Dragonbirth (working title)

I wrote the first 500 words or so of this effort a while back after I had a dream about it one day. I'm still working on getting through the content of the dream but since it was my first major creative writing effort of my 1000 words a day I thought I'd share it. It's sitting at 4,500 words right now, so 4000 of them were written today. Enjoy.
And a thousand words, goodnight.
-m0rg4n 

Dragonbirth

Maric looked up at his brother. Kae had piled his armor and the contents of his backpack in a heap at the base of the cliff that loomed above them. The stone was course, brown and sheer. The tallest pine in the forest behind them didn’t rise halfway up its face. Kae had tied two lengths of rope around his waist and started climbing. He found handholds in what looked to Maric like flat stone. Maric wasn’t convinced this was a good idea. Wherever the secret entrance was to the Wyrmvale was, this was not it. His younger sibling wasn’t the patient type, however. When the road they’d followed ended at the cliff instead of the passage they’d expected, Kae had simply decided to make his own path.
The end of rope smacked Maric in the face, jolting him out of his reverie. “Tie it to your rope!” Kae yelled down. “Mine aren’t going to be long enough.”

Maric sighed and opened his pack to get his rope out. He made a poor knot around the bundle and tied it off. His brother started to pull it up and ten feet up it began to uncoil until it spilled to the ground.

“Maric!” he yelled, annoyed.

Maric sighed again as Kae let the end of his rope back down. He tied it off again, this time end to end and Kae managed to pull the whole length up. The older of the two was standing on an overhang barely worth calling a ledge and managed to tie off Maric’s rope on an outcropping that Maric would have sworn hadn’t existed before his brother found it.

“Wait until I get the second rope placed before you come up!” Kae shouted. Maric would be lucky if he made it up using the rope, he thought. He wasn’t sure how someone as lithe and well-muscled as Maric could be so clumsy. The boy could run all day, but could ruin a pot boiling water and had broken so many swords and snapped so many bow strings that Father had stopped giving him new ones after Gavin the blacksmith had threatened to go on strike. The castle guards joked that he had tripped on a brownie as a child and been cursed. Personally, Kae thought it was because when his brother took his nose out of his books at all he left his brain in them. As far as he was concerned, military books were a useful tool, but not nearly as interesting as fighting or listening to the soldiers at the castle tell war stories. Even dancing was a more enjoyable past time. At least then you could touch any pretty girl you wanted. Not that Kae had any problems with that, being a prince.

Maric, waiting at the bottom, was wishing at this very moment that he were sitting at home in the castle library. The book that had started this whole adventure was lying with a bookmark on a small table next to a huge, cushioned chair that threatened to swallow him whole whenever he sat in it. The chair stood in front of a fireplace large enough for logs the size of a quarter of a tree. It was one of his favorite places anywhere and without a doubt was better than standing at the bottom of a cliff hunting for dragon’s eggs.

“Are you coming?” Kae yelled down. Maric shook his head free of his wistful thoughts of home and grabbed the rope, tying the end around his waist in case he lost his grip. For the umpteenth time, he wished the spells in that old book were real. It would have been so much simpler if he could cast the levitation spell he’d encountered in its pages. He had asked Maltus, his father’s court wizard, but the balding mage had scoffed and called them fairy tales. Besides, he had said, if wizards could cast spells like that, they would be kings and not simple advisors. Not to mention that, if a wizard cast a spell that powerful, it would kill him outright. Everyone knew wizards drew upon the energy produced by their own bodies and thus were limited to whatever endurance they built over time. Maric supposed that was why the man ate and drank more than any of his father’s warriors, yet never seemed to gain an ounce.

Hand by hand, Maric pulled himself up the cliff face, picking up a couple bruises when his foot slipped and he slammed against the rock. The ground was so far down now that it seemed foolish to consider going any direction but up. So up he went.

Kae waited impatiently for his brother. There was more cliff to climb and he couldn’t start up again without the ropes to tie off for Maric. Even if it turned out that Wyrmvale wasn’t on the other side of the cliff, it would be worth it, just to conquer this challenge. A dragon egg or two would be the cream on top of the whole trip however. The minstrels would have to write a song about this adventure. It was the kind of glory princes were meant to achieve.

Maric, on the other hand wasn’t feeling very glorious. His boots seemed to reject purchase on the rock and the muscles in his arms and shoulders were screaming by the time he finally reached the ledge Kae was standing on. Kae helped him up and he saw that it was much wider than he imagined it was from his perspective on the ground. He sat down on the cool stone and panted as he looked out over the incredible view over the forest. “I hate you,” he breathed at his sibling. Brother was too nice a word at this point.

“You won’t hate me when we find a dragon’s egg,” Kae said optimistically. Maric just glared at him.

“If I survive to even look for one. Though I’ll admit, after this cliff, facing a dragon isn’t going to seem like much of a task,” he said, half-seriously.

“Wouldn’t that be incredible?” Kae exclaimed. His brother’s silence was telling.

“Don’t you have a cliff to climb?” Maric asked before his eyes suddenly widened and he grabbed his brother and pulled him down on top of him, almost rolling them both off the ledge. When Kae protested, Maric clamped one hand over his brother’s mouth and pointed with the other. Kae nodded his understanding vigorously and Maric released him as they both huddled against the rock face as a dragon flew overhead.

