Yam Story Excerpt 3

After holding forth for quite some time, Arthur shocked Noah by saying they ought to turn in. “We have plenty of culture to live, I reckon”, he declared. It would be a relief to de-focus from the aura of weird that was Arthur. As Noah dozed off he toyed with naming the phases he’d seen Arthur seamlessly cycle through: scared watcher on the plane; eager boss-follower at Lars’s house; fretting paranoid at the dinner; chatting academic after supper. What fueled all this? Not just the stress of the trip on its own, or the whole resort would feel like an American mental ward.

The next day, the resort became an American mental ward. A general scurry seemed to be in progress. The hippy-looking couple, who were just next door to Noah and Arthur, were complaining to the house staff about the rats they had heard in the night. Noah walked by just in time to hear the chambermaid swear there were no rats in Kaokara—laughable since he had heard them himself, but never thought to complain about it. Of course there were rats here.

Before he reached breakfast Noah was accosted by Carlton, the eldest of the trainees, who was making a list of names of people who didn’t get hot water at their morning showers. On behalf of the more delicate palates in the group, Suzette was conferring with an impatient cooking staff on the subject of breakfast options. Pete and Carol were discussing what sounded to Noah like lost luggage. Dennis exited the public loo swearing about the toilet paper. Noah looked around at the faces of his companions at breakfast. The only eyes that weren’t wild with some sort of panicky discomfort were those of the two former missionaries, Amy and Michael. Whatever calm-juice they are drinking, Noah thought, laughing inwardly, I’d like to get about five gallons of it. As Noah joined the couple, Mike recommended the sausage, then quietly intoned—smirking—that there were some misplaced expectations regarding the hot water.

Earth 2 (fiction excerpt)

The news on the radio was plain enough, as all had come to expect from the Republic. There was movement in such-and-such province of China, toward the sea. Flotillas of unarmed civilians were being shuttled from here to there, probably in preparation for an attack; the enemy, which was China this time, had proven unwilling to negotiate several points of importance to the Republic. Military arrangements were now underway but diplomacy was to be exhausted fully before any Americonian forces would be committed to defending...

"They tell us exactly nothing," Katie would say. 

Sonny spoke up, "You know how I can tell they're going to get us into another war? The way they keep telling us they absolutely won't get us into a war."

An older neighbor nodded. "It's a sure sign."

One of Katie's farm hands brought lemonade and something strong to add to it, for those who might prefer it. The radio droned on but only Sonny stayed close enough to it to hear what followed. Two hours later, when some of the recruitment-aged youths began asking about fighting and traveling to foreign places, Dumar found Sonny still listening to all the fluff programming that came after the news. 

"If you can tear yourself away from the dancing fish-men, there are some green-horns you should be scaring."

"I'd be happy to scare some youngsters. But what do you think I'm listening to here?"

"It must be the ads, because I know you hate the evening programs."

"That's right, Pop. Stay a minute and listen to what they're advertising."

In a few minutes the host of Dancing Fish-Men politely ceded the airwaves to their sponsor, Unversal Transport: 

Thousands of job opportunities in industries overseas. Farming, manufacturing, communications, education and more. Many jobs provide and require only an able bodied volunteer with current papers and a clean bill of health. Seek your adventure abroad and send your pay home to the family!

"It's just some trick the armed forces are using. Isn't it?"

Sonny looked his dad in the eye. "The army's running warnings on the radio about how dangerous it is to travel. Or those standard low-budget recruitment speeches by old veterans..." Scare you into thinking the only way to be useful in this world is to step up to the danger."

"Somebody begs to differ." Dumar nodded at the radio and Sonny rolled his eyes.

"Freeing up the highways for the adventurers and profiteers, making sure the cautious and the infirm stay at home. They've always done it like this."

Dumar found it poetic when his sons spoke to him with authority he used to speak to them. The schooling had been worth it, but there was no way both sons could be happy as a farmer, as Dumar had been. It was fine with Dumar. He understood the times didn't call for settled men; Dumar sensed there was a change due. If his sons could be part of it, so much the better. 

Your damn tevee set

Beer it up ya pigs-ya don't fool me with your wattayacallits all throbbin for some dangerous sports but a comfortable evening like phony Henry David Thoreaus running back to mommy for a roast beef, not worrying about doing the laundry and waiting for it to dry like I did or having the Plymouth seize up on you right there at your girlfriend's house with her angry dad waiting for a reason to tell her to go back to Mr. Football Dickhead. You guys never had to go through this and tha's why I thing you're jerk-offs. But fuck you rich kids. Fuck you I got bigger things to deal with.

Things like, what happened to me during the 25 years since I have started having this thought. Which, by the way I still have all those thoughts; none of them ever left my head. I keep plenty of room in there for them because number one it's as big as a warehouse and number two I throw away all the things that matter to the rest of the world that I don't get like what the heck is an atom I don't care. None of you are listening but if you are listening I think you're jerks and I haven't forgotten what it was like with the damn Elvis Costello music until 2:00 am and the hauling me out in the snow naked because of what I did to JK. And by the way JK needed to be taught he wasn't cock-of-the-rock but the message doesn't get through to him when you all take his side like that. Yeah, it was 25 years ago but I didn't forget. Just like CR probably remembers me flushing his stupid Men at Work down the toilet. Screw him and his stupid tv set. I wanted to kill him when that thing showed up.

About Ferro

Some planets, like some villages, are made up of the peaceful, wise, but easily manipulated. An out-of-the-way world is not as likely to learn war and diplomacy as
one that is constantly in the line of fire. The peaceful become the the enslaved, with a few aggressive strokes of the opportunistic, shrewd, warlike neighbor.

Ferro's people learned quickly that their attackers, who called themselves the Chosen, were a brutal and methodical enemy. The Chosen, for their part, failed to see the madness of a plan to exterminate the Ferrans. After decades of brutal combat, the technologically advanced attackers had to admit that some other force was at work, protecting the Ferrans. Highly efficient war machines became ineffective upon their deployment on Ferro, time after time. Only with smaller, cruder, much more bloody tools could the natives be subdued. The fighting force of the invaders became disgruntled, frightened, demoralized by a strange, demonic (for they were highly religious people) presence.

