bare feet in the street

i was out for a stroll with my dog. we were just making the usual rounds. the weather was hotter than usual, but that didn't really make me pay any closer attention to where i was, what i was doing, and where i was going.

then, my dog started barking. she was a big boxer - scary looking, but harmless. she jumped back from where she had been sniffing. where were we right then? the park? we were in the park. my dog, she jumps back and barks and i pay attention.

i'm thinking about skunks and porcupines. i've had to be up in the dark scrubbing down my dog after a skunk sprayed her eyes. i've seen the porcupines at the edge of the city, like living punji sticks, and i've had nightmare visions where i'm endlessly plucking the barbs from my poor baby's nose. i'm worried about skunks and porcupines. i'm not thinking about feet.

two feet, naked and ending at the ankle in a clipped bone and skin that twisted up to the white tip, like something out of a zombie movie, are moving as if someone's attached to them and walking. They step out of the grass. They walk down the street.

i can't believe i'm telling you this story. i never told anyone about the two feet. but i saw them, and my dog saw them. and it was a hot day, but it wasn't hot enough to drive us both insane. and this is old caddo country. caddo indians used to live here, and they got smallpox and died like a zombie movie.

that's what it was like for them. they got this horrible disease and it killed everybody. then these people with white skin like corpses walked over the hills from the lands below the earth riding horses and shooting guns, and rounding everybody up that wasn't one of the zombies to kill them.

and the barefeet walked down the road, and they were brown like indian feet, and maybe this is still indian land, and they're coming from the other side.

my dog and i still walk there, and i always know where i am, where i am going, and what i am doing.

i've seen hands floating in the dark, i think. i've seen long, black hair. i've found roadkill with speartips.

be careful out there, friend. this city won't last forever.

another secret of cats

in my continued research into the mystical properties of the common housecat, i have deduced the true secret of all that shedding.

massimo, as anyone who has ever set foot in this domicile knows, sheds three times his body weight in hair every two days.

this is, in fact, a self-defense mechanism, and a useful tool for hunters.

with all these puffs of cat hair everywhere, feeble-visioned creatures like geckos are quick to meet their doom when they do not realize that massimo is, in fact, not just another big poofy ball of cat-hair.

rodentia with their awful red eyes have difficulty discerning the clumps of cat hair, like tumbleweeds over the kitchen tile. thus, massimo is hidden by his own natural camouflage.

also, when he is sleeping, no larger animals will attack him, because he looks like a big, poofy pillow.

however, a clear disadvantage to this scenario is that occasionally larger creatures come along with brushes and scrape away his defense mechanisms.

dreaming about the end of the world again

i was dreaming about the end of the world again.

i was thinking about how cosmic order exists beyond our comprehension. thus, why do we assume the cosmic order will end under our comprehension.

i suspect that the world exists in our senses. thus, every single death is the end of the world because it is the end of the sensation of the world.

i dreamed about a deus ex machina that didn't save a thing. the god came down from olympus to end the war, and raised his glorious thunderbolts, but they didn't do a damn thing to end the war we were fighting.

and then, people started dying, all pelmel, and no one was dying when they were supposed to because this was a metaphor for the end of the world.

we live with a billion worlds in our faces, because these worlds are created by the measurement of the bodies that sense the world. we reach out to each other and collectively create our own shared creation of creation. and when we die, it is the end of the world, and it comes like a thief in the night, and the greatest myth of christianity and religion is that everyone's world will end at exactly the same moment in time.

but i'm in central, and you're in greenwich mean, and up in space they measure the light and move with einstein's theory of relativity, and no one experiences the same time.

we live in a hazy window of about ten minutes. there is no true exactitude.

and when the end of the world comes, your eyes will bend shut. your fingers will curl closed. your tongue will twist and wilt. and you will hear nothing. and that will be the end of the world.

it might as well be, for you.

anyway, that's what i've been dreaming about lately. i need to work on a different story for a while, and maybe i won't have dreams like this.

dark dreams of death and ruin.