The dragon was a huge, black shadow against the sky and beat its wings only rarely as it drifted on a current over the forest much like a hawk or eagle. Maric found himself hoping that it didn’t have the same kind of eyesight as a raptor did. The two brothers often went hawking and it always amazed him how the birds could see such tiny prey from so high up. It would be nice if his first encounter with a dragon was not as its dinner. He watched in awe as the dragon’s shadow skimmed over the treetops and off to the northwest. The princes sat quiet and still until it disappeared from sight.
“Did you see that?” Maric hissed.

“No. I was too busy trying to stay on the cliff we spent all this time climbing. Some idiot tried to knock me off it,” Kae said sarcastically.

Maric ignored him. “I guess we’re in the right place.”

“You have that right.”

“Let’s get up there while it’s gone,” Maric urged his brother.

“What if it comes back while I’m climbing?” Kae asked.

“Just go!”

Kae nodded wordlessly and started to climb again. Two stops, two hours, more bruises and one more fifteen minute breathless period spent pressing themselves against the cliff face in an attempt to hide from another, smaller dragon later, they reached the top. The rim sloped down to a shallow caldera that spread out for miles below them. The sun, in spite of the horizon luring it away from its zenith, beat down on the cracked, dry ground of what had clearly once been the mouth of a volcano. Maric scrambled and slid down to the caldera floor, while Kay walked as easily and calmly as if it had been flat, shaking his head at his brother’s clumsiness.

“Now what?” Kae asked as they stood together at the base of the slope, looking out at the Wyrmvale. The valley was filled with rocky outcroppings of all sizes and gently bubbling vats of mud. The air smelled strange and heat rose from the ground as well as the sun.

“I suppose now we keep an eye out for dragons and nests. Hopefully we can find one separate from the other.”

The princes walked cautiously into the valley, weaving around rocks and avoiding the pools of mud. Occasionally they passed piles of bones that once belonged to various animals taken as prey by the dragons, but after half an hour they had yet to see anything that looked like a nest. Kae was getting frustrated and Maric nervous. Maric was beyond certain they were out of their league and had gone from the frying pan into the fire. Kae wanted to grab an egg, any egg and go home. His mind was on parades and songs and some of the younger serving maids at the castle.

Maric was about to give up when they rounded a particularly large pillar of rock and came face to face with a group of eight angry, poorly shaven men in rough leather clothing. They were arguing quietly in front of another, twenty foot cliff that rose above the rest of the caldera. A quarter of a mile along its arch, he could barely make out the entrance of a cave through the steam rising from natural hot springs. The men started and cursed as the two dirty princes came around the corner. Their clothes, which had once been hardy but fine clothes they’d acquired from their friends among the soldiers, were torn and ragged from the climb up the cliff.

One of the men gestured to the others. He was broad in the shoulders, but shorter than the rest, with a sword belted at his side and a buckler lashed to his arm. The men surrounded the boys, their hands on their weapons. The leader glanced around to check that the area remained clear of dragons before coming over.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked roughly.

“I am Mar. . .” Maric began, but stopped short when Kae surreptitiously stepped on his foot. “Marc,” he continued. “This is my brother, Ken. We’re from Odevar,” he said, naming the capital city, which was true enough. The castle sat on a peninsula that technically separated it from the city, but it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began these days.

“And how did you get here? We left guards at the tunnel and I ain’t thinking there’s another entrance we don’t know about.”

Kae spoke up, “We climbed the cliff.”

The men stared. Their leader thought about that for a moment. “Did you now? Then perhaps you can help us with a little problem we’re having.” He pointed toward the rock face before them. “Up there is the nest of the black dragon. The biggest, nastiest dragon there’s ever been, who we seen mating a month back. We’re thinking there’s an egg up there and none of my boys are brave enough to risk it. I think one of you just volunteered to go get it.”

Maric frowned. “Why would we want to do that?” he asked.

The man cocked his head toward Kae, and two of the other men grabbed him by the arms. Kae shouted and struggled and a third man hit him in the stomach. “Quiet, you idiot! Do you want to get us all killed?” the man hissed angrily.

“Would serve you right!” Kae said, though quieter.

Their leader looked amused. “And that’s why. You get us the egg, and you and your brother can go home. You don’t get the egg, and your brother can go back down the way he came up. Only hope he can learn to fly before he hits the ground.”

All eight of the egg-hunters laughed at this joke. Kae looked less than amused and struggled against his captors again. Maric, stood still, uncertain of what to do. He wasn’t a fighter and even if he had a sword, he wouldn’t be able to do much against eight men, especially if they had Kae captive. He was only good at running and studying. Military tactics and faerie tale spellbooks, whether they lead to dragon’s nests or not, weren’t going to do him any good in this situation.

“I’ll do it,” he said with a resigned sigh.

“But I’m the one who climbed the cliff!” Kae protested. The cliff to the dragon’s nest was not tall, but he was certain Maric would break his neck before he ever made it to the top.

