Hound of Spring: a tale

The day was both warm and cool, a July afternoon with clouds, no clouds and then clouds once more.  A soft breeze feathered over my head from which I had shaved all the hair, once a more brilliant red than yours.

We faced off that day around a small, green table on the patio of the Boulder Cafe—green, like the very soul of the earth.  The occasional distraction of firecrackers, like bursts of ancient gunfire, unsettled me:  How gay and loose people had become, I mused, yet still so distant the point of perfect joy.

Strange the clarity with which these words, so long asleep, now sing within me, and this desire to return there now in the physical with the head from the ale still clinging to my lips, the youthful tempers of two sisters swelling like storm clouds.

“One day, Lenis,” I said with such cockiness, “Omega Point will arrive, as sure as the scent of choke cherry in the spring.  And, like a hound of spring, I’ll be there to break open the buds with my fingers, to inhale, indeed to become the fragrance itself.

“Vera,” you pleaded, “there’s nothing wrong with venturing off into dreams, so long as they’re round trips.  Are you listening to me?”  You paused, piercing my eyes with yours.  “Your life is here with me—your family.”

“I’ll not back down,” I said.  “I’ve come too far.  I’ll have my Omega Point!”

Your hair was the red of Irish anger.  You had tied it back with the engraved silver clasp—my gift for your thirtieth birthday.  So beautiful you were that day, so hesitant.

“It’s unproven,” you argued, “pure theory, speculation originating from a French priest hunting the phony bones of Piltdown man in the deserts of China.  Not even that,” you continued.  “It’s folly to doggedly pursue this insane, supposedly mathematical theory that if life began with a Big Bang—an Alpha Point—then, it will also end at a single point.”

“This Omega Point;” you said, “this single, omniscient cell—playing God is what you’re talking about, becoming capable of re-creating life elsewhere in the universe after the earth crumbles apart from instability.  You’re a cosmologist trained in the pure sciences, Vera, for God’s sake!  For most people of above-average intelligence, this twentieth century theory was never more than a source of amusement.  Your acceptance of it, quite honestly, is not near amusing.

You pounded away.  “Even if there were an Omega Point, it’s simply unnatural for you to cheat death and leapfrog ahead!  Is our world so inhospitable that you want to just pass it by like some mere road sign on a celestial highway?  Won’t you stop to smell the roses?”

“The technology exists,” I countered.  “Unlike before, we can now be preserved indefinitely.  We, Lenis.  You can come with me.  The inner chamber is basic cryogenics, time and again proven successful.  The outer skin is synthetic spider silk, soft as cotton, strong as steel and proven capable of enduring broad swings in temperature change.  The skin is enriched with a rare kind of bacteria from lake bottoms—ninety-five percent efficient in capturing light.  Perfect for enhancing the solar cells that fuel the cryogenics for years and years . . . and years.”

“At Omega Point,” I concluded, “when humanity merges with the divine, then I’ll awaken from my chrysalis.  The years I spend asleep will pass like mere seconds.  Technology will bear me over the sea of time as on the back of the golden, winged ram—Chrysomallus.

“Vera,” you said passionately, your ale turning warm and flat.  “You’re my little sister.  We’re blood.  Blood, Vera!  Doesn’t that mean a damn to you?  You’re already asleep and dreaming with all of this mythological Chrysomallus nonsense.  This is 2023!  A time for joy, and peace and family.  Our time!  Please?  Our parents are gone.  Too young they were gone.  You’re all I have!”

I stood firm.  “Lenis, I’ll not back down.”

“Do you realize what you’re asking?” you shouted, drawing glares.  “You want me to bury you alive!  To seal you away in some cryogenic chamber, away from my eyes for the rest of my life.  What could you possibly be thinking?”

Glimpsing my reflection in her moistening eyes, I paused.  “I’ll not back down,” I repeated, softly.  “I have friends,” I said.  “They’ll set me up at the location I’ve chosen in the mountains.  Come with me to Omega Point.  There’s still time.  I’ll take care of all the arrangements.  Lenis, please?”

“You’re on your own,” you said, your words like thunderclaps at my heels.  “You’re on your own.”

~

It was the eugenics-crazed Irishman George Bernard Shaw who once said:  “When you are asked, ‘Where is God?  Who is God?’ stand up and say, ‘I am God and here is God, not as yet completed, but still advancing toward completion, just in so much as I am working for the purpose of the universe, working for the good of the whole of society and whole world, instead of merely looking after my personal ends.’”

