Summer’s here: the sun is shining, the kids are playing, the West Nile mosquitoes are hovering in clouds of death. For many, the Summer is a time for travel, whether it is to a far off location or just to one’s “happy place”.

At Local Color, we asked our readers to send in their stories about travel. We left the interpretation of the word “travel” to the discretion of the authors.

In response, we got Grays by Christian Verotik, a journey through the relationship between us and our alien overlords; Kelly L.’s Wayworn City, a trip through the remains of a past age; and J. Robert Novak’s (I Believe in) Travelin’ Light, in which the narrator prepares to venture far from home.

These stories can be found here.

We’d like to thank the contributors, and to remind everyone that we are always accepting fiction, as well as essay submissions.

By Christian Verotik

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece is several years old by now and was developed in Verotik’s writing group. He’s kept it to himself, but felt ready to reveal it. I hope you like it as much as we do. — Charlie)

They live in a glass house, with a floor made up of stones, but they need not fear. It works well for the woman, for she does not like to be the one to throw objects of reality, and she does not fear him, for he knows better than to throw his stones in their house made of glass. So, together they live, trapped in a life inside a glass house. It isn’t so bad for her, as she knows that she need never fear, for the reason stated earlier. He is the one who must forever walk on eggshells, for she can react in her own way, but he is never allowed to act in his way. It’s not all pleasantry for her though, for you see, she absolutely abhors him. He once loved her, but he’s no longer sure of that word, mostly because all the stones must forever lay on the ground, never to be touched by his hands. This is the life they live, inside their glass house, all because they live in fear of the L-word.

It started innocently enough. She was recovering from a bad marriage, he recovering from a bad case of alcoholism. Both were in need of companionship and a shoulder to lean on. They met mostly by chance, one fine Spring day, and they both seemed almost happy for a time. This was before they ever thought about the abysmal L-word. Together, they built up a fine house for themselves, a beautiful looking house made of fine glass, with pretty-colored stones to make up the floor. They quickly moved into their new home, never thinking about the repercussions of what would happen should they ever happen upon the L-word.

For months on end, they lived together in happiness. Mostly because they could look out their many windows to see the world outside, but they need never fear that world outside ever again. Both of them wanted to lock themselves away from the outside world, and they seemed to have done that task together. Then, the nagging started. Then, the abuse started. She wanted to control his every thought and action. He wanted to pound his fists against the walls and throw his stones, but he could not. She grew angry any time he did not follow her instructions or live his life around her. Her anger came out by ignoring him, by avoiding him. It was the worst anger in the world for a man who reacted by throwing stones. He wanted nothing more than to pick up the stones along the floor and begin to fling them this way and that, but he had to always remain calm, for he knew better than to ever break the precious glass. This is the way they lived for many months on end, and they were no longer happy in the least.

Finally, one day, she had had enough and decided to leave. It being her right to decide to do this and not his because he lived with the all-consuming need to throw just one stone, but this he could never do. So, he always stayed, and now, she decided to go. She opened one glass window and prepared to step out, when she stopped and sniffed the outside breeze blowing in, it froze her. “It… It smells of something…” she gasped, “Yes… it is… it is the smell of L.” She slowly let herself back into the house. She glared at the man who she had learned to abhor, but still she closed the window and sat down on the couch.

When finally she talked to the man again, she explained that she had never before thought about the world outside of their glass house, that it was full of the L-word. The man began to tremble a bit, “Not the L-word! I had never even stopped to consider the L-word! How did the world become so infected with L since our time in this house?” It was the end of the discussion, and from that moment onward, they learned to hate each other more and more.

He would yell and yell at the top of his lungs, but she locked herself away where the noise could not reach her, and since the stones were out of the question, he was left with no choice in the matter, except to suffer. She came to grow angrier and angrier more often with the man, not even stopping to try to understand the little things or tiny mistakes which he did; her anger at him was now all-consuming. This was the life they led. Many times they wanted to get out of this lifestyle, but every time they thought about it, the realization came about what was out there, they thought about L.