Looking at the faces of the rough men around him, Maric could tell there was no point in trying to talk them into letting Kae do it. It wouldn’t have been right, anyway. Maric was the elder and had to do whatever it took to protect his brother. If that meant climbing a cliff and stealing an egg from the most vicious of dragons, he couldn’t let Kae do it in his stead, even if he had the skills Maric lacked.

“I’ll do it,” he said again, this time with determination. Kae surged forward again, but the men held him tight.

“Marc,” his younger brother began. At least he had the foresight to remember not to call him by name, Maric thought.

“It’s okay, Ken. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

The short, stocky man interrupted. “If he gets himself killed, then you can go get the egg. In the meantime, GET GOING,” he cried quietly and forcefully. “It’s not like there ain’t dragons waiting to sniff us out, you know?”

Maric nodded and turned to the cliff. One of the men stopped him and handed him a pack with straps. “For the egg,” he said. Maric took the pack and pulled the straps over his shoulders as he looked at the ridge rising above him. The rock was pock marked with many holes that would make it easy to climb. He breathed a sigh of relief. Slipping the toe of his boot into a good spot, he began to ascend. The rocks were sharp and the going slow. By the time he reached the top his hands were ragged with small cuts and the cuffs off his already filthy clothes stained with blood. He peered over edge as he reached the top, making certain nothing waited to eat him at the top. The nest was empty, so pulled himself up and looked around.

The top of the cliff was hardly what he would normally consider a nest. Piles and piles of cracked and scorched bones littered the ground like sticks in a forest. Maric had to step over some of them, large bones that belonged to some kind of animal he had never encountered. He hadn’t thought there was anything that big that wasn’t a dragon, but its skull was huge and round with strange tusks curling from either side of its jaw. If there was anything he knew at this moment, it was that he did not want to meet whatever was big enough to carry this thing to its nest and make a meal of it.

In the center of the nest was a puddle of the bubbling mud. A single black-shelled egg rose about a foot and a half from the ooze. Maric glanced at the sky to make certain that its parent was not in sight then approached. It was warm to the touch and heavy as he lifted it from the mud and slipped it into the sack. After he had settled it on to his back, he looked around again, double checking for signs of dragons. A tiny shape had appeared on the horizon and Maric started in horror. It was coming back.

Maric ran to the cliff’s edge and clambered over with agonizing slowness. “Dragon!” he shouted. It was all the warning they needed, but it didn’t come soon enough. The ground shook as he scrambled down the rock face and the air reverberated with an angry roar. He instinctively tightened his grip as about halfway down the stone shook again and black talons as long as a man is tall gripped the ridgeline and an immense scaly black head appeared above him, mouth gaping wide enough to swallow a cow whole. It looked straight at Maric and he half-climbed, half jumped the rest of the way down. The egg-hunters and Kae stared at the beast in shock.

“Are you crazy?” Maric yelled at them as he ran toward his brother. “RUN!” he screamed. The men shook their heads clear as the dragon pounced down from the cliff top with only the slightest effort, filling the clearing with his body. It seized the closest man in its jaw and flung the corpse to the side as it came after the egg. Their purpose forgotten, the rest of the men fled, leaving Kae and Maric to their fate. The princes, free of their captors, followed close on their heels.

“This way!” Maric called to his brother, dodging around a boulder and making toward the cave he had seen earlier. Kae followed. A wave of heat blew over them as the dragon belched a vast, seemingly endless volume of fire after the fleeing men. Two of them screamed briefly as they were caught by the flame and incinerated. When the flame stopped, the midnight-scaled behemoth turned his head as if searching. When it saw the brothers, it paused as if to breathe again, then stopped.

“Why isn’t it cooking us?” Kae yelled to Maric as they ran. It seemed like the thing to do, and Kae probably would have done the same were he in the dragon’s. . . shoes.

“It can’t without hurting the egg, I think!”

“Oh, thank the Lady of Luck for small blessings.”

“Yeah, and remind me to have a chat with her about the rest of our luck today.”

“At least we aren’t prime rib like the others back there.”

“Not yet, at least.”

“Pessimist.”

The Lady of Luck, it appeared, wasn’t done with them yet. As they grew closer to the hot springs near the cave, Maric suddenly tripped over something sticking of the rocks and crashed to the ground, skinning his already wounded palms. The egg on his back smashed heavily against his spine. Great, another bruise, he thought. The something moved as Kae came up behind him and suddenly there was a much smaller dragon between them. This one’s scales were reddish-gold, and shone in the fading light of the sun. It’s head was the size of Kae’s well-muscled torso and it hissed at them, unsure of which was a bigger threat.

Kae froze uncomfortably. There was an oversized dragon coming up somewhere behind them and a quite large enough dragon keeping him from running from the first dragon. This wasn’t as easy as fighting men, especially since he was totally unprepared for it. His armor was still at the bottom of the cliff outside Wyrmvale, since he didn’t think he’d have much use for it when it came to dragons. He hadn’t planned on finding out whether or not he was right.

