and cruel do not change in life (because even if they get some kind of awakening or comeuppance in the hereafter, it’s too late for the now).  I don’t even know if I’m making any sense.  In any case, I think a graveyard should be especially humbling for anyone who doesn’t think in “cosmic” terms, because, in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re better, harder, faster, stronger, or smarter than anyone else – the genius and the idiot, the strong, brave person and the weakling all find their “reward” in rot.  Are you really “better?”  You cannot control what people think of you after you’re gone, after all.  Today’s heroes may be tomorrow’s villains, or just… forgotten. 

Run the race, but the finish line is just about the same when it comes down to it. You don’t get first place if everyone’s participation ribbons are the same thing as the first place ribbon. Sometimes, I think the meaning of life is death just because with the same finish line, we have to think about how we’re running the race.  In the end, don’t get too proud.  “Winning” at life is an illusion.   

About a year or two ago was when I first ventured into to the graveyard at night. Upon coming home from places and driving past the lot to get home, my man Bob and I grew curious about the weird lights we saw there.  I went outside in the dark, looking over my shoulder for cops and nosy neighbors, and stole into the cemetery to find, that, yes, indeed, people were leaving solar lights on some of the graves.  I told an online AIM friend I had about it, a friend who was atheist-leaning agnostic and she thought I was brave for that and wouldn’t do it alone like I did because “graveyards are spooky.”  I was all “Huh?  Okay, you’re a rational skeptic. You don’t think there’s anything in a cemetery but stones and bodies buried deep. What would you have to be afraid of?  I’M the slightly-superstitious person / person who has some religious beliefs / believes in the possibility of a spirit world and, though I don’t think there’s anything in that cemetery but stones and bodies, either, the remote possibility of getting haunted for disturbing the dead does actually register with me –  and I’m not scared at all!”

(Maybe it’s because I disturb the bones of found dead wild animals for art all the time I haven’t felt any curses…) Unless…said curse is my life… 

I just thought that was funny.  I’m out of touch with said friend – she had some computer problems long ago and failed to get back to me. It’s been about a year… I’m worried she might have grown apart from me as some friends of mine do.  I was putting a lot of my psychodrama on her unfairly.  In a way, I think I may have experienced death a few times without actually dying, because I know what it is to have friends “grow out of me” and forget me, and I know what it’s like to lose touch with family.  It is change, is all…

I remember one night last year or sometime before that, I decided to show Bob the grave-lights and we would up traipsing around the graveyard at night, making discoveries (like the over-decorated Uncle Sam grave in the back).  Bob had been playing “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” out of sheer unemployed-at-the-time boredom and he Zelda-ized our little tromp.  “We’re hunting Poes!” he exclaimed. I laughed so hard. 

(For those not familiar with the Legend of Zelda games, Poes are malevolent ghosts found on the fields and in the graveyards at night and are, in most games, shown holding lanterns.  In “Ocarina of Time,” you can catch them in a bottle and drink the things to boost (or sometimes harm) your health!!! In “Twilight Princess,” they’re demonic entities that stole pieces of a man’s soul and you have to, in your alternate wolf-form, attack and literally rip the soul out of them to help the cursed man in exchange for rewards). 

In any case, if you visit me and stays on a summer evening, I might just walk you across the street and take you “Poe-hunting” beneath a spooky moon.  

Open Question...

An open question for readers of my blog…

If I post a novel here, would any of you read it? 

After years of rejection letters, not having any family or friends in the publishing business, seeing the faltering of Print, hoping to entice prospective readers, having a desire to control things I know I would not likely be able to control if I had to deal with professionals (cover design and illustrations and so forth)… I am thinking of posting one of my currently completed and recently re-edited novels on this blog. 

It would be a weekly thing, “Free Novel Friday” or something.  I am thinking of posting one of two works. 

