Tag Archives: writing

Ghost City

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Ordos

It was the first time I felt I could relax, even for a moment.  I knew that it couldn’t last.  After the three-hour hike down the alien streets where the grass was beginning to push through the cracks, I was back at the building.  The silence permeated every cell of my being but I knew I couldn’t turn the music on.  The fact that I had turned the multi-module in my arm off was the only thing probably keeping me out of harms way.  Still it would have been great to listen to something.  The only solace I had as I came up the leaf strewn parking lot was the sound of birds.  Those crows that always gathered like a gang of spies that had never given up.

The door was left open, which I kind of expected, but at least it wasn’t smashed down in the final riots before we were all shipped east to the fence-line.  It was a little silly being here.  It was hardly like I could take the elevator up, let alone go in, throw my keys down and grab a beer from the fridge.  It would be probably white walls.  Nothing but white walls and dust stains from the scraping of the furniture.

I began my ascent up the stairwell, shafts of light coming in the windows, their frames high above where anyone could reach them.  The walls looked grimier and more battered that I remember.  Minette and I lived on the 5th floor which was I was sort of half thankful for at the moment.  I wasn’t in bad shape but I definitely began to feel it by the third.  I sat on the fading carpet and looked out the window across from the black-railed stairwell.  The orange yolk of the sun was broken by shafts of cloud, the afternoon sky a slight cedar that we always called the Curtain.  The Curtain never lifted where I had spent the last fifteen years since we were gathered.  Out here the effect of the great processors seemed slightly thinned, like when you add more water to a teabag.

I was also looking for movement in the city.  The skyline was grey and quiet like you would expect, but more unkept, with bramble and grasses turning everything into a strange sort of greenhouse solarium with the orange white roof above.  There was so many of us back in the camp that I suspected it would take some time before anyone noticed I was not around, but then all it would take was one idiot to say “Hey, where’s Yun?” and then the reports of a lost worker would set out the whole barrage of Shepherds into their roles as the people’s trackers.  I knew just how invisible I wasn’t, with how my heat register made it’s imprints on everything around me, sticking me out in Westwood like a beacon.  I almost considered staying exactly where I was.  Partly due to the fact that what I was after would have already have been stripped from the room to crush any thoughts of doing exactly this and partially because I didn’t even want to see our home like this.  It was one way to sleep in section twelve.  I mean, I had free Wifix at call and I was really careful about my credit points but that was just the crap they wanted us to see.  If I wasn’t reading what few pdfs were still out of their reach I would think back to when we had our last job, our last day of work, our last meal.  I can even remember my last employer on his knees crying, with his sister Satiyo beside him rubbing his shoulders and cooing to him like a child.  He wasn’t the nicest guy on the planet back then but of the four bosses I had, he was the last and to his credit he had tried to build the company from the ground up.  Now he was just a balding man in a dirty white shirt on the floor, his shoulders shaking with his hand to his face.  I remember I didn’t know what to say.  I just sort of stood there.

Back on my feet I continued up to fifth.

The inside of the room could have been anywhere, in any room all up the coast.  It was better than most I had passed in the halls.  No one had attempted to squat in it before the gatherings.  The walls were still mostly white.  Minette smoked back then, which was the only illegal thing either of us ever did, but we were excruciatingly careful about it.  A friend at the university had given us some Linethen, that blueish grey composite that cleans the air of cigarette smoke almost instantly.  We kept in buried behind the back of the fridge and even now I could see the trails up the wall, fanning out like so many spiders.

Then I heard it, noise from far away like the mewing of a small cat. 

Scrambling onto the counter-top next to the gaping hole where our old stove had been, I opened the cupboard.  The sound outside grew just slightly.  They knew where I was, and they knew that I knew.  I looked for the slight edge upside down in the cupboard, my eyes squinting as bits of old wood unsettled all over my hands and face.  With the other hand I began to punch the top of the stained cupboard wood. 

The sound grew louder, coming from the living room.  In the giant square empty room, the windows remained open with just one frayed curtain remaining, it’s flag swaying just slightly in the wind.  Across the way was the other block of flats, patio rails like bleached bones.

I punched harder and the sound grew.  Finally, the roof of the cupboard cracked and dust and particles spewed out, causing me to look away again.  In the living-room the curtain began to flap more in earnest.  They were very near.  I found what I came for and stashed it into the pocket in my leg where a hole turned the rest of the pants into an accidental deep pocket.  I dropped from the counter just as the sound of the chopper blades became obvious.  The rag by the window flapped violently as the giant glass globe of the Shephard’s vehicle rose with the blades roaring invisibly above their heads.  I walked towards them, looking straight at them in their black silk uniforms and red helmets.  What was there to say or do at the time?  I simply waited with my arms out so they wouldn’t strip the flesh from my bones.

