Nothing serious or signific at first — but, before long, a greeterly incontinence took hold of the two of us: The first time I climbed all the way out, she guided me to where she said she slept: My hands lent themselves to her pink, winking undernesses. She had the prevailing anatomy. We made plans to meet again halfway between us. She named some eligible district. A less penalized course of retrospection, however, would find me having already found that there was a living to be made by furnishing grounds for others in the town to regard me consanguineously: I thus fingered their ashtrays, left informing redolences on their sofas and chairs.
I wore a welcome hole in their lives. For once, mothers would have been perfectly in the right to talk in secret twos and threes. But how wrong could they have been to keep counting their children on the sly every hour on the hour? When at last the time came to eat, we confronted a speckiness in shallow bowls. Afterward, I would be alternately detested and regaled — the butt of every confidence. I remember setting enough nights aside to compose a hat: For it was on the strength of this hat alone, the boxed mock-up of it, that I advanced to another man: We mostly had to travel.
I had to be driven out for a look at the place. What I could make out had a loose, unmastered aspect in the supplementary light I had been reminded to bring along. But she had advantages of height, of moisture. These she is said to still be sweeping. I hope I told last every one of them the same thing — that under no circumstances should the body ever have to depict itself. More in keeping, then, with the nature of this anniversary confession are my chances, much later in life, of having had a boy looking in on me after work. Whenever [herring gull chicks] see a bird beak, they frantically peck at it, begging for food.
But this reflex can be manipulated. Should the chicks see a wood stick with three red dots, they peck even faster. Similarly, we are drawn to peak shift features in art. Ramachandran also asks why we bother creating and viewing art. He gives four possible answers, favouring the last:. Literature in the Second Degree [; ]. A txt can never stand alone; it is exponential. Paul Baran, Types of Network. Of course, the kind of network the txt sets up will vary based on our starting point, i.
Perspectives on Ergodic Literature [], ergodic literature being txts where the reader must do nontrivial work to navigate the txt. Standard Posted by Sean Kohingarara Sturm. Posted on 19 September Posted on 11 September Posted under Lacan , method. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait Posted on 3 September Posted under capitalism , Economics , method , Sloterdijk , technology , university. The word Weltinnenraum , from poet Rainer Maria Rilke, implies a pantheistic space disclosed by affect: Posted on 25 August Posted under "grammar B" , Lutz , Wittgenstein , writing.
That is to say, there needs to be an intimacy between the words, a togetherness that has nothing to do with grammar or syntax but instead has to do with the very shapes and sounds, the forms and contours, of the gathered words. The sentence is a colony: A tabby cat observed my pacing from the one seat there. To calm my nerves I stooped to say hello to it. In the darkness of its sleek eyes I saw my forced smile droop.
Her room was barely a cupboard, almost a perfect cube. All she had was a chair and desk upon which she had methodically laid out the ribbons she had collected. When she lit a tiny oil lamp its glow showed the mould on the walls. There's something too sad about naming deaf cats. I had my spine flat against her door, my pulse reaching my fingers as they clung to the doorknob. Through the cracked mirror of her desk I saw the corner of her lip was puffed up, a slight purple tone glowing from under her makeup.
There was something slightly erratic in the movement of her eyes. When I snatched my hand back, I must have hissed, because she yelped, shielding her abdomen with one arm, her face with the other. Squeezing that ribbon, feeling its weight, I began sniffing, aching and burning at the eyes. Before long I was apologising and wiping my eyes with the cuffs of my jacket. She rose and took my head to the embroidered flowers on her shoulder. I sobbed there, like a bullied schoolboy; uncontrollably. I remember, even in that dingy room being terrified that anything louder than a thought would somehow reach my father.
My lips forgot the shapes of speech. But pulling each word from me I suddenly understood what he had always suspected:. The light from her oil lamp faded. With that, I found myself alone in the exhibition centre, looking out onto the night sky. Darkness, my element, gave me a canvas upon which to think, albeit uselessly. In turn I myself had set paths for them - either out of love or a lack of imagination. Beyond my reflection I saw the dust of construction seep from the alleys.