I’d really like to post “Malarkey and Belinda” because it’s been in the works/on the back-burner/edited and re-edited for years.  It’s a story about a genetically-engineered gryphon raised by a lady-slave on a planet with creatures of fantasy as part of its ecology and human life built upon the remains of lost technology.  What may put a damper on posting this is my “bestiary.” I did illustrations in the form of a bestiary of creatures and the scanned, sized complete versions with informative text are apparently all on my main graphics computer, which is having problems (dying hard drive, we think).  I looked through my backup disks and flash drives and have the text chapters of the novel okay, but none of my illustrations.  I’d re-scan my basic paintings and spiff them up *again,* but the scanner is also attached to that same graphics-computer.  If I get this computer fixed anytime soon and get my illustrations back, this is the novel I’d like to post – it would be a nice, long, read, too – Twenty chapters with once a week posting is twenty-weeks of blog-content. 

I might decide to post a twelve-chapter piece of mine over twelve weeks:  “A World of Rusted Dreams.”  A more recent novel of mine with themes I feel are “more important,” I’m still a little shy about it, thinking it may need yet another read-through / re-edit.  It’s the story of two young people traveling to a great city in a post-apocalyptic world (but a century after the depopulation event, it’s a largely-recovered world).  The protagonists were raised in a place that believes in personal guardian creatures appointed to people from “the Heavens” and said creatures are things that only people who believe in them can see and feel.  The city they and their personal guardians travel to is one where belief in such things is rare.  All my text and illustrations files were backed up and are intact on disks/drives I can currently access. 

A friend suggested that I just post sample chapters and go e-book.  I’m not sure on going e-book yet.  All my experience in posting sample-chapters while trying to get published and advertising said sample-chapters has never turned out favorably.  I’m thinking of just going ahead and posting a whole book here just to make it *exist* in some public form. 

So… votes? Opinions? 

It Gets Worse

Alright, I have a nasty head-cold, which is probably why I'm too beaten-down to get suicidally upset at the moment (close to it, though)... I honestly worry about tomorrow and the next day, however, as whenever I get bad news, sometimes the initial shock wears off, I start getting a little calm or distracting myself, then when I sit and mull about it later, it hits me like a brick...

I just lost my job.  If you saw the rant about Disability below, you know it wasn't a particularly well-paying job, but I loved it.  I feel in my element taking care of animals.  I was apparently good enough at shoveling poo to keep the job for two and a half years. 

Last week, I quite probably saved a horse's life because I noticed signs of colic in him and alerted others to help.  I was thanked profusely for that. 

A couple of days ago, the horse colicked again and people noticed his water buckets were empty.  I don't know if it was the one day that they were in all night because of a storm or what - I either had overlooked his buckets when it came time to fill them up (and I'm really OCD about checking the buckets in the stalls, for just that reason) or, quite possibly, being a living creature and having stomach distress, he drank them down by morning but all my boss' husband noticed or cared about were "Buckets are empty! Bitch gotta go!"

Faithful service for two and a half years. Doesn't matter.  Saving the life of said horse during an earlier crisis. Doesn't matter.  I very well could have made one stupid mistake.  I may have become a victim of a thirsty animal being an animal - in which case my bosses really need to put extra buckets in the stalls like they do for some of their known to be particularly thirsty animals.  (I have come in when that horse has been in all day to find that he'd drained the water he'd gotten that morning by the time my evening shift arrived).

My job coach (the person who originally got me the job) came by with severance-pay (appreciated) and flowery words about how this is all "opportunity" or something (it took all my self control not to tell her to shove her words back up her anus).  Apparently, my actual boss bears me no ill will, it's just that her husband, who holds the purse strings in all this, cannot be reasoned with/just does not care.

I'm just sort of... I'm not sure I'm competent to work at all. I feel like my life is a series of failures and of it being pounded into me "worthless! worthless! worthless!" as soon I start thinking I'm "okay" in any way, or even "close to human." 

What's worse is that I feel bad for accidently almost killing a horse (unless this was just a misunderstanding and he did drink his buckets down, without a mistake of mine), and I'm worried about the horses there in general.  When they're in at night, they need more water. 

The Real Folk Blues

Title is from a song used in the anime "Cowboy Bebop" just because I don't really know what to title this.  I don't even know if I should be posting this here as it might drive away my fiction readers and potentials... but, argh... I need to rant somewhere or I'm going to explode. 

