ECHOES OF EDEN

{Starting 2/9/12 : BLOOD WILL TELL will be FREE for 5 days!}

http://www.amazon.com/BLOOD-WILL-TELL-ebook/dp/B0050219BW

My blood center is down a man, so I was called to deliver blood to the only hospital servicing Cameron Parish.

Once again I set out on the Creole Nature Trail, one of the last surviving wildernesses in America.

I call it "the Last Exit to Eden."

Before I left the outskirts of Man's domain, I got gas at a station appropriately named FOUR CORNERS.

My half-Lakota mother would have smiled at the name. In Lakota myth there is a spiritual power in the crossroads spinning off to the four directions.

She often told me that the four directions have to be in balance for all to be well with the world.

From today's headlines, I would have to say they are a bit out of kilter.

Often in Lakota myth, the directions are represented by animals. And on this trip, I met my share. I felt much like my own character, Hibbs the cub with no clue.


http://www.amazon.com/BEAR-TWO-SHADOWS-ebook/dp/B004MDLWD0

A lone dog stood sentinal in the front yard of a nearby home as I pulled away. He stood so still that for a second I thought him a bronze sculpture.

But he turned his happy, tongue-lolling muzzle towards me as if to say, "I wish I were going with you." I waved a happy hello and good-bye in one gesture and went on my way.

I passed a majestic ranch, bordered by long, white rails. A small lake was just a few feet away. A bass jumped up in search of an elusive fly.

A peace grew within me. The four directions of my spirit were in balance at least.

For a brief moment, I found myself at the end of a long convoy of parish vechicles off to some construction site. And I felt a wave of resentment much like the mountain men of old must have felt upon seeing pioneer families moving into "their" wilderness.

I laughed at myself. How could the mountain men or I own the wilderness which existed long before we were born and would go on long after Man was only a radioactive memory?

Just before the long, winding S curve I love to drive, I spotted a single horse grazing in a blaze of marigolds. He looked up as I passed as if to snort,

"Do you mind? I'm trying to have lunch here." Then, he went back to grazing.

As I pulled under the canopy of Cypress trees onto the straightaway, my old friends were waiting for me :

the small herd of horses who love to pace my van in a friendly race through the clover and marigolds. They happily took up the game once again.

This time they had company : a lone great Egret who soared above them on silent, mighty currents of wind. It swooped down and around in long, slow, graceful motions of its huge wings.

I put down my window and drank in the sound of the gusting wind, the pounding of the hooves, and the haunting cry of far-off hawks.

I sadly parted from my equine friends as I started up the high, lonely bridge that arched and twisted up into the clouds like the feathered serpent of Aztec myth.

At its peak, I looked out across a landscape that seemed devoid of Man.

It didn't seemed to mind.

As I hit the bottom of the bridge, I looked for my alligator acquaintance from the last trip. But he was off in search of more accessible meals than a human in a speeding van.

But I did spot a distant cousin :

a huge tortoise slowly making its way across the road far ahead of me.

I looked in my rearview mirror. Another car would be here before my shelled friend would make it across.

I pulled over to the shoulder of the road, and I got out and lifted him all the way to the other side. As I walked away from him, he twisted his head my way as if to say,

"You're a decent sort ... for a two-legged."

As I continued on my lonely way, the quiet was broken by a huge flock of great Egrets playing tag with one another. They spread across the vast blue sky from horizon to horizon.

And without warning, the flock enveloped me in its midst as the graceful, white birds darted down, welcoming me to their game. But, alas, I was rooted to the ground, and so they left me to waddle along the road in solitude.

And it seemed as if I heard the ghostly voice of The Turquoise Woman from Lakota myth and my mother's bedside tales :

"You Two-Leggeds are so foolish. Solitude? Here? I am ablaze with life all around you. You are never alone, never unwatched."

A scary gust of wind shuddered my van just as I was traveling down the most narrow section of the trail, rippling waters from both edges of the road lapping up just inches from the side of my vehicle.

I tugged on my wheel, and I felt a pressure on my van, steering me away from the grasp of the waters back to the center of the road.

I seemed to hear ghostly laughter, "Not your time just yet, little Lakota. You still make me laugh.