He came to fear L so much, that he made the decision in his mind to never leave her, no matter how painful it became, a life of helplessness was better than a life of L. She was not so sure in her mind. She couldn’t stand the thought of one more night in the glass house or one more day spent with him, and believed that nothing could be worse. Nothing, that is, until she reached her head through an open window and smelled the L-word on the breeze. Every time, that smell. She recoiled in fear and set firm in her mind that she could last a little longer with him. She kept fooling herself into believing that one day the L-word would not permeate the outside world so heavily, and she could finally leave her sickening life behind. He had no such false pretenses left in his mind, he knew that the L would never go away again, and sometimes he wondered what would be worse, for her to leave or to face this tortuous life one more day? He never fooled himself for long, he could never face L, and deep down he hoped she would never leave, because this life could never be as bad as L. Besides, this wouldn’t be such a bad life at all, if only he could throw just one stone…

by Christian Verotik

Living inside here isn’t always easy.
You can touch me, but I will not feel.
Scrape your hands on blistered wood.
The burning flames of ember waves in the night,
Calling the siryns out from the sea
For copulation, decapitulation, or simple extrenouations.
In here all sperm leads away from uterine walls
And into blood chasms of omnivorous termites.
Using clacked mandibles to exert influence over hardware.
Radiological bisects building corrugated genetic dissolutions.
No, it’s not an easy life, but it keeps one busy.
Gesticulations of the masses towards words made of metal,
Your hearts are iron, your brains rusted copper, your bodies candle wax.
Melted baby fat mixed with aerosolized acid medication
Used to treat what ails a dying soul breed.
Viruses in the base of our skull causing sentient awareness
Overuse of antibiotics creating lower intelligence.
Bread box houses to hold the maimed, cannibal lights in every room.
Do you know who lives alone with you?
Canjoled Aribeastry beings from quadrants outside your minds,
Impeached upon the world tree of Belgium and sanguine loss.
And, in the end, stomach ulcers and embolisms of sex, this is why
Why I’d choose the life of a wood louse over the dreams of sullied albatross.
It’s a garbage receptacle for the souls of the Jewish dead,
The legacy of Hitlerian economic philosophy taught at Kent State by discredited Yales.
Metaphor mixed my in head loose alighting saladiptious marketed cornerstones.
Jimmy Carter is a used shoe salesman in my refrigerated wedding.
And you, you, always for you…..stoneglasshouses and Napalm babies.
The Me would come later and never end with shopping carts full of uranium.
This is the face of Love in the Garden of Pines.

(Intro: a very personal poem from Christian. If you know him at all, you know where this comes from. - CK)

Bring back my lover to me.
The creation of pocket universes
to hide your pain;
Creating a world of bitterness,
Unhappiness, and the hopeless-
Helpless to find your way back
From where you were first banished.
Bring back my lover to me.
They say your sanity is the first thing to go
Dizziness and a pain in the neck.
Tethered to reality like a moth on a single string
Tugging, pulling, roiling through your mind-
Thoughts of disease, decay, loneliness.
Abandoned with your own self,
And I know I don’t make good company.
Bring back my lover to me.
Is talking to oneself really so strange
When no one else can hear? A land of the deaf and dumb.
If I could tell of the shaking, the aching
The busted brain and the limping step-
And the heart. Beating a rhythm too jaded to dance-
“Alone!” it cries. Night miseries.
No, this is not my world….
My life? Bring it back to me!
Too blinded by clouded waves of grain to see
It’s a good life, if you don’t weaken.
Now, there’s nothing left but weak shells
Without a sea of people. The crowds make my wave break.
Bring back my lover to me.
Coagulated blood and pills to make you bleed
if you’re lucky. While my number is thirteen.
Twenty-one to live, twenty-five to die. A roll of three.
I miss you all, but I miss Her most….
One more and bring back my lover to me.

The March 2007 Call for Fiction entries are posted! We’ve got some great stories: contributer Christian Verotik sent in Two Lovers, about the meaning of true love; new contributer Gen posted Routine: Loss and Gain, about, well, loss and gain; Publisher, editor-in-chief, and all around nice guy Charlie Kondek wrote Top Shelf, another meditation on loss; and editor-in-chief J. Robert Novak gave us Intervention, a tale of God, Nintendo, and Dungeons & Dragons.

In the next day or two, a few straggling stories may be posted, so keep an eye on this page.

And now, the March 2007 Local Color Call for Fiction entries!

