He drew the night from his pocket like an heirloom buck knife, unfolding it with a snap, and presented the edge to a very long day. "I've had just about enough of you. Go find someone else to bother or I'm gonna make tomorrow an only child."
Hearing - Regina Spektor - Bon Idée
The viral nature of our affair,the defeat of serendipity with rage; We've declined gold for fortune's ore, refined whim to arrogance and spent it on a cold and sensual beast.
Was it a broken sense of power and light; Base nature interpreting experience as it blindly cedes to desire? When was wisdom ever an artifact of wanting?
Shedding tears like a serpent sloughing skin, wriggling free from woe, we clothe instead with the glean and shine of apathy, Trade heart for appetite, for something more easily appeased, And providence moves through probability to latent entropic will.
Satiated, but unfulfilled Is something we can live with.
We tracked her across the Falcon Arc to the jagged upthrust of granite and quartz known as the Conundrum Spire. It used to have another name, a useful name, back before the Coral Plague wiped out all the Indians, finally letting us forget there'd ever been anyone here but those brave and noble declensions of Europe. The Russians took over most of the casinos, fledgling archeologist abandoned Native American studies in droves, and local tourist boards lobbied to rename landmarks hoping to jump-start economies still suffering from the lingering stench of death.
But that was too long ago to bother with, and is relevant only as it pertains to the peyote camps and mescaline messiahs our quarry seemed to be taking refuge with.
We unpacked two cases of Mobile Reconnaissance And Containment Arrays once we hit the Spire's eastern foothills. The MoRACA hounds came three to a case, and were the size of a Jack Russell terrier when their ceramic and alloy frames were unfolded and assembled.
Each hound was slaved through satellite to the brain of a suspected terrorist held at a secret government prison in western Texas. The prisoners were themselves controlled by a mixture of chemical and electronic stimulus, not the least of which was a manual kill switch.
An early test had seen a hound go rogue when a fuse blew at the prison, taking down the main control system. A Pakistani general known for his inventive methods of interrogation used his temporary freedom to take his mount for a joyride through a suburban mall in Idaho, killing 14 people before a lab tech was able to strangle him to death with a power cable. The kill switches were installed almost before the fuse was replaced.
Tapping my headset, I opened the line to the control facility. "Sigma Station, this is Lisper, I've got six hounds ready to hunt and need a pair of riders."
"Acknowledged, Lisper, queueing up two riders."
"Hey, is Cumonde available?" I asked, trying to catch her before she finished configuring the network.
"Let me check." Then after a pause, "Controller Cumonde is available, would you like him as primary?"
"Perfect," I agreed, "thanks."
He traced her figureOn his heart With charcoal. The fired remains Of yesterdays perfectly perceived And profoundly destroyed. It was nice to have a another subject, But mostly his thoughts were on the medium.
After a time The bitter black lost dominion To the beauty of her form: Dead grit Came to soft life As curious fingers Feathered heavy outlines Into beating tissue.
He moved to watercolors When shades of gray Could no longer contain his vision. Rough sketches Were replaced with impressionistic hopes, And light was everywhere.
Time sharpened edges, Made features more familiar. He got into acrylics Knowing faults Only added to reality; That truth bound better than fantasy, And that patience Made for truer focus.
When it was time for portraits, (When he could get the three girls To sit quietly For more than five minutes) He brushed oils Across the linen of his life, And felt, for brief moments, Like a master.
They spread his remains From a mountain in Boulder Across an amazing blue sky. Each one held a gallery Inside Of the love he had given. Reflecting on the art of their own lives As a cold gust stirred, For a moment they could see A figure Traced in ashes, And they smiled.
The air around me is sentient, whispering constantly in Romani and the Japanese slang of shops and arcades along the Ginza strip. "Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachim," dark velvet strands of vowel and consonant accuse, tickling my ear like an unrelenting gnat.
I wave my hand distractedly, annoyed. A trick of the light, perhaps, or the tonal impetus of days lost to all the ways my world has ended. Wee, private Ragnaroks crying out in temporal dissonance, betrayed by the forward stumbling of weary feet; a widowed unwillingness to lie down.
"Nogitsune!"
Fox-spirit. Old Man Coyote. Loki. I've been called worse more often than better.