And you save my turtles."

I nodded to the endless depths of the blue sky and whispered, "Thank you."

Just then, a red-winged hawk swooped across the road far ahead of me. I took it to be The Turquoise Woman saying, "You're welcome."



***


I've wanted to see a movie of JOHN CARTER OF MARS since I was a little boy, curled up on my bed, reading his adventures in thumb-worn paperbacks.

WHY MYTH?

Don't forget to vote for my GateKeeper entry (THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH) :

http://www.wattpad.com/1073509-the-legend-of-victor-standish#comments

Myth springs like Athena from Zeus' forehead from the Greek "mythos," meaning word or story.

Man has always used stories to explain things he could not understand or explain otherwise.

Ancient myths were the stories that sifted mysteries into answers that made the dark less frightening.

In essence, then, Myths are metaphors for life and its challenges.

World Mythology has a deep skeleton of common images and motifs that provide a structure ...

an eternal, common quest, if you would, of Man for self-awareness in the face of entropy,

that eternal dark of disorder that waits upon the night's horizon to swallow both meaning and fulfilment.

Bottom line :

myths are the magics that take our breath with that child's awe of the first snowfall.

We listen to their magic because they tap the collective unconscious :

the dreams and hopes and fears which murmur in the night to all of us.


On one level, our modern society seems devoid of myths.

Perhaps that is why many have a sense of meaninglessness, estrangement, rootlessness, and the cold brittleness of a life devoid of reverence and awe.

Those of you have a deep belief in God do not take offense. I, also, have a deep connection with The Father and with His Son.

I am talking about another level of consciousness. A level that often withers from lack of nuturing early in childhood.

We each have our own mythology. Consciously or unconsciously, we create our own myths.

We have our own fables -- the things which are important and valued and vibrant to us personally.

We are the heroes in "mythic journeys" by which we romanticize our various passages through life.

Although we generally accept cultural myths to the extent to which we are a part of our culture,

the truly satisfying and exciting myths are those which arise from our own passions, our own dreams, and our own visions.

As Joseph Campbell said, in An Open Life,

"The imagery of mythology is symbolic of the spiritual power within us."

In this symbolism, we see mythological characters who represent love, youth, death, wealth, virility, fear, evil, and other archetypal facets of life --

and we also see natural events such as rain and wind. The fanciful beings are personifications of those facets, those "energies."

As we read about the interplay of these forces of nature, we are viewing a dream-like fantasy which portrays the interaction of the elements of our own lives.

In Lakota myth, everything is alive, impacting everything else in a delicate web of life.

In Celtic myth, splendor and magic contest with kings and their kingdoms. Lakota myth emphasize the inner, while Celtic stresses the outer.

My half-Lakota mother taught me the importance of being rather than striving to possess.

It is not that we Lakota do not care about physical comfort or material possessions. It is that we do not measure ourselves or others by those things.

We believe we are measured by how well we manifest the virtues praised in our stories and myths.

When the Europeans devastated the Lakota culture and peoples,

we survived by becoming the kind of people spoken of in our hero-cycles and myths.

They are our gifts to the world's peoples to draw strength from for themselves, no matter what race or creed they may be.

These stories continue to inspire and sustain the Lakota people.

And for one desperately ill boy in a frozen-in Detroit basement apartment, the tales melded of both Lakota and Celtic myth whispered not to fear that last looming darkness ...

that Death was just a change in worlds ...

and that Hibbs, the bear with 2 shadows, who championed all hurting children and who had passed beyond and back again,

would champion the cause of that feverish, shivering, coughing little boy.

And before my mother's wondering eyes,

I rallied,

feeling the chills as the loving touch of the Turquoise Woman and seeing the dark shadow at the foot of my bed as the comforting spirit of Hibbs,

he who had been the cub with no clue who grew into the mighty bear with two shadows.

So, there, you have a taste of what my friends and I will be talking about on my book blog tour that we are now setting up.

Have a magical new week, Roland
***

TO SING LIFE INTO BEING

To Sing Life Into Being.

My half-Lakota mother would take me on long walks at night,

pointing to the stars and telling me tales

of long ago when life was blinking-eye fresh

and animals could talk.

