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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Back Again

He sits in the breakfast nook, an artfully designed corner of the otherwise empty house with bench seats that look out on the Douglas firs.  A cup of tea is before him, as is a single English muffin.  This has been his routine now for six months.  Get up, run around the property and the hills beyond.  Shower, dress, enjoy a cup of tea and a pastry of some sort.  And then?

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Rereading The Elenium

When we moved back into our house, the chore of sorting through what seemed an endless tide of boxes of books fell to yours truly.  It was only fair. A good eighty to ninety percent of the books in this house are mine anyway.  And of course I didn’t mind, reconnecting with what I could consider friends, some of which have been with me since high school.  As I sorted and unpacked, I realized that I wanted to reread a vast number of them.  Now, some of these books I could probably rewrite from memory.  But I wanted to reread them none the less.  Like I just said, some of these books, they’re like friends.

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All Play and No Work…

There is a ski lodge high on Mount Hood that you may have seen before.  It’s Timberline Lodge; and while its story as a WPA project is worth a read, and its interior a marvel in American craftsmanship, you probably know it best from its short screen time as the framing shot for the fictional Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  Now allow me to be upfront about this; Timberline Lodge is not the Overlook Hotel.  The hotel was a set piece, and the interior of the Timberline looks nothing like the faded glory of the Overlook.  However, there’s information about the movie proudly displayed in the hotel and the Lodge hosts the annual “Overlook Film Festival”; a bit of a perverse thrill in telling its guests that they are sleeping in closest thing to the Overlook.  (According to the Lodge’s website, room #217 — the original room in Stephen King’s book — is the most requested room.)

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