There was noise behind me which I expected.  My leg was kicked out and I fell into darkness.

Get visable!

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Friendly group of people waving to you

 

Can people find you?  Imagine getting an online readership of over 25k!

One of the things I have been working on this morning, due to the fact that I am now full time self employed, is the whole world of self promotion.  This of course takes a myriad of forms, but what’s interesting is how there are bloggers out there that make over 25k in just WordPress followers.  That number is amazing and from what I’ve seen it isn’t entirely impossible to do.

Here’s one link to kind of wet your appetite, or maybe even give you some immediate insights with identifying your target audience…

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fonecoolsite.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F09%2F01%2Fhow-to-identify-your-blogs-target-audience%2F&h=OAQEr84G-

That said, I have been working with a number of newer companies and artists over the past few years and one thing that I find myself saying all too often is…

“Ahh!  What are they doing!?  I’m really looking for them and I can’t find them!  If I can’t find them, how can there be an audience!?”

This is not a place I think you want to be.

The Social Media creator pitch

(I don’t know about you but I hate those posts out there that lead you down a garden path and then after hours of your time hit you with “I can tell you for only 49.95!”  Ugh.  So here we go…)

I am absolutely happy to help anyone set up there social media platforms for a competitive cost.  I am not a massive Html and Java slinging pro designer who worked for Apple or Google any time recently so my costs for this would be relatively low.

However I have had success in my work, and I can easily assist someone outside of the Greater Victoria Area as well, but it will take some emailing back and forth to set up things such as a Twitter platform which typically requires a text message conformation from a unique phone number (your cell).  This is because, well, I can’t afford to buy dozens of cellphones.

The nice thing about me doing it for you is that you can get on with what you do and leave the social media setup to me.  As an example, I set up the entire http://www.westsoundmag.com campaign of website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and email all in about three hours with images and content.  Some of it was from the back of a friend’s car.

My background with all this came slowly, starting with my earliest music projects and just running around with posters.  Posters are still in my world, but we have other people who do that sort of thing these days.  Still, the basic advertising theory is essentially the same.

A show, an event or whatever that’s going on in real time isn’t about the show in itself.  Any event is a reason to put the name out!  With something coming you have suddenly a great reason to advertise the name and then it becomes about repetition.  They say it takes about five years to really lock down a brand in people’s minds.  You don’t expect anyone is going to see your poster, or whatever and suddenly take out a notepad and start jotting things down.  It’s all about seeing that name one more time so that they later on say “Oh yeah!  I’ve heard of them!”  We move towards what is familiar.  Familiar seems way more reliable and enticing then “Never heard of those guys.”

Hiring me or not is totally up to you and your project, but the main thing is to make yourself visible.  Everything is converting to online activity.  Despite all this tech I’m older than I look, and I have had younger folks ask if I dyed my hair this way (It’s grey).  I remember when if you wanted to seem like someone who puts in initiative for work, you would show up with a resume in a shirt and tie.  I have been informed more recently that no one wants you to do that.  They prefer emails.

Emails!?  What a different world this is!  I can distinctly remember a friend in the nineties saying how if a resume and cover letter were faxed they would throw them to the, let’ just call it, “less interested” pile as fax=lazy!

But that’s the thing, and it covers everything these days.  If you want to find the next bus do you use the bus schedule book?  No.  You google the location and it tells all.  Order pizza?  I don’t even know where my classic phone book is right now.  I use the Yelp or Zomato App.

The point of this side trip in the direction of memory lane is that if your product can’t be found online, your product has a problem.  You don’t want to spam people as that has a reverse effect of course, but you do need to at least get visible.

You know what the last thing most people will use their smartphone’s for these days?

As phones.

Telling someone to just give you a call might just have you sitting there listening to your Hootie and The Blowfish album, and that’s about it.

Cheers,

Tom

Discovering Georgia’s Eden

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This is something that I have always meant to blog about since it first captured my imagination.  From simply doing research for a book project I was working on, I have always wanted to travel to the country of Georgia.  To venture into the Caucasus Mountains that form its northern border and roam the streets of it’s capital city Tbilisi.

Set between the Black and Caspian Seas, Georgia first caught my attention in a series of videos called Vintage : A History of Wine which are narrated by the author of the original book by Hugh Johnson.  It is in this small, beautiful country that the story of wine begins.

In his film, Hugh explains that not only is Georgian Wine still made by the same ancient process of aging in gourds underground but that the history of winemaking there goes back to 10,000 B.C.