Having withstood floods, wars, and occupations the whole country now seemed to swell with desperate, adolescent potential. But my heart ached to picture her - the girl that I had spoken my little truth to before boxing it away like so many undeveloped negatives. I saw her, aged like myself, limping through the folds of the city as it extended, indifferently, upwards.
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The theme of the story is more geared towards gender relationships than capitalism, so would be good to introduce the theme within these observations. Maybe something that resembles a pink ribbon. Or to 'marry' the themes of gender and the development of the country somehow Thinking of focusing on male labourers, construction workers, the difficulty of it.
When I started out my thinking was that the rapid growth of Hong Kong was itself revolutionary, but this mark doesn't seem to have been hit. Might be the answer to these last words not really clicking for me. I'd like to somewhere say that the father believes Hong Kong is destine to failure' Draws attention to the theme of it growing. I feel like 'extended' and 'upwards' are not the right words now.
Especially since you deleted 'descend'. Yeah, and I feel like the line 'the country was the real revolution is really naff. I'd rather the exact adjectives painted this picture without having to state it bluntly. But she would not turn back. This was her only chance. Their heads were almost as high up as — No, they were not floating, but sitting on the stairs at the end of the alley. The bald man on the stairs stood up. The man unlocked the door. This could be the final moment of her life.
The final moment of this life, and the beginning of another. The girl did not look away from the television. Who could blame her? Her body was failing. Her mind was failing. The man emerged from behind the curtains. Or rather, a Switcher. There were seven of them, Ling had been told. The man opened the cage and let the cat out. She looked back at the old woman. Fifty percent chance of failure. This was worth it.
Top Story Winners 2017
Choose Month 11 10 09 Jia by Olivier Lee. Prank by Cindy Lam. Whispers and read by Liam Beale. Xunxin Zishi Zui and read by Nathan Lauer. Top Story Winners Such rambling comes across as quite gloomy sometimes, so the Photographic Society often reach for another quote of mine: Photography is, to me, like whispering a little secret into the darkness. Had it really been thirty years? My father waved down a waiter and ordered a whole bottle of rice wine. The circle of girls smiled.
The tighter circle of men nodded knowingly.
Escaping their eyes I looked up to the pipa girl, wishing our eyes would meet. She steered the song into a new key. I drank up some courage. Then I was struck by another possibility - I could just lie. I considered sneaking out to a hotel, returning in the morning. Bronwyn held her mother by the elbow with one hand and with the other hand brushed at her, as if the contact might have dirtied her. You'll bruise her," Maggie advised as evenly as possible.
Bronwyn sprang away from the bed as if she'd touched the lighted end of a torch. The frail Queen blinked her wide, green eyes twice and held out her hand to her daughter, who took it timidly. How are you today? I've just slain the entire Ablemarlonian army and the leaders have all been hanged in your name. You're such a thoughtful child. Bronwyn had her mother's eyes and chin, but she was otherwise her father's daughter entirely.
A fitting successor to her paternal grandfathers, Rowans the Rambunctious, Rampaging, and Reckless respectively, she would have made King Roari a fine son.
She was a dead loss at the womanly pursuits, and had gone through so many gowns her tiring women had finally given up and allowed her to go about in the simple undergown and armor she preferred. She clinked somewhat now as she perched on the edge of the bed, not quite resting her entire weight upon it, afraid she'd break her mother's bones if she relaxed. She was such a large girl—half again as large as either Maggie or Amberwine and uncomfortably aware that she had yet to gain mastery of her body.
She knew she could cause irreparable damage to practically anything in the twinkling of an eye. If only she could be allowed to puncture something other than her own fingers during her earnest but ultimately painful attempts at needlework, perhaps the child would be good for something despite her—problem. Amberwine caught Maggie's eye and said to Bronwyn, "Your aunt has a wonderful surprise for you, darling. Sick, or not, the Queen was Bronwyn's mother. Let her be the one to break the news.
She was a-wriggle with excitement now. Winnie shot Maggie an injured look. To see some of the rest of the kingdom and to meet your cousin Carole. It must be so dull for you shut up in the castle all the time and. You will need to see more of your realm than the capitol sometime, and there's no time like the present. Maggie and I were such good friends as girls. You and Carole must learn to know and love each other too. I want you to have friends and—oh, darling, don't look like that!
