A Dream.

This is a dream I had about a year ago, I wrote about it then, because it was so vivid.
At that time, I'd not heard the term 'Steampunk', but that dream was pure steampunk, and I can see the images now, the distant voices, the smell of woodsmoke.

It was posted on my profile at Flork.com (a site that has provided some amusement and a few true friends)... :

"In my dreams of flying, I rarely travel more than a few feet above the ground. I have to go around trees and very tall buildings, but can easily manage brief hops to clear fences and houses.
In my dreams I sometimes fly high on the sky, but more often I am close to the ground. I seem to skate, but as if my feet are about a foot above the ground, I can lean into the turns, glide, rise and swoop, and balance is never a problem, I can never fall or suffer bruises. (did we have this discussion before?) I was very tired, after a string of long working days. I did dream of flying, though, over a mythical country .
There were strange beasts, castles, villages with mediaeval-seeming life going on. Yet on a road below me, a great steam powered traction-engine was pulling a sort of road train of four heavy trailers laden with goods, sacks with spilling grain, barrels, bales of something , maybe wool. Two of the trailers were sheeted over, I swooped down for a closer look and the driver, a woman, built like a heavy-duty russian heroine of the republic, wiped her brow with a bandanna and raised a cup of coffee in greeting. Beside her, a young boy, maybe ten years old, was shovelling coals into a glowing firebox. I waved back, pedalled harder for the climb, for the first time was aware of the craft I piloted, a beautifully made airboat, made of polished wood, rattan cane, bound with copper fixings, the wings were covered in bright silks, rose and fell by force transmitted fom the pedals, I sat on a bicycle saddle, steered with handlebars, behind me, a bright silk rooster tail turned, pedal harder to rise, gently to maintain height and motion, push the bars forward to dive, pull back to climb, I heard a clanking, and below and to the left, I saw a larger flying machine, with a steam boiler, pilot at a wheel, like a ship's wheel, standing, braced. Behind him a filthy stoker leaned on a shovel, and tapped a boiler gauge. They were on an upper deck, below and behind them, were rows of seats, wooden slatted things, about ten passengers, wearing goggles and gloves. some waved. Below the control deck, and at the front was a small cabin with celluloid glazed windows, I could dimly see some people inside, bright clothes, nobles, no doubt, first class. The great wings, two sets, flapped ponderously, covered not in bright silk, but heavy duty canvas. Chuffing and clanking, the air-liner pulled ahead. I was looking for a country inn, a place to set down for a meal and a bed for the night, they were signalled by a cluster of tethered balloons about 200 feet up, the colours of balloons denoted the facilities each offered, hot food, accommodation, steam baths, minstrel gallery, air boat exchange Ah, you can exchange your airboat here? you don't own the airboat, it's a commodity, you show a wristband that seems to denote credit, i think, and you pick up a fresh, adjusted, cleaned and provisioned airboat in the morning, could be a plodder, a two or more seater, with ample luggage space, or a nimble lightweight, like mine.
I was hungry, tired. And not sure why I was there or where I was going, but a walled town, far away, on the horizon, with a great castle, seemed to be my goal. I was aware that I had entered this world as a stranger, that everything in it was new and interesting to me, I was aware that I was elsewhere at the same time, sleeping, and a little afraid that if I fell asleep at the inn, in a room above the stableyard, i might wake up back in my own, familiar world, before I had seen enough of this, before I had found my purpose here.
And so it happened.
Starcitywoman may recall this discussion of dreams. Actually, I've been reminded that the first line was in her dream, not mine, I do apologise, I'll dust it off and return it as soon as possible, but this is scarily like being married, I mean, the cds are all mine, I think that painting's one I had before flork, but fragments of my dreams, wisps of my reality, I'm no longer sure, Anyway, if anybody wants to claim the elephant, please do, soon, because it really doesn't fit in some of the recent dreams, yet it's been there. How about: each morning, before we launch ourselves into a new day, we just take a few moments to tidy up, pack away any strange artifacts? That way there'll be no strange minglings of dreams, and strange, busty, gleaming silver space-suited starship crews won't wander unannounced into my carefully crafted, late seventeenth century coaching inn dream. Whoever released them, it was most disconcerting, and my coachman was so distracted by the tactile shiny ladies that we almost missed the tide- and that would have caused havoc over the three year voyage.......... It occurred to me, where would they find electricity for their hair driers in seventeenth century Oxford? Then I realised the hairdriers were probably rayguns. Anyway, please take care, and keep your dream characters separate to mine, it confuses me so much."