The very name Ferro became synonymous with frustration in the home language of the Chosen, as the natives fought on for an entire generation against the overwhelming technological advantage of the strangers. The Advange, as the mysterious force came to be known, could not prevent rivers of Ferran blood from flowing, but the passing years of conflict served to strengthen their resolve, for what race of people in all of history would surrender their very homeland, even if hope had been reduced to a single fighter against ten thousand.

There were many reasons for the Chosen to stubbornly fight on as well: mainly they were economic, for the Chosen home world was an overpopulated, needy world, weary from thousands of years of prosperity and conquest, endless growth and a bloated class of aristocrats whose demands weighed heavily on the workers, soldiers, pilots and wage-earners who faithfully marched forward to whatever adventure their leaders undertook. The Ferran undertaking was nothing more than an attempt to harvest the plenty of this world to provide for the vast population at home. To the Ferrans, the Chosen became known as the Parasites.

The Ferrans experienced a great deterioration of their once proud society. Not a highly technological people, still the Ferrans had a rich history, religion, education system, as only an ancient grown to maturity can obtain. The Chosen could never fathom that the Advantage was something outside the realm of technology and faith as they knew it. In fact much of the technology of the Chosen had come from other societies, through centuries of trade. As faith reigned supreme over the Chosen, much of the life of the universe remained a mystery to them.

The Ferran's Advantage grew weaker with time. Great cities were abandoned, the native people fled to the less fertile ground of the hinterland, leaving the prime farming, mining, and other natural resources to the invaders. No treaties were ever signed; no official cessation of hostilities ever occurred. Commerce began to flow, to the advantage of the Chosen. But it was always laden with complications, which was blamed on the local Demons for centuries of domination by the Chosen. Eventually much of the commercial endeavor on Ferro came to a halt. The only profit-making enterprise was a series of mines, which changed hands so often that no one could keep track of who was the real owner.

A subcontractor from another civilization came to Ferro to manage the mines. No superstitions would prevent these people from doing their work, as long as the pay was good, for they came from a desperately impoverished line of people descended from Earth and Earth 2, a pair of befouled worlds plagued with many of the same problems as the Chosen, but fully five hundred years behind technologically and politically. To the Chosen, the Earth-humans were not nearly as ferocious as the Ferrans, nor as easily frustrated as their own working classes, so they fit the job of working Ferro's mines.

Through the transitions the Ferrans remained at a distance, living in the shadow of their former civilization as strangers from other world mined steel and coal from below the surface of their own home world. To the Earth-humans, the locals on Ferro were known as Cannibals, which title dated back to the original battles. Stories of the Advantage had been twisted to include ritual bloodletting to a heathen god, whose power lasted until the true God of the Chosen had blessed the place.

To the Earth-humans these stories were distant and strange and beside the point. They needed to make a living, and they would keep to themselves of left alone.

Mines & Memories (fiction excerpt: Return to Ferro)

There's a guy out here that'll make you laugh every time you think about him. Irritating, mostly, but then also filled with so much humorous hooey that I can't help but kinda like him.

Half of what he says is so blasphemous you about bite your tongue off the first time he talks to you. Instead of getting arrested he just keeps on showing up each day in the mine (he works good and hard, I'll give him that), then putting in his couple hours of rhetoric at night.

And there's plenty old Mike could get arrested for. Says were' all living for the machine, and that the old way was that the machine lived for us. Says we used to be in a village like the cannibals, and that if we took a good look at an honest cannibal we'd call him friend quicker than you and I would call each other friend. Says a cannibal is a right respectable person, except for the eating people part of it, which we don't even know for a fact.

And this is where old Mike gets me laughing. Somebody always says to him, Mike, don't you watch the bulletins at night? Hell, there's always someone showing up on their with a vicious bite out of his shoulder or a missing foot, or found torn to pieces, or gone altogether. But Mike says those are nothing but mining accidents they made up to look like someone done chomped on the guy, and he says those people who make the bulletins are nothing but a bunch of crooks and liars, and we miners should be able to figure that out for ourselves, and of course we have a grand old time fighting with him about it until Clyde the foreman comes along and tells everyone to shut the f up and show some respect to the hard working stiffs who are trying to get to bed early instead of playing cards and screaming ourselves hoarse about all this cannibal nonsense. Then he gives Mike a lot of hell right in front of the other guys, telling him he ought to grow up and it's no wonder he never made foreman after all that hard work.

Funny thing is, though, Clyde really likes Mike when we're all down in the mine, and anyone would admit he's the best guy to have your back when things get sticky, which they do. Mike knows how to work some pretty magic with an infected hand or a breathing problem; he keeps a first aid kit with some unusual potions and things, but never talks to people about where he got it, or why he's not a doctor if he knows how to heal you.

One strange fellow, that Mike. If you pay him a compliment (which a guy will always do if another guy just fixed up a big fat cut on his hand), he just says it's all from memory.

"What's all from memory?" I asked him once.

"All of it. Work, laughter, pain, healing. It's all from memory."

And that's the scariest thing the man can say because everyone knows the old saying Memory is a burden, and we all have enough of those. Or, remember your work and forget all the rest, or all the prayers to God to free us from our past to allow us better to see the light.

These are true enough words for me, and so is live and let live, so I don't report Mike to anyone. And I don't think it would make any difference if I did. The law don't need to worry about a guy like him who rocks the boat. After all, memory? I mean, who the hell needs a toothache like that? What's in my memory from today? Work. And what about yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that? Work.

"What's the earliest thing you remember?" says Mike, to one of the young guys. The guy says he remembers that time they showed us the girl. A real, living woman here at the big hall where they do the speeches and political stuff. Mike says, "that was only like two years ago. What about before that? What about Todd?" Mike says. And then it gets quiet. Then some guys get to talking that you couldn't forget Todd even if you wanted to because the guy was such a scrub. Looked like a tree that turned into a man. Not a tree like the ones they make beams from, but one of those trees along the path to the administrator's mansion, kind of pretty and skinny and weak-looking. But for as weak as he looked he could kick some ass down in the mines. Carried my ass out of the mine one day and I'm like 110 kg. That was when I hit my head and I was no good for anything for a couple days. I KNOW that was more than a couple years ago.