"night flight" got picked up in a journal

the most excellent poetry publication (remember robert shirtliffe) called Tipton Poetry Journal just accepted a little poem of mine called "night flight" for their next issue, (#7).

I want to encourage everyone to pick up a submission to this excellent little magazine, because if we don't support literary magazines of quality with our pocketbooks, we don't have them anymore.

publishing poetry is always a good feeling.

dare i use one? i dare:

;)

exceedingly early character sketch

my second novel, NEVER KNEW ANOTHER, began as a character sketch. i took two player-character pictures from Icewind Dale 2, and imagined a scenario that juxtaposed them in some manner of interpersonal conflict.

the names have all changed. the situations have all changed. the characters are all completely different. fortunately, so - i might add - because this early character sketch is just not good enough to unravel spirits from the rafters of haunted houses. there's nothing holy about this sketch.

anyway, the final book is out a few interesting places that i really can't tell you about - you know how that story works, writers.

take a look at the barest of beginnings:

Mari spent the night sifting through the back alleys and the secret basements. She threatened bouncers with magic fire. She threatened bartenders and card-runners and pickpockets and bums and wild eyed prophets of doom.
She picked up her half-brother’s trail.
In her mind, she thought of her half-brother, Tenk, as two people. The first was the young man that fought to the edge of life to save his sister from the wicked inside of her and the pious all around. The second was the dying man that faded into the city with a lick of the lips and a hungry fist.
It was the second brother whom she was hunting tonight.

“Wake up, Tenk,” whispered a voice. “Tenk!”
Tenk groaned.
“Tenk!” shouted the voice. It was his half-sister, Mari. He felt her fingers on his hands.
“I’m awake,” he said. He opened his eyes. His legs and arms still weren’t working right. In his hand, he still held the long stem of the hookah. He smiled. “I had a horrible dream.”
Tenk looked around the room. A low pink of smoke hovered in the air. Soft pillows stank of vomit and smoke and smothere the filthy cellar floor. Tenk’s sister was so mad that her tongue dangled past her teeth. Nobody cared about demon blood in this room. In the streets, she’d be arrested for her tongue alone. Here, she was a purse with women’s legs.
“I was looking for you all night!” she shouted. “I didn’t know where you went!”
Tenk laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You spent all of our money, didn’t you?!”
“No,” he said. His body slowly discovered solid ground below him.
“How much did you waste this time?”
“Not all of it,” he said.
Two dwarves watched listlessly as the siblings fought. From upstairs, a bouncer peered down into the cellar. The light and the noise of the tavern spilled in from the open door. He shouted, “Take it outside!”
“I had to pay just to come down here and find him!” she shouted.
“I don’t care!” shouted the bouncer, “But you gotta keep it down and stop fighting if you stay!”
Tenk nodded. “We’ll go,” he said, “Will you help me outside?”
“No,” she said. She let go of his hands. She had been holding his hands. He sank back down to the pillows. She snarled, and grabbed his hands again. She dragged him to the stairs.
He struggled to work his legs. He couldn’t quite make them work.
“Hey, you!” shouted Mari to the bouncer. “Hey! I’ll give you a kiss if you throw my brother outside!”
The bouncer shrugged. “Sure.”
Tenk dropped asleep when the bouncer picked him up. Tenk dreamed of flying. He woke up lying in an alley behind the tavern, his face covered in mud. He looked up to see his sister’s frowning face. He grimaced. “Hi,” he said, “Have you been here long?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Have I been here long?” he asked. He tasted the rising bile on his tongue.
She folded her arms. “How much did you spend?”
He threw up in the mud.