You'll have such fun!
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Tell her about the ice castle and the worm and the animals and the talking river, Maggie. It was unsettling enough to the Queen to be pregnant and bedridden while her husband was at war and her country under attack without worrying about Bronwyn. Not only was the girl a handful to have around at such a crucial time, but if the new reports of the enemy entering the Gulf of Gremlins were true, and by some ill fortune the King's forces could not stop them, the Ablemarlonians might soon be in Queenston Harbor.
Bronwyn was Crown Princess and must be kept safe. Winnie was sure that if her daughter knew how potentially perilous the situation was, she would refuse to leave, although it was vital to national security that she do so. Maggie's view was that the girl had to grow up sometime, but then, Maggie wasn't Queen and very glad of it too. So she talked, wishing she had her husband's gift of gab and persuasive musical abilities to help her sound convincing. Bronwyn interrupted her in mid-sentence, rising from her mother's bedside to stand at attention, her face set in a small painful smile not quite tight enough to control the trembling of her freckled chin.
If my Royal Mama commands it, I am sure that I shall greatly enjoy my banis—fostering at your home. If I may be excused, I'll take my leave now and prepare for the journey. Maggie and Amberwine exchanged relieved sighs that Bronwyn had been so tractable for a change. It was a sign of their anxious preoccupation with other matters and the poor state of Amberwine's health that it didn't occur to either of them until much later that Bronwyn's seemingly sensible attitude was more ominous than any fuss she might have made.
For the trouble with Bronwyn was that, through no fault of her own, the girl was incapable of telling the truth. Back to Bronwyn's Bane. Rupert Rowan, prince and diplomatic trainee, winced and recrossed his long legs, sinking back into the velvet padded chair and trying to maintain his carefully cultivated serenity despite his sister's anguished wails from the other side of the iron-hinged door. He had wearied of pacing hours ago and now had settled down to present a good example to the occasional subject who passed by him in the corridor.
Most of these subjects were women, and many of them pretended not to hear Bronwyn's caterwauling, which Rupert thought very decent of them. Bronwyn was supposed to be a warrior. Why did she have to choose a time when he was in earshot to give up stoicism?
A buxom wench with a pert face and a corona of golden braids smiled warmly at him, masking the expression he frequently saw in female faces with one of sympathy. The hollering relieves the pains some, see? Every woman does it in labor. She won't even remember this when she holds the little one in her arms.
Will it be much longer do you think? Though the first always takes longer. Is it an Argonian custom to have a male relative in attendance, Your Highness? Forgive me, but we were curious, we girls, if you were here because Prince Jack couldn't be, being in Brazoria as I'm sure it's needful he be, though very hard on our young lady, your sister, it is.
None of his folk offered, not even the women. We all know what gypsies are like. The girl started, gave him an apologetic smile and a half-curtsy, and scurried off, banging through the door hip and shoulder first. He had, in fact, only been stopping off on the way from his fostering in Wasimarkan, where he was learning diplomacy at the behest of his Royal Mother, Queen Amberwine. The Queen had rightly pointed out that with an elder sister as Princess Consort of Ablemarle having lost the title of Crown Princess of Argonia when her brothers were born , elder twin brothers one of whom, Raleigh, would be King, the other of whom, Roland, would be war leader , there was very little else for her fourth child to do that would be useful.
The Queen had declared with unusual forcefulness for a person of faery blood that she was not about to have a son of hers turn into a good-for-nothing knight errant bullying the populace and using his royal prerogatives to rape and pillage. It had happened elsewhere, and Rupert was no less fond of the phenomena than his mother. He was a highly peaceable and loving sort by nature—so loving, in fact, that by the age of twenty, when his frost giant ancestry caused him to be so unusually tall and well grown and his faery blood lent him an uncommon beauty and charm, he was a cause for alarm among the fathers and husbands in the Wasimarkanian Court.
To the men he was called, behind his back for it would never do to offend so powerful an ally as the Royal House of Argonia Rowan the Rake. To the women, into whose eyes he gazed soulfully and whose hands he kissed tenderly, almost without regard for age, station, or pulchritude, he was Rowan the Romantic. He would miss those charitable and generous ladies, one and all, but his mentors, under pressure, had declared that with princesses of six major countries in a swoon for his attentions, he would need more advanced lessons in diplomacy than they had to offer.