The dragon Maric had tripped over turned on the prone prince as he rolled over and scrabbled backward on his hands and feet until the egg came up against a boulder behind him. It bared its fangs and made to strike him and as it did, Maric’s panic turned to calm. Strange words in a strange language came unbidden to his mind and he heard himself speaking aloud, though he had no idea what the words meant. The air grew heavy around the three of them and the heat more intense, in spite of the setting sun. Sweat poured from Maric’s brow as the air seemed to sink into his bones and then the dragon before him disappeared in a flash of golden light that blinded both princes. From the angry roar of the black dragon and the crash as it collided with one of the many formations of stone in the area, it too had been affected.

As they blinked the spots away, it became clear that the dragon was gone. A naked young girl with long, brilliant red-hold hair about the age of six stood in its place. Kae goggled at the scene. “What did you do?” he asked in a loud, confused voice.

“I have no idea,” Maric said, blinking at the girl as if she might go away with the spots. She blinked back at him. “I didn’t do that.”

“I heard you! I saw you! You did that. You used magic. You turned a dragon into. . . a kid.”

“I didn’t! That’s impossible!”

“Impossible things don’t happen, that did!”

Before the argument could continue, the black dragon roared again and they heard the flap of its wings as it took to the air. “Oh, for the love of the Lady,” Kae swore.

“Let’s get moving,” Maric said.

“What about the girl?”

“Bring her, we can’t leave her here.”

“She’s a dragon!”

“She’s a little girl! Come on, let’s go!” Maric shouted impatiently in Kae’s face.

“Why do I have to carry her?” Kae complained.

“Because I’m carrying the other god-damned baby dragon. MOVE!”

As they ran, Kae swept the child into his arms. She clung to him instinctively, her small arms tight around his neck. Kae noticed in passing that she was strangely warm. It was all he had time to notice as they ran around the edge of a particularly large pool of steaming water. A moment later, a wave of uncomfortably hot but not scalding water washed over them as the black dragon landed in the pool. Maric stopped as Kae ran past. Kae turned to look at his brother and Maric shook his head and waved him on. Kae slowed as if to stop and Maric yelled at him.

“Go! Keep running. Get to safety. I’ll buy you some time and follow!” Maric yelled. Kae thought he said something about get to the cave, but couldn’t hear it clearly over the dragon’s roaring. Maric had the dragon’s egg out in front of him now, keeping the black dragon from attacking or breathing fire. He was backing away slowly, talking to the beast as if that would make a different. Kae kept running, going full speed. He couldn’t see a cave through the steam and falling darkness, so he headed for a copse of trees that he could make out in the distance.

Maric didn’t have time to look back to make certain his brother had made it to safety. He had seen the cave entrance only a few hundred meters from the pool the dragon had landed in and keeping the egg between the two of them, was making his way toward it while never taking his eye off the monstrous creature. The behemoth stared directly at him as it seemed to be considering a way that it might get him without harming its unhatched young. It seemed to be thinking, the idea of which disturbed the young prince greatly. He almost jumped out of his skin when it spoke in the same strange language he had heard when something, he refused to believe he had done it, had turned the other dragon into a little girl.

“You can’t escape, insect. Return my daughter to me and I will kill you quickly.”

“Uh,” Maric said eloquently while he collected his thoughts and rearranged his entire paradigm of the universe for the second time today. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Where will you go? The hunters you came with are dead. They could not escape me either and could not have saved you if they lived.”

“I didn’t come with them, but as I see it, not giving you your egg is keeping me alive. So I think I’ll just keep it.”

“If any harm comes to her, I will rend you. Slowly.”

“If any harm comes to me or my brother, I will break it.”

“Your brother? The one who ran like a coward with the little one. You are a fool, human, thrice over. For coming here, for stealing my egg, and for bringing a child.”

Maric thought it was curious that the dragon thought that the girl had been with them the whole time, but didn’t really have the luxury of time to figure it out just then. He decided to try another direction as he continued slowly working his way back toward the cave. Another 150 meters.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The dragon rumbled and for a moment Maric thought it was going to risk cooking the egg along with him. The sound continued and the creature’s jaws didn’t part, so it took him a second to realize that the dragon was laughing.

“Do you think I am a fool, human, to give you power over me? Call me your doom, your death, your last vision. Do not think that I, who have lived centuries and killed more of your kind than you have ancestors, will succumb to pathetic wizard’s tricks. I am the free one, the unchained one, the greatest of my kind.”

Maric filed that information away in the back of his mind. Apparently dragon’s names were useful things to know. The cave was only 100 meters away now, and getting closer. The dragon was stalking him, taking one step for every ten he shuffled. Its long neck kept its snout so close to Maric that he could feel the heat of its breath. Maric was surprised at his overall calm, since it was likely the worst situation he had ever been in, or likely to ever be in. 50 meters.

The dragon roared suddenly as it came to an abrupt stop as its nose beat against an invisible force. “NOOOOO,” it screamed, taking a deep breath and bathing the world in bright orange light. Maric blinked as the world turned dark again, surprised to find himself uncooked. In fact, he realized, he hadn’t even felt the heat of the flame. Whatever magic this was, he was ok with it, but not going to test its limits. He turned and ran for the cave.