The two lived in a room above a bakery. The smell of the baked goods wafted up into the open window on the damp sea storm winds. The siblings sat at the table next to the window. Tenk stared at a cup of tea she had made for him. He didn’t feel well enough to drink it.
Mari sat across from him, and stared at his tea. She didn’t want to look at him.
Finally, she said, “You used to come up with excuses,” she said. “You used to tell me a woman left you, or you were making a deal and your partner went there. You used to tell me about my father.”
“I know,” he said. He coughed. He tasted bile in his mouth when he coughed.
She leaned back, calmly. “Aren’t you even going to say you’re sorry?”
“Probably not,” he said.
“Are you sorry?” She looked at his face, desperate to see remorse in his crevices.
He thought about his answer. He looked up into her eyes. “Yes,” he said.
“You’re always sorry,” she said, “If you’re sorry, why do you keep doing it?”
He coughed again. He shook his head, and looked at the tea. “I don’t know.”
The tea’s waves of steam faded into tepid nothing. Time passed in silence.
“Drink your tea,” she said.
“I’m not ready, yet.”
She sniffed. “Drink it anyway.” She was calm. She was angrier when she was calm.
He nodded. He took the cup in his hand. He considered the orange liquid. He held his breath, and swallowed as fast as he could. It burned down his sore throat. When it landed in his stomach, it sunk like lead weights.
Tenk swallowed down rising bile. He held his breath until the urges passed.
“Feel better?” she said, bitterly.
“No.”
“Good. What are we going to do with you, Tenk?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“We have to leave the city. I would rather spend the rest of my life sleeping under a tree than watch you do this to yourself. We have to leave the cities.”
“Where will we go?”
“You took all of our savings. Do you have any money left?”
“I have a hundred good coins in my pocket. I think I won it gambling. I can’t remember what we were gambling over, but I think I won it.”
“Did you steal it?”
“The thing is… I don’t remember. You know how it can be. Once I get started, everything fades.” He looked down at his hands. “I hope I won it.”
She coughed. She shook her head. “That’s what will happen if you keep this up. You’ll fade. People will find you in a ditch. A merciful soul will take you to a temple. You’ll spend the rest of your life staring at the ceiling and drooling.”
“I know.”
She clenched her fist, and pounded the table. The tea trembled. “If you know…!” She hit the table even harder. She snatched the teacup and heaved it out the open window.
“I don’t know why I do it, Mari,” he said, “If I knew, I’d stop.”
Mari scratched at the scales beneath her shirt. She scowled. Her scales itched when she was angry.
Tenk’ bottom lip trembled. He closed his eyes. “You could just leave me, you know.”
She frowned, dropping calm again. “I’m not leaving you,” she said, “I want to help you.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Have you ever thought about…?”
She stood up from the table. She looked out the window at the tea cup. It had fallen into thick, wet mud. The cup hadn’t even scratched from the two-story fall.
“I’ve never thought about leaving you, Tenk,” she said, “We have some money left, however you got it. We’ll sell everything. We’ll buy some gear. We’ll sign on with a merchant. We have to get out of the city. We’ll find somewhere new, somewhere far away. We’ll start over.” She sighed and took a deep breath. The baking bread from below smelled too good to her right then. She didn’t want things to smell good..
“I’m sorry,” he said, “You liked it here.”
She held the rest of her words inside of her. They burned.

movie theatres like death

i like to sit alone in large theatres by myself. i do not like when the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th person arrives to spoil my solitude.

even then, in the most crowded of theatres, the lights go dim, and everyone ignores everyone else and we stare at the screen like we're alone with our lovers and children next to us - but individually alone and locked up in our own eyes and ears - alone and alone in a crowded room. still, i prefer to be literally alone in theatres, not just metaphorically so. i like to make the metaphors real, because they then spiral beyond the easy metaphor into new realms of meaning.

alone in the place where i should be alone in a crowd is what i prefer. all the empty seats become the illusionary crowd of ghosts. i am sitting in this chair that's shaped like a plush tombstone. in other planes of sensation, all of those chairs are full with just one person alone in a theatre. we're all ghosts for each other, in our silver-sreened cemetary. the movie rolls - and all these plots are the same - pulling a narrative out of the memories in my head. the memories replay and replay until i forget the details and the film falls further into the stylized techniques of idiosyncratic directors. finally, even these narratives fade to mythos languages, gibberish child-speak in the rushed conclusion. then, the music plays and it's just a list of words, of names, like in an obituary where they list survivors and family friends.

