August 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Man I have not had much time to do some nice relaxing writing, and well I have no talent in art. I dislike reblogging things just to reblog them, maybe I’m just not fit for the modern day social media on account of my tendency to stay silent.
Sadly I am becoming a bit untethered at the moment. My ears are becoming too acute and I cannot sleep, my eyes are beginning to ache. It is the...
“I thou thee, thou traitor!”
– Sir Edward Coke, prosecuting Sir Walter Raleigh.
June 2012
10 posts
3 tags
How I became enlightened, or: Burn a field and new...
Once upon I time I was a child, shocking but true. When I was a child I possessed fear. I guess I possessed some level of insight too, for it seems that fear should be impossible without understanding. Tornadoes scared me. Roller coasters scared me. Death scared me. Life scared me. Time scared me. Anger scared me. Pain scared me. My own sorrow scared me. I was an unhappy child. I gave up these...
2 tags
Sometimes I fall in love with the stupidest ideas.
I currently desire to write a version of the Brothers Karamazov set in a twisted world of organic magic and engineered creatures to track down the traitorous Smerdyakov, avenge their father and clear Dmitry’s name. I have a surprising number of ideas for it. Should I be rethink this?
1 tag
Blue Cliff Record 57
Monk: 'The supreme Way is not difficult; it simply dislikes choosing'. What is non-choosing?
Joshu: Above the heavens and under the heavens I am the only one, alone and exalted.
Monk: That is still choosing.
Joshu: You stupid bumpkin, where is the choosing?
The Monk remained silent
--I call too few people bumpkins, and of those I do very few of them are monks. It must be nice to be a zen master.
1 tag
“A monk asked Tozan, “How can we escape the cold and heat?”
Tozan...”
– Blue Cliff Record 43 (Though this translation comes from elsewhere I believe.)
In case you didn’t know, I like some Koans. They’re pretty much nothing until we make something of them, but once we do they’re swell.
"Sifu Kisu How do you deal with Anger?
sifu-kisu:
Be aware then let go.
Cultivate the good roots of non-contention.
Gaze through the opponent as if scanning through to a distant horizon.
Guide as a gentle example.
If you do not allow yourself to attach to what you feel is most their most annoying aspect then suddenly it is no longer annoying right?
Emptiness & compassion.
Row the boat with the flow of the river row the...
3 tags
Uncle Iroh is kind of an existential coward
First let me say, I love Iroh. I enjoyed his antics, and the interaction between him and Zuko carried half the show.
I admire many things about Iroh, he’s clear headed, strong but humble, recognizes that balance should be preserved, the spirits should be honored. He is compassionate and wise.
However, after the death of Lu Ten, he gave up. He did not abandon merely the siege at Ba Sing...
3 tags
Did you know?
That resonance is the most useful word science has given us. I encourage you to use it at all points in time, especially if writing trashy sci-fi.
6 tags
Loose lips stop crack ships
In a darkened control room illuminated only by the flickering light of a dozen screens, there sat a man astride two worlds. Here he viewed into the collective dreaming of thousands, the twisting the turning, the maelstrom, the war of visions and conceptions turning around a central point. It was here that Bill sat, looking in on the dreamers, on the contention in their mouths. He smiled a soft...
May 2012
9 posts
5 tags
Flash-fiction roulette #5: "Memories not included"
A middle aged man, walked across the threshold, and his eyes lit up. Any sense of tedium quickly faded, the bordello had that effect, inside there was just fun. The girls were beautiful and sophisticated, they wouldn’t likely have gone down the path of easy money like this at any place but the Lethe Bordello.
[[MORE]]
There was no shame in it here, they wouldn’t bring the work home...
4 tags
Flash-fiction roulette #4: returning home to find...
Commander Clinton Laster, the hero of the battle of the quantum fissure, receive his last salute of the victory tour and entered the En-Dis cell. His vision clouded and unclouded. But even before his atoms were disentangled, even before he was again a single person standing in the fields of Algidus he knew something was wrong. His eyes were clouded with the double-scene effect from...
4 tags
Flash-fiction roulette #3: Noir/hardboiled style...
A corpse washed in off shore. A corpse: naked, frozen, and wealthy. They called her the queen ice-bitch of finance. The most powerful single woman in the world, or so they used to say. Every piece of shit reporter in town was already trying to step on their mothers back for an edge, usually the gulls served the role of filth around here, but today these vultures were in a frenzy. In the ice-bitch...
4 tags
Flash-fiction roulette #2: mash-up creepy/romance
I leaned in and kissed her softly on the neck. She turned with a start and a jump, eying me with fear. What caused me to act so brash, so brazen. Ego? no, I had been intoxicated by her, I had grown tumescent. She could see it couldn’t she? She could see the inevitability, that she would fall in love or lust, tonight she would fall, and as she lay I would take her. Her eyes were cold and...
4 tags
Flash-fiction roulette #1: A sailing story
Thick slick slime on the decks, grown heavy with algae and grog, “heave you rat bastards, heave up from the depths the treasure of legend”. An ugly crewman slipped on a patch of rotting wood, and fell face first into the mizzenmast, his face now even uglier as it spurt blood from a broken nose. A grand chortle went up among’st the deckhands, even as sudden weight jerked them all forward. The...
“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason...”
– A Study in Scarlet, A. C. Doyle
I am not a great fan of this story, but as with almost all stories of at least a little renown there was something I thought worth noting. The logic Mr. Holmes here espouses seems to me to be the cornerstone of all those gifted in dissembling. Those who construct...
In the pipe
Coming soon a handful of flash-fiction stories I wrote a while back playing a game of writing-prompt roulette. Quality very not guaranteed.
Wúménguān 19
Zhàozhōu: “What is the Way?”
Nánquán: “Your ordinary mind—that is the Way.”
Zhàozhōu: “Can it be grasped?”
Nánquán: “The more you pursue, the more does it slip away.”
Zhàozhōu: “How can you know it is the Way?”
Nánquán: “The Way does not belong to knowledge, nor does it belong to non knowledge. Knowledge is illusion. Non knowledge is beyond discrimination. When you get to this Way without doubt, you are free like the vastness of space, an unfathomable void, so how can you explain it by yes or no?”
Upon hearing this, Zhàozhōu was awakened.
“The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
– Seneca. (via sifu-kisu)
Aye, Kisu, its a fine anodyne but a terrible cure. With both the wound untended and the cause untreated, we are liable to either fester or relapse. 