So I tell Mike all about it, even though the whole memory thing is really a pain; those old proverbs exist for good reason. I could forget all about a guy like Todd, but I'm glad I didn't, and that makes me uncomfortable at the same time.

Then along comes Mike's questions to make a person more uncomfortable. "What else do you remember about Todd?" And just like that, there's a blank space. I say whatever you say about a person who's gone.

"Cannibals?"

"You really think that? Or is that something you say to shut me up?"

I laugh at Mike like I laugh at anyone or anything that's getting to me. He laughs too, but not in a pissed-off way. He laughs to say, don't worry about it. I can't help feeling like I wish I knew what became of Todd. I and I know I knew once. And I figure Mike knows but to hell with his lessons. I yawn, and stand up to go hit the sack. I know I'll forget about this in a minute or so, or if not, when I'm asleep.

But I don't. In fact, I dream about that guy Todd. He's floating out there, in the sky, like they say happens to the dead, but he's not going to heaven. There's a look on his face like he doesn't mind it. By his face I can tell he knows I'm looking at him, and he wants me to see something out ahead of him. He's pointing. His arm is extended toward some indistinct cluster of stars that looks to my eyes like nothing more than a tiny wheel in the night sky. In the dream the stars are so familiar to me as to be commonplace, but when I awake, I can't even remember the last time I looked at stars.

Triad: Fiction Excerpt

The Captain

“Water, I say. I haven’t had a thing to drink in hours.” The captain’s staff had plenty to report, most of it confusing. The captain was hoarse from giving orders and shouting exclamations of surprise. “Parker! Status.”

“Sir. Still no power from the main engines. Auxiliary is available at about twenty-five percent. Enough to keep us moving forward but every time we come within tracking distance of the alien craft again we’re back to no power. Weapons system unresponsive. Radios functional but satellite uplinks disabled.”

“Are we still receiving the strange radio noises?”

“Affirmative. Most likely the alien craft. The comm experts are saying it’s most like an animal noise in its tonal quality.

“How do they know that?”

“Sophisticated patterns, beyond the capacity of a machine to produce. Or more accurately an absence of pattern.

"Does it sound like bullshit to you?"

"Sir?"

"Could we be chasing a couple of gigantic explosive devices that only *seem* to be manned. And what kind of creatures could withstand a rapid dive of--how deep was it?"

"4000 meters, sir."

"4000 meters feet in less than thirty minutes?"

"Sir, I believe we're dealing with a creature navigating directly to a pre-selected location with a specific goal in mind."

The captain was as angry as he was curious. "Such as!"

"Such as they're looking for a source, either a certain raw material, such as manganese nodules, or a certain creature, such as..."

"A creature? And they're just going to dive into the ocean and start looking for it?"

"There is ample reason to believe the intruders have been to Earth before.”

“What reasons?” The captain asked in an unusually calm voice.

“The directness of all their movements so far, for one. And their adherence to the exact shipping lanes we ourselves only know from our GPS systems. They have patched into our information systems. For all we know they have monitored our radio communications. They somehow have the technology to navigate the dangers of our atmosphere and our oceans with no hesitations and no technical challenges, with a pair of relatively small vessels.

uptight about work

For the first time since I started at Z-co, I' m feeling uptight about where I am. For five years I was in the enjoyable Niche, and in charge of it. In fact I was the Niche.

Soon I'll leave that niche to join a Group, doing a pretty-well-established set of procedures, following Group's norms and not doing a heck of a lot of independent work. I almost feel like I need therapy over it, it's making me so uptight.

Do I fear what will happen to the Niche? Am I afraid the new person, Newby Newberry, will screw up the sandcastle I've been building for five years? Do I feer she'll do a better job in my niche than I ever did?

Do I fear that Group may try to break my independent spirit? Or that I won't have fun anymore?

The reason I'm laughing now: I should be glad to be rid of my series of work-headaches; I should look forward to a clean slate; I should let go of notions that no one else can do it like I do it.

Right.

Well, there are some other problems that make me uptight. I care about what I've been producing in the Niche. For the sake of quality I am concerned about the possible decline of quality.

Also I have witnessed the lack of talent that sometimes plagues Z-co. We tend to put people who don't know squat into positions that require more thought than the knowing squat will allow.

Triad Excerpt

Paula: We interrupt this program…yak yak yak…a special bulletin…this is the story we imagine as children, or watch in the old movies, but folks, I can tell you…attackers…yak yak yak…three separate locations...appears to be a coordinated effort…this morning.

Lou: That’s right, Paula. And thanks for joining us, folks. There are currently three separate colonizing forces hammering planet Earth with three distinct armies. All of them arrived in the night and all of them are still cloaking their communication as far as defense scientists can tell. We take you now to the Saudi desert where a group of space-craft have landed and apparently disabled all the terrestrial vehicles in the vicinity but—as you can see from this live broadcast they have not yet scrambled the communication. The local response is massive and chaotic. As you can see, however, the majority have taken this visitation as something holy. Thousands of local villagers are beginning the journey on foot to see what is going to happen, but also to offer prayers and offerings.

Paula: Lou, are there any people responding to the visitors with force?

Lou: Force? Well, I’d have to say there’s really no force available for them to use in response. Behind me can be seen a teeming crowed of awestruck, silent onlookers who stream around the feet of four great tanker-spaceships. The spaceships are silent, resting on tremendous feet with the girth of great redwood trees. I’m told now that our viewers have lost their video feed but I’ll continue to describe what I see, Paula. The sky has taken on an amazing orange tint, like a tropical sunset in a velvet painting. It’s indescribably beautiful. I feel as if I’m only now aware of my true senses for the first time. I can’t go on…

Paula: Lou appears to be affected by some mass-mind control centered at the space vessels in the Saudi Desert. As I have said, there are two other recognized landing spots this hour; all are confirmed to be civilizations foreign to Earth. On this historic occasion we take you now to the South Pacific, where submarines and a battle ship rush to gain access to two massive winged crafts that, according to the satellite photos, well, we’ll let you see them for yourselves...