They referred him back to his own family for further instruction. His ship was docking to take on cargo. He had not seen Bronwyn in several years, and she had always been his favorite in the family. She was as good a fighter if not a better one than Roland—at least on the practice field—and she had had marvelous adventures when she was still much younger than Rupert.
When Rupert tired of hearing of those adventures, which he sometimes did since he always wanted to learn something new, Bronwyn was most adept at making up tales to amuse him. He almost failed to recognize the wild-eyed creature who greeted him and clung to his hand, her face so pale that every freckle stood out like a pock, her wiry red hair loose and straggling in every direction, her belly great with child. The self-sufficient big sister of his youth all but pleaded with him to remain until her child was born, as it was to be any day.
She begged him to stay since her husband, Prince Jack, could not. Rupert had failed to understand any more than the pretty lady-in-waiting why any masculine family member should be a comfort to Bronwyn in what was first and foremost and unarguably woman's work, but he could not deny her. A long, gasping cry ended in an ear-splitting scream, and was followed closely by another cry, this time the squall of an infant. Rupert jumped to his feet and strode to the door, leaving his rowan shield leaning against the door. All the Rowan offspring usually carried the shields made by their father as birthing gifts on their persons, for the rowan wood was proof against magic.
The door flung back against him and the girl with whom he had been speaking bustled out, brushing against him, a whimpering blanketed bundle cradled against her breast. I'll be bathing this child to be presented to her when she wakes. Well, um, may I watch? I've never seen a new child bathed before. The baby's bath was interesting chiefly in that Rupert thought it very convenient to be able to bathe an entire human being in a wash basin that barely fit his two hands. Otherwise it was rather messy.
The maid herself was far more intriguing, and he proceeded to get to know her better while his new niece slept in her cradle, carved in the shape of a swan and newly decked with pink ribbons by the lady whose ear he was nibbling. The enormous draft that blasted open the double doors took both Rupert and his companion by surprise, as did the fact that neither of them was able to do so much as raise a finger to lift themselves from the tiled floor where they had been flung.
Indeed, Rupert could not so much as twitch his knee from where it undoubtedly inconvenienced his paramour, lodged in her midsection. He watched helplessly as a rather large rug whisked in on the blast. Two gentlemen with blue robes and bandages tied round their heads with blue cords lifted the baby from her cradle and onto the rug and whisked back out again. They failed to blast the door shut behind them and Rupert could hear doors banging, presumably all the way down the corridors to the main entrance, as the rug flew through unhindered.
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- Stalker or Lover Chapter 1, a naruto fanfic | FanFiction!
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I've seen many a fine songwriter who once wrote and sang wonderfully understanding songs about the lives of ordinary people fall flat on his ass when he gets a little famous, gets away from regular folks, and pretty soon all he's able to write are songs about how god-awful it is to be on the road and how he is so a-lo-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-own. So I want to make it clear that though I'm in it and I have a little part of it, this story is not about me. It's about me telling about what happened when certain parties decided to deprive the world and these United States of America in particular of what is broadly, inaccurately, and disputedly called folk music.
About these certain parties; lawyers would probably call them the parties of the first part, but I call them devils. For one thing, they are, as you will see in this story and the other two parts of it that follow, mighty powerful and also mighty evil. That fits devils down to the ground. More than that, they're mysterious and magical and we—my friends and I—only learned what happened on their end in little bitty pieces here and there most of the time and had to fit it all together as we went along. Because to begin with, I would say the common attitude among us was that we all were inclined to like magic without exactly believing in it, which was different from later when we were forced to believe in it but didn't like it much at all.
It wasn't your little Tinkerbell fairies or nice old bats with magic wands, none of that stuff. Not even wise magicians like Merlin or witches like that woman with the twitchy nose who used to be on television. So though I could tell you they were goblins or gremlins or all-powerful wicked wizards, I think I'll just call 'em what my grandma from back in the Carolina mountains would have called them: Not necessarily the hellfire-and-brimstone kind that get you if you don't believe a certain way.