Gori_reis_08_(10)

I could almost finish my blog there and just let your imagination take things from that point.  This country on the border of Europe and Asia was making wine, something that requires patience and planning (and most importantly, civilisation) before most of the great empires of history took their first steps.  As an example they were making wine long before the construction of the first of the Egyptian pyramids with the earliest being the Pyramid of Djoser between 2630 and 2611 B.C.

The vineyard owners that Hugh Johnson interviewed were very humble and friendly which is exactly what I experienced myself when I made contact with people from this country myself.  Long before the Internet was what it is today I emailed some folks for more information on Georgia.  I was sent not only the phrasebook I sent for but a sheet of Georgian recipes and another sheet that contained facts about the country.  I still have my copy of this wonderful book by Patricia Hall and Tatyana Bukia which goes over everything from basic survival phrases to what to say at a Georgian Dinner.

 20160505_175225.jpg

What is also interesting has been the increase of archeological discoveries in the countryside.  They have found the existence of dinosaurs in the area, ancient caves and more importantly, the evidence of human activity.  Near the town of Dmanisi, sixty kilometers south of Tbilisi that go back 1.7 million years.  For those who believe in the accounts of the Bible, Mount Ararat of the story of Noah’s Ark is a stone’s throw away.

What ever one believes I am personally enchanted by the wonder of Georgia as one of Europe’s most fascinating treasures.  Due to its military position as the border between two continents, its truth may be locked away under centuries of soldiers, horses and the endless scouring of time. 

If you are a Victoria, BC based reader you can find Georgian Wine as I have at the BC Liquor Store at the corner of Fort and Foul Bay.

Thank you for reading!   

Tom

The time to explore

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I’ve mentioned before about my love of mornings which I know makes me weird straight away.  I actually woke up far too early on this one even for myself but I had set myself this rule of getting out each morning to do some kind of exercise.  I have been struggling with a digestion issues since last October so this is one of the many ways I’ve have found myself fighting back.   I honestly don’t know if it works or not, but I’m just not willing to find out what would happened if I stopped!

One of the great things about getting out there is the exploring side.  This morning I finally, and this is nuts I am, but after going for about a half hour walk I finally took a route 1 bus out to its furthest end.  Some more walking and a different route home and I am completely reading to get out there and start my regular work.  If I hadn’t become so enthused by all this desire to be outside each morning I never would have done such a nonsensical thing.  I admit I felt a bit too self conscious to get on the 1 route home, because I was fully expecting the driver would have looked at me funny. 

I’ll work on that one.

Once home though I started planning out some really nice ideas for some other walks involving quieter bus routes I could do.  A simple one (no pun meant) would be to take the same route to the café at the end, walk the beach to Gonzales Park and then hop a quiet #3 home again.  You can’t beat breakfast with a million dollar view can you?  As someone who already has one of those bus passes the only thing that cost you was some time and maybe whatever you picked up at Delish.  Not a bad deal!

In the theme of exploring, and this is weird too because not only was I thinking about this subject this morning but my friend Kevin Lintern wrote about the same thing so I hope I’m not borrowing that too much, but people should not be afraid to explore possibilities within their own worlds.  This could be anything from boating to model making but naturally my focus is creativity. 

There is a mentality out there which states that only really talented people should even think of walking into a music store…and art supply store……ok, writer’s don’t have the same thing (a pen store?!) but…setting up a blog, and I am here to tell you it’s just not true.  Creativity is a place you can simply explore with whatever fascinates you.  You don’t have to be serious and think you have to play guitar or paint at a certain level with so many hours a day in order to try it.  

I just recently started doing more visual arts thanks to the spurring of a book called “The Trickster’s Hat” by writer Nick Bantock, which I definitely recommend.  One of the ideas he comes up with is the idea of just setting out without big goals or expectations in mind and just freeing yourself to try and make mistakes.  As far as I’m concerned, in creativity, there is no mistakes.  Ready for this…?

There is no bad art.

Whoa huh?  Now you might say I’ve crossed a line there as you can probably quote me a list of names of people who you think have no talent and should stop.  I’ve been on some people’s list with that one!  But I stay stand firm on this.  The very doing of creating is wonderful in itself…the simple act of stepping out of the things you have to do to explore what could be and creating from nothing.  The Artist’s Way series is also great for breaking through this.  I still try (and fail sometimes but what the heck?) to do my morning pages first thing every morning along with my other routines.  I’m at the point now where I actually can’t imagine my life without that or the morning exercise.  Also started doing meditation with a great app for the meditationally challenged like myself called “Calm”.  There’s other things I like doing first thing like practice and drinking lots of water but that’s more specific to me.  The process does take a while.  Mornings work for me but whatever you find best for you, that’s the best time.