It seems people like my dream. I manufacture them nightly, but with so perishable a product, few survive to be shared. How annoying, it is never possible to return to one at will, and to see the next chapter.
Trap one of yours, (keep a glass preserving-jar near your bed, seal the dream from air, I think that, and daylight, are their enemies,) mount the dream on your blog, or as a comment here, I'll be interested to compare delusions.

I Saw Eternity.

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
Wit's sour delights,
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
Yet his dear treasure
All scatter'd lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flow'r.

The darksome statesman hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog mov'd there so slow,
He did not stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digg'd the mole, and lest his ways be found,
Work'd under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
That policy;
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
Were gnats and flies;
It rain'd about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.
 

The fearful miser on a heap of rust
Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves;
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugg'd each one his pelf;
The downright epicure plac'd heav'n in sense,
And scorn'd pretence,
While others, slipp'd into a wide excess,
Said little less;
The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave;
And poor despised Truth sate counting by
Their victory.
 

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the ring;
But most would use no wing.
O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night
Before true light,
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shews the way,
The way, which from this dead and dark abode
Leads up to God,
A way where you might tread the sun, and be
More bright than he.
But as I did their madness so discuss
One whisper'd thus,
"This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,
But for his bride."

 Henry Vaughan 1621-1695

Delicious

'Matapedia' By Kate and Anna McGarrigle, from the eponymous album.


http://www.amazon.com/Matapedia-Kate-Anna-McGarrigle/dp/B00000062Z

The Blog Archipelago

An Archipelago:
That's what we are, tiny islands adrift in the great ocean of the web's wide world.
Although I'm new to the business of bloggery, I'm not new to blogs. I've been wandering, watching, reading, enthralled, for a longer time than I remember.
Long ago, I ditched my television, because there were just too many channels not worth watching.
There were some good things too, but generally I don't miss it.
I find the written word has better pictures, anyway.

I sail alone upon this imaginary ocean, I could be like Captain Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail, single handed around the earth. -In a boat he built for himself, felling the trees, forging the fittings.

I sail, making landfall at enticing islands, I stay, linger, read, sample the produce, make a new friend, perhaps, and then I row back out to my sturdy ship, hoist the anchor, set the sail.
Sometimes, at an island, I find recommendations for other islands to visit, and I mark my chart accordingly, at other times I'll sail beneath the stars, listening for surf. One day I might find your island. I'll admire your grass hut, try that hammock by the beach, read your words.
Perhaps I'll swim to my boat for ink and a quill, on your beach I'll peel a strip from the paperbark tree and write my little message. Perhaps I'll still be in the lagoon when you return, and we'll chat, become friends before the tide draws me away.
Along the way, I consign my scribbles to the waves, tight-corked in bobbing bottles. Who knows where they will find landfall, who knows what waifs or beachcombers will open and read.
In the night, my ship comes oft to my own island, or maybe my island follows. I sit at my own driftwood fire, writing my thoughts, for anyone and nobody to read. I pin them to the side of my hut, and, hearing the call of the whales, return to the sea.
When I come again to my island, I remark, with glee, your footprints in the sand. I hope you found fruit and food aplenty, refilled your casks with sweet water, rested in the hammock, sampled the wine, picked through my book-case, I hope the lamps were lit, and you left refreshed.
Perhaps you read my words, and found the pens and paper, on the table, and perhaps you left your thoughts, pinned there. Maybe you scratched graffiti on my wall. Or took a trinket. Maybe you just moved a chessman, and smiled.
I'm not sure why I am voyaging, except for the idea that there's always something to be discovered beyond the next horizon.
How about you? What calls you to the keyboard? to the little glowing box, the window into these myriad worlds? Do tell, I really really do want to know.
I'm not sure why I am here, but on my travels I've met some good friends. People who I'll never touch, but friends all the same, I've been shown new music, art, poetry, and I've read things that make me laugh, things that make tears spring in my eyes. Just as if I were truly travelling.

John Donne wrote:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

We bloggers are not the islands, we inhabit them; also we roam, befriending some, shunning others. We are travellers in the web, interlinked, interwoven, in designs more complex than we can grasp. We can come together, on one beach, and party as a group of friends, or retire to our own island, solitary, perhaps, but never alone, for out there, we can see the twinkling lights of each other's fires, the glows of the lamps beneath which we all write.

Leave a few words, traveller, I thank you for visiting.

Update. May 30th, 2007:

"In my imagined world of the blog archipelago, the lights on a friendly island have winked out. A patch of darkness, a sense of loss."

The death of a blogger.
'Dodderyoldfart' of http://restarea300.blogspot.com/
When I wrote the post above, I never imagined this.