I was after completion all right, but too zealously after my personal ends.  I confess this to you now, Lenis, although far too late in this mad game, for you’ve been long dead.  I carved away too much of your life and too much of my own . . . as if I were God himself.  And for what?  For some non-existent seed of hope lying somewhere beyond the seal of this self-imposed, cryogenic tomb; this merciless darkness; this stinging chill; those rumblings outside; these tortuous, razor-sharp memories that I would now happily direct to my burning wrists if only it were—

Those rumblings outside?  So stupid.  So completely stupid.  The time was to pass like mere seconds with no tortuous memories, no awareness of the darkness, no stinging sensation of chill and no outside rumblings.  The cryogenics are failing!  They must be failing, and I must be awakening.  But, to what?  My death?  In my mother’s name, what’ve I done?  Is someone out there who will free me?  What are those rumblings . . . growing louder?  Those cracking sounds . . . at this, my tomb—

~

And I felt . . . as if gentle hands lifted me forward by my tiny feet.  Suddenly, Lenis, you were in me, and I was in you.  Our parents were in us, and we were in them.

~

And the small, green table along with every grave ever dug into this so-wounded earth had burst into tiny dust particles, hurtling outwards into the boundless universe.  In the beginning, at Omega Point, the one so impatient to be among the first . . . was the last.

~

by S.A. Bort / 29 July 2013 (originally 19 February 1997)

Photo Credits:

“Spider Silk” Top:  http://whyfiles.org/2010/spider-silk-material-of-the-future/  Bottom:  http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2097773/source_of_spider_silks_extreme_strength_unveiled/

NOTE:

Lately, I’ve been enjoying publishing some of my older work.  Since this is still July, and much of this story takes place in July, I thought I would rework it some and present it again.  I wrote it at a time, early 1997, when Vance Aandahl [http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Vance-Aandahl-p3649.htm] was a writing mentor of mine.  On an early draft of this story, he wrote, “your writing style is wonderfully romantic and literary. . . . Hound of Spring is a fine story, professional in quality.”

My writing has always been rooted more in romanticism than realism, and I’m not ashamed of that in the least bit.

I have always thought the world of Vance, and I treasure his insights into my humble attempts at fantasy and science fiction.

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Talkin’ near-bedtime, beer-drinking, alchemy blues

It’s 9:45 pm, and I’m at my studio in Englewood, Colorado.  I’m having a can of beer.  A good one.  A Colorado-brewed Scotch Ale.  It’s not past my bedtime anymore because I’m past the age of having to be parented.  In fact, my parents are deceased.  I’m also past the age of caring.  Well, I do care some.  Only about certain things and about certain people.  Right now, there may be a full moon that’s beautifully set in the evening sky above me.  Set like a jewel of some celestial, unworldly kind.  (Did I mention I’m a poet?  Maybe not one of the fine caliber of Frank Messina, but as I stand and breath, I say to this night sky that I am poet.)  If it’s not a full moon, then it’s very close.  Close enough.  I care about the moon.  If the moon disappeared suddenly, I would worry.  It’s always moving, but it always comes back.  People don’t always come back, but I can depend on the moon.

I’m sitting in a folding chair now with the flag of Texas for the cloth part.  I hope it’s not a sin of some kind for having my ass set upon a replica of the state of Texas.  Would this be like mooning Texas?  Doh!  I grew up in Texas, so maybe that makes it okay for me.  My parents, paternal grandparents and paternal great-grandparents are all buried outside of a small town in the Texas Panhandle, so I say that gives me the privilege to have my ass thus set.  It’s nice to have privilege of some kind.  I was schooled in Texas through my twenty-fourth year.  I consider that a fine privilege.  I can depend on that education I received, even if my abilities at humor still sometimes are called into question.

I’m rambling, probably because of the good beer that I’m drinking.  A lot of rambling goes on in Texas, but that’s another story.  I’m in Colorado now where there’s a whole lot of good beer.  It’s late, and the moon is very nice to look at as I type this in my folding chair outside of my studio.  There’s very little wind.  It’s kind of balanced between warm and cool and feels just fine.