Buddhists have devils same as Christians, same as a lot of folks. Most everyone has something like that. So just say these were basic, generic, all-around-ornery devils who were opposed to anybody having any kind of belief or good feelings in themselves that helped them get by. That was why they hated the music so, you see. That was why they set out to destroy it. And that is why it's been up to me, who never has been able to carry a tune in a bucket, to go before the others, back into where just about all the music has been pulled out by the roots.
My job is to tell how it happened, to fertilize the soil, to make the people ready for when the songs come back, fresh cuttings transplanted from the old soil where my friends and I have spent these last harrowing years harvesting the songs from their own history, trying to save them from the oblivion where the devils sent so many of our own songs. I don't go on the radio or TV talk shows, now that I'm home, or anywhere the devils can find me and keep me from talking to people.
I use my gift of gab I got from bartending and the performance training I got from dancing plus what I learned from hanging around all those musicians lately, and I travel around among the ordinary people, the kids, the bums, the working folks—anyone who is bored or lonely enough to have time to listen. I turn myself into someone else, someone as fascinating as a snake charmer, someone who is a worthy enemy of all those devils, and I make myself heard. What follows, written down, is the important part of what's been happening since I've been back, staying with a friend and with an audience as long as it seems safe, then moving on to carry the story farther, to break just a little more ground.
It's not in my voice because mostly it's not about me except as I'm reflected in the eyes of other people. It's about them, what they say, what they do, what can be guessed from the things that happen and from the lifting of an eyebrow or a quirk of a mouth. And of course it's about the songs, which, when you hear them, speak for themselves. So think of me, and of yourself, as if we were birds on a branch or flies buzzing in the air around that first schoolyard, where a funny old woman is talking to a bunch of kids, telling them about something that happened a few years before.
The children were fascinated by the woman, not only because of what she said, but because of how she said it. When she talked, she moved her face more than people usually did and she moved her body too, so that she seemed to be the Chairdevil calling a meeting to order. This was the second story—she'd told another, a short one, at morning recess, a silly one about animals, just to whet their appetites.
The boy had been impressed then too by the way she spoke different voices with each character, seeming to turn into a new person as she spoke in each new voice. She never left out important words, even if they weren't suitable for children, and somehow, all of this combined to make her words come as alive in his mind as anything he had seen on TV. She moved more than he would have thought possible for such a small person, and all without shifting from her sheltered position in the middle of the group.
And she was funny-looking. Oh, you could tell she had once been pretty enough to be a corporate executive herself, but she'd let lines get in her face, though her eyes were still snapping bright and her cheeks red as apples after the grocer sprayed them with a hose. Her legs were still fine and shapely, the boy noticed that too, right off, but her waist was too thick. And her hair was a mop of gray, not white, not silver, not violet or blond, but plain old elderly gray curls.
Nor was her voice quite what he was used to.
When she wasn't pretending to be someone else, it had a snap and a twang and sometimes a sugary drawl. She didn't call them children, she called them kids, and instead of trying to learn their names, she carelessly addressed them all as hon or darlin' or kiddo. His mom would have a fit if she knew he was listening to someone like that. Everybody knew better than to talk like that these days. You learned better just listening to the educational shows on your TV. This crazy old woman might as well have been a spaceperson for all the similarity she bore to the women even his grandmother knew.
He couldn't wait to hear what she was going to say next. The Chairdevil was a fairly conservative fellow in his way, and liked to stick with the tried and true. I'd mention them individually, but I can't keep track of them myself. Just let me say that just because the war you promote isn't a big budget job between major powers doesn't mean it isn't important. The little stuff adds up and I want you to know it is by no means overlooked. The Chairdevil theoretically did know that the cumulative effect of their very successful efforts to see hunger and hostility clamp down on one regime in one little country after another regime in another little country made all the difference—all the difference—in the world, but the Chairdevil just naturally went for the flamboyant.