By Charlie Kondek

Fatherhood changed my life. I think we use that phrase a lot, about all kinds of things that happen to us, without ever really considering the gravity of an actual, life-changing event. We feel our lives are changed, that we are different people, when we hear certain music, see certain films, read certain books, have certain epiphanies. We recall them later in florid, inflated memory; “I remember exactly where I was when that happened. It changed my life.” But we do not fully experience the vertigo of a life-changing event until we have really fallen down that well. Fatherhood changed my life. Twice.

I am told that a man’s body and brain are saturated internally by a biochemical response to seeing his children born. Certainly this would explain for me the feeling I had at the birth of my first son. Something inside of me turned forever. I could palpably feel the switch being thrown. And as the little man struggled with life outside the womb, I stood in the delivery room staring at him from beyond the warm lights and knew, with utter clarity, that I was not the same person.

I’m not boasting when I say that the man created on that day has, so far, been a great dad. When my oldest was passed before me for the first time I instinctively called his name in the same singsong with which I had addressed my wife’s swollen abdomen and was shocked to discover that this minutes-old frog-like creature turned his thin eyes in my direction as if annoyed. “You!” his face seemed to say. I’m quite sure I’m not inventing this memory, because the nurse handling him noticed it, too. “He recognizes you!” she exclaimed. I have witnesses.

It’s as if we knew each other before he was born, Louie and I, a bond the depth of which is surpassed each day. I said I am “a great dad” and I qualify that in large part by the rapport I have with the child, now three years old. I am his hero, his tutor in all things, his constant playmate. I am the first thing he sees when he gets up in the morning and the last thing he wants to see at night, the thing he cries out for if he wakes from a bad dream. When he was a nursling he would pull himself away from the breast to smile at me, as if to say, “Don’t go anywhere, old sport, I’ll be right with you.” Except when I’m working or at the few extracurricular activities I attend each week, we’re together.

I take every aspect of his parenting seriously. Once when we thought he might be seriously ill I prayed with more intensity and conviction than I had ever prayed before. I never forgot that feeling, that desperate cribside prayer, because it was probably the very moment that my faith was the strongest it’s ever been, certain bane to the rare ghosts of atheistic thoughts. That’s powerful. Fatherhood makes me believe in God.

The feelings surrounding my second son have been complicated, and it’s precisely because I have set my standards for fatherhood so high, have exceeded my expectations in parenting to the extent that I have, that I am obsessed with them, and struggle to understand and keep perspective on them. I love my second son, Sam. We planned for him, tried for him and got him. I want him and his brother to have the strength of their brotherhood all their lives. But the feelings in me about having a second baby have been unavoidably benchmarked by the first.

I guess there’s just nothing like the first baby. When we brought him home I jumped at his every mewl and whimper, held him in exactly the position he wanted til my arms ached, then held him some more so he would go on sleeping. Catering to these same demands in a second infant feels less an intoxicating blessing and more like a chore. Whereas with the first child I was busy hastily rearranging my mind and my worldview to accommodate him, with this one that work has already been done, and I wish I could just show him where all the toys and furniture are and turn him loose, have him fall naturally into the happy domestic routine of the household, join me and his older brother at play.

This is where perspective comes in. Even before Sam was born I found myself having to remind myself that he was not an accessory to Lou, but his own person, though attached to a sibling, with his own rhythms starting again at zero: erratic sleeping, always on the hip, ravenously nursing and comfort sucking, crying as his only means of communication. (And what a set of pipes this one has, although, like Lou, he is easily comforted.)

Caring for Sam is a chore and we always do our chores. In fact, I am writing this on a yellow legal pad while Sam sleeps on my chest. It’s nearly midnight and there are “M*A*S*H*” reruns on TV. This lacks the same mystic quality that such activities had the first time around. This time, I’m all business – I can only imagine what it would be like with a third, fourth, fifth child. By then you’ve got to be approaching a state of mind like that of a coach, a general or a ringmaster.

The first child sets the bar so high. My attachment to him was instant, the raw drama and excitement of a wedding day. With the second child, falling in love has been gradual, like waking up beside your spouse to discover how much more you love her today than yesterday. It’s the contrast that I find so remarkable, so troubling, so earnestly needing my private, inner attentions.