Thanks for reading!

Happy exploring J

Tom

What you pay for

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mSUB9ia

Fear is the biggest hurdle in poverty.  This is not only because a sense of lack, something perpetually put to you as evident, makes you act in ways that push reason.

But there are those that know of this fear and are only too determined to make the most of it.

They come at you with their ads and bargains, their dollar stores and discounts, their news events and threats upon the nation.

They push you and pull you and tell you that all you need to really do is go under their wise wings and everything will be alright in the end.  They put pressure on you at just the right moment.  Time is their greatest weapon against you.  You don’t want to miss out do you?  You don’t want to miss the boat!  After all, these chances don’t come along often.

Bull.  Can you imagine someone saying that to a salmon?  You’re both creatures.  You’re not missing anything.

It does cost a little more to steer away from where they want you to go at first, yes.  But as people we are not that complicated.  One thing I have noticed just this morning is how much better my day started by just going out for a walk.  Came home, started writing into my notebook (I write on their before going digital) and had some oatmeal with blueberries.  Coffee.  Nothing you would really think to Instagram (some might, I know I’ve gone there too!)  But like the salmon that I sort of plunked down into this little ramble, we are not that complicated a creature.

No one has all the answers.  If they say they do, tell them you’re just browsing.

 

 

Home

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This is my refuge but it’s also my study, my factory.  Here I build for better things to come.

Dreams are dreamed, coffee gets shared and things are at their softest and least diffused.

I work here with music on, seeking the truth, elusive as clouds and you can find me writing, playing, rewriting, waking up, cooking.

Memories find tin boxes, plastic containers with dusty lids and new ones get their little births.

Everything I’ve ever done sprouted from the walls of home.  Sitting on the floor with a guitar and an old Panasonic tape deck.  Silly thoughts pass here like fish in a stream.  Some sparkle so bright you can reach out with your hands.

Bard – Chapter One

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958-mossy-tree-bark-1920x1080-nature-wallpaper“Well, this is certainly awkward.”

There wasn’t much else to say at that point.  I was lying face up in the Commons of the Bly Forest, as place that is as sacred as it pretty much gets with more and more Jeekan faces glaring down at me.  And it was not comfortable either.  When you finish coming down from a climb of the Tiki Tree you usually have people to help you up.  They pat you on the back and talk to you.  They’re excited for you.  Not me.  And fair enough really, considering that the tree that was behind me did not use to exist.  I made a tree.  Around here that was kind of a big deal.

We live in trees, us Jeekas.  Trees are our thing, pretty much.  I was born in one.  I learned to climb before I could walk.  Our red wand soldier Jeekas have a drawing of the mighty Tiki Tree on their shields.  They were not just a part of every moment of a furry little guy’s life.  They were downright mystical.  The Bly Forest has long been called the Po-Ha Spirit Shal-Than’s sacred garden.  Indeed, from where I was lying I could barley make out the afternoon sky, filtering its way through the dense foliage high above.  The Tiki Tree, or this side of it, took the most of my view.  That thing wasn’t a tree when you stood before it like I had done the day before.  It was a mountain. It was sheer wall of bark ascending into dense foliage with skybug lanterns swinging above the whole of the Commons. It took long to climb, which is saying something because climbing with our fore and hind claws was kind of something we are known in Tarsha to be good at.  All around the Commons, which is the sweet grass circle between the Tiki and the wand trees, we numbered in the hundreds.  The event was over but lots were sticking around to see what would happen with me.

Ok, they all were.

Because of that it took a while for Readspa Weet and his horrible little nephew Dinnlen Weet some time to push through the crowd to get to me.  Readspa was the Seat of the Tree, the head governor of all the Bly.  I was not looking forward to meeting him as I lay below the curved branch that had brought me to the forest floor.

“There he is Uncle!” Dinnlen said as he got close “There’s Jeebles!”

Oh, yeah…Dinnlen was enjoying himself thoroughly.  One more thing I had done wrong.  One more thing to go to a governor about, and he was related to the top.  The guy was in spoiled rich pup heaven.

“Don’t you have workers you would rather be lashing, Dinlenn?” I said.  We were never really super close.