She would always start those walks by pointing to the many-eyed blanket of night and say,

"The Great Mystery sang those stars to life, Little One. What words do you suppose He used?"

Perhaps that is why we sing life into being with our prose --

we carry that need to create we inherited from He whose song
spoke us to life.

Words. It all comes down to the Word.

In the beginning was the Word.

Lucky for the universe God didn't need an agent to get his Word to see the Light.

But none of us is God. We don't have the job qualifications.

Not being Deity, you and I have to get an agent.

Of course, there are vanity publishers. But they're called vanity publishers for a reason. Basically, it's like paying for a kiss. It means very little.

And less to major publishers if you refer to being published by them. The big boys all know you paid to get published.

And it only means something when they pay you for it.

In a sad sidebar, that truth is why some hopeless women on the hard streets feel they have worth.

Men pay for them.

Remember FIELD OF DREAMS?

"If you build it, he will come."

And the same is true for us as writers.

An agent will not come because I'm a nice guy.

She will not come because I'm a writer with a great idea.

She will not come because I beg. {Although I have to admit, I've been tempted to do that.}

She will not come because I have great promise.

No.

The agent will come when I build something real for her to appear for :

A novel that is finished,

that is riveting from the very first sentence,

that grabs the reader and will not let her go,

that finishes with a resolved crisis and growth for the main character, hinted at in the very first chapter.

But more :

she will come when I have already built a platform from which she can stand,

from which a publisher can view potential sales, from which they can compute the possible profit in it for them to buy my novel.

That is something she can use in the ways she knows best,

taking a finished novel with existing interest.

With that she can go to the editors, persuading them into a better financial deal than we could have dreamed.

Until that happens, there is no need for an agent. Lusting for one is even a distraction. A distraction from what, you say?

From crafting that polished," draw-you-in-with-the-first-sentence" novel.

But the novel is not enough, you must also have a platform. Get your name out there.

Twitter. Ah, I am not comfortable with it. But many are.

Listen to others on it. Learn how NOT to hawk yourself.

Facebook has problems. But set up an account for later.

Be prepared.

Do what you're doing now:

Write an interesting, absorbing blog. Be the best you on that blog you can be.

Go with your strengths. If you're funny, make 'em laugh.

If you're wise {me, I'm otherwise},

then share what you have freely and compassionately.

Go to others' blogs. You see something there that is useful or fun or both, direct your readers to that blog.

Have the back of your fellow blogger. Maybe they'll have your back in return.

If not, you still have the good feeling inside that being decent and kind gives you.

Google on how to write queries. I've written a couple of decent posts on how to do that. Other bloggers have as well.

Now, go to http://www.agentquery.com/ and find agents for your genre.

Go to Preditors and Editors http://pred-ed.com/ and see if there are any red flags to their names.

Go to Absolute Write Water Cooler : http://absolutewrite.com/forums/ and see what fellow writers think of your targeted agent.

Write the shortest, most interest-grabbing query you can.

I've written a few posts on how to do that.

Google will show you others. Now, write that query. Show it to a few fellow writers you trust.

Then, throw your note in a cyber bottle out into the sea. Throw ten notes.

And if three request a partial or a full, send them. Also tell those requesting agents about the interest of the other two.

Is that honest? Yes. Is that wise? It's human nature wise.

Guys want a girl that other guys want. It's human nature.

Finding out other agents are interested in you makes you seem more attractive to that agent reading your reply.

Be professional, of course, in how you state it. State it as a courtesy to them.

Agents who read this may sputter. But I'm not writing this for them. I writing this for you to have the best shot at getting an agent.

Oh, and when you get your agent, and she sells your novel, her next question will be :

"What are you working on next?"

Be prepared for that with a polished proposal.

{I have one prepared for the sequel to THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH : VICTOR IS NOT JUST MY NAME.}

Let her know that you are professional and not a one-shot wonder.

Understand that there is a melody playing inside her head as she looks at you :

"What do you have for me that will make me more money?"

Your goal is to write, sell, repeat. Enjoy the journey ...

and the friends you make along the way.