The real reason I’m writing this is because of the poem I wrote and posted recently titled, alchemist, which I think is pretty good, thank you.  In fact, I can’t stop feeling it.  My hope is that those who read it won’t stop feeling it either.  It was written to be felt until one’s last breath is taken.  I, for one, have decided that I will.

My aunt’s last breath was taken just last month, less than twenty-four hours after I laughed with her in her hospital room, then pretended to reach out to shake her warm, frail hand when I had to go.  She looked down at my hand kind of funny, then smiled when she understood my stupid joke of shaking her hand instead of hugging her.  I leaned over, hugged her and kissed her on her right cheek.  That was that last time I saw her, and I’m intensely glad that we got to laugh together those last moments.

My cousins and her grandchildren were in the room with her when her breath stopped, and they described it for me later.  A long time ago, I was in a hospital room when my paternal grandfather took his last breath.  I know of the experience and feel strongly that I can speak of it:  that final “peace which passeth all understanding.”  We will all experience that final breath, that final peace that has nothing at all to do with books or words, even Biblical words, or knowledge or understanding of any kind.  And we will all take that peace to the great beyond.  Better to be laughing sweetly than living bitter.

I’d like to try to explain my poem, alchemist, only a little, because poems, like some things, are not supposed to be explained but instead felt, taken deep inside.  I truly do want you to take this poem inside, which I myself will take to the grave with me.

This poem can be taken as a recipe or a prayer or both.  I see it as both.  It can be taken in an Eastern traditional way or a Western traditional way.  I see it as both.

A “Flight For Life” just flew over because a hospital is only a block away.  Critically injured people are taken to and from there all the time, so I always make a sign of the cross when the helicopter flies over.  I can usually see bright lights on in the copters and paramedics’ heads along with their red vests because they’re so close in the air above me.  They’re very loud and always capture my attention whatever I’m doing at the moment.  But, back to the poem.

alchemist is at its heart simply about the act of meditation.  One takes in a deep breath of air.  It mixes with one’s inner energy, one’s “khi.”  The “pluses and minuses,” or the goods and bads, or sacreds and evils or positives and negatives within are balanced.  When one holds a breath in, it’s like an expanding  inner strength, a balanced rainbow of bright light, radiating outwards beyond the flesh, an “aura.”  (Hang in here with me.  Don’t “New Age” out on me.)  When one empties the balanced breath outward, the experience of “peace which passeth all understanding,” from either the final line of T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, or earlier, from Philippians 4:7, takes its place.  This is the recipe, or prayer:  khi + aura =  peace which passeth all understanding.

Try it right now.  “Breathe deep the gathering gloom, watch lights fade from every room…”  Doh!  Sorry, I accidentally channeled The Moody Blues just then.  Seriously, though, take a deep breath, feel the air and energy balancing the crap in your life down into the good in your life, feel the energy expand outward as if becoming an aura radiating out from your flesh,  let the breath out and then feel the peace.  It’s just a breath for God’s sake!  We all do it.  We have to in order to breathe.  It’s not that you do it.  It’s how you do it.

This is a recipe or prayer which cooks one from within in order that one may be ready to be served to others.  How can an unprepared or uncooked meal be served to others?  It would be an insult, in the least.  Being properly cooked brings one to be brightened.  Properly serving oneself to others is cause for laughter (and of course it’s a nice privilege to be served as well).  You can always tell when one is underprepared or undercooked by what a bummer they are to be around.  Yep.  Too much minus and not enough plus:

“Hay, how ya doin’ there partner?”

“Just peachy, thanks.  Doin’ just peachy.”

“Yeah, well you might just tell that to your face.”

You know the kind.

One’s outer form is imposed on them whether liked or not.  A turkey is a turkey.  A pig is a pig.  A big nose is a big nose.  Plastic surgeons aren’t really hiding anything.  What matters is that the “peace which passeth all understanding “ is prepared within so that it can then be served beyond.  Beyond the flesh.  Beyond the form.

There are other feelings in the poem which are personal to me.  I won’t share those. They’re for my contentment alone.  But the recipe/prayer is for all.  It’s so simple.  Take the air into your energy.  Balance out the shit that media satellites constantly feed you with the good that’s there to be found by just turning the channel in another direction–like towards that very bright moon shining above, or to the Flight For Life helicopters that are so good for reasons that don’t have to be explained to anyone with family or friends.