In late March, I won my case for Disability coverage.  This is due to the shameful condition that I have - bipolar disorder with a high propensity toward anxiety.  I do actually work, but I cannot maintain more than a very low-stress (and unusual) part-time job that gives me little contact with people.  Give me a list of things to do, things to clean up, leave me alone to do it and I do it, that's really all I can handle.  The normal "boss tells you what to do and supervises you doing it" is too anxiety-riddled and occasionally anger-confrontation triggering with me.   You can say that this is why if I ever got a "real career" (outside of cleaning a horse stable for minimum wage), writing would be perfect for me.  I write, I send... I'm actually very good with taking constructive criticism in written form, it's just flesh/face-to-face stuff that causes problems.  Artists can be neurotic as all get-out and still produce good things, right? 

I was told that it takes usually a month to start seeing Disability checks and/or your back-award (I have a substantial one coming, covering years.  I am hoping to invest it in something I've never had before: a savings account of some sort so that maybe, just maybe, when I'm sixty-years old I don't have to eat dog food to survive).  I've heard it could take longer, but most people get it within a month or two...

It's been two months, and aside from a letter stating that I did, indeed, receive judgement of award, I've not seen or heard hide nor hair of it.  At a meeting with my social-caseworker, we called the local office and, I kid you not, got a response of "Good luck." from the person on the other end.  (A wish for good luck, not sarcasm, but it shows that whomever is on the other line probably gets a tragic number of these kind of calls).   On the literature I received, it said that some cases take up to five months.  I hope it's not that long. I mean... I'm already having fantasies about finding my way down to the local offices with a wheelbarrow full of manure and just throwing it at people.  

I did mention that I'm crazy, right? 

And right now... is not good.  Due to some unexpected expenses that just blindsided us out of nowhere, my guy and I are having trouble paying our basic bills.  Since I got paid my (minimum wage!) check tonight, he was able to buy for us some bread, eggs and milk, which we have been lacking over the last week.  Seriously, bread, eggs and milk are luxuries right now.  Also, if I disappear from online for a while, it's because that bill is due. 

I mean, if I don't even get my full back-award right away and just start getting the monthly, it's going to help us out a lot, but you see, life likes to play a game called "Yank Shadsie's chain."  At this point, since the news from the local offices is "It's supposed to take sixty days, you should be seeing it oh about this week" and not seeing anything actually show up, I'm wondering if something got mixed up in the files and they're sending my money to the wrong person, or if I didn't *really* get awarded squat and the letter of award was a lie, or the lawyer on my case is being douchey about things somehow... (haven't heard from him lately, either).  This is just me being paranoid, I guess.... another part of my condition. 

I just want to scream WHERE'S MY FUGGIN' MONEY?!!!!

I'm sick of living on a knife's edge.  My guy and I have done it a lot... that's what being working poor IS.  You have things alright for a while, just enough to get you calm, then - WHAM! Some stupid bill or situation or asshole comes out of nowhere and you teeter, wonder if you're going to be able to afford to drive, or to pay your rent, or to eat, or having to trade off one for the other, and it takes a LONG time to recover to that place of quiet calm (which, by the way, is a "calm" that still has bill collectors from past knife-edges and/or student loans or that hospital-bill from a work accident that your boss was supposed to have paid two years ago coming up on you). 

I'm just... sad... and pissed off.... really pissed off right now.  It's one thing to just be poor, but to actually expect someone out there to HELP you, who said they were going to do it, only to YANK your damn chain until you feel like hanging yourself is just...

I don't know if "life is suffering," but it certainly is AGGRAVATING.

Sola's City

A strange little random short story about a young woman wandering around in an inexplicably empty city.  I had the idea for this piece for a long while, but I think it's kind of interesting that I did the first hand-writing on it while on a road trip just after exiting the claustrophobic chaos that is New York City.  (Glad I finally saw the place, don't want to live there).  This is one of my "mind screw" pieces.  Enjoy. Or don't. In any case, it's here.

Sola’s City

S.E. Nordwall

Sola wandered the silent city alone.  The area was not truly silent, just much quieter than it had been before.  Birds chirped and wind whistled through the streets, but the only sounds from a human source anymore were the words of Sola, who was talking to herself. 

“The lights are still on,” she muttered to herself.  “I wouldn’t have expected them to last this long.  Maybe it’s just the city that’s all empty like this – maybe the plants are still running.” 

