The dust begun to clog up my bandana as I surged down the arroyo. I was seated-slash-clinging for dear life on an ATV, my thumb sore from trying to keep the throttle button pressed at a steady position. I was in the rear of an ATV caravan, keeping up the vanguard as I ate everyone else’s dust. My clothes were no longer white and blue but a golden brown, the same as my forearms, my only exposed skin. The display had long since been covered over, wiped off and covered over again in the sand and dust of the dry creek bed. A pair of cheap sunglasses, purchased from the supermercado in Cabo San Jose were already lost, having been flung from my shirt pocket with the rapid up-down-upupup undulations of the uneven creek bed. In short, I was having the time of my life.
Continue reading “Spring Forward”Ancient Northernmost
“My father told me the story once.
To hear my dad’s people tell it, it’s our creation myth;
all people used to be Acians and all Acians were slaves.”
– Jest Rovanna
Hear then the tale of our people, of all people. For all people were once Acians, and all Acians were once slaves. Long was our enslavement, measured not in generations, but epochs, before there was such a thing as history or words. Our masters were of no tribe, no people. They were the masters of monsters and things for which we have no names. They tamed the universe and its secrets and for a time, our masters bowed to nothing.
Continue reading “Ancient Northernmost”Protharious
Well, I told you there’d be fiction again! I figure after that doozy of a post, I should lighten stuff up. But I also want to stay on target somewhat. While thinking about what I wanted to write in the previous entry, a thought had occurred to me that I might have another outlet for expressing my anxiety, one that would also allow me to work on the well overdue The Priest of Smugglers’ Run. Of all my characters, the one that would absolutely struggle with anxiety — in fact, I think he does without me even having known about it — would be the titular priest, Protharious.
Continue reading “Protharious”The Rising Tide
Fiction is fun, isn’t it? Apparently not many of you think so. “sober” was by far the least viewed post I’ve shared in the sudden stop. That’s okay, I don’t take it personally. But I ain’t gunna stop. You’re going to have to wade through some fiction here. I like fiction, what it allows us to explore, the hypotheticals and sometimes — in the case of fantasy — just something fun and insanely awesome.
Continue reading “The Rising Tide”sober
There was something in the way that his shoulders slumped. Perhaps there was too much breath in his sigh, in the barely audible groan that accompanied it. His eyes, always so alive and inquisitive seemed dimmed, focused too much on the ground. Whatever it was that tipped Joanna off, she knew without Kevin saying a word that his day was too long to forget over one drink.
Continue reading “sober”The Curses Are Not What They Seem
“May I never be complete.
May I never be content.
May I never be perfect.”
– Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
The New Rules
“A man must have a code.”
– “Bunk” Moreland
Writing these entries has always been an interesting experience. For those who have never used WordPress, you click “New Post” and are greeted with a nearly blank screen, only the margins filled in with your admin navigation. In the space between the sudden stop and now, this software has been updated several times and with those updates, a new, more streamlined editor, one with much more white space. So I click “New Post” and I’m presented with a new canvas, upon which I’ll begin to defile with these1largely inadequate words.
Continue reading “The New Rules”A Sudden Stop
What’s this? What is this place, this space, this empty screen, this blank white canvas with no words defiling the stillness? What is this writing, these words that appear directed by the sure and steady rhythm of keystrokes? This stream, these thoughts, this form where there had been none for so very long?
Continue reading “A Sudden Stop”