and then, you're all alone staring at the empty screen of your own forgotten life. mysterious sounds at the edge of language, like audio hallucinations, are all that's left of your mind. you strain to listen, but you can't make anything out. somewhere people are laughing, running, talking to each other.

and you're alone in a theatre.

i sit alone in a theatre and imagine all these things. people arrive a little later and yak loudly about where they should sit. they rattle popcorn and icy beverages. their clothes make annoying swishing sounds while they walk down the aisles, still talking.

more people come. then a few more shout for their families over the previews and opening credits.

we are then, all of us, metaphorically alone in the crowded theatre.

at the end of the show, i stand up and exit the theatre. i drive home in the dark to an empty apartment.

i turn off the lights and watch the ceiling fan spin in the moonlight and the streetlamp glow like the way the milky way is spinning in the dark in the cosmic eye.

CONTEST TIME!

I just won my own ARC in an auction. I already got one. I don't need it.

You do.

I'm holding a contest starting right now and ending October 21, 2007 to see who shall win this lovely ARC. (Personally autographed, of course).

I will choose the winner myself.

To win a personalized, autographed ADVANCE READING COPY, I want you to send me your favorite original sonnet, villanelle, sestina, limerick, or triolet about (naturally) LAST DRAGONS.

Winner and as many runner-ups as I want (and maybe some honorable mentions) will be posted to my cool blog.

Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your cats. Tell your neighbors. Tell anybody.

Enter as often as you'd like, with as many original entries as you'd like.

Send everything to me at j_m_mcdermott (at) yahoo (dot) com

Anybody want an Advance Copy of LAST DRAGON?!

Reviewers are turning over the book to used bookstores.

They're showing up in the world, for sale (despite that prominent note on the cover that says "Not For Resale"... It happens).

Follow this link to see if you can find yours today.

I ask that you - PLEASE - do what these advance copies were intended to be used for. Please post a review of the book, somewhere, everywhere, and etc.

I tell the story and I tell the story

I say, sternly, furiously, in my big-booming, you-have-been-a-bad-kitty voice, "Get in the box!"

The story whinges and cringes. "NO! I don't WANNA get in the box!"

"This magazine will not even look at you if you are over 4,000 words. You do want them to look at you, don't you? GET IN THE BOX!"

"NO! I hate the box! I want to be 8000 words! I want to go to a different market!"

"You're crap at 8000 words and you know it. Now get in the goshdarn, Hemingway-humping BOX!"

"NO! NO! I HATE THE BOX! I HATE IT!"

I take a deep breath. I tell the story I shall count to ten. I cross my arms. I tap my foot. "I'm getting you in that box even if I have to chop out the land of the dead."

"YOU WOULDN'T DARE!

"I would."

"You know what would happen if you did that, and I fit in the box?"

"You'd fit in the box. I'd send you off."

"And I'd stink and you know it. You need the land of the dead."

I stomp my foot like an angry horse. "STOP TALKING BACK YOU ANNOYING PEST AND GET IN THAT BOX RIGHT NOW, MISTER!"

"NO! I don't WANNA get in that AWFUL BOX!"
...

...

...

check back later. This may go on like this all night.

until then, how about a good, old-fashioned mystery novel?

create what's said about yourself. also, about the holy people

i am a new person whenever a new person looks at me.

i create what is said about myself.

my angles, my corners, the gaps in my lips when i smile, the texture of my palm when i shake hands all carve new territory in the mind's twisted, cluttered desk. but new places are rarely carved. they are pulled together like a dream mosaic of familiar mental schema. i am placed upon the patterns of other people i have never met.

bits and pieces of aunts and cousins and siblings and friends and lovers and short acquaintances all pull together in the soup of psyche until my face is recreated behind the face of the new person i have just met.

my smell is actually full of other smells. my sounds - my voice, the sweeping muffled insect call of corduroy when my legs cross, the way my jacket grinds gently on the suede chair - are not my sounds inside your head because i am a new person to you. i am made of the sounds of them that came before.

and you, new friend, new lover, new enemy, else newly to be forgotten: you, too, are a frankenstein monster in my mind. we gape and pose at each other like foreign embassies posturing in diplomatic relations. we are, both of us, foolish and not ourselves at all in the other new person's head.

and i look upon you, new person, fully aware of the bric-a-brac of brains, and i am still incapable of meeting you any other way.

perhaps a holy person is the one that has no head for faces, voices, and identities. 'tis easier to love all when that love is uncontained by the history of bodies and faces and voices and smells. the holy one shakes hands with another formless, gormless entity. all they can sense inside the head is the luminous light of life. all bodies are just souls and everyone looks like a brother and a sister.

why does George W Bush hate poor children?

Why does George W Bush hate America and poor children so much?

When you are poor. When you are very poor. When you don't know where rent is coming from next month. When you work full-time and do not make ends meet. When you have to miss a whole day of hourly-wage work to sit with your sick, crying child in an emergency room waiting to see a doctor that will make you pay for this basic thing for years.

When you are almost poor. When you were middle class, and then suddenly discovered yourself to be chronically ill, but technically in that hazy gray area between aid eligibility and wealth that precludes your ability to qualify for necessary healthcare programs while you still don't know where rent is coming from next month.

When you are poor. When you cannot afford healthcare for yourself, much less your children.

ANYTHING is better than nothing.

Socializing all medicine would not improve all the problems in the system.

However, the way health insurance works is that it doesn't actually work. It's broken. It's busted. It needs to be fixed. And, companies don't make any money by fixing the thing that's broken about it. Thus, in this situation, the Federal government is the only entity with the clout and the power to make even minor changes that can make everyone's lives better.

One minor change that would have made America a much happier, healthier, wealthier, and safer place was the federal bill approving funds for the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Bush did an evil thing when he vetoed this bill. For the cost of one day in Iraq, we could have improved everyone's life - and I do mean every single solitary American citizen, including the wealthiest and healthiest.

Some problems are a keystone in a bridge of many bricks leading to disaster. Poor children's health care is one of those issues. It pulls kids out of school - the ones who need it most to improve their standing in life. It lowers their grades. It forces parents to miss work, lose jobs, etc. If you cannot afford to care for your chronically ill child - for instance, one with Autism that requires special, expensive schooling and close supervision, or Asthma that requires constant care and close supervision - no amount of free market punditry will make a damn bit of a difference in your life, or your child's life.

Teen pregnancy increases because the healtchare knowledge just isn't imparted by doctors and nurses.

Chronic illnesses remain undiagnosed until they are very deadly, dangerous problems, destroying lives and family retirement accounts tragically and unnecessarily.

Things like chronic headaches and lack of appropriate corrective eyewear dramatically diminish a child's performance in school. Things like bad dental care diminish your child's ability to eat healthy and nutritious food, which - in turn - diminishes your child's academic performance and life options.

Missed classes from poor healthcare promote drop-out rates.

Poor children's healthcare increases crime. It increases the size and glut of our already crowded prisons. It places a heavy toll on the urban and rural communities that must then increase the spending of police and public safety tools that increase the dangerous militarization of our communities. It increases the "Us versus Them" mentality of class and race issues that affect us all.

With the increase in criminals comes an increase in crime and thusly an increase in organized crime. This means an increase in all levels of gang violence, drug use, drug-trafficking, prostitution and human slavery... All of which take money out of American citizen pockets and places it into the pockets of our nation's enemies.

Promoting universal health care for children takes money out of the pockets of terrorists. I wish I was exaggerating. Terrorists deal in opium and hashish, after all. Even Bush will admit that much. Poor health care among children does contribute in great strides to all the issues of endless poverty and poor opportunities that contribute to drug-dealing and drug using.

Vetoing this bill just caused a whole system of little disasters that add up to a world that isn't as fair, isn't as just, isn't as economically sound, and just - simply - isn't the America we know and love.

Critics say, "But why should the Fed do this? Don't many states have, already, this CHIP system?" Many do. All do not. I live in a state without one. We used to have one. It is a damn shame we don't. The Fed should deal with this because it is a universal need, and needs the kind of funding only the Fed can provide. Even the states that have the program need more funds, always.

Do not be afraid of limited social programs that could be called - by fools - "Socialism". Socialism is not a slippery slope. There is no domino effect. Be afraid of the people who oppose things simply because they are afraid of a single word - one which I doubt they truly understand.

Socialized healthcare, as an option for all children - especially the ones that have no options, is a very good idea. This one specific instance, socialization could make our freedoms and democracy more glorious, indeed.

Also, when I hear critics speak of this, they question the cut-off points and insist that no one should get a "free ride". They reveal their anti-conservative values. No true conservative would want the govenment to decide for the individual what that individual needs. Wouldn't you prefer to be the decision-maker in your child's life instead of a government suit who only knows your name when your form is in his hands?

How very un-conservative, and foolish. The program is needed. Adding a layer of oversight is not as effective as allowing parents to choose private health care as they can afford it - because it will be better than the socialized stuff.

All in all, a group of very stupid, hateful people just quashed something that is not only morally correct, but fiscally and socially >Necessary< for the children and parents of this nation.

I ask again, and this is rhetorical, because I don't think I can keep talking about this without more whiskey than I can get right now.

Why does George W Bush hate America and her poor children so much?

found something on e-bay

so, you work in an office. you deal with a sales staff. sometimes they try to butter you up with gifts.

if you're anything like my mother, you thank the sales guy, and immediately hand off any gift at all to your staff. you give these things away to others.

or, if you like books, and you're given books to read as part of your job, you keep them for yourself, garage-sale/used-bookstore-sale-them them later, or donate to a library.

right?

why would you auction such a gift on e-bay?

anyone?

seems a touch tacky, no?

people of the interweb, i respectfully request that you refrain from bidding on this.

if i can win this auction, i shall run a contest for all of you, and I will give this book to the winner free of cost.

the flowers of germany

i was consulting with my sister's cats about the sad story of mr toad/mr moth. my sister's cat was born in germany, and spent her whole life in the confines of an apartment.

she said to me, some in german some in english, that in her country, cats do not do such awful things.

i asked her what cats in germany do.

she said that they prefer to sculpt their victims into flowers. the timing has to be just right, or else the bubble will burst open too soon into a bloom, and die in the frost.

and, because this is germany, each breed of cat is assigned a different flower. there is no competition. there is only punishment to those that neglect their duties. she was taken from her mother too soon to learn the true art. she and massimo try their best in the apartment, carefully measuring their blows against spider, lizard, and bug. they're trying to make peonies, because that is what their mother taught them.

sometimes, they practice on paper towels or kleenex, trying to get that perfect rumpled puff of the peony just right.

i can only wonder what other mysteries of nature exist if we only bother to ask.

at the end of our conversation, diva was quite insistent upon one subject, however.

"where's my breakfast, you bastard?!"

recommended with reading the first chapter of last dragon

for the lucky few that have gotten a taste of my first chapter, and the lucky many that mayhap will get a taste soon, i have suggestions on ways to enhance your experience. like any fine dish, the addition of complementary wines and menu items will likely improve an already salubrious subject.

i recommend reading LAST DRAGON with White Chocolate, Pinot Noir, Rainer Cherries, Firelight, Bengal Spice Tea, Rainy Afternoons, Reading Aloud to Cats, Beanbag Chairs, Curried Tofu with Vegetables Over Brown Rice, Comfy Chairs in Quiet Cafes, Blackberries and Whipped Cream, Shostakovitch Symphonies, Long Train Treks to Calcutta Upon the Orient Express in a Luxurious Sleeper Cabin, Turkish Coffee, Samuel Barber's Two Essays for Orchestra, Reading While Practicing Tai Chi Chu'an, Dark Chocolate, White Merlot, and Always Thy Comfiest Pajamas.