Sola was in her home city, Freeton.  She’d arrived there after a long drive to find it deserted.  Sola did not know if what had happened to the city had happened to the entire world, but she had her suspicions.  She’d driven around the suburbs and outlying boroughs to find them devoid of human life.  She remembered seeing a bright flash of light while on the highway at night almost a week ago.  Sola had kept driving in bewilderment as the highway was void of vehicles.  That was it- there were no cars left in the city and no people.  It couldn’t have been a bomb of any sort – that bright flash of light – since she had survived it and little was disturbed. 

This was unreality.

Sola had been wandering around in it for several days.  She passed by the Great Gear Clock in the town center.  Its minute hand clicked forward, marking illusion.  The young woman wondered if she’d somehow jumped outside of time or to a parallel universe. 

That clock had been designed by some artist she’d forgotten the name of.  It was installed only about seven years ago – a funky, chunky thing cast in a golden-toned polished bronze.  Other cities had their landmarks – Philadelphia had its Bell, New York had its buildings, bridges and Broadway, both had drivers who did not know the meaning of turn-signals… Sola’s city had that big, stupid clock. 

“The sky is like a sapphire,” she said to herself, looking beyond the grand timepiece.  “Maybe I should stop.  I’m talking to myself.  Crazy people talk to themselves.”

Sola supposed that she could pray, but she really didn’t know whom to and, according to her mother, that was just as bad, if not worse, than one’s talking to oneself.  Sola’s mother had taught her to pray when she was a small child, but in the course of life had lost her faith in a way that led her to condemn it and all related subjects as forms of insanity.  The aging woman had come into her latest view with the exuberance of a new convert and a zeal and certainty more appropriate, Sola thought, to a member of her own generation.    Unlike her mother – or that uncle of hers whose views had gone in the opposite direction with a particularly conformist church that she found creepy, Sola wasn’t sure about anything. 

She was even less sure of anything in this bizarre, empty world. 

“Ha!” she laughed, “I suppose I can talk to myself all I want to!  Mom and Uncle Jimmy aren’t around to tell me not to, are they?” 

It was three days after that when Sola found the kitten.

The city had seemed to be devoid of animals as well as humans, save for the wild types.  Songbirds chattered from power lines and she’d caught sight of three deer wandering down

Main Street

– a whitetail buck and two does. 

Still perplexed at the continued hum of electricity and other conveniences, Sola got herself out of bed in the bright glare of an early summer Saturday morning.  She filled up some plastic bottles with water (the plumbing in her apartment was still working as smoothly as ever) and loaded them into a small backpack.  The television was static and, while her computers (both the tower unit and the laptop) still worked, the Internet had been down ever since the “emptiness” had begun.  The landline telephone gave her nothing but a repeated computerized message about any numbers she called being out of service and her cell phone lately seemed to think that everywhere was a dead-zone. If there was an outside world anymore, there seemed to be no way of connecting to it. 

As she stepped down the stairs outside, she heard a strange squeak.  A little white shape came bounding out from behind a bush.  It had bright pale-blue eyes and skinny limbs supporting a fat little body, round in way that kittens often were from baby-fat and bellies full of mother’s milk.  It sniffed Sola’s feet.

“Well, hello there, little one…” she said, noting the soft gray markings on the animal’s ears, nose and tail.  The kitten was clearly of Siamese descent, though of the rare “tabby-point” kind.  The animal’s forehead bore gray stripes and the tail was trimmed in circlets. 

“Do you belong to anyone?” Sola said as she cautiously picked the kitten up.  She wasn’t talking about a human master.  Her eyes scanned the area to see if there was a mother cat around.  The kitten purred and squirmed.  It appeared to be at a just-weaned age and was definitively a male.  Sola set the kitten down, not really knowing what to do with it.  She expected it to scamper off.  As she walked down the street of her empty neighborhood, she found it following her.

“Alright, alright,” she laughed, “I’ll see if I can find you some canned cat-food while in town.”  She paused and picked the tiny fuzzball up again.  She held him close to her chest, listening to his thunderous purr.  “I guess…” she said tentatively, “if you have no one to take care of you, I’ll have to do it.  I think I’ll call you ‘Ring,’ since you have rings on your tail.” 