As I said, I take every aspect of my parenting seriously. I will always work to look at Sam with fresh eyes, though there is an irremovable context to him, to take time just for him, even as we have taken time reassuring Lou of his valued place in our hearts. Already behaviors are developing that I hadn’t exactly anticipated. Sam, now five months old, wants to be everywhere his brother is, and is content to sit in my lap watching him play. And Lou is enjoying the position of importance in the baby’s life. “I think he wants to be by me, dad. Move his exer-saucer closer to me.” It is my hope, indeed my prayer, that the two will develop a bond and an alliance unique to themselves, though I do not cherish the battles between them that may come.

Before I had kids, I liked kids. Now that I have kids, I really like kids. That is why I was so startled when I didn’t feel the same elation at the second child as at the first. I can feel a deep yearning to care for strangers’ children. The distant cry of a child in a store causes my head to swivel like a dog’s. Why wasn’t my connection to my own second infant the same? But Sam and I, we’re working that out. He has special smiles for me, now, is sometimes comforted only by my touch, laughs deep baby belly laughs at little games only he and I play. He’s walking well-trod paths in my heart and I want him to know them well, but also to blaze trails of his own in that tangled forest.

Words and images by David Barnett

(Intro: A cheeky, witty travelogue from a writer we really need to hear more from. — Charlie)

* * *

Ah, the summer of 2005 — what a time to be alive that was. A few months prior, I finished my tenure at the University of Wales, Cardiff, studying Journalism, Film, & Broadcasting. My lifestyle was a dynamic mix of sleeping, eating, and pornography, and yet, I wondered was there something more? Well, dear reader, there was. You see, I can’t say I live in a terribly diverse cosmopolitan locale. A day out around here usually means going around the shops, going to the cinema, or feeding the birds, tuppence a bag. No wait, that’s Mary Poppins, but you get the idea.

Not that life in Wales is boring, you understand. Endless shops, endless fields and mountains, and ah! singing coal miners, I’m reliably informed. I’ll take the moral high ground for a novel change and not draw attention to the sheep jokes often made about us, though. I’m often reminded how beautiful and peaceful it is, but quite frankly, its charm has long been lost on me. Like the average black hole, you come to Wales, but you never leave, or so that was the case for the majority of my life. Apart from one dire school trip to France and brief family trips across the border, I had never really ventured anywhere on my own. The shocking truth of a geek in life experience deficit mode.

On top of it all, I was in the midst of truly wondering what I wanted to do with my life, a dilemma that was killing my initiative in seeking gainful employment. Oh sure, in theory, journalism sounds like a great career where I could just type at a keyboard most of the time and think to myself how great it is that I’m serving the public. Heck, that is the prevailing rationale of a lot of those who do it; problem is they don’t really. So, life was uneventful even more so: no schoolwork, no actual work, what’s a guy to do?

So, I got thinking; dangerous, I know, but I had to risk it. A grand journey: I would explore locales of great repute and esoteric spots of hidden delight. By foot, by wheel, and by rail, I would explore these Great British isles on a journey where I would grow into the man I am: steadfast, tireless and moronic to the point of spectacle. Suffice to say, it didn’t really turn out that way; it didn’t turn out a fraction of that way really. But this be the tale I tell.

Every journey has its first step, and as I took mine and tripped over my shoelaces, I wondered what exactly does one need in order to travel? Now, one could consult expert sources on this; instead I took what I call “the maverick route”, or as some call it, “idiotic”, and I basically compiled a shopping list of items I associate with the somewhat nebulous term “travel”. Lets see… well, I’m going to need to know where I am and where I’m heading, so a map and compass seems wise. So far so good I think.

Then it got a bit silly. I wasn’t quite sure why I was buying one of those metallic containers that people use in the great outdoors to store their hot or cold beverages, but by damn, if it was on the list, then I was going to buy it. Never mind that it was more of a camping thing, really, and I had some distinctly more urban destinations in mind. I spent about six years in the boy scouts without ever going camping or feeling anyway inclined towards it — another great lifestyle choice that prepared me for adulthood, no doubt.

In fact, at this point, I was still pretty vague as to actually where I would be going and how much of it all I could actually fit in. The grand plans had to be downsized from their original lofty ideals once I realised just how much the entire damn venture would cost. So I would miss out on some of the more lesser-known spots and focus on the heavyweight division of British travel destinations. London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Newton Abbot.