Like Spenser says, "It is what it is."
****************
And please give your spirit and heart a present and watch and listen to this :

THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS_HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER BLOGFEST

This is my entry for Justin W. Parente's HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER blogfest :

http://jwparente.blogspot.com/2010/09/birthday-wishes-and-more.html


(I twisted the phrase : Hook, Line, and Sinker to mean

the beginning, middle, and end of a novel or story.

It's the rebellious Texican in me.

I didn't want to punish my readers with a 1000 words. That's the Boy Scout in me.

The teacher in me wanted to paint a lesson in brushstrokes of prose :

The beginning must entice.

The middle must sustain interest, while foreshadowing the end.

And the ending must strike an evocative chord in the heart and mind of the reader.

The following excerpts are from a short story detailing the adventures of the last Lakota shaman, Wolf Howl, in the very near future.} :


SHORT STORY : THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

BEGINNING --

When she was thunder in the distance, I awoke. When her laughter was lightning above me, I knew fear. When both front tires to the bus blew, I saw her face in the night.

The Turquoise Woman was angry at the White Man.

Again.

Luckily, I was not a White Man. Or not so lucky.

I was on the bus.

***
MIDDLE --

I led the little girl, Abby, past the moaning passengers yet alive. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. Some begged me to help. I ignored them.

Abby whispered, "Aren't you gonna help them?"

"I am not a priest or a psychiatrist."

"That's supposed to tell me something, right?"

"The color of their thoughts is death."

She paled. "You can read thoughts?"

"I am not a Peeping Tom. I limit myself to observing the colors of thoughts not their substance."

She looked at me. "What colors are your GrandMother's thoughts?"

"The colors of her thoughts are the Northern Lights."

"Well, whoop-de-doo for her. What about mine?"

I mussed her hair sadly. "They could use some scrubbing."

"Says you."

We passed the soldier on leave. I sighed. He had survived Iraq, only to die on a "safe" bus ride. There was a life lesson there if I cared to look deep enough.

I didn't.
***
ENDING --

I reached out and tenderly stroked the dead girl's still warm cheek. From the cliff of our birth we keep falling, falling.

Abby had hit bottom sooner than most. It was a world of sorrows because we made it so.

I tried to see some echo of the innocence that had once been hers. I couldn't find it, only a hard hollowness to the eyes I slowly closed.

Perhaps that innocence had died with her grandfather.

Perhaps it had been choked bit by bit by her Mossad trainers, her handlers. Had they fed her on lies until her heart had starved to death?

I fought another sigh. She had died from their last lie : that the Turquoise Woman was a projection of my will.

I shook my head sadly. I never killed the young, while they comprised the majority of GrandMother's victims. To say that she and I held different views of life was an understatement.

GrandMother, The Turquoise Woman, sounded puzzled. "You knew that she was one of the Mossad team all along?"

I nodded. "The color of her thoughts was always death. Always."

From the heart of the dark woods, Bu, the Owl, cried in the voice of the recent dead.
***

CHAPTER SEVEN : WILL YOU SET YOUR EYES ON THINGS THAT ARE NOT?

{"Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing."
- Bill Cosby}

Marlene tugged on my arm and led me and Mark Twain deeper into Meilori's, deeper into trouble, and hopefully, farther away from those Shadowlanders who wanted me dead or tortured.

She led us between clusters of tables, through the babble of plots and counter-plots. Jackel-headed beings argued with stork-headed ones. Triple snake-headed Nagas eyed us with weaving stares.

Three hooded women stiffened as we passed. Amidst their whispers, I heard the hissing of dozens of small snakes coming from inside their hoods. I smiled grimly.

The three Gorgon sisters. Oh, why the hell not? It would be just like my strange luck to die at the talons of a myth no one believed existed.

Growls came low from under their table. I glanced down. Anvil heads with double rows of sharp fangs. Hellhounds.

Better and better.

Long ago I had read of the graveyard spiral, the last test of every pilot for the airplanes of World War I.

In that last test, everything a student had learned would be held to the fire of death and life. If he had learned his lessons correctly, he would pull out of that dive.

If not, both pilot and teacher would die. Deep inside, I knew that this night was my graveyard spiral.

Every humanoid male we passed looked longingly at Marlene, and Mark Twain muttered, "Don't take this wrong, Roland. But you've got to admit Marlene is a veritable goddess. She could have anyone. What does she see in you?"