...now that we have video restored. It appears the two airplane-like machines dove directly into the deepest spot in the Pacific Ocean today. No doubt their instrumentation provided them with the location of this spot, and that they have come to it for a specific reason. After landing, upon the water, they immediately folded up their wings and dove straight into the Marianas trench, traveling as accurately and purposefully as submarines. According to Navy sources there is a limit to how far down any terrestrial craft will be able to pursue them. Therefore it may be a matter of waiting out the invaders until they return to the surface. We will keep you updated. Now to the invasion in Central Mongolia…

(originally written 2004)

Yam Story Excerpt 4

Rain

The morning brought on an enormous downpour that started just before dawn and continued, relentless, for more than two hours. Alison and Noah thought they knew what heavy rain was from their stay at Kaokara, but this was something more intense and more enduring. Looking out the window, they saw every walking path transformed into a tiny stream. Little bits of coconut husk and stray cooking leaf were carried away. A slant to the village ground not previously noticeable became apparent by the slowly creeping direction o f the light sheet of water enveloping the hamlet. Water moving as one slow creature passing through the village to consume the detritus of earthly life; water falling from the sky with the force of ropes dropped from miles above; water of a shifting mood, first hurried and giddy, then steadier, a runner going a long distance, then filled with the rage of a tremendous, petulant toddler; water arriving as the landlord, coming to remind the tenants that the boss was at home, and planning on using every room; water that soothed, at last, like a blanket of night, realizing the mind into an abyss of quiet and inactivity, because the water allowed so little human movement; water that arrived as a guest, welcome, but called upon its own kind to join the party, and overran its hosts; ill-mannered and sloppy in its behavior; water that shook the houses and silenced the babies’ crying with its amazing basic parenthood over all things; water with hands that took whatever was for the taking; water that could shake any island to its foundations; water that told them, you are all so tiny, and made them all feel relieved to be tiny.

Creatures (1)

The goose wails in the flagging daylight: it is a noise that any creature with ears will find horrible and upsetting. The mud-bug, only a few inches away, doesn't even know the goose is there; he doesn't have the power of sight or hearing. His body knows what it knows and lives accordingly. The goose is a big fertilizer where the mud bug is concerned. The nutrients pour out of geese like manna from mud-bug heaven.

Another goose replies. The goose takes off; the mud-bug disappears into the murky warmth of his home.

Planet of the Boys Excerpt

Stephen
Oak has actual people living on it. People who were fired, convicted, exiled, people who spoke out against the Powers. And we're not talking about people who said the easy things, like mining can be bad for you; no, a contaminated planet is saved for people who commmit serious religious crimes, or indecent people who kill outside the law.

But up here in the tall buildings we know the real crime, and it's always the naive, nearly educated people who take the freedom thing too seriously. If there was one thing we learned from the Liberty Experiments, it was that humans like to believe they have liberty. And that it's easy to make a life full of consumer products feel like liberty. The danger of the experiment is that so many people fail to see the nod and the wink on the official publications that speak to them about liberty. Everyone can see the uniformed guards, everyone can see the prisons and the weapons we keep stockpiled around our settlements, but somehow they think of liberty as this overarching principle, a thing as essential as their breath, rather than the soft, comforting advertisement for happiness that we always intended it to be. Abstractions have always taken a back seat to economic reality; it's been that way since humanity came into existence; longer really: it's been that way since any beings anywhere engaged in community living. The abstractions are how we flavor things for the lessers, though, so we encourage them where they're useful.

Davey
I am an old guy who talks all the time. The guys tolerate me because I say things that make this place make a little sense, and things that scare them a little bit. But they wouldn't really put up with ol' Davey's crazy theories unless they saw me working. I know I'll be washed up soon enough but I've been lucky enough. The truth is I want to get going but I have to earn a few more bucks out here before I can take off. Sure, I could apply for work on Oak, and be set up with a pretty nice assignment, but if you think the recruitment to Ferro was bullshit? I mean, that place was *liquidated*. You don't liquidate unless you have the kind of violence that could spread to other civilizations (or so they tell us). Even if they could get rid of all the contamination on Oak, no way should anyone accept an assignment there. If I have time I'll tell you my whole Oak theory, but now's not the time. I'm trying to keep my mouth shut for a few days. That's a cycle I do: talk a few days, then lay off and leave people to think about it. Also I take on some bullshit topic that comes straight from the managers, and I work that for a while, so they think I'm helping spread the Powers' word. But I soften it up so much and distort it so well that the guys aren't gettting what they're trying to sell.

It seems like it'd be easy to be a good guy, tell the stories that need telling, and be true to yourself. Are you crazy? That's not easy. It's easier to be a liar, to not give a shit what happens to your fellows, and to take whatever you can steal.

(Originally written 5/2005)

Yam Story Excerpt 2

Arthur

Noah hoped his roommate would be out long enough to leave a few hours of peace in the cabin. But no such luck. Arthur was only a few minutes behind him getting back. He had hoped he would have time to read, or write or just fall asleep alone. Time alone was something Noah cherished, he was finding out on this experience of very little time alone. The idea of a roommate was somewhat stifling to him after years of having enjoyed his own room back home. Strangely enough this very concern was on Arthur’s frantic mind. As he paced he vented his thoughts to Noah.

“They really mean it when they say you get no privacy, you know. Not a moment to yourself. Always in the fishbowl. You never know when you’ll have a moment to yourself.”

“Was that the article by the girl who was a volunteer in Kiribati, because I—“

Arthur didn’t notice the interruption. “My brother was a volunteer in Mali a few years back, the seventies. He taught in a secondary school. Not two minutes after a shower, he’d be in his room dressing and there’d be a pair of eyes. A student peeking in the window to see how the white man lives.”

“I guess the curiosity just—“

“Well, this went on for weeks on end, a different kid or group of kids each day, peeking in the window. Finally he—“ Noah thought he could see Arthur’s pessimistic world view rising, dough in a pan, as he related his tale. What had pushed him to such fear and excitement?