I didn’t see him.  He was clearly standing back a ways from me, along with some of the others in the crowd, as though they didn’t know what I was going to do next.  Perhaps I was going to turn into a Turweef spider and begin lashing in every direction.  Truth is I had just had fallen hard from the rope branch that hung like a thick snake above my head.  So when it came to lashing out with anything, I could barely move.  Then two Jeekas did come close.  Dominion Red Guards.  Seeing those two standing above me with wands drawn to my face was enough to get my attention.  I shelved my snarkyness in an hurry.  The gemstones from both wands were close enough that I could almost grab them, which would be, of course, immensly stupid.

The gemstones swirled like eddies in a river, not pulsing but glowing steady with a heat that cannot be described in terms of temperature.  You just felt the fire within those pure shards of Si.  You knew about the power of rock-thrower, that could send stones beneath you into a hail of the fastest missles.  You knew that the guards simply had to touch your skin and let the power seep into your flesh.  The fire would reach your center like rot shredding its way into a trees very root.

“Get him up,” came a command from a gentle firm voice.

With wands still on my face, another set of strong arms hoisted me to my hindpaws.  Still feeling a bit shaky, I padded myself down for a moment and thanked them for helping me up, which did not receive much in the way of smiles.  In the crowd behind Readspa Weet and Dinnlen I could see some of the others moving their muzzles side to side slowly.  They weren’t eating.  That movement came from how we Jeekas chatter out teeth, which again has nothing to do with how cold it is.  It’s always the perfect climate in the Commons.  No, chattering our teeth is something we do when we are angry.  Well, that or afraid.  Or someone just sent a hundred foot tree rocketing from the soil beneath them into the sky like a ship crashing into a headland.  I was just that popular that day.

“You care to explain what happened Fleet Jeebles?”

I just looked at him.  I actually was trying organize my thoughts so I could work out where in the story should start.

Climbing the Tiki was a rite of passage for Jeekas my age.  You got to the top, took a rope branch down to one of the six trees, got the wand that decided how you would serve the Bly and then come down.  Dinnlen had just done it, as had Teekthie (from the Tikitaa district like Dinnlen.  Hated her.) Bithel (from the Heepata like me.  Nice guy, and I’m not just saying that because he was working class too.  Kind of dull though.  There, I said it.) and about forty other Jeeklings.  Jeeklings going up the tree.  Jeekas of the Bly coming down.

I was a Jeeka now.  And boy, was I in the deep fertilizer.

“I got in an arguement with Dinnlen, sir,” I managed “It was nothing.”

And that was a give my head a shake moment.  Why in blackness did I go there?  I could have just said that I didn’t know.  I could have said that it was the darndest thing.  But straight away with “Golden Trousers” himself leering, I knew that Dinnlen had told Readspa his version of our arguement on the top of the Tiki.  I was a bit of a fistfight in probably the most dangerous place in Tarsha to do that.  Not only is it high, high…I can’t even describe how high up it is…but the intense Si of that place doesn’t exactly approve of people fighting or indeed having a little sightseeing moment.  Everything started to sway and Dinnlen and I had to jump onto the first rope branch we could see.  Our harnesses clicked into place and down we went, flying and spiralling around through the clouds on our way back.  He vanished from my sight as I burst through one cloud and into another, the rope branch swinging and diving past others until it came to its end.  The end was still high off the ground and without a wand tree in sight.  I firmly believed I was fertilizer myself when…well…I made a tree.

I explained all this to Readspa.  At least I think I did.  No Jeeka, not even the red army could beat the Seat of the Tree for looking intimdating.  His purple stone wand could tell you if you told the littlest fib and he was a very tall elder with eyes that looked right into you.  He got to his position by his extraordinary insight and razor sharp wisdom.  I’m not being sarcastic there.  You would not want to play a game of stones with Readspa Weet.  He came from generations of great governors.  His great grandsire had been the one to settle the war between the Lotherans of Laboi Canyon and the Bly.  Their weapons still remained in the stone columns before the Clay City of Tercichio thousands of leagues away as a sign of peace.  I guess the idea behind that was that neither of us could get those great weapons back.  Only the immortal Vakkal could enter their home.  The Si energy in that place would drive any mortal Si mad if we tried to enter.

Anyways, back in the soft cool of the Commons, I couldn’t really look at Readspa as I explained what I think had just happened.  I told him about getting the wand in the empty round room.  I told him about the wierd inscriptions on the walls, running around the ridge between the round wall and the solid ceiling.  There was also the fact that the empty room was in a tree that came out of nowhere just moments before.  And there I was standing before him with a pure white wand in the wand-sheath behind me with no color at all, so it looked like someone had made some kind of mistake somewhere.  The wands were orange for a worker, green for a farmer (that was my father’s kind) red for a warrior, blue for a healer, purple for a governor, and yellow for a seer.  Mine was like some wierd kind of exclamation point.