“They can’t protect you forever, insect,” the dragon threatened cryptically. “I promise you, I will have my daughter. And I will have your corpse like a battered doll between my jaws when that day comes.”

Knowledge & Ignorance

I got into a what we will kindly call a “debate” this morning on the subject of ignorance and learning. It began when I made a comment about nonchalance and the term “sprezzatura,” which comes from Castiglione’s The Courtier. The girl I was talking to misunderstood the definition of nonchalant, comparing it to apathy. I offered her a more appropriate definition, which she then rephrased as, “faking that you don’t give a damn”. I may have been goading her a little when I made the analogy of, “Yes, but that’s like comparing mud to potter’s clay.” She responded with some comment about supposing it depending on where the mud originated. Things went downhill from there.

Part of the debate was regarding the importance of classic literature, which she places no value on. I, on the other hand, have a degree in English and while I rarely enjoyed the classics, I did learn to value them. A fair quantity of Western history and culture is inexorably tied up in those classics. If they haven’t shaped history on their own, the figures who shaped history have been shaped by them. The results of these works color our understanding and daily lives in ways one can only understand if one is familiar with them. Whether philosophy or fiction, our thinking has been guided by literature for hundreds of years. To be ignorant of the classics is bad, to be willfully ignorant is depressing.

To be fair, she did agree that learning and education make you a better person. Most of the disagreement developed from her opinion of what was worth learning and what kind of learning made one person better than another. I hadn’t made any statements regarding the value of an individual based on their education, but somewhere along the way she decided that I was taking the arrogant prick stance. I may have taken it out on her by pushing her buttons, but I don’t really like it when people put words in my mouth. For someone who claims to be an extremely literal person, she was certainly worried more about the connotations of my word choice than the actual meanings of the words.

Is she wrong in her assumption? Not entirely. I do value individuals based on their education. I offer educated people more respect than I do those who haven’t attended an institute of higher learning. There’s a caveat there; if you know more about Nietzsche than I do, I’m not concerned with how you learned it, just that you did. Self-educated or college educated, it’s the education that matters. The willingness to learn. If an individual is unaware of something but expresses a desire to change that, then what they don’t know doesn’t matter. To scoff at knowledge of any kind, but particularly such relevant knowledge, bothers me. A constant desire for self-improvement, the gathering of knowledge of any kind is one of the few goals that I put real stock in. Knowledge of the world, its history, and its cultures will always be worth having. Literature is one of the sources of that information.

I will be honest, I find it challenging to communicate with people who aren’t as intelligent as I am. My debate partner this morning isn’t one of those people; she is quite intelligent. Our failures stem from differences in dogma, her tendency to twist the meaning of words, and my tendency to use words I know she is going to twist when I am provoked. Otherwise, I find she thinks on a similar intellectual level more than most people I have encountered.
I suppose part of my irritation stems from the belief that mass education at higher standards than we currently hold in the United States would cure a lot of social ills. Having experienced the difference between what children are capable of learning and what they are taught first hand, I truly think that education, while not a panacea, is certainly a way to treat the problem and not just the symptoms. Ignorance, regardless of intelligence, isn’t bliss. It leaves a wake of bigotry, racism, sexism, poverty, and the worst aspects of conservative thinking to name a few.

That is my opinion. And it is hard to respect anyone who supports ignorance over education. How much education is enough? None. It’s an impossible goal. There’s no such thing as over-educated. Life is about learning. You learn whether you want to or not. . . but the more you want to, the better life gets. At least, that’s my two cents and it’s riches enough for me.

Wishing I Were Somehow Here Again

I am back. I took an unintended break from writing due to distraction, illness and general lack of motivation. I guess you could even say I was kind of down for a while. Part of that, I am certain, was because I stopped writing every day. It definitely has a positive effect on my general mood.

I have also been playing Diablo III, like many gamers out there. That is and was a major distraction. Is it the perfect game? No. Is it Diablo? Yes. It is more or less what I would expect from a Diablo sequel. It reminds me of Solitaire, most of the time: a nice, mindless way to spend time. Though Diablo is much more life consuming than Solitaire is. Though unlike that oh-so-popular card game, Diablo can be played with friends, which is what I did for about six hours last night. Four of us called each other up on Skype, and just ran through with our characters, laughing, chatting, killing demons and undead and dying frequently. Well, I died frequently. I tend to be a little gung-ho and get my toon stuck in the middle of impossible situations. I have decided that Diablo III needs titles and my barbarian’s name would be Ulhaduun the Dying.

It is difficult to find a good balance between games like that and getting out and about, especially when a lot of your friends play. I get so caught up in the game that the hours are eaten away quickly. It isn’t as satisfying to spend time that way when others things get pushed to the sidelines. My guitar stands silent in the corner, my French grows ever further from the years I studied it, my letter to my friend in Britain remains unsent and my writing goes unwritten. Balance, always trying to find that balance.