“Finally he couldn’t take it any more and he chased the kid away with a stick, and then the trouble really started” The guy in Arthur’s story must not have read the literature that said “you live in a fishbowl” when you live as a Peace Corps volunteer.

It was spelled out for them during the application process, during the interview process, but other volunteers returning home, and in a hundred little hints given in any travel book about any country where “westerners” were not a majority. People simply looked at strangers quite a bit, especially children who had never seen the strangers. A white man entering the Solomon Islands that year was much the same level of fascinating as a black man visiting a small city in Japan. Everyone has a look. Some people have a stare. It’s not pleasant but it’s natural.

“It’s only natural for people to stare, Arthur.”

“I know that’s true. It’s just that I’m ready for that part of the experience to be over.” Ready for it to be over? Hell, it hadn’t even begun. What the heck, thought Noah, I’ll share some psychology stuff too, as long as we’re at it.

“I really think I’m going to like the people-staring-at-me part. You wanna know why? I was pretty lonely as a kid. Big house, lots of sibs, I didn’t get a lot of attention. You had to be loud or injured to get much attention at our house.” He thought as he spoke, this is letting your guard down. From now on this nutty guy’s going to consider you his buddy, and follow you around the way he was following Edgar around at the visit to Lars’s research center.

“That’s opposite of me. I had a ton of attention. Only two of us and my brother gone a lot.”

“Two parents?”

“Yep. Divorce?”

“Not only that”, said Noah dramatically, “but a second divorce. Mom got remarried right away to an even weirder guy than Dad.”

“Whoa. And did he have more kids that he added to the mix?”

Noah felt strange about the conversation. As if Arthur were going to keep track of all he said to use it as gossip or blackmail later. Paranoia, infectious? It was Arthur who had all the concerns about privacy, so would he be protective of others’ privacy? For a second, it seemed like a funny idea to talk to Arthur about drugs or group sex, just to see if word would get around. A crazy notion.

“Do you think they have much in the way of divorce here?”

“I bet they don’t. But I also know there’s quite a lot of missionary work here. Traditionally, probably divorces weren’t too common. But you see foreign influence and you see alcohol and gambling and people moving to town, then you sure see divorce, I guess.” Arthur continued for a while in the same vein, for a little too long.

Noah cocked his head sideways as if to let a word or two fall from his ear to his brain. Weren’t he and Arthur the “foreign influence”? Was divorce really something that “Europeans” brought with them? What about the theory that the locals might have freely divorced one another until the missionaries came along and told them God meant for women and men to stay married for life. Noah saw a momentary picture of his mother and father, having to stay together despite their dislike for one another.

After holding forth for quite some time, Arthur shocked his roommate by suggesting they ought to turn in rather than wear themselves out with the cultural talk. “We have plenty of culture to live, I reckon”, he declared. It would be a relief to de-focus from the aura of weird that was Arthur. As Noah dozed off he toyed with naming the phases he’d seen Arthur seamlessly cycle through: scared watcher on the plane; eager boss-follower at Lars’s house; fretting paranoid at the dinner; jabbering academic after supper. What fueled all this? Not just the stress of the trip, or the whole resort would feel like a getaway for wigged out Americans.

Originally Written 2003-2005

Yam Story Excerpt 1

Arrival

The flight from Cairns, Australia to Guadalcanal Island’s Henderson Field was late as usual. At the airstrip (for it was too tiny an operation to be rightfully considered an airport) waited a striking looking crowd, including a band of shirtless local schoolboys with their bodies painted in bright array, pan-pipes in their hands; a nervous but official-looking group of Americans who were not dressed quite as well as a youthful group of what looked like graduate students but turned out to be the Peace Corps “training staff”, bearing clipboards and wearing brightly polished shoes. Finally there was a group of twenty or thirty upper-class looking 30 to 40 year olds with bright polyester clothing and sandals on their feet. This group crowded into the shade of a beautiful and ancient tree in the sand parking lot, just outside the baggage area, which was little more than and overhanging roof to protect against sudden and forceful downpours. The only truly indoor areas were behind doors marked “staff only”. There were no restaurants, gift shops, or any of the commercial distractions Westerners would normally expect.

Twenty three Americans would be arriving within the hour. The boys would strike up their pan pipes, the worried looking Americans would usher the newcomers off to their medium sized buses (very large to a local person) waiting nearby, and so would begin the two-year experience of living more simply than they could possibly imagine. Still, to most islanders, each volunteer’s two years would still be more luxury than a lifetime would bring.

Their arrival would be the end of a long process of application, clearance, and travel. It would be the beginning of a frustrating but necessary several weeks of training in the language and culture of local people. For a few it would be a rapid unraveling of their last two years or more of planning and sacrifice as they realized they were not meant to function outside the United States. For fewer still it would be a rapid psychological deterioration as they discovered their fragile sanity could not endure a combined pressures of culture shock, travel, training and stress.

For Noah, as most of the group, the greatest loss would be the surrender of a number of mistaken expectations.

The group who waited on the ground tried their best not to let show their impatience. The group on board the soon-to-arrive flight tried not to let show their mounting anxiety.

The most noticeable person among the Americans waiting at Henderson Field was a tall new Englander with bloodshot eyes, a balding scalp, and a cigarette in his shaking fingers. He looked like an aging, reformed heroin addict. The aids, much more at ease, stood by his side: a woman with an exaggerated tan, also chain-smoking and a slightly-less-tall man with no cigarette and a decidedly more placid expression. He held a clipboard and wore a belt with a water-bottle holster.

“I want this welcoming to be brief but have some memorable impact for them,” huffed the taller man. “I’ve been thinking of how to combine humor with-“

“Patriotism?”

“Well, not patriotism exactly. Do you think? No. Something like esprit du corps.”

“Esprit du Peace Corps,” countered the placid man. The woman turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes, and pursing her lips.

“Mike, if you’re going to do this with the volunteers…“

“They’ll eat out of his hand.” The nervous man interrupted. And the don’t get to be called volunteers until they have completed their training. Michael’s putting on an act of his. He nerds it up and it helps him keep professional distance. Also it makes them comfortable, like with an uncle.”