The young woman looked to the sky and sighed.  “This beats talking to myself, I guess, though I’m sure you don’t understand a word I’m saying.” 

Sola wondered briefly why it was considered crazy for people to talk to themselves, but not to an animal.  Even people who had a problem with others talking to God didn’t usually have a problem with them having one-sided conversations with Dog.  Animals for-sure existed as much as the self did, but animals didn’t know what people were saying, for the most part.  Sola had known dogs that could decipher the word “walkies” enough to get excited about it as well as a cat belonging to an aunt that knew what “sushi” was.  Said aunt was the type to share small amounts of takeout with pets.  Sometimes, that cat would just jump up on the kitchen table with people seated at it, too.

Ring followed Sola to a shoe store.  Sola felt lucky to find the front door open, though she found the chiming of the little bell mounted on the door’s corner eerie.  The soles of her old runners were getting thin.  She tried on a pair of dark leather work-boots, though she removed the straps.  She sat on one of the chairs in the store’s front dangling a bootstrap in front of Ring, smiling at the kitten’s frantic antics. 

“You know, Ring?” she said, “I once had the thought to gather a whole bunch of these – bootstraps, I mean – and weave them into a noose to hang myself with.  People all over the place tell you to ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’ you know?  It was going to be my answer to that.” 

Sola laughed aloud as the kitten jumped and danced, and got one of its hind legs tangled.  “I think you and I will get along real well,” she said with a pleased sigh. 

In her strapless boots, Sola hit the street again and walked to a grocery store she knew to procure some cans of cat food and a few other necessities.  One could never have too much toilet paper.  The doors opened for her just as they had in the time of people.  While it was bizarre and worrisome that everything meant to serve mankind was still working without a hitch, Sola was getting used to it. 

“Maybe we’re a couple of bugs in some kind of alien’s jar,” she mused, talking to the tiny cat at her feet.  Ring had taken to following her as faithfully as any puppy, a far more common trait in kittens than was widely known. 

“What I like about this,” Sola said, popping a can of “Mariner’s Catch” into a canvas “Save-the-Earth” bag she’d taken off the side of a register up at the front of the store, “is that everything is gratis.  I didn’t have to work hard to get any of this, nor am I having it denied to me because I worked hard, but was unlucky enough to not have the work pay well enough to feed myself, let alone kitty-cats.  When I came home to the empty city, I’d been driving home from looking for a job… I had to go far out of my way to put in my bid with a bureau that’s supposed to find jobs for people who have trouble getting hired by conventional means…” 

She picked a bag of dry cat food off the shelf, figuring her new kitty might like that, too.  “To tell you the truth, Ring, I’ve long had a little fantasy about wandering around in an emptied world.  Living the dream – woo hoo.  I always figured it wouldn’t be what I wanted when I got it, though… that I’d be lonely or have a hard time surviving.  Characters in post-apocalyptic stories always have a hard time surviving. 

Sola picked up the little kitten.  He squirmed in her hands.  “This isn’t so bad, though,” she asserted, “… not really.  I suppose I never knew until now how little I’d miss people.  The city is quiet now and I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of me… at least, as long as I take care of you, hmm?”

The young woman held the cat close to her and shouldered the canvas bag filled with the things she wanted to take back to her home, including a small bag of clay cat litter that proved to be quite heavy.  The sun had set when she stepped out into the vacant parking lot and made her way out into the streets.  Something unusual caught Sola’s eye.  She set her bag down and gently released Ring.  Ever since she’d seen the mysterious light, the only car she’d glimpsed in Freeton was her own. 

She saw a car and it was her own – just off the main thoroughfare into town, its front end wrapped around a tree.  Sola picked up her feet.  Broken windshield-glass was everywhere.  Shadow figures appeared around her and she heard the garbled noise of police speaking into communicators.  Red and blue lights flashed round-about her.  Sola could not make anything distinct out of any of it.  Everything was made of shadows and static. 

She stood suddenly still, like a confused animal in the center of a highway.  She found herself paralyzed like a mouse captured by a cat.  Her every muscle locked.  There was a body in the driver’s seat of the car – or what was left of it.  Sola couldn’t get a good look at the face, but the long black hair and the clothing that it wore reminded Sola of her own long hair and what she’d been wearing several nights ago. 