That isn’t to say I have been totally secluded. I continue to teach my dance class, play D&D with the same friends I play Diablo with, hang out with Tia on occasion, and I have finally started going to rehearsals for The Music Man again. I haven’t skipped them, I simply haven’t been scheduled for them. It was a weird feeling, being part of a production that I didn’t have rehearsals for three weeks in a row. I wasn’t terribly far from quitting, to be completely honest. I lost most of my motivation for that as well. When I finally felt well enough to attend my scheduled rehearsal Monday, it went well enough that I am comfortable with the idea again. It will all be over in a month anyway, after which I am going to take a break from acting until autumn at very least. I want to enjoy the summer.

Current drives continue to be more writing and a more active lifestyle. My mind gets a lot of work, but my body not as much. I can feel it, see it, weigh it and I am dissatisfied with it. I have reduced my yoga class over the last month to once a week, which has contributed to my lack of energy. I am one of those people who is more awake the more activity I have in my life. I am more exhausted and tired from hours in a chair than I am from hiking up a series of small waterfalls.

Work continues to be inadequate. My boss gives me what he can and has taught and offered to teach me things that I am fairly certain he wouldn’t offer to anyone else working here, since he doesn’t really trust other people to get things right. It is nice compliment and I will take whatever he offers. I am still suffering through the endless bureaucracy surrounding the copywriting position I applied for. They hired one woman for the three positions they had available and gave me the work for two flows of copy. Last the manager spoke to me, they were discussing creating a position tailored to the work I have been doing and the tools I am capable of using. I need to set myself a timeline, then start looking for a better position. My starting wage isn’t comfortable enough for my finances. If it means I need to go elsewhere, than so be it. I can’t support anyone but myself right now, and I want to be able to. For example, I would like to get a dog.

I am a fan of big dogs. My parents bought our first dog when I was eight or so and she was an Airedale Terrier. Since then we have had three labs and one half lab/retriever. They currently have two Labradors. I owned a Doberman before I left for Japan. I miss that particular relationship, and I have come to realize that I would almost rather have a dog than a significant other. Not that I wouldn’t welcome both.

My ideal pet is a Newfoundland, or some other large dog like it. I wouldn’t mind another Dobie, a Mastiff, Dane, or even a German Shepherd. I don’t intend to buy one outright, since they tend to be expensive, but I wouldn’t mind rescuing a younger dog. There are plenty of pups out there in need of homes. Though, I would really like to raise my own dog. My Doberman, Charlie, was a rescue from a guy who got so angry with him he abandoned him at the dog park outside the local animal shelter on a holiday when no one was there. He was a little hard to train to come because of it. It’s all moot at this point anyway. I don’t live in a place that allows dogs OR has a fenced yard. So that needs to happen first.

I continue to look forward to my “ideal” life. Four wheel drive vehicle, Hobie cat sailboat, dog. From there, it can go whatever direction it likes and I’ll be content. A family is still on the list, but that’ll happen when it happens.

Until tomorrow.

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n

To Create or Not to Create? Dumb Question

Until this weekend I had been fairly diligent about writing my thousand words a day. Often you didn’t see them because I chose not to post, but the were written. I did write a song this weekend, another one, but certainly not a thousand words. I am quite happy about the lyrics though. And the melody and chord progression, which I stole directly from Ron Pope’s “A Drop in the Ocean”. I’m learning to play a new chord because of it: Bb.

I am not torn up about this lack of writing, however. I enjoyed my weekend, as it turns out, and spent plenty of time being creative. From Thursday night’s open mic night to running a D&D campaign at a BBQ on Friday to sitting down with a friend and doing the same again on Saturday while drinking a whole bottle of wine, I shaped and created songs, characters and stories.

I feel like I need to make some kind of reason or excuse for playing D&D, arguably the most nerdy of nerdy activities. I don’t really like that feeling. I enjoy it, and that should be enough. At the same time, I regularly have people ask what the attraction is. For me, it is a way of exploring character and story with a group of friends. When I join a game as a player, I get to be part of the story that’s presented and help shape the story through my actions. When I run a campaign, I am the one creating the story and reacting to the actions of the player.

Right now I am using the campaign I am running to flesh out the details of a novel I am inactively writing. If you can imagine a world that drops Peter Pan, Narnia, Redwall, steampunk, the French Revolution and post-American Civil War race conflict into a pot and stir them all together, you’re starting to get the right idea. The world is about the size of the United States or Australia, whichever gives you a better image, and consists of 5 tiers, like half a wedding cake. Each tier after the first relates directly to one of the four seasons  due to the sun and moon being attached to clockwork hands at the back of the cake. The tiers are physical representations of social class.

The game takes place in an alternate dimension of the same world. It has the same problems, but the rules of the game allow for more prevalent existence of magic and monsters. Neither of these is particularly prevalent in my novel. Not non-existent, just not running rampant the way it does in D&D. What running the campaign is allowing me to do as an author is gain a better grasp on the world I’m writing, fleshing it out with characters, places and in some cases, events, long before I actually work on my novel. It has been interesting to see how some of the ideas I have have worked out when presented in actual situations where the players encounter and deal with them. To say that talking animals in this world are treated much like African Americans were, à la the company store, etc, is one thing. To have a player decide his character feels the same way toward humankind due to his mistreatment at their hands is another altogether.