Simple things like astronomical death tolls didn't impress him. He liked things to go boom.
theranchhands.com : Radio 3|Top Story Winners |Whispers and read by Liam Beale
In some ways, he was surprisingly democratic. He enjoyed seeing great civilizations crumbling, the rich and privileged, the sheltered and pampered, dying just as miserably as poor folks. It was one of his more endearingly infuriating characteristics. Pick off the civilians. Pick off the so-called innocents. Why should they be left out? Keep reminding our minions that it's up to us to set the example. If our people commit one little suggestive atrocity, our lead will be followed and amplified tenfold.
Now he was one that always got a lot of pleasure out of the little things. Back to Phantom Banjo. Picking the Ballad's Bones. As if a night like that with the wind and fog and rain in an ancient monastery looking for a long-dead wizard wasn't Halloweenish enough for everybody, Gussie was trying to get used to sharing her body with a ghost. Hell, she hadn't shared it with a man on a regular basis for close to twenty years except for a one-night stand once in a blue moon.
And this was a whole lot closer than being in bed together—it was like being pregnant with somebody else's homemade film, full of voices and pictures that weren't hers, even when Sir Walter wasn't talking. It made her giddy. Not that he wasn't as polite as he could be. It simply didn't give a lady much privacy. She had never been quite so close to anyone even before she ran her old man off. She felt a little like a ghost herself with her cold wet feet and her stringing hair trailing water all down her back and face, her eyes wide from trying to see in the dark.
As she passed through the gate, reminding Sir Walter that they had to physically open the gate and go between the doors, not through them as he had been used to doing, she saw Julianne wafting ahead of them, like something out of a Wilkie Collins novel. At Willie MacKai's back, the banjo was still playing that song and now more than ever the words came back—Gussie realized Sir Walter was feeding them to her.
Willie stopped, listened, then continued on, stalking silent and wary, looking all around him like the soldiers on patrol in the war movies did. Anna Mae Gunn walked a little to his left as if she were on tippy-toe and if she were a cat her ears would have been swiveling all different directions. Brose Fairchild pitty-patted beside her with little reluctant steps, the irises of his eyes all surrounded by whites and his wiry red-gray hair seeming to stand on end more than ever. And I can't help wondering where that red-haired woman got herself to.
I know her," he said. Though he hadn't quite recognized her in the long-distance visions he'd had when he first arose from the grave, the moment he met her he'd known her for what and who she was. He had been a sheriff and a lawman in life and he had seen a lot of deviltry—enough to knock sense into any ordinary man. But he was also the biggest romantic of his age and lived more in his head than he did in the real world most of the time and a little thing like dying hadn't changed that.
Gussie did not know what to make of the image he showed her of Torchy Burns with her red hair blazing under a golden crown with stars all over it and wearing a gown of velvet green decorated with silver trim and little silver bells. She just supposed that he liked redheads, which figured, him being Scottish and all, and that he was having the kind of fantasies about her that if he were a modern man, he would have dressed her up in a slinky evening dress and diamonds and maybe a mink coat.
Well, maybe not a mink coat what with the way people were reacting to those things these days. But most men having fantasies about redheaded women didn't worry about animal rights politics or much of anything else at the time. Faron and Ellie had been inspecting everything around them with interest but now that Julianne had found the tomb Ellie's eyes were big as saucers and Faron's Adam's apple traveled up and down, up and down. They had already encountered several ghosts in the course of their journeys but the ghost of a wizard was surely something special.
Both of them were big fans of fantasy novels and they knew that the quintessential question when it came to wizards was a paraphrase of the one Glenda the Good had asked Dorothy Gale, "Are you a good wizard or a bad wizard? The other ghosts may have appeared on atmospheric nights too but they didn't have the fanfare of being announced by a descendant who was possessing a friend of the Randolphs'. The Wizard Michael Scott might have been a great philosopher, scientist, and scholar but he was also, like all competent magicians, enough of a ham to know how to make an entrance.
Ellie scooted closer to Gussie. She was shivering so hard her rain-wet goose bumps stood up like white caps. He never met him. You don't mind if I call you Walt, do you? And you call me Gussie. Seeing as how we're getting so close and all. I doot mah dear wife would mind even were she alive, and would join me in begging you to call me what you will. Walter or Wat, as you would have it. Where are we going? You don't have to return to the grave at midnight do you?