The Oracle at Delphi was out of her nut on wine and ethylene when I showed up curious one late spring evening, and she squawked the answer to my impetuous question for the whole crowd to hear.
"You!" she shrilled at the top her slowly dying lungs. "You are your own worst enemy!"
Plutarch was embarrassed by the show and quickly rushed me off to some debauchery or another where we forgot all about it.
The air though, oppressive, bilious, entirely too talkative, has never forgotten.
He kept it on a key chainWith a bald rabbit’s foot And a mini Magic 8 Ball. It caught her attention From across the little city library, Over the top of Harlan Ellison’s The Pain God and Other Stories. She lost her breath And her page.
She moved to stand expectantly At his left shoulder, Like a wooden match Looming over a rough surface: Longing for flame But nervous of the strike.
He was flipping slowly through a book of clouds And explained without looking up, “I forgot why the sky is blue.” “Higher frequencies,” She whispered, “Are prone to scattering.” “That would explain”, he replied, Looking up, “How your eyes wax azure As I'm moved from want to wonder.”
On a bench outside, Where the big maple promised to hold the world, He closed his eyes and touched her hand With just the tips of his fingers, Like a child reading the Vedas in braille. “I feel like I’ve been trapped in summer forever,” She said, “And I just want to fall." He smiled beneath his blindness When she asked if he'd catch her. "No," he answered "But I'd never let you fall alone."
He still had his rabbit foot when he opened his eyes, But she'd taken his heart from the keychain. It jingled hopeful in her hand as she waved From the ice cream cart across the street. Without even consulting the Magic 8 Ball He knew he had nothing else to lose.
Gordius was never a just a simple farmer, rather he was one of the point men for a Qabbalistic experiment in raising spiritual consciousness. The Gordian Knot was the physical manifestation of a mathematical expression of social harmony, and the challenge to unravel it was meant to expose those who would dare be leaders to the refined, conscious altering arguments for peaceful coexistence. The closer one came to understanding the mystery of the knot and untying it, the more changed they would be by its formula.
Plato knew about the Qabbalists. He'd uncovered information about their existence and intents during some of his earliest research into Atlantis. He did not trust this ancient order of secret keepers, however, and thought them a danger to the way of life he was trying to help create, so he gave his most promising pupil the task of keeping them at bay.
Aristotle worked on the problem for more than fifteen years, even after philosophical disagreements with his mentor kept him from heading up the Academy upon Plato's death. His most promising solution came after leaving Athens when he was asked to tutor the son of Philip II, King of Macedon.
This is how Alexander the Great was set on the path to Gordius' fabled knot, not to unravel it, claiming the secrets of peace and bearing them into the world, but to destroy it, and spread through force of arms the visions of peripatetics, academics, and hemlock drinkers.
Two years later, in 331 BC, Alexander made a dangerous pilgrimage to the Oasis of Siwa to visit the Oracle of Ammon. Alexander had two questions for the Oracle.
"Have any of my father's assassins escaped unpunished?" he asked first.
"Yes," the Oracle responded. "The chief architect of that treachery lives on undetected and undeterred in a land where your name is yet unknown."
Unsettled, Alexander presented his second question. "Shall I conquer the whole of the world?"
"To conquer the whole of the world one need only untangle Gordius' knot," the Oracle replied.
"Ah!" Alexander shouted victorious. "This thing my hand has already done."
"No," the Oracle answered, explaining the nature of the Qabbalist creation and the consequences of his circumventing their intent.
In the few years that followed, Alexander declared himself a god, fell into debauchery, murdered his best friend, lost the respect of his men, and after more than a decade of leading his armies to victory in battle, died from a mosquito bite.
Bringing fruit from the bloomingOf dark, hopeful lips; From a pause, To a purse, To a soft airy phrase; Pushed past rose In the simplest prose, Granting a glimpse Of enameled desire.
Couched in a quirk; A brief dimpled twitch: A question, An answer, A sweet imposition, A challenge to leave Or stay and believe Lupine intentions Are safer in wool.
Coming And GoingGrowing wings like lightening; Moving on a thunderous crest Across my purple sky. Belief was not enough to catch you, Is not enough to hold you here. Freedom is a storm more suited to your temperament, And sometimes watching you go Is as beautiful As watching you return.