It is clear that while I ‘failed’ to write, I did not fail to be creative. I certainly succeeded in broadening my understanding of the world I am creating. For my D&D campaign, at least, there exists a medieval “utopian” society of talking animals on the other side of a shadowy tundra where the sun never shines. The idea of it came unbidden as the party traveled through a subterranean cavern on Friday. And now, even that idea merges with another that hadn’t made sense quite yet. War, though of a more tribal sort, affects even that small part of the world. A small conclave of clockwork beings fight for survival against the aforementioned society. Not so utopian after all. Bwahahaha.

What I find my brief absence from writing truly did for me is whet my motivation to keep it up. While I am content with the turn of events, I find that I miss those words I wrote. For now I am going to continue with the plan I began with. I will to write a thousand words a day in any form or combination thereof. Perhaps as it starts to truly become a habit I will start to focus my efforts toward my creative projects. In the meantime, it is the practice writing that I want. The creation of an addiction that will lead to future glory. Someday, somehow, someone will buy a book I wrote. In the meantime, I admire those of you with the gumption to have already done so.

Two hundred words short. New subject.

I am going to take a new friend out to play around at my parent’s house and have dinner with my dad and me tonight. I should probably warn her that he is going to be there, on second thought. Oh well, I will do that when we are already on the way. For anyone following my adventures in the wide world of dating, no, this isn’t planned as a date. Tia’s new to town and started coming to my dance class a couple weeks ago. I invited her out to karaoke last Tuesday after class, just so she’d have something to do and people to meet. She came to open mic night as well. So far she’s pretty much up for anything, as well as seeming kind and pretty bright. I could use someone to get out and do the things I enjoy with more than a date anyway, so as long as we continue to get along, I think I will leave it at that. She is also taller than me. I may have a slight issue with the quote about women all being the same height where it counts. Turning my head up to kiss someone is weird. So. . . here is to just wanting good company and letting the river of life take its course.

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n

Just the Way You Are

Dear Ella,

You are, my dear, everything that is woman. I will never see what you see in the mirror, I cannot. From the way you talk, I do not want to. The woman I see is beautiful, she is real. You can deny me, over and over again when I compliment you, but you can’t deny this one simple fact: I love looking at you.

I promise you this, Ella: I will never, ever, desire any part of you be made of silicon or botox. I realize that I am one of those strange creatures known as men, but know that we as different and peculiar from one to another as you are in all your many forms. This man will proudly stand and declare that he will love you, not in spite of the lines by your eyes, but because he hopes they’re there because of how often you have laughed together. If your breasts are small, I will rejoice and enjoy them as much as I would were they not. I actually like them that way. I will never push you to get plastic surgery and instead will grow irritated if you take the idea seriously. When I touch you, embrace you, I want it to be all you, not your inappropriately titled “enhancements”. I don’t care what size your boobs are; they suit you.

I must let you in on a secret. Sometimes your sexiest moments have absolutely nothing to do with how your hair or make-up look. Whether or not you are “porcelained to perfection,” as I once described it. You look like an angel asleep with your hair spread across the pillow. I am equally excited by how you look in your pyjama pants, in spite of the fact that you might never dream of going out in public in them. I hope you are brave enough to do so, however. I certainly am.

I think it is only fair to warn you. I will want to take you dancing and after one of those incomprehensibly sexy slow cha-chas, I will just want you. Depending on the situation, I may very well not wait to get you into the bedroom, nor remove any of your clothing. Where there is a will, there is a way. I will be ridiculously, childishly disappointed if your undergarments aren’t sexy and will be equally ridiculously pleased if you aren’t wearing any at all. I will do my best not to express my disappointment in the former situation and do my best to express my pleasure thoroughly in the latter.

If you’re a little vain, don’t worry, I won’t be able to hide the fact that I love it. I may tease you a bit, but it will always make me smile. I may never understand your need to wake up at 6:00 in the morning to get ready for work at 8:00, but it is only fair; you are never going to understand how I manage to get up at 7:25 to do the same.

I swear that I will treasure your mind as much as I do your body and your ability to laugh at me for laughing at my own jokes. This is a necessity. I am obsessed with my own cleverness and I will love you as much for loving that particular eccentricity as I will if you cook for me. I will happily cook with or for you in return. I will want to play with you, whether we play tag, hide in seek, ping pong, Frisbee golf, or other, more adult games. I hope to lose hours admiring how much that little black dress flatters all those real parts of you I admire so much while equally entranced by the conversation we’re having over wine. There is no one aspect of you I admire more than other. I want it all.

Ella, if you are one of those many Ella’s I will never meet or come to know better than a hello in passing, know that in essence everything I have said will remain true. I boldly declare myself a man worth having and as representative of such, take what is important from this: there are men out there who are happy to love everything that is real about you. We don’t want a woman with the breasts of a porn star nor the stretched face Dr. Seuss look of botox. We just want you, au naturale. Just you, the way you look tonight.

Sincerely Yours,
m0rg4n

P.S. I have included the lyrics I wrote this morning. Of a similar vein.