Marlene stiffened, then slowed her pace. "Rather it is what he sees in us -- and others."

She leaned towards him, touching my temple with one set of fingertips and Mark's with the other. "Come, see as his Lakota blood allows Roland to see."

We were passing a fat Renaissance flesh peddler haggling with a Chinese warlord. Marlene slowed her pace even more. Mark Twain stiffened and gave a low cry.

And I knew then that he saw as I saw ... as my mother had seen ... and as her grandmother had seen before her.

The corpulent body became dim, and inside it was a young, starved, dirty-faced boy, rubbing the back of a small hand against thin lips. And Mark and I heard the thoughts of the child that lived forever within him :

"Hungry. Always hungry. Never enough. Never. No one cares. No one. Everyone’s out to get me. Everyone. But I’ll get them first. Theirs will be the back to get the knife. Bastards. Bastards all."

The Chinese warlord’s body became dim, revealing the inflamed, bruised body of an even smaller boy, his face hard, his eyes dead.

"Killed my family, my villiage. Laugh, you dogs. Laugh. I escaped. Hunt you down, every last one of you. In their sleep, everyone dies so easy. I’ll get my own army, then, I’ll show you. Show you all!"

At the next table sat a once beautiful woman, dressed in the fashions of Marie Antoinette. Her lined face still held echoes of that haunting beauty. She sat toying with her hair, eyeing the perfumed man in front of her, his own eyes lingering on her fat purse.

Her body dimmed, and in in its center was a little girl, her dress nearly torn off.

"Mommy. Mommy, they killed you. Daddy, where are you? Where? You said you’d always be here. Always.

But t-they tore my dress, pulled it over my h-head, stuck their thing into me over and over and over. Oh, Daddy, where were you? Don’t you love me anymore?

No, of course, you don’t love me anymore. How could you love me? I’m dirty. Dirty!"

The dandy’s body had a ragged boy inside him :

"Why did you leave me at the inn, Pop? Why? Why do I keep on asking why? How come I’m so stupid? Only the weak ask why.

‘Sides I know why. ‘Cause you’re dirt, that’s why. Like Ma was dirt. L-Like I’m dirt.

Well, I’ll show you. I’ll show you all. I’ll claw, steal, and kill until I can buy and sell the world. The world!"

Two tables down, the Musketeer had recovered from Marlene’s blow and sat nursing another ale. His adult body faded, showing a fat boy, tears streaming down his face.

"Why? I never done nothing to them. I minds my own business. I keep to the shadows. Why do they keep beating me up? Why do they call me names? Why do they chase me? I ask, but I really know why.

‘Cause I’m weak that’s why. Worthless, fat, slow, stupid. Well, they’ll be sorry. They’ll all be sorry. From now on, I swear I’ll exercise and train until I can run through anyone who sneers at me. Anyone!

Then, I’ll be the one doing the sneering. Me, the toughest, meanest bastard in the whole damn world."

We passed the samurai from earlier. His body dimmed, showing a younger, hollow-eyed warrior standing over the body of a robed daimyo.

"Once I thought I knew what honor was. Once I had a master to be proud of. Once I was a deluded fool.

All I had were illusions, lies! I caught him betraying the empress -- for filthy money. Money! And a whore’s body.

Well, I killed his whore in front of him. Then, I killed him. And killed my illusions while I was at it.

Now, I am empty. Empty and alone. Alone in a world without meaning, without hope, without purpose. Why do I keep on living? Why?"

"Enough!," cried Mark Twain, tearing his temple from Marlene's fingertips. "I can bear no more."

He turned tortured eyes to me. "Is this how you truly see?"

I nodded. "Yes, but not all the time and not with everyone. I don't tell people. It would make them uncomfortable around me."

"Then, how did Marlene know?"

Her eyes sank deep into her pale face. "One night I - I brushed the hair from his eyes and touched his temple, seeing myself as he saw me."

Mark Twain rasped, "Then, I know why you act the way you do to perfect strangers."

Marlene's eyes grew haunted. "To Roland, no one is perfect."

I caught her eyes, reached out, and squeezed her right hand lightly. "And no one is a stranger."
***********************************

LAST EXIT TO EDEN

For an unusual third time in a month, I was called to deliver blood to the only hospital servicing Cameron Parish. And so once again I set out on the Creole Nature Trail, one of the last surviving wildernesses in America. I call it "the Last Exit to Eden."

Before I left the outskirts of Man's domain, I got gas at a station appropriately named FOUR CORNERS. My half-Lakota mother would have smiled at the name. In Lakota myth there is a spiritual power in the crossroads spinning off to the four directions. She often told me that the four directions have to be in balance for all to be well with the world. From today's headlines, I would have to say they are at a kilter.

Often in Lakota myth, the directions are represented by animals. And on this trip, I met my share. I felt much like my own character, Hibbs the cub with no clue.

A lone dog stood sentinal in the front yard of a nearby home as I pulled away. He stood so still that for a second I thought him a bronze sculpture. But he turned his happy, tongue-lolling muzzle towards me as if to say, "I wish I were going with you." I waved a happy hello and good-bye in one gesture and went on my way.

I passed a majestic ranch, bordered by long, white rails. A small lake was just a few feet away. A bass jumped up in search of an elusive fly. A peace grew within me. The four directions of my spirit were in balance at least.

For a brief moment, I found myself at the end of a long convoy of parish vechicles off to some construction site. And I felt a wave of resentment much like the mountain men of old must have felt upon seeing pioneer families moving into "their" wilderness. I laughed at myself. How could the mountain men or I own the wilderness which existed long before we were born and would go on long after Man was only a radioactive memory?

Just before the long, winding S curve I love to drive, I spotted a single horse grazing in a blaze of marigolds. He looked up as I passed as if to snort, "Do you mind? I'm trying to have lunch here." Then, he went back to grazing.

As I pulled under the canopy of Cypress trees onto the straightaway, my old friends were waiting for me : the small herd of horses who love to pace my van in a friendly race through the clover and marigolds. They happily took up the game once again. This time they had company : a lone great Egret who soared above them on silent, mighty currents of wind. It swooped down and around in long, slow, graceful motions of its huge wings. I put down my window and drank in the sound of the gusting wind, the pounding of the hooves, and the haunting cry of far-off hawks.

I sadly parted from my equine friends as I started up the high, lonely bridge that arched and twisted up into the clouds like the feathered serpent of Aztec myth. At its peak, I looked out across a landscape that seemed devoid of Man. It didn't seemed to mind. As I hit the bottom of the bridge, I looked for my alligator acquaintance from the last trip. But he was off in search of more accessible meals than a human in a speeding van.

But I did spot a distant cousin : a huge tortoise slowly making its way across the road far ahead of me. I looked in my rearview mirror. Another car would be here before my shelled friend would make it across. I pulled over to the shoulder of the road, and I got out and lifted him all the way to the other side. As I walked away from him, he twisted his head my way as if to say, "You're a decent sort ... for a human."

As I continued on my lonely way, the quiet was broken by a huge flock of great Egrets playing tag with one another. They spread across the vast blue sky from horizon to horizon. And without warning, the flock enveloped me in its midst as the graceful, white birds darted down, welcoming me to their game. But, alas, I was rooted to the ground, and so they left me to waddle along the road.

And it seemed as if I heard the ghostly voice of The Turquoise Woman from Lakota myth and my mother's bedside tales : "You Two-Leggeds are so foolish. Solitude? Here? I am ablaze with life all around you. You are never alone, never unwatched."

A scary gust of wind shuddered my van just as I was traveling down the most narrow section of the trail, rippling waters from both edges of the road lapping up just inches from the side of my vehicle. I tugged on my wheel, and I felt a pressure on my van, steering me away from the grasp of the waters back to the center of the road.

I seemed to hear ghostly laughter, "Not your time just yet, little Lakota. You still make me laugh. And you save my turtles."

I nodded to the endless depths of the blue sky and whispered, "Thank you."

Just then, a red-winged hawk swooped across the road far ahead of me. I took it to be The Turquoise Woman saying, "You're welcome."

One of the tunes I was listening to on my trip was WHISPERS IN THE MOONLIGHT. And if you've been paying attention, you know who is whispering.