Dinlenn said I threatened him which was kind of annoying.  We threatened each other.  Actually, we threatened lots of other Jeeklings because they had to get past us scraping to get to the rope branches.  That’s the kind of thing perfectly sane people do.

“Fleet, have you ever been outside of the Bly Forest?” he asked bringing his wand between us.  The light from its regal purple began to glow.

“Um…no…sir,” I stammered.  I hadn’t.  He knew that was true immediately.

“Have you ever been near the Southern gate?  Sands of Umahh?”

“No sir.”

He considered me for a moment and then, with his wands ability to amplify his voice he sent everyone on their way.  Dinlenn protested but he was met with the same authority from those sharp eyes.  Suddenly I had the very wierd experience of standing in the soft coolness of the Commons with Readspa Weet.  Well, and his gaurds.  He wasn’t that reckless.

“Follow me little one,” he said with a concerned face before leading me back to the Tiki Tree, to the other side where between giant natural curves in the grain we entered the Room of Roots.

I was made to wait in the that round lower room with its ceiling that was so high that you couldn’t actually see it, sunlight streaming in from where I had entered and through a similar entrance far to my right.   Guards stood by the door to the upper rooms across from me, the whole interior carved into the base of the Tiki Tree ages ago.

There were benchs all around the circular room with a darker wood star in the center.  The star had six points, one for each of the gemwands.  I sat with the quiver behind me holding the wand whose gemstone did not belong.  The thick cloth and metal hook still hung there on my back too from when it held me to the rope branches in the sky high above.  The guards did not look at me.  They stood like statues, hands behind there back, next to the skybug lite stairway that climbed out of sight.  I had never been in the room before.  I had spent most of my time in the working class district of the Heepata far to the southwest except for when I was born.  I was born in the Typlem Hollow on the north border where we had a grain farm.  That was before my father’s accident.  We had lots of food before entering the Bly-supported trees of Heepata.  I had been in that district for so long that I could barely remember those days of playing with my little sister in the tall grasses and the open sunlight that danced on the Dawzu River.  It flowed far from the Great Eastern Range and the eastern canyons before passing through the Bly and under it.  I had been in the submarine trails where some Jeekas lived below the surface.  Down there it was all giant roots and skybugs dancing above the white water and pathways.  On the wall above me was a giant drawing of the Bly Forest and it’s communities.  We rarely left the Forest other than in goodwill parties to the city of South Leah far away.  That didn’t happen that often.  We were still somewhat shy when it came to Lothrans.  I had seen one when I was a little Jeekling pup.  Or at least I think I had.  My father met someone on the northern road before the Bly Gate.  They talked and I watched from a distance with my mother keeping a firm grip on the fur behind my neck.  That was probably a very good idea at the time.  I’ve never been known for my self restraint.  That rumor wasn’t helping me much now.

“Meepsa!”

My sisters name.  My father’s voice!  I suddenly sat bold upright on the smooth ashwood bench.  Creet Jeeble’s voice came from the other door to my right, sunlight and tiny sparkles of air playing in its bright north western entrance.  That’s where suddenly I saw a very familiar sight.  The sight of soft white and hazel fur around black excited eyes.

“Big brother?” came her little voice, it’s little sound echoing into the vast chamber.

I looked at the guards, worried, and then back at her.  They hadn’t moved or anything.  I guess someone two and a half feet armed with a birchwood doll wasn’t a major threat.  Still, it was Meepsa, here, in the same room as Jeekas who could…I went over to her as quickly as I could within breaking into anything that looked like a run.

“Meepsa!” Father called again from somewhere close.

“In here!” I called out the window as the little Jeekling raced up to my legs and with her muzzle to one side which still pressed into my stomach, she hugged my legs with all of her might.

“Oh, there you are!” Creet Jeebles, that’s my Father, said “Are you ok?”

“I’m great, sir.  Um…” I said turning to the guards and motioning to the bench “Is it ok if my family sits on the…”

They didn’t move.  I guess it wasn’t not ok since they didn’t seem to be opposed to it.  I still felt nervous with those red wands near my family.  I felt nervous with them near me.  I mean I had been in trouble with the local governors for getting in fights with upper crush twits like Dinlenn, but I never had those guys around.

“Ok,” I said to the people I loved most in the world like someone at a district meeting “Try to keep it down a little bit.  I’m waiting for Readspa Weet to come back.  He told me to wait here.”

“Readspa Weet!” my Father said “And the Room of Roots.  You’ve had quite a day!”

“That’s right, sir,” I said “Let’s just sit over here.  Meepsa?  Can you let go of my legs now?”