The dirty swine have returned. They're after my bukes, Gussie. We maun save my bukes. Even if we don't go through walls I can't run all the way back to your place. The others can stay here. Once we get back to Abbotsford Sir Walter can un-possess you and haunt the vandals into submission if we make it in time. Brose, you got the keys? A diesel eighteen-wheeler with the legend Circus Rom on the side was parked outside Abbotsford and the front door stood wide open. I should have locked up," Gussie said.
Sir Walter forgot that she was no longer young and he had been dead more than a hundred and fifty years. He took the walk up to the house like a sprinter and Gussie passed Ellie and Faron, and did not hear the scuffling from behind her when the young couple came abreast of the circus truck. But Sir Walter carried her along so fast she did make it to the door before something came down on her head and she crumpled on the threshold just as a bright orange light blossomed from the open doorway to the library.
Back to Picking the Ballad's Bones. Michael thought, but then you never could tell. As Shayla and the rest of the small band of Californian eco-feminists gathered around the campfire, Ute fixed them with a sardonic glance and continued sharpening his blue pencil with his pocket knife. The smoke that rose, some might say fragrantly, to the sky, was authentically coming from a fire of dried unspecified animal dung. He used to tell the tour groups which animals, but that had proved unwise. Now, sated with their politically correct meal, the women sat around the campfire and watched the smoke spiral toward the moon.
No television, no radio, no computers," began Barbara Harrington-Smith, a corporate tax lawyer. We walked a great deal, true, but I miss my evening jog even though I do understand that we might trample indigenous wildlife of the fanged serpentine variety and be immediately chastised for our thoughtlessness. And I did as instructed and didn't bring any work. He was not offensively macho. Though the eco-feminist group had requested that their guide be a cowgirl, or more correctly, a cow-woman, the tour director explained that the cowgirls were all attending management seminars that week or competing for top prize money in the rodeos and wouldn't be available but assured them that Ute, while absolutely an authentic member of his profession, was also extremely progressive in his attitudes and in fact was the one who insisted on bumper stickers that proclaimed "ERA Will Rise Again" for all of the ranch's Jeeps and pickups.
Ute grinned at Heather-Jon in a non-condescending, brotherly, and respectful way. That's somethin' that it's only fittin' should be read carefully in big old folios of recycled hard copy. She inched a little farther from the fire and slipped on her wool socks and pulled on a poncho her roommate had woven for her from the wool of organically grown sheep. Ute's eyes, pale as prairie skies and framed by wrinkles only a little leathery since he was careful to use plenty of sunscreen, lit up. Fact is, I always have wished I could get the hang of a comb and tissue and never have.
I'd be much obliged if you could maybe give me some pointers? I'd be glad to show you a thing or two about ropin' in exchange. In line with the amended Code of the West, I aim to show and not tell you all about it. First off, I want you to imagine a little woman about sixty, sixty-five years old, but quick on her feet and strong from lots of dancin' and a good judge of people and a way with 'em from years of bartendin'. She had thick curly hair that she just plain let go gray, as if there was nothin' wrong in the world with that. Just shows she wasn't one to put all them chemicals into the water system.
Besides, lotsa people pay to make their hair lighter. What's wrong with just lettin' nature change it, is what I always say. Anyway, this woman had gone through some tremendous changes in her life because she happened to enjoy a certain type of entertainment with which we cowboy poets are also in sympathy, which is how I came to hear this story. You see, there were a bunch of devils, and I don't mean only of the strictly Judeo-Christian brand, mind you, more what your Native American Indians might call the evil spirits.
These folks decided to eliminate this particular type of entertainment—oh, hell, call a spade a spade. They used to call it folk music, though strictly speakin' that's not always an accurate term. Anyhow, these devils, who were rich and sophisticated and behind all the troubles in this world that people didn't dream up all by themselves, decided to take away the music that sometimes makes people feel a little better about themselves and their work.
Gives 'em a kind of what we cowboy poets would call an eagle's-eye view of their situation, helps 'em get their lives back in control. Anyhow, for a space there—and y'all may not be too well aware of it, but me and my compadres were—these devils by killin' and connivin' managed to get rid of most of the most important singers of the songs and make everybody forget the words to songs people had been singin' for hundreds of years. Everybody forgot every song sung by every dead singer. When the great Sam Hawthorne died on the very day the Library of Congress folk-music collection got blowed up, almost all the songs in the country were wiped from people's minds.
You notice I said people's minds. Sam had this magic banjo that he passed on before he died, and it remembered the songs, though nobody knew how come. Now, this magical banjo eventually passed into the hands of a very small group of people. One of them was this woman I'm tellin' you about, Ms. All fine musicians except for Gussie and Ms. Randolph, who was a more academic kind of lady. Then there was Mr.
Brose Fairchild, a gentleman of more than one color who was a crackerjack blues man and purveyor of Baltic ethnic tunes. And last but by no means least Mr. Willie MacKai, who used to work right here on this ranch where we are now working—though that's another story. These were the people who came together and ended up as the guardians of Lazarus, Sam's magic banjo. They went over there and with some help from a bunch of ghosts, includin' that of the famous writer Sir Walter Scott, his ancestor the Wizard Michael Scott, and a bunch of their kinfolk, they got back the songs.
Then they went after songs from other places than Scotland, such as Ireland, France, Spain, and the like. Gussie, who had become a hell of a storyteller by virtue of bein' possessed—though mind you in a very respectable and respectful way—by the ghost of Sir Walter, came back here to do a little low-profile advance publicity. She was the chief devil in charge of debauchery. Among other things the musicians learned in Scotland, one was that she used to be the Queen of Fairyland and had come down in the world since then. So she was the one who both helped them and hindered them when the musicians wanted to go into the ballad world to reclaim the old songs that would help them release the rest of 'em.
Of course, as a devil she was bound to uphold what the rest of the devils wanted, which was to try to keep the musicians from living through the songs, making them their own, and bringing them back to this country to revive all the other songs with the powerful magic contained in the oldest and strongest ballads. Musicians were some of her best people, and she was always a little ambivalent about the whole devilish operation to kill them off along with the music.
Also, she was always a little wild, as if she was high on some of her own stuff. It seemed to Gussie that the redheaded devil's unpredictableness made her the worst devil of them all—she was like the old mule who'd be nice to you for two weeks just to get a chance to kick you. Having survived a difficult childhood, the death of her mother, an arrest for possession of illegal substances and the perpetual adolescence of her father culminating in his marriage to a woman who made three attempts to murder her, Snohomish Quantrill felt far older than her fourteen-going-on-fifteen years.
She decided that instead of marrying a prince, which she was too young to do anyway, she wanted to be a fairy godmother when she grew up. Marrying princes was not all it was cracked up to be. Her father, Raydir Quantrill, had been the Prince of Punk before he became the King of Rock, and she definitely was not ready to take on somebody like him. Besides, she had been through enough counseling to know that you had to get your own shit together before you interfaced with somebody else's kingdom and all of its headaches. The way she decided to become a fairy godmother before she was even a mother was through a counselor friend of hers, in fact.
Almost being murdered, once by a hired hit man, twice by your own stepmom, made you ponder on the meaning of your existence in a way that was difficult to communicate to most people. Her classmates at Clarke Academy had welcomed her back with girlish squeals and touchy-feely hugs. They were so sorry she'd been hurt and were so genuinely glad she was back, and had the hit man, like, raped her or anything?
It was too creepy the way they drooled over the details they'd gleaned from the media. Some of them, she knew, were really, truly pissed at her because they'd been looking forward to attending her funeral and giving tear-choked statements for the six o'clock news. They acted like what had happened to her was some lurid splatter movie instead of her own life for the last month or so. But she had very real scars to remind her of the last attempt on her life, which had landed her in the Harborview ICU for two weeks. Her dad wasn't exactly a pillar of strength either.
He'd extracted his head from his ass long enough to join the search party looking for her, but in the process had found someone else as well. He fell in love with his fellow searcher, Cindy Ellis, hired her as his own stable manager to keep her around, and lately had spent most of his time trying to convince Cindy that he could change, he really could. Cindy was nice, and she too had had a wicked stepmother, but Sno couldn't help being less than thrilled with her for taking up so much of Raydir's attention.
She didn't know what to do or where to turn. She was what they called marginalized.