Romantic

I’m not someone
with his head in the clouds
just a man determined
to tether romance to gravity

You may think that I’m unreal
but pinch yourself and see
I’m the real thing and you’re not dreaming
Better yet, just kiss me

I won’t come riding in on a white horse
I won’t come riding in, in shining armor
I’m just a man with his hands in his pockets
leaning against a door somewhere
waiting for you to stroll on through

I know sometimes it seems
like you must be Alice and this is Wonderland
like you are dining upside down
in a world that’s topsy-turvy

You may think that I’m unreal
but pinch yourself and see
I’m the real thing and you’re not dreaming
Better yet, just kiss me

You may think that I’m unreal
just kiss me and see
I’m the real thing and you’re not dreaming

You may think that I’m unreal
but kiss me so I can see
you’re the real thing and I’m not dreaming



And a thousand words, goodnight.

Copyright all creative content, 2012, dba m0rg4n blah, blah, blah

A Question of Rejection

A couple of situations I have observed recently have me thinking about what lengths we go through to avoid rejection, and how inconsiderate we become in attempting to “avoid” rejecting someone. I will admit, freely, that at least one of these observations is related to my own life. The other, more complicated one, is a situation a friend of mine is in. Two friends, you might say.

They aren’t really in the situation together, and that is the issue. He thinks he is in love with her and that they are happily ensconced in a relationship. She, last I knew, has no intention of being monogamous. This isn’t to say she is cheating on him. In her mind, they aren’t in an exclusive relationship. It is clear, however, that even if she has sat him down and tried to tell him, he didn’t get the picture.

It is interesting, watching the story unfold. As it often is with me, I have a sense of dramatic irony. I know more about what is going on in the background than all the characters in the story do. I keep the moral quandaries of others to myself and let them dig their own graves, so people tell me things they often don’t share with others.

I am not sure what I think about her choices. They bother me, to a certain degree. She continues to move forward with their level of intimacy in spite of her distaste for the intensity of his. Beyond being somewhat lonely in this town, I am certain that she enjoys the fact that he practically idolizes her. She states that she doesn’t want to lose his friendship and that is where I really start to take issue.

Unless her feelings for him magically transform into something greater, the whole thing is going to come crashing down at some point. He is going to climb higher and higher on the wings of Icarus until they melt under the harsh light of reality. Their friendship was doomed from the moment he fell for her. He told her in a drunken conversation months ago that he didn’t think he could just be her friend.

At this point, what is the path they are traveling but selfishness on her part? She is afraid of losing someone she is almost guaranteed to lose, so she holds on and allows him to mislead himself. Indeed, she allows her actions to continue misleading him as well. I am not really looking forward to the inevitable. Even more so because I listen to our mutual friends talk about their relationship in the same terms he does, and whistle to myself internally.

I find myself wondering about her deeper motivations. What are they? Is there some fear of being alone, of rejecting or being so thoroughly rejected she loses a friendship? Is she too afraid to stab Caesar in the front, as was Brutus? Will Caesar’s last thoughts run through our friend’s mind as he finally sees through the mask and cries out, sadly, “Et tu, Brute?”

In my world, where no one is negligently plotting an assassination of the heart, I find myself frustrated by the simple mechanics of rejection. If only I was the one doing the rejecting. No, I am simply testing the sincerity of someone’s plea for friendship and finding it lacking. Did I expect better? No, not really. Did I hope for better? Well, I am always one for hope.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. Why is it so difficult for us to reject someone outright? We have become a world of silent rejections, which I find worse than an honest one. I put my hand out in friendship with an invitation to a specific event. The woman I am referring to plead work. Understandable. A more general query was ignored.

Why ignore me? Am I not good enough for a no, if not a no, thank you? I assume if she honestly wanted to build a friendship, she would have replied with at least tentative interest. It is difficult for me to accept a silent answer. My opinion of myself is too high to easily take being ignored. If she can’t reject me to my face, fine. But what harm to have the common courtesy to actually reject me. We all want to be acknowledged. Acknowledge me, even if it is with a negative response. Even a rude acknowledgement would be better than no response at all.

It seems to me that the answer is that we, as a society, are as afraid of rejecting people as we are of being rejected. Tragically, in our fear, we do more harm than we might ever do with a direct answer. Cut me with a sharp knife and it will heal cleanly and quickly. Tear my pride with the rusted, jagged metal of silence and the wound becomes infected, it festers, it heals slowly and scars.

Who do we truly save from agony when we try not to hurt someone’s feelings? I think it is a selfish, self-preserving action we take. It is not his or her hurt we fear, but our own guilt at causing harm. The wounds of negligence, however, are easy to ignore. We don’t see them. We have moved forward, moved on, nursing our own aching hearts. We are “innocent” in our ignorance.

I ask you not to, no matter the situation. Don’t offer to be my friend if you aren’t sincere. Reject me out of hand, if you will. Say to me, “Fuck, no.” Say to me, “No, thank you. Sorry.” Let me move on when I catch my breath instead of leaving me with this gaping, seeping sorrow. I know I am good enough for the effort it will take for you to give me that simple negative. I will recover faster, better, stronger if you have the common decency, the common courtesy, the respect to acknowledge that I am an adult capable of hearing, “No.”

Not getting rejected would, of course, be great. But when it happens, don’t fuck people with your silence.

And a thousand words, goodnight.
-m0rg4n