6 Weird Things About Me.

Oh dear. These blogging folk have strange rituals, like the passing of the sacred meme. And it's passed to me. I'm the person who breaks the chain in chain letters. Chinese whispers? They stopped at me. I must have been a horrible child, but as I get to write the definitive autobiography, You'll never know.
However. As I have sneaked into the realms of Bloggolalia by false pretences, I fear if I do not embrace the meme, I'll be found out, and banished. Or varnished. Which is shinier, but uncomfortable. So here goes.





Six weird things about me.
1: I like to read dictionaries.
2: This is really difficult, because what you might think of as weird, I might consider normal.
I have a mind packed with useless information, that I can't extract at will. The answer is there, but it's going to pop up at a time when I don't need it.
3: The first time I met the girl who was later to become my ex-wife, she told me her mother had told her not to talk to strange men. I replied "How will you know whether I am strange, if you don't talk to me?
4:I am the untidiest person I know. I create chaos out of order.
5:I can levitate and glide. (only in dreams, so far, but I live in hope of remembering how to do it when I'm awake).
6: I died once. I hovered near the ceiling of a hospital room, whilst simultaneously rolling and tumbling deep down in green water, drifting away from sound and light. And I heard the clicking of the shoes of the nurse who came in each evening, and a voice saying "Don't go in there tonight, Nurse, the boy's dying."
And I started to struggle and fight to return to the surface, to return to pain, to return to life.
I think it makes a difference to how I see life every day.
Which six people do I tag? Well, I'm new to this so I'm not sure who gets it. I'll think. Maybe tomorrow.

A Poem

I found this via.... I forgot. I need a better memory. more about that later.
Anyway, here's a poem.
The poet, Brian Turner, a 39 year old sergeant, in the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, was serving in Iraq, and turned to writing, honing words and meaning, to try make some sense out of the chaos, boredom, pointlessness, the purpose, the blood, bombs and violence, the sunshine and quiet, the beauty, and despair.
It's glib to say Turner reminds me of the war poems of Sassoon, Wilfrid Owen, et al, but he does. Crouched in a dusty hot place, he is their brother, those men who scratched their words in the cold mud of the Somme trenches almost a hundred years before. Not ideologically a supporter of the war, but a soldier, accepting his duty to share the burden with his comrades, trying to portray, to make understandable the impossible contradictions that war zones pose.

He sees it for us.

Brian Turner

At dusk, bats fly out by the hundreds.

Water snakes glide in the ponding basins

behind the rubbled palaces. The mosques

call their faithful in, welcoming

the moonlight as prayer.

Today, policemen sunbathed on traffic islands

and children helped their mothers

string clothes to the line, a slight breeze

filling them with heat.

There were no bombs, no panic in the streets.

Sgt. Gutierrez didn't comfort an injured man

who cupped pieces of his friend's brain

in his hands; instead, today,

white birds rose from the Tigris.

The Al Harishma Weapons Market

At midnight, steel shutters

slide down tight. Feral cats slink

in the periphery of the streetlamp's

dim cone of light. Inside, like a musician

swaddling a silver-plated trumpet,

Akbar wraps an AK-47 in cloth.

Grease guns, pistols, RPGs --

he slides them all under the countertop.

Black marketeer or insurgent --

an American death puts food on the table,

more cash than most men earn in an entire year.

He won't let himself think of his childhood friends --

those who wear the blue uniforms

which bring death, dying from barrels

he may have oiled in his own hands.

Akbar stirs the chai,

then carries his sleeping four-year-old,

Habib, to bed under glow-in-the-dark

stars arranged on the ceiling. Late at night

when gunfire frightens them both,

Habib cries for his father, who tells him

It's just the drums, a new music,

and the tracery of lights in the sky

he retraces on the ceiling, showing the boy

how each bright star travels

from this dark place, to the other.

© 2005 by Brian Turner (Alice James Books, Farmington, Maine)

More

Wilfred Owen

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(Dulce et.. Latin: 'Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country', a quotation from Horace.)

---

With mustard gas the effects did not become apparent for up to twelve hours. But then it began to rot the body, within and without. The skin blistered, the eyes became extremely painful and nausea and vomiting began. Worse, the gas attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. The pain was almost beyond endurance and most cases had to be strapped to their beds. Death took up to four or five weeks. A nurse wrote:

I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case--to say nothing of ten cases--of mustard gas in its early stages--could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes . . . all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke."

This passage is from John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I, (1976), pp. 66-7.

And then, a reminder that we never learn.

Aftermath, by Siegfried Sassoon.
HAVE you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same-and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads-those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon, 1920

Mental Floss

There is no work in progress. Soubriquet's brain has absconded, and he has decided to sleep until it returns. Perhaps tomorrow. The last few days have been hard for the small number of brain cells doing all the work.They need sleep.

Rabbit Crimes.

No snow here yet..