In a way, the whole thing is like a refrigerator.  Unless it’s consistently plugged in, the cold will very soon become warm, and the food will stink.  The closest scientific term is entropy.  Unless you regularly follow the recipe/prayer, the minus will always overtake the plus just like the warm will always overtake the cold.  Regarding alchemist, one needs to stay plugged in for as often as possible to overpower the minus enough to balance the two.

Here’s the most important point.  One can never eliminate the minuses in life. They’re there as sure as a big nose is there, or a pig or a turkey. The minus has to be cooked through with the plus to reach a balance.  Anything more would be overcooking, or charring.  Life has minuses whether one likes it or not.  The very best you can do is to obtain balance–regularly, until it becomes a habit.

Many people consider meat to be bad, but I can tell you from having grown up in Texas that finely prepared chicken-fried steaks or barbeque ribs or T-bone cuts of steak are as well-balanced a meal as one can ever find.  Although, the “peace which passeth understanding” is many times followed afterwards by an early bedtime with much snoring.

It’s now 11 pm, and the burritos I ate earlier, along with the good beer, are having a similar effect.  A natural effect.  The pluses and minuses in life are plentiful and natural.  Today, and in the days to come, the minuses will, I believe, become even more plentiful.  It makes it even more vital to do whatever one can to balance the two, to stay plugged in.

Khi + Aura = Peace which passeth all understanding.  That ultimate peace will only be found in death and then taken beyond, but in life, it can and should be encouraged within–to the max–at all times, and then also taken beyond oneself, into your family, friends and the world at large.

Before being served to others, one must be properly cooked.  That is the alchemy from the alchemist that turns something base into something of value.  That is the Khi, the Aura and the Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.  And, this is where I wish to end my prayer before bedtime overtakes me at last and leads me to warm dreams of a cooked Steve that brightly laughs and dances with the alchemist in the companionable moonlight with good beers.  Doh!

[the photo and all above text is by Stephen Bort, copyright 2012.]

Living Cheaply with Style

 

SB

The following excerpts from [Callenbach, Ernest.  Living Cheaply With Style.  Ronin Publishing, 1993.] resonate with my own attempts at expressing who I am.  One of my favorite words has become enough:  “sufficient to meet a need or satisfy a desire; adequate.”  Callenbach is definitely writing from within a specific political “box” (which is more than evident in later passages of his book), and I like to keep as far away as possible from partisanship, but much of his voice rings true for me.  –SB

 from: Living Cheaply With Style:

 

Dedication

 

To all who think for themselves and stay conscious of the choices that shape their lives . . .

 

To all who know in their bones that enough is enough, and want to figure out how much that is . . .

 

To all who understand that thrift, ingenuity, and resourcefulness mimic nature and help preserve the Earth . . .

 

To all who wish to survive with grace, humor, imagination, and a little help from their friends . . .

 

Introduction

 

The aim of the book is to equip you to live a better life–more relaxed, more confident, more resilient, more loving, more thoughtful, more satisfying, more genuinely stylish–than you could possibly have with a lot more money.  It’s not easy to live in America today, and for many of us it’s getting steadily harder.  But if we learn to live smarter and with less dependence on the money economy, we can tap a rich potential for sustaining healthy, productive, and happy lives–lives with real personal style.  This book will both provide you with the knowledge and suggest the change in attitudes that can enable you to escape from the mental oppression of our commodity-crazed society, and to focus on what’s really important in life:  our human relationships both inside and outside the family, our communities, our physical and mental health, our contributions to the world, and the infinite pleasures and delights life can offer that are not dependent on cash.

 

Style.

 

You live with style when you live in a self-determined and original way that is authentic for you, when you do things you enjoy because you enjoy them and not because you read about them somewhere or heard that somebody famous and rich enjoys them.  You live with style when you keep your mind free to invent ways of thinking, feeling, and doing that suit you, rather than some corporate marketing department.  You live with style when you rely on your own practiced judgment rather than somebody else’s pronouncements.

 

Thus style is a matter of independence, even rebellion; we’re not talking here about fashion, which is a matter of commercially fostered fads.  America offers a paradoxical living environment, because on the one hand we praise independence of spirit, but on the other hand we are a nation of sheep in our consumer behavior, regularly duped by advertisers.  In our commercial life and in our political life, we have become a nation of chronic liars.  Living with style means turning away from lies, being your own person–though also realizing that as human beings we are social and sociable animals whose safety and serenity inevitably depend heavily on others.  Part of the pleasure of living cheaply with style is to share your tricks and achievements with others, to build a counter-culture in which human beings can live more comfortably and satisfyingly, and to help make American life saner and more humane.