“No.”

“Or we can stand here,” I agreed.

Oh yeah, I call my dad sir.  We all do.  It’s just a Jeekan show of respect to an elder.  Meepsa told me she was scared when I didn’t come down right away like everyone else.  That’s when they heard of a tree exploding from nowhere.  They had been on the other side of Tiki Tree so they got the information second hand.  That’s how big this tree is.  Even this room could fit a hundred of us in it easily.  And, fun fact, from what I’ve heard, you can actually see the Tiki from anywhere in the Tarshan Peninsula.

I heard that one from my Father.  He had been to the northern city of Moz once to sing with a choir for the Lothran’s midwinter festival.  He is where I got my musical traits.  My mother was always the pragmatic one.  I remember my father singing all the time when I was younger.  It was an unexpected treat to hear it these days.  It’s one of reasons I built my first clavacar.  The thing was terrible but when I strummed it I could make a sort of chord like sound.  Sometimes the thing even sounded tuned.

“What’s going to happen, son?” he asked as Meepsa looked up at me.

“Mr. Weet asked me some questions and…I don’t really know,” I replied, only to see Readspa Weet coming out of the stairway with two more guards and a Jeeka who dressed with a yellow sash around his frame.  A yellow wand.

“Fleet Jeebles,” the yellow wand said in greeting.  He did not hold his wand in his hand.  He didn’t need to be I knew it was on as he looked me up and down.  He walked around me before asking to show me the wand I had received.  I took it from it’s sheath behind my neck and held it up for him to look.  Everyone looked at it as though I was holding a rare bottle of Thorkberry.

“You can put it back in your sheath, Fleet,” the yellow wand said, apparently content.  He nodded to Readspa Weet before heading back to the stairwell with one of the two guards accompanying him.

“Creet Jeebles,” Readspa said to my father softly “How would you like if you and your family got to go to the Lothran city of North Leah?  And we will pay your way.  Handsomely.”

All three of the Jeebles family stared at him dumbfounded.

——————————

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  It’s a new spin I’m trying out on an older project and would love to hear any constructive thoughts.

Cheers,

Tom

Mage Part One

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It has been quiet in Dameron since the last attack.  You don’t expect that the thing that would wake you from sleep would be a child’s song.

 

It was part of a dream at first.  I was there again, back on the hilltop surrounded by white flowers and the scent of the Southern Sea.  The Bay of Mount Laer stretched around me then like a warm embrace, keeping it’s kin close in the little seaside village.  I liked to spend most of my time as a child up on those bluffs overlooking the city and the sea.

 

That was one of the images that I always held during the campaign to the dark lands of the East.  Well, that and of course dear Lenette.  I was the shortest one of the six of us that would head off on our own little adventures when the grown ups were busy.  We did use to get into such trouble, primarily being lost or late for dinner.  It was never anything that involved actual danger like the sinewy fingers of the blackness.  Those curling tendrils had not yet reached our little fishing village, like many protected by the rocky shore or the northern plains of Umahh.  Dameron was closer to the plains but also closer to the bridges that would take me back to where we had travelled.  Dameron seemed treacherous at that time.  It was many winter’s snows in the city for me since Clantan the Grand Master lead us east.  We sung the song on the road, our hearts thumping with seemingly unbreakable joy.

My eyes opened to he pale light of the moons flooding the room in gentle blue against the Leyleaf-stained roof.  The song was still in the air, stealing in through the cracks in the cracks of the window.  I got out of bed in my baggy nightclothes and peered down into the street.  The song was fading and it seemed urgent that I find it’s source.

My gaze fell up and down the shadows and snow of the narrow streets.  The snow was still falling but only lightly so I could make out much of the world below from two floors up in my room.  There were tracks of people walking through the snow of course, the wind dusting the falling snow along like leaves catching the waterline in a river but I had no spell to tell me the identity of a singer.  Slowly the sound melted away.  A ghost of the home I could not return to, even as a wandering sight.

Then I heard it.  It was so incredibly soft that you would scarcely believe it happened but it had not been the first time.  Copper tumblers were being brushed aside with a thin needle.  The door creaked to life as though simply pushed by the wind.

A man in rags, his swirl of clothes hiding a flash of steel left the floorboards and swung to the wall, the back of his head hitting the solid boards with a dull thud.  He tried to reach his sword but I drew that away, the useless blade skittering across the floor and under the drawropes of my bed.

“First rule, friend,” I said coming closer “A mage rarely sleeps.”

He strained against my will.  He wasn’t a big fellow as the best thieves typically are not, but he was from the guild and carried with him a relentless wirey strength.  His eyes fell on the other side of the room where I kept my books, stacked neatly or somewhat neatly with bits of paper poking out, the soft chair and candles for reading late and of course, the chest beneath my desk.

“Really, you’d be better off with one of the books,” I continued as he glared at me.

His faced grew red as he breathed hard as though the man had just finished running clear across town.  He was one of the brave and stupid ones.  Perhaps he had just got the wrong room but not with the mark left on my door.  I knew what that was carved for.

“So how about this…we treat it as a learning experience and I don’t tell Namal about your little…shall we call it…lack of communication?” I said looking at the man who only started to resign his attempts to move from his comfy spot a foot and a half above the floorboards.  He took a deep breath.

“Sorry about all this Peter,” he said “Things haven’t been easy since I got back here.”

“Wait,” I said looking at the face now coupled with the man’s accent,”I know you…”

“And I know you are not a man to wake up.”

“Marc of second company,” I suddenly said, the sudden realization falling into place.  He was a thief but he was, well, one of ours.  I let him down.

Marc breathed, his back still on the wall, where he stretched it like his was in one of the city baths.  He leaned back still a little wary of me, standing before him in probably a less impressive sight with my oversized bedclothes.  He walked over to a chair and then turned to face half asleep scratching, me.  He sat down and rubbed his feet.

“Sorry, I couldn’t get my dagger back could I?” he asked “I know I don’t deserve it but…”

“Oh, no that’s fine.  I was awake anyways,” I replied, sitting on my bed and spirited his dagger across to him “Was that you whistling?  You shouldn’t do that…kind of counter-productive.”

“The Fisherman’s Song…I heard that too,” he said “No, not me.  I tried to go home and couldn’t find work and ended up with Namal’s gang.  I just wanted to borrow from you but…”

He looked at me.

“Nah, I didn’t think you’d buy that,” he said getting up to go “Sorry again Peter.  I won’t repeat this”

“Marcellian,” I said pointing to the barrel I kept next to my door “take the pouch, there.  And ask me next time.”

He took the pouch and smiled at me.  He gave a little hand gesture of thanks.

“Ask, got it.”

The door clicked closed.  I locked it with a wave of my hand.

 

 

 

 

It’s really all so very small.

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There’s a few people who would be good examples of this that I could have chose but Peter Jackson was my most recent biography find so it’s still the freshest in my head.  I could have also mentioned Peter Hook of Joy Division for this one, the man who literally grabbed a bass and joined the band.

Peter, the one pictured that is, was inspired by film at a very young age.  Only in his teens he was trying to make his Super 8 go as far as it could until he finally discovered a slightly better camera and began messing around with other little films.  Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit was a long way off from those first initial attempts.

Being a singing bass player Sting is another huge inspiration that naturally springs to mind.  Sting played gig after gig for years in a variety of bands (including a cruise ship gig) before he ever met a drummer named Stewart Copeland who already had this idea for a band called “The Police”.

The work these three gentlemen have created is indeed timeless, and they are only three examples of probably hundred of artists I could name.  The connection to me is those early years of the work and the creative approach.  During a tour of American colleges, Sting explained to music students “We’re not building cathedrals, we’re building sheds.”  This is an insight that I think is worth keeping in mind when approaching anything creative, and possibly other things in life that don’t fall under that category.

It doesn’t have to be great.  It doesn’t have to even be good.  If you think of the early Beatle’s cuts from the beginning of their career they genuinely did not know what they were doing.  Most bands (using music as an example) evolve slowly over a period of years and that’s the stuff we hear.  The same goes for writers, visual artists, and film makers.  Defy the white page and it’s patronizing nature.  Make it all messy in spite of it because the odds are that it probably isn’t a big deal anyways.  You’re just mucking around with it.  I do this with Twitter and Instagram and I fully admit that.  I just kind of go “Hey, what about this?”, usually said out loud because I admit I do in fact talk to myself.  That’s me.  I’ll be talking one way or the other and someone else may or may not hear it.

It even fits into most creative theory with the fact that the first part of creativity is simply getting it out of you and the second part is editing that mush for the little bits of gold in there.  Also if something isn’t working, or you find it boring, try some other thing.  Considering the expanse of possibility and remix culture out there you can always switch gears and bear in mind that you never have any massive thing expected (and should share that same expectation to others).

Even my biggest projects typically have roots that started little bits at a time, little bit each day at a time.  You just relax and let those small things pile up.

So go ahead and mess it up all messy now.  I’ll try to not sound like a motivational speaker now.

Cheers,

Tom

🙂