Newton where? You don’t know THE Newton Abbot? That small town in Devon that I’m sure I will never return to. It was never part of my original itinerary, and I guess the only reason it ever got onto my radar was due to a request by an online friend of mine that I come visit her. So, like the sucker I am, I made THE Newton Abbot the start of my moderately downsized not-so-Great Adventure that upon further reflection of the financial costs did not include Ireland anymore.

So, after spending a small chunk of my student loan fortune on the “necessities” of travel, I arrived at the railway station in mid August, 2005, in a rather, dare I say it, optimistic mood. Needless to say, it wasn’t to last, but the memories will last a lifetime, I’m sure. A long train journey spent looking at the increasingly schizophrenic weather later, and I arrived. Well, first thing’s first; my online “friend” didn’t materialise, and in fact, never appeared. She would tell me much later she had to go into hospital for those few days, so that was my first stroke of bad luck right there.

Still, it looks nice, I thought. How bad could it be? Or so the ships captain of the Titanic asked as he looked down the wrong end of the telescope. On reflection, I suppose, it was very much like the small town that I had just travelled so far to escape from, and I suppose that’s what increasingly irked me as time went on. “No place like home,” they say. “Like heck-fire there isn’t,” I reply. Loads of small town shops nearly all owned by the same local company got me dubious as to the quality of this fine holiday destination. I was getting flashbacks to films of creepy rustic towns where they don’t take well to outsiders.

So, I walked around a lot, took the scenery in, took some photos, and warmed up to the place –well, kind of. On reflection, it had some neat, old architecture that I have an odd fondness for. Gradually I got more hot and bothered with the way over-packed bag on my shoulders. Should have gone back to the drawing board with this venture, I remember thinking, the most productive thinking I had probably done in a while. Ah, the folly of a major walking adventure with worn out boots began to dawn on me as blisters began to cripple me. Oh, there was a smile in my heart, but not on my face.

So, things were not going too well; still, it was early days yet. Just a few minor hiccups in the planned schedule, nothing major, I thought. Then, the straps allowing me to somewhat comfortably carry my backpack on my back broke, forcing me to walk with a sideward slant as I struggled to carry it in hand. Then, the evening began to draw in, and I looked at my trusty B&B guide.

Well, how should I put it? Perhaps I should have better used that £8.99 on something rather more practical: a how-to guide on kicking your own ass, for instance. Yes, my patience was wearing thin, but hidden deep within this comedy routine I call a personality, there was a sense I vaguely recognise as pride that would not allow me to pack it all in and go home.

After some increasingly frantic searching through the local public houses, I finally found one for the night. A low-rent affair for a not so low rent, but at least it came with breakfast and a smile. Ok, so no smile, and I don’t think that much fried food should be considered breakfast by anyone’s definition of the term. Not wanting to give up on my absent friend too soon, I hung around, but resolved to keep within budget and find someplace cheaper should I stay a second night.

By the second day it became clear that I had pretty much seen everything there was to really see in this town. Better preparation here would have probably given me no ideas, but then you are forgetting the key word “moronic” that I used earlier in my all-time list of personal qualities. On a minor note, my attempts to find a cheaper place to stay proved fruitless and so, as the cheap bastard that I am, I resolved to do the previously unthinkable.

That night would become the first night I’ve ever spent out in the open without shelter. First, I hung around the railway, very impatient at this point and eager to get the first train out of town. Got bored with that and wondered around town. Church was closed; tried sleeping in its doorway, unsuccessfully. Listened to BBC World Service on portable radio and realised why I never normally listen to the BBC World Service. The night was long, windy, and wet, and it was only just beginning.

Oddly enough, I didn’t feel scared in my predicament. I think it’s fair to say I’m a sheltered child of parents who worried a lot when I was growing up (and had some very real reasons for that fear which I will spare you the melodrama of). Things like this just don’t typically happen to me. The fact that the dead of night in this town truly was dead played some part in it. No drunken yobs roaming the streets threatening to piss on me as I slept and all the other comforts of home. One of those moments where it truly dawned on me that the big bad world wasn’t as big or bad as I had been raised to believe.

As I recall, I ended up seeing in the morning trying to warm myself in the doorway of the local courtroom. Saw the somewhat fascinating if morbid sight of a large spider attacking and eating a smaller spider on its wall. Ever since, I always try to drop a few more pennies into the hats of those with no other choice than to sleep on the streets and realise that it’s not nearly enough. My brief experience of it, no matter how cold and wet it was, was not permanent.