Dion: Life and Near-Death On The Long and Winding Road

This is a excerpt from a moving interview in today’s Wall Street Journal with Dion, who sang such early rock & roll gems as “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer” and “Abraham, Martin & John.”  He gave up his seat to Buddy Holly on the plane that ultimately crashed on February 3, 1959, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.  That day is still known as “the day the music died.”  Dion thought thirty-six dollars was too much to pay for a plane ticket because at the time that amount represented one-month’s rent.

As the tour continued on, Bobbie Vee joined the tour with 18-year-old Bob Dylan on piano, as a replacement for the recently killed Buddy Holly.  Dylan is now 70, still produces new music (Nikki Jean, a backup singer for Lupe Fiasco, just recorded a song she cowrote with Dylan, “Steel and Feathers.”) and still tours worldwide for most months of the year.  –SB

[ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204468004577167252304032204.html?mod=ITP_fridayjournal_3 ]

THE ARENA   JANUARY 20, 2012

• The Eternal Teenager in Love

By STEVE DOUGHERTY

Dion and the Belmonts rose from neighborhood street corners to the top of the pop charts in the 1950s with songs like “I Wonder Why” and “A Teenager in Love.”  Now 72, Mr. DiMucci, who went on to solo stardom with “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer” and “Ruby Baby” before releasing his final No. 1 hit, 1968’s “Abraham, Martin and John,” was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.  He lives in Florida with his wife of 48 years.  His latest CD, “Tank Full of Blues,” comes out Tuesday.

You were the only headliner who survived the 1959 tour when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash.  Did you ever wonder why them and not you?

I was 19 years old and touring with those guys was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Buddy and Ritchie and I, we all had the new Fender Stratocaster guitars; mine was all white; Buddy’s had the sunburst body.  We jammed every night on that bus.  The heater kept breaking down in subzero weather.  It was so cold on the bus Buddy’s drummer got frostbite and had to leave the tour.  Carlo of the Belmonts filled in for him.  Buddy and the Bopper were from Texas; Ritchie was from L.A.—they didn’t know cold like that.  They wanted off that bus!  Buddy chartered the plane; we flipped for the two other seats.  The Bopper and I won the toss.  But the price was $36 each.  That was the exact amount of the monthly rent my parents argued over all my life.  I couldn’t justify spending a month’s rent on a plane ride.  Plus I could handle the cold.  I told Ritchie, “You go.”  Then all of a sudden, they’re gone.  I remember sitting alone on the bus after and there was Buddy’s guitar; I was in shock.  I thought, what the hell is life about; why am I here and they’re not?  I was angry.  It took me a long time to process that loss.

In your recent book [“Dion:  The Wanderer Talks Truth,” about his Christian faith] you say Feb. 3, 1959, wasn’t the day the music died but the day it was born.  What do you mean?

There’s a line in Scripture that says a grain of wheat doesn’t bear fruit until it dies and takes seed.  Buddy Holly and the Crickets created the form—guitars, bass and drums—that every rock band after him, the Beatles, Stones and all the rest, followed.  They wrote and performed their own songs like he did and his music is still being played today.  And that tour, it gave seed to a new generation.  Bobby Vee was a 16-year-old kid who filled in for Buddy at the next gig in Moorhead, Minn.  We got to know each other and we always kept in touch after that.  When Bob Dylan broke big, Bobby Vee told me that his piano player that night was Dylan, who was 18 and still known as Bob Zimmerman.  [Mr. Dylan’s spokesman said:  “Bob says it’s so.”]  He had been in the audience for one or two of the Winter Dance Party shows and now he was on the stage with Bobby Vee, standing in for Buddy Holly.  Bobby told me Dylan played so loud he couldn’t hear himself sing; he said you couldn’t control the guy; it was like someone let him out of a cage.

Related Post:  Please see [ Revolution du Jour and Another Slice of American Pie ] for a great follow-up story on how the song “American Pie” details the earthquake-like shift that ocurred in America between the time of Holly’s 1959 death and the Stones’ tragic Altamont concert in late 1969.  –SB