In the flashing lights, she picked up her feet to avoid nuggets of glass and spatters of blood.  Just as quickly as it had appeared, the vision dissipated, leaving behind nothing more than a scarred oak.  Ring came padding up to Sola.  Aside from his tiny squeaking and the wind through the leaves, all was silence. 

The young woman did not sleep that night.  She sat up on her apartment’s small balcony as the sun rose; her knees were curled to her chest as she sat on the bare concrete, her tailbone hurting.  Ring slept upon a folded-up towel, curled into a fuzzy little kitten-ball. 

“I don’t think the world ended, Ring,” she said, talking to the feline although he was snoozing.  “I think I ended.  The world melted away for me, but really, it was only me that melted away.” 

She petted the kitten with two fingers and awakened it.  Ring purred and rubbed his face against her thumb. 

“I don’t know where I am now.  I suppose I can’t go back.  I don’t want to, though.” 

“Mew?” 

Sola smiled, positioned herself to sit cross-legged and brought Ring into her lap.  “The more I think of it,” she sighed, “If I had the chance to go back, I wouldn’t.  Alone, but not lonely… I suppose it’s a rare achievement.” 

The sun glared over the empty streets below.  Sola could see the Great Gear Clock without the foot and car traffic in the way, as it had always been in past days.  She stroked her purring kitten. 

“This is my city,” she sighed happily, “and here I am free.”  

More of Shadsie's Animal Adventures

Cross-posted between Deviant Art and Blogger.

Some days I feel like “Shadsie Irwin.”

Yesterday evening, I went into work – for anyone who doesn’t already read me regularly, I work on a farm cleaning up after horses.  I got a surprise.  

There’s a big barn and a little barn and on a yearly basis (I’ve been working there for a couple of years now), springtime brings birds that like to nest in the big barn.  I think they’re swifts, not entirely sure – they look reasonably like that family as illustrated in the Peterson’s Guide.  There’s a pair that’s been taking a particular nest-building site inside the big barn that my guy, Bob, and I like to call “The Bickersons,” because they loudly argue.  Drives the barncats nuts… Brave little things – they’ll swoop right by your head if you’re too close to their nest, dive-bomb the cats…

Apparently, the Bickersons’ brood from last year came back with them and a pair of young birds has been staking a claim in the little barn for the first time – right inside the doorway.  There are lots of fly-paper and fly-sticks hung up there because the little barn is close to the Great Lord Smellypyle (manure heap) and gets things especially bad and especially early with the flies.  So, I go into the little barn to take care of the couple of the stalls I’m in charge of cleaning there and I notice something odd about the orange, tubular fly-stick hanging from the ceiling… I thought it had a rather large bit of debris caught onto it from wind.  I took a second look and it was a bird.

A bird was just stuck on there by the wings and tail.  I looked up, thinking “poor dead thing, to die like that,” then to my resolute horror I saw its head move.  It was still alive, the poor thing! I called Bob at his work, asked what could be done… tried to rouse my immediate supervisors who live on the farm, but they were out partying – it’s Saturday… wound up getting one of the neighbors who lived on the property to help me out.  We took the fly stick down and gently pried the bird off.  I set it down to see if it could fly and it couldn’t get off the ground.  I scooped it up, just as Mr. Big, the multi-toed giant shorthaired barn cat came thundering up.  Told the neighbor to get on his computer and Google wildlife rehabilitators. Called Bob again, holding the scared little swift. 

It was close to quitting-time for Bobbert, so I waited, holding the little bird gently while he picked up some organic/non-toxic goo-gone and the kind of scentless, neutral dish soap people use on animals caught in oil spills.  The bird was nice and calm for me – probably in shock.  Its left claw had a death-grip on my thumb.  The barncats were especially interested in me…  And, so I started in on my work quite late because of birdy-rescue.  Bob and I managed to get some of the goo out, but ultimately we wound up finding a box, putting some soft hay in it, and Bob took it to the local wildlife rehab while I did my job. Bob said the people there were going to keep her until her tail feathers grow back in – because the fly goo had just wrecked it.  Her wings weren’t really all that bad.  I’m hoping she hasn’t laid eggs yet because that means they’re pretty much doomed.

Then, for dinner, I had Dairy Queen chicken strips.

Ideas for a story, possibly novel

I have a stray idea that I sketched in a notebook.

Yep, that's a human heart embedded with clock-gears.  I don't have enough "story" in my head yet to start writing a story, all I have at present is a sketch.  Perhaps if some nice people were interested in publishing my other work (how many months ago did I send out queries for novels  "A World of Rusted Dreams" and "Malarkey and Belinda?" ), I'd have the little bit of umph I need to get my head on an original story idea like this and out of the stupid videogame fan fiction I've been into of late.  (Though fans of my fan fiction probably want me to stick around in that world).

Anyway, I have a title and a basic concept... on a torn out notebook page... with a creepy drawing of a heart.

Title: "Secondhand"

Setting: The setting is a world where the "seat of the self" isn't viewed as the brain, but the heart - kind of like the way of thought in the ancient world (Ancient Egypt, if I'm not mistaken), except in this world, it's actually true. More appropriately, the "soul" of a person is in their blood in this world.  There is an energy or "essence" that is known to flow in the blood of humans and animals and it is a measurable, scientifically-known, detectable material thing rather than a vague concept.  This energy, however, is mysterious and things about it are not completely understood by the science of this world.  It is thought to be the root of emotions.

This "essence" vanishes from the body after death.  It is not known whether it lives on or just decays into the earth like the rest of the body. It sort of just disappears - poof, no residue left behind at the moment of dying. I am thinking that most people in this world are of the latter ("decays") opinion, but there's no hard proof either way, which pretty much makes questions of the soul in this world much like questions of the soul in our world. 

Basic Plot: One nation's scientists/thinkers/engineers have discovered a way that the "essence" can be regulated.  If it's "flow" through the body is adjusted, it can be tightly controlled and thus emotion can give way to reason, calm and the controlling of a populace. The "essence flow" can be controlled through controlling the actions of the heart.  Being that this particular, powerful nation's culture generally frowns upon "overages of emotion" so a governmental motion is carried to give people after a certain age (when they are out of childhood and have stopped physically growing in any significant way) artificial clockwork hearts.  The artificial hearts allow blood to flow normally, but regulate the "essence."   

(Remember, kids, this is a fantasy world, I'm not even trying to be medically accurate).

Having an adult population with clockwork hearts (called "secondhand hearts" and the surgery to get one is called "secondhanding") keeps society on an even keel.  The people are kept "controlled."  However, as it turns out, these "secondhand hearts" don't work for everyone. Even people who survive the surgery intact sometimes, without explanation, continue to emote strongly, secretly question their government and innovate in unexpected ways...

I'm thinking that much of the story is in a protagonist seeking asylum from his country of origin in a country that has developed a "world gate" enabling contact with our world and the guy ends up explaining his world and his country to an interviewer from our (brain-based) world.  I also think the day he found out that his "secondhanding" didn't take and he was an "Irrational" (a person that would be branded with the epithet) when he *had a dream.*  It was actually a pleasant dream, but is scared the poo outta him because adults with secondhand hearts don't have dreams.  (REM sleep is essential for our brains, but not essential to survival in blood-soul-world) - and dreams are looked down upon, something "to be stamped out" in the secondhanding culture because they are irrational, something the society wants to eliminate. 

~~~~~

I think I may be channeling a bit of "Brave New World" here. I know I'm channeling a bit of the anime, "Kino's Journey" - there was an episode of that detailing a small country where people were lobotomized into adulthood and strict, unquestioning obedience of their government.  I think this idea is also a metaphor for psychiatry in a way:  I have a disorder for which I take medication and make attempts to "normalize" myself in order to function in the world.  How much should someone give up of themselves in order to be a part of the world? How much should someone give up of themselves to feel like they're in control and to feel like themselves?  Where do we draw the line at order and disorder?

I read an article yesterday on a news site where some guy was trying to "debunk the myth of the mad genius" well, I tell you, bunk on him because there are ideas I know I'd never come up with or be able to do with any kind of realistic efficacy if I were *normal.*  I see this as one of those ideas.