The first train out of town was mine, and my train was off to London. Things were about to look up, like a rising phoenix or a falling Wiley Coyote. London, two visits in two years, and I still haven’t done everything I want to do there. On my first arrival there, I found a decent hostel right near St. Paul’s Cathedral. A shower and a lot of sleep later, and my poor mood vastly improved. At this point, any notions of an insightful great journey were abandoned. In its place, I was in full-on tourist mode –three days of totally superficial and totally enjoyable sight-seeing.

Found this really awesome art gallery down a side street somewhere that was based entirely on animation and comic art. You could buy stills of Bugs Bunny or an original drawing of Batman by who-ever for a couple of hundred pounds. Couldn’t buy anything there at the time naturally, but some day I will, by damn. Hyde Park and St James Park was pretty laid back and at one point a squirrel came to within an arms length of me on a park bench.

In Soho, I came across this rather tall chick that turned out to be a cross-dresser when I saw her face; pretty damn fine she/he was too. The tube is a pretty grimy but pretty good way to get around, too; something perhaps you only appreciate after living in small towns where the bus’ rarely arrive on time. Sights like Nelsons Column, Big Ben, and Marble Arch were pretty much just there, but they are worth seeing up close at least once in a lifetime; novelty wears off quickly though.

Spent most of a day trying to get to the British Museum and repeatedly getting lost, only to arrive there 20 minutes from closing time. One might not think that one eating an ice-cream in the grounds outside a museum would be the most intolerable of activities, but then again, I don’t have the keen eye of a British museum attendant who told me to stand just outside the gates in order to eat my ice-cream, dick! Found a decent comic book shop down the road, though; always helps to ease the pain, that.

So my budget was promptly abandoned at this point. Now you would think paying £1 for a bottle of soft drink that cost 75p back home wouldn’t be something that would empty your bank account any faster, but it did. In another of a great legacy of great decisions, I just happened to choose the hottest days in August, and so those very same soft drinks were going down at a mighty rate. But anything that maintained my good mood at this point was pretty essential in my view; hearts and minds and all that.

Heck, everything in this city costs more; you know capitalism has gone too far when you have to pay to use the toilets. Despite wanting to stay there for a great deal longer, I decided to move on. But when I left there, I promised myself that when I finally escape this berg I call home, I’m going to live in London although I bet even the cardboard boxes there cost an arm, a leg, and a head in rent.

The next and final stop on my Diet-Grand Adventure was the city of Edinburgh. Now, my memories of that place are pretty good too, although the journey there was anything but. In a money-saving exercise, I decided to get there via a coach to Glasgow. I figured, if I took a late night journey, I would essentially get a night in away from the elements and arrive in Scotland all rested and ready. Did you hear that? Listen carefully now, it’s the sound you get on quiz shows when a contestant gets it WRONG! Shame I didn’t hear it at the time.

I spent about six hours next to this whiny bastard who really got on my bad side quickly. Add to that the air conditioning of the coach fixed on the charbroil setting, a lack of leg room, or any room, on that packed coach, and a fun time was had by all. Initially, I thought about spending a night in Glasgow before moving on to the capital. Initial plans that were quickly dashed upon arrival; you see, I’m sure Glasgow is a wonderful city populated by some great and fascinating people. But arriving there on that early Sunday morning, when it was all grey and rainy. Well, I’ve seen happier post-apocalyptic war films, to be honest. Couldn’t find a place to stay and didn’t have the patience to wait; onto Edinburgh it was.

If I had planned myself much better, I might have arrived here much sooner in August and caught more of the Edinburgh Fringe. If I had done a lot of things better, the venture on the whole would have just been a great deal better than it was. Still, I count my victories where I get them. After finding a hostel reeking with the smell of what I assume to be recreational drugs, I caught myself a load of street performances the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Some of the finest talent I’ve ever enjoyed I enjoyed for those few days. Magicians, acrobatics, comedy, sometimes all three-in-one, and certainly one of the main reasons I must return to this city some day.

There was this insane Australian guy that had so many great qualities. He juggled sharp objects and flaming torches whilst perched on top of a unicycle –a unicycle, I tells yