Fri - December 5, 2008Psychic DetectiveIn the Bay Area you can find anything, and
probably in your immediate neighborhood. There are special advertising
newspapers for people who offer unusual services, most of them some aspect of
the psychic arts, whether in its healing aspect, martial aspect, or erotic
aspect. Porter considered all "tell me more about me" arts as erotic, because
they involved a messy emotional entanglement and lurid lies.
Posted at 02:13 PM Read More Thu - December 4, 2008Erotic Dancer(This week I've been looking through the
writing I discarded when I did the second draft of Indian Shadow, and putting
some of them back up on Shuffle
Play.)
Father Roland found a mysterious symbol of the Fool Who Denied God in his Heart on a playing card dealt to him by Bergamo, after he'd agreed to have his fortune told. "What does it mean?" Roland asked, but Bergamo said it probably means something different to whoever's looking at it. That didn't satisfy Father Roland, and he became obsessed with this particular manifestation of the Fool. Posted at 03:29 PM Read More Wed - December 3, 2008Blue MotelIt's no use asking where somebody comes from in
Ash Fork, because their history works backward from the present and then circles
them like predatory birds. These circles unfold like a flower opening, so that
for every choice made there is a branching outward of event fields. What once
looked like a track for a linear logic explodes into a kaleidoscope of
simultaneous occurrence woven together by an active intent.
Posted at 02:42 PM Read More Wed - November 26, 2008The Ascension of Father RolandAsh Fork was an energy field whose
personification was an 1880s gunfighter. The manifestation of the gunfighter
included archetypal detail, such as the gold pocket watch on a gold chain,
relentlessly ticking toward high noon, and the calm assurance of the hands
closing the inscribed cover over the face. The inscription was a circle with a
jagged line, like a lightning bolt, originating in the center and piercing the
perimeter. The gunfighter dropped the watch back into its pocket.
Posted at 01:10 PM Read More Tue - November 11, 2008Friedman's GhostI was listening to the radio yesterday and there
was a discussion of how the policies of Milton Friedman shaped the economic
system which is now collapsing, through a belief that financial institutions
have a built in moral guidance system, so that government regulations are an
unnecessary burden on them. I was remembering some satire I published in the
Ash Fork Series, around Milton Friedman, about four years ago. It now looks
prophetic. The gigantic financial bodies created behind Friedman's economic
guidance have become destructive giants out of our control.
Posted at 11:51 AM Read More Mon - April 21, 2008Ghost of McCain PastIt was May 17, 2004, and the grip of the
neo-conservatives was still solid, as George W. Bush demonstrated once more the
unfortunate circumstance of having a rigid man in charge during a time of rapid
evolution. The future the President and those around him projected, of knocking
the top of Iraq and just replacing it with a colonial governor, was in fact the
past. The best critique I heard of the Iraq War was by Zbigniew Brzenski, who said it is a war outside
it's relationship to history. It is a a colonial war. The following blog is
what I wrote on that day, when I still thought McCain was a straight up guy.
His moving toward Bush, and the ultra right, changed that.
Posted at 12:46 PM Read More Fri - February 29, 2008Don Juan & CarlosI'm stoned again. This American kid comes by here
all the time, looking for help because he's sitting in the cockpit of a space
ship he doesn't understand and he can't control, and he thinks I can show him
how to fly it. I told him that, in pretty much those words, and I thought he'd
go away and leave me alone, but he kept coming back. "Hello Don Juan," like I'm
his Dutch Uncle. He seemed really nervous and so I rolled a joint, figuring
maybe he was trying to find a source for some drugs, but he got paranoid and
kind of obsessive. Not a good combination.
Posted at 11:20 AM Read More Wed - December 26, 2007Invisible HighwaysAnybody who asks Mary where she comes from, she
just smiles and smiles. "I come from where there's space for me to be, baby,"
she says. Everybody likes her, even though nobody knows how she can just show
up when the piano plays, and still be there when it's not playing, like she
walked in through the door.
Posted at 03:19 PM Read More Sun - September 30, 2007Ray's BluesBack in 2000 I wrote my first song in a rush of
inspiration. I couldn't play the guitar, and I couldn't sing, but I could tap
out a rhythm and make up the lyrics. That's what I did. This is a rough draft
of the song Clay and I did. Sometime we'll produce it professionally, with
drums, piano, guitars, etc. Of course I'd love to get it picked up by a country
blues band! Hey, we've got lots of songs for sale
...
Posted at 08:10 PM Read More Thu - September 13, 2007Spook ShowMary stood in front of the oval mirror, before
which she dressed and arranged herself as a person before the world each day.
This was a meditation for Mary, and just as one woman will feel a reflected
sensual delight when she takes her clothes off with calculated effect, and
another will feel the assurance of virtue when she covers herself with a
thoughtful modesty, Mary navigated easily among possible worlds.
Posted at 10:40 PM Read More Sat - September 8, 2007AtmosphereThe first thing that hit Bergamo when he walked
through the door of the Mission was how time had changed. In Ash Fork he hadn't
noticed he was on computer time because there was nothing to compare it to, but
now there was. There was a sky full of rolling, gray bellied clouds and an
afternoon shower was tapering off toward the East. There was the dark, musty
perfume of damp Janet. There were holes in the clouds and no matter where they
broke, one of her seven suns would be trying to get a look at her in wet
clothes. "They always see me through the atmosphere," she said.
Posted at 10:53 PM Read More Tue - September 4, 2007Blue Midget 1A Bomb's lips moved carefully as he sounded out
the dedication one more time, "Dedicated to the troll in me," and then one more
time he turned to the back flyleaf to look at the picture of Paris standing
beside a fire hydrant, painted white in the middle but with a bright red top and
trim. She was fashionably dressed and wearing a pill box hat. The fire hydrant
was naked except for a bowler hat and aviator sunglasses. No matter how many
times A Bomb looked at the picture,he couldn't see any resemblance to a troll in
her. Then he got the joke.
Posted at 09:01 AM Read More Sun - September 2, 2007Blue Midget 2A Bomb, the Indian Shadow, was waiting. The book
was open to the second chapter, and a slight breeze rustled a yellow curtain.
Whether it was yellow or blue I don't know for sure, the book began, because
memory isn't a security camera, it's a production with writer, director, cast
and crew, and the first draft has disappeared beneath the process of
remembering. Behind that curtain, the priest was making love to my mother. I
didn't suspect. I didn't believe priests did such things.
Posted at 02:12 PM Read More Fri - August 31, 2007From ChicagoGene Tweaks had not planned to pull the trigger.
He was part of a Special Security team, an expert in urban guerilla warfare,
with seminar training in explosives and damage control. The main subject of
damage control wasn't about developing a soft footprint. It was mostly media
relations. Gene was pulling down over a hundred grand a year because he was the
perfect combat soldier except for the voices.
Posted at 03:24 PM Read More Mon - August 27, 2007Wing GypsiesHe came from a long line of fighters. He had eyes
in the back of his head, not like the ones in front, which were really conscious
and registering a high resolution image. The other was like a security camera
which connected to emotion, reading the surroundings, and if there was danger,
focusing in and taking a look. With this faculty he could slip beyond the range
of his ordinary senses. "I don't know how it works," he admitted, "but it
does."
Posted at 07:30 PM Read More Sat - August 25, 2007Spider BiteA tiny little bite, hardly noticeable. Uncle Sam
felt it as a slight sting with no known origin. He brushed his right hand
across his neck but encountered nothing. The spider was gone before he knew he
was bitten. It rappelled down a thread of gossamer and moved unnoticed along
the ground, toward its mistress. Spider grandmother watched through unblinking
eyes, sad and still as if she had to die today. "Sit down," she said, and at
the moment she said it he had the sensation of being very high above the ground,
looking down an impossible distance toward his shoes.
Posted at 10:36 PM Read More Fri - August 24, 2007Shock and AweAt first it was just a speck. It was first
noticed on one of the deep space scopes, which began a computer profile of it's
behavior. It wasn't a comet or an asteroid. The analysis showed it consisted
of a three interlocking wave pattern and was not an object per se, but the
forward effect of an unknown phenomenon. "Forward effect of an unknown
phenomenon," the President repeated through a frozen smile. "Can we hit it with
a nuke?"
Posted at 03:08 PM Read More Thu - August 23, 2007Dream of LoveThe collective trance was one cooperative system,
a brain composed of interactive personal stories, and the process was both as
simple and as complicated as for a bird flying in
formation
with the flock. "We have been gifted," Normal Nuts said. "We have
been gifted with the ability to replicate ourselves in Space, and we have learned that our
creator came not in the light, but in the darkness." He paused and felt the
trance deepen. "How could we have prepared ourselves for Sophia?" he asked. A
murmur of undefined sentiment moved through those in formation.
Posted at 04:06 PM Read More Wed - August 8, 2007Not Doing ItI woke up on this train. She was waiting for me
in the dining car, wearing a blue dress with white dots. But they weren't
evenly spaced white dots, just a pattern sprayed across a night sky. I slipped
into the chair across from her. I was sure I had made the decision to leave her
but I was not certain I had shared it with her yet. I looked for a neutral
subject. "Interesting pattern on your dress."
"It's a pattern from the sawed off shotgun that killed Vincent Vega." There was an uncomfortable silence. Posted at 11:35 AM Read More Tue - August 7, 2007Meditation on a HorseI'm drunk out of habit, and inside the amber glow
there is a fatalism based on the probability that no matter where I start, I'll
be led around to the same place. What's coming up is what's coming up, and
what's slipping back into darkness is already in blackface. Everything orbits
around what's moving from dark to light, and from light to dark, like a shifting
sea below a lighthouse where I am standing and looking out into a black fog, cut
by a half million candlepower double bladed axe of light.
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