Michael briefly guffawed. “Edgar knows me too well, already.” Even as he spoke he was scanning for logistical snags, reviewing the trainers with his eyes, glancing at his clipboard to count this and that, speaking soundless reminders to himself.

“Elaine, you’ll speak first, and you give ‘em a drill sergeant’s pep-talk,” said Mr. Nervous. Elaine’s eyes narrowed a second time.

“We have been over this enough times, my fearless leader. I set them up with a pep talk, then you knock ‘em down with a sense of duty talk. She seemed to be more experienced at the routine despite, clearly, that she had 20 fewer years on Earth. Her nervousness was a nervousness of too much caffeine while his mimicked a reaction to too few sedatives. He felt around in his pockets for something that might have been missing. Mike opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, deciding something.

The boss abruptly pivoted, addressed the most senior looking of the Solomon Islander contingent of his staff standing by.

“What’s the first performance the group will be doing?” The head trainer looked bewildered for a split second, then mentally translated the boss’s question and began his response. In the moment of confidence this offered Elaine, she turned to Mike.

“Is Edgar more freaky today or is it me?” Elaine let her agitation loose for a moment or two. It manifest through her eyes, her head, her dry mane of brown-yet-lightened hair tossing impatiently as she shifted her pocket-search for cigarettes from one tight hip pocket to another.

Mike looked into her face, then past her to where Edgar, their smoking, chatting rail-thin director, struggled through the use of Solomon Islands Pidgin with the trainer. Mike might have been responding with his eyes to Elaine’s query. She continued. “I would love to be able to disappear for the part where he gives his speech. People just don’t buy that shit, do they? Davis never would have—“

Mike showed his first vague sign of irritation, which was no more than a lessening of his placidity, still mainly in command of his face. “Edgar hasn’t been here long enough to have the confidence of a Davis. I’m sure once he finds his footing he’ll—“

“He better fucking find his footing I swear it.” Edgar spun back around now, an amazed look on his face.

“Did you know Francis’s parents have arranged a marriage for him for next year? Why, I didn’t even know that could happen here. Amazing!” His eyes widened with more amazement than words conveyed. Now Mike was the one to narrow his eyes at the boss.

“You know, that’s not the first time Francis has told you that, Edgar.” For a change of pace, Elaine decided to show the placidity.

“Edgar’s quite right though, Mike. This is my second stint in the South Pacific and I haven’t heard of arranged marriages from anyone besides Francis.”

There was a pause, then Mike displayed that side of his personality that neither of his co-administrators fathomed. He laughed loudly at himself, even slapped his knee. This gesture caused an immediate ripple of laughter to pass through the group of trainers. Soon they were all laughing heartily through their minor stage fright, for what reason they knew not.

Mike’s expression registered hearty approval of the trainers’ laughter. He wanted to make sure they stayed happy. These young people were important to the success of Peace Corps in the country. They represented the first impression each volunteer-in-training would have of the Solomon Islands: they would be the first teachers of customs, language, social norms. Amongst all the expatriate Europeans, Asians, North Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and Africans living in this tiny nation, only the missionaries could rival the Peace Corps in the quality of training in local language and culture. Trainers were Peace Corps’s life-blood. Still, Francis would need a talking to after the exchange with the boss. Was he bullshitting Edgar to make him look silly? If so, it would have to stop.

This is an excerpt from a book-length draft.

Please message me below if you'd like to read more.

Country Music as Art

(12/2006)

My spouse loves that Country Music. Not just Country, but "Young" country. What does young mean. Does it mean they put the stars out to pasture before they get too unappealing to the youngest, spendiest demographic? Does that mean that the Willies and Johnnys and Lorettas and Dollys of the future will fade to nothingness before they can have the second, third and fourth acts of their careers as their namesakes did? I have to say I don't like the "young" stuff too much. About the youngest star I can really listen to is Dwight Yoakam, who happens to have made is debut album north of twenty years ago. So I'm somewhat out of it.
So when I tell you I did some analysis of Country you'll forgive me, perhaps, if my studies are prejudiced by the older artists.

I figured out what Country Music has to say to me. It only came clear to me when I started thinking of the songs as part of a literary canon that should be studied with the nose held, in much the same was I held my nose whilst wading through "Classical" English Literature, such as the Bronte Sisters and whoever wrote Frankenstein.

The lament features a person with a "steady heart", known as "Me", paired tragically with someone who likes to go off dancing and cheating while poor Me cries; this person is known as "You". You makes Me feel like crap by Me can't help coming back again and again, or letting You in the door late at night even though You might smell like cheap perfume and alcohol, because Me can't live without You. Me even tried to live without you; this was folly for a "steady heart", incapable of the same neglectful lifestyle that You relishes.

Me may be a steady heart who can't live without You, but Me is no fool. Me even tried to go out with He or She for a while but the thought of You spoiled any effort to find new romance. For some reason He was boring and unattractive to Me, and even though He offered Me the world, You got in the way of Me's new love without even trying. He was patient and tried hard to understand the spell You held over Me, but ultimately that made Me find He even less attractive. Where Me found a She to love, there were a number of different reactions. Sometimes She was boring just like He; other times She was even more neglectful than You, causing Me's heart to be broken twice over.

My research has found, then, that Me is not just a "steady heart" but that Me loved You because of how callous You could be. You might have some words to say in defense of all this alleged mistreatment, but alas You was the silent one in every case, so research yielded no results. In the popular case of a duet, both voices inevitably sing the part of Me, causing the listener great disappointment to discover there are two Yous out there; that they are equally selfish and uncaring; and that they will not be allowed to speak for themselves, most of the time.

December 31, 2006

Alfred and Carla on Ice (fiction excerpt)

(1996-2000; excerpt from much longer story Up and Down the Ladder)

The minivan was stuck on a small patch of ice in the Howard's driveway. This would be easy to free up but Al was caught up in his old feelings, knowing Carla was bringing him to the silly party he'd never otherwise have attended just for the purpose of not telling him something really awful like that she wouldn't like to see him again. She'd brought him out on a couple other occasions not to tell him to back off--but he wasn't getting her message. In fact he never seemed to receive any of the messages she didn't send. Carla was terrible at sending messages, or not sending them, in this silent way; Al actually knew it, instinctively, but there was a romantic and highly foolish impulse squelching the instinct Al read most clearly in Carla's dinner invitations: the message "stay away from now on". So he kept making new drawings for her and calling her after work and speaking to her mother when Carla was out with other friends, creating an increasingly awkward web of unbearably blurred communications between them in which he moved closer and closer to feeling in love with her even though he could tell it was hopeless and even though she returned his calls with less and less enthusiasm but without any true hint of "no" in her voice.

He would have a couple of visits a week in which she brushed off lightly all attempts to touch her and in which he'd begun to see evidence of her non-attraction, after a couple days of Al telling himself, the next visit is going to be different.

Tonight was the next one and it was no different. He sat in the passenger seat of her dad's minivan noticing she had it hung up on a spot if ice listening to a stupid song by his favorite singer. She liked that singer too except his stupid songs were her favorites which Al had originally found interesting or at least amusing but which lately had begun to seem like a warning sign. The stupid song and Carla's absent minded and unfrustrated attempts to move the car were enough to create an air of amusing yet depressing ambience. He noticed that snow had begun to fall. He'd like to watch it accumulate through the window at Paul's house."Let's forget the party and go to Paul's", he said. Paul was a nearby friend who offered Al's favorite types of distraction day or night. He knew Carla would not end up going there-he even asked himself why he continued on with her when so much of her actions he knew ahead of time. But it always seemed worth trying. What he'd been toying with for months was the idea she might have a drink or smoke some pot with him and begin to loosen up and talk about how she felt about him. Paul liked to call pot the "golden lasso" which never altered but simply "magnified the salient aspects of our personalities so we can't be false any longer." Paul was a big vocabulary builder for his Alfred, who loved to be with people who seemed incredibly intelligent.

It never occured to Alfred that Carla didn't need a lasso, that she might already be telling him how she felt.

Carla refused the golden lasso by saying "oh, maybe later", in a far off whisper, but not without a bit of an eager flash of her eyes and a squeeze of his hand saying, if he could have given noticing the physical hints that she might want him, it would have saved Al quite a bit of trouble. The lasso itself was a delicious idea to her, but she didn't much care for Paul.

In fact Carla wondered why Al was having such a hard time seeing what she really wanted from life. As he traded seats with her to casually remove the minivan from the icy spot with cautious reverse-forward, reverse-forward rocking motions she repeated to herself mentally what she'd not said so many times: "I'm not ready. If I were ready it'd probably with you. I like you a lot and I know you're ready but I'm just not." Was he not listening? Did he think she was kidding? Did he need to hear more? It was a busy life for her preparing to graduate and to face the absolute confusion of college applications and all the other senior year headaches. Wasn't he too busy for chasing her this way? True he was one of the most honest and creative people she knew, and he had a great knack for introducing her to other people he worked with or met in other towns, and she even found it flattering that Al constantly ignored blatant advances by Caroline from Ireland, the exchange student all the lower classmen boys lusted for- because he was too stuck on her, Carla. But Carla's reason was plain and simple with no hidden truth beneath it. She wanted to get education over with and start seeing the world and start making some difference in it instead of all this silly, amusing talk.

They drove in considerable silence through the freezing November night to her friend Margaret's house-sit, Carla feeling the sense of relief at hearing other company and Alfred welcoming another oncoming attack of gloom and reflection. It would be awful to stay at Margaret's house-sit long unless there was plenty of intoxicant on hand. This Thanksgiving break business was a bit rough on his psyche because of a memory of a very strange thanksgiving when he was five and the whole town saw Mom and Dad throw groceries at one another along the Massachusetts Avenue near the town common after some confusion at a repair shop had left them stranded with a flat tire and no spare, forty-five minutes late for Aunt Ruth's family dinner gathering. Thanksgiving is when everyone shouts, he'd told his first grade teacher inadvertently, only to be rewarded with a full year of afternoon counseling sessions and some paperwork for Dad which caused another uncomfortable public scene (which he found out about later) between the school principal and Dad.

He thought about telling Carla the old Thanksgiving story but that was potent poison to be dumping on her holiday Wednesday night out so he let it go. He forced a bit of cheer and small talk to help her relax, silently brooding that he had to be at an overcrowded high school Van Halen and J. Geils party instead of back at Paul's with a big joint and some Velvet underground playing But when they arrived he was delighted to see Paul and some of his cronies on the back porch by the full keg, quietly criticizing the whole world . Carla trotted off toward her dependent, sullen-eyed friends who awaited her at every turn, and Al let himself relax a moment, laughing at nothing except the opportunity to escape to his dependent, sullen eyed friends.

Alfred woke up alone at 8:30 on Thanksgiving morning 1984 with a raging headache, alone in someone's bedroom, with a Led Zeppelin poster over the bed and a model something hanging off the ceiling. Shoes off but clothes on. He could smell Carla's hair but she'd left him with a kiss on the cheek and embrace, probably. The driveway was empty of cars and there was a substantial snowstorm in progress. As he searched the house for his jacket he found a few survivors, friends of Margaret and Carla that he hardly knew, and he helped them pick up cigarette packs and beer cups for a while. He'd been paid early because of the holiday so he had plenty of cigarettes to share. He was happy to be among such a neutral and cooperative scene for the moment. But it was Thanksgiving and he had to figure out how to get his ass back to Dad's before someone sent out a search party. So he started walking toward the center of town a couple miles away with the great wet chunks of snow sticking to his hair and no sound but the falling of it.

(1996-2000)

Triad Chapter 1 (fiction excerpt)

The Landing

Planet earth became busier and busier, the pace of life reaching beyond any plan nature or gods could have devised. Greater discoveries and bolder inventions brought humans and their surroundings closer and closer to the crisis of knowing everything and doing everything, yet their earliest folly, which had come with them and every other animal out of the primal muck of earth’s fecund womb, still hunted them every day of their lives: violence and conflict tore at the lives of people; most of them suffered; the few who did not suffer the violence of physical privation were instead plagued by the crisis of conscience created by witnessing such a cruel reality. Throughout the world, humans attempted to create a universal environment of understanding, but underneath it all, animal instinct carried the day, usually with less compassionate results than most people, if they thought about it, would desire.

Many predicted that a destructive force would bring the end of all things. Some said the earth would rid herself of humanity as a body destroys a threatening infection. Others reasoned that God would carry the pure of heart to a paradise, destroying the pathetic sinners. The notion of the onslaught of something was shared by growing numbers of people.

Then, at a time when much of humanity looked outside their own world in expectation of some great change, landed three separate alien invasions. There was no fanfare, no immediate response to the arrival of the foreigners. In fact, most people didn’t notice—even many people whose job it was specifically to notice such things.

Doing a Double (fiction excerpt: Madhouse Diary)

(10/2004)

Ed on Madhouse Diary: Doing a Double

Dad worked in a mental hospital. He'd come home at 4:30 except on the days when he worked double shifts. Then he came home after 11:00. When he was mad at us kids for fighting or generally being difficult he'd remind us that just to keep us in clothes was costing him two sixteen hour work days a week. Every Sunday night and every Thursday night was the schedule. I guess he had Saturday off. He usually slept all day. His snoring was loud enough to make us all understand that we better be quiet. I counted sixteen hours on the clock one day and realized that, as far as functioning through the day, sixteen hours was more than one day. It was all the day's life drained from it, and some of its bones ground into dust as well. I was a kid then, and I knew that a length of time you wouldn't even be bothered doing fun things had to be torture. Dad was a big strong man but we knew he was killing himself gradually.

Years later I'd work a couple sixteen hour shifts to see what it was like. I didn't have kids at home, I wasn't working in a mental hospital, and I wasn't an overweight smoker like dad, but I bet I felt something like what he felt. You don't want to feel that. Around the fourteenth hour I remember something like madness creeping in, then fleeing quickly and leaving me with a queasy sense of triumph that I hadn't fallen into the abyss. There was some gateway that opened in the mind during the double, but it was easy for young, fearless me to see it as a fearful place and step away from it. But was Dad able to avoid its lure?

The whole notion of working in the mad house is a Dickens nightmare. How did Dad come to it as a viable employment option? He could've worked fifteen miles closer to home at something far safer. Safer both physically and mentally. I worked it out in my mind that something about being in the crazy house made Dad feel justified in being in a terrible mood all the time. When it came time to voice his state of mind to the world, what else need he say besides "mental hospital" and "kids at home" before even the most cold-hearted listener would begin to think, that explains it.

(Written 10/2004)

Fascinated (fiction excerpt)

(11/1991)

Are we alone?

The separation is complete.

All the others have gone.

Take off my clothes with that nutty roommate's records playing in the other room. The record has repeated itself about a thousand times this afternoon.

Just let it go on and on. We are fascinated with one another but you are fascinated with me in a different way. You see me as one sees a book about the back woods of America where people still think naive thoughts such as "there will only be one real love for me." And I am fascinated with you the same way a person from the back woods is fascinated with any eighteen year old woman with her own credit cards and an apartment in Manhatten who comes along.

Someone even told me that a singer who had had an affair with you two years ago, when you were sixteen (!) wrote a song about your hair. It was who? He must be fifty!

It was all in the spirit of the city of no sleep, the city where you can get a hot dog and a bottle of bourbon at four in the morning and catch a film festival on Christmas day that goes all day and night. It is all true. New Years in the square, what is that square called? And those magazines, inspired by the artist who did the crazy Elvis Presley with big six-guns. What do I know? Where I come from the whole town closes down the day before Christmas and people look at you like you are crazy if they see you on the street.

I am simply baffled.

The night is dreadful in the city. That is my advantage. At the age of eighteen I have seen two hundred thousand stars burn up in the sky. One time, a thousand in one night. You cannot believe me and I have to show it to you. But you got too cold and I had to take you home.

Standing in the field, wanting to ignore his almost unbearable physical attraction to her, she tried to turn their minds to a more neutral subject, to the strange, rusting machinery which formed tangled shadows in the dim light of the crescent moon.

"What do you think that thing is for?"

"I grew up on a farm. I never worked on one."

"What the hell do you do on a farm if you don't work?"

What the hell you do is you make the day go by without getting stung by one of the yellowjackets in the nest over the back porch or getting butted by the Ram, who is named Raymond. He will give anyone a healthy respect for what the world believes to be a timid and fluffy creature who habitually runs from the wolf, the dog, or whatever else crosses its path. Raymond is neither timid nor fluffy, and he frequently stands up to any creature who cares to offer a threat to his dominion of the yard in front of the carriage-house.

He has all the demeanor of a drill sergeant, with perenially short hair and angry face bearing down on all who face him.

Raymond's fiery disposition is appreciated and imitated by all the other species in the barnyard, though he remains the most ominous through the constant threat that he may at any moment charge, not stopping until his head has impacted severely on another living creature. Each of the begrudgingly coexisting creatures has his own trademark mode of attack, and the young children have all learned the hard way to know the warning signs of an impending assault.

(Raymond went after dad)

(written 11/1991)

Madhouse Diary (fiction excerpt--takes place in October)

(12/2004)

I began to imagine the snow was falling outside, even though it was a clear night and the temperature was an October mild. In my mind, though I knew it to be true, I wished we could all go out and make sure. Someone noticed me kind of squirming in my seat, and I found myself explaining the whole notion.

"That's cool," said Tabitha, but everyone else was quiet. Another long silence followed. I started thinking, this is the last time these girls will invite me anywhere with them, now that I'm talking like a 15 year old. Plus I kept clearing my throat, that last big cough not really all the way done with me. Finally Annie spoke.

"Now you got me thinking it's snowing outside." And we were all laughing again. But this time in a frantic, convulsive way that made me forget what it was that was funny. I figured that pot didn't really do anything to me. I was high on my nervousness, just happy to be around some attractive women who found me at all interesting. If I stopped to think about the last couple years, the end of my marriage, the ugly blows life dealt me, the state of the world, I could've been weeping with equal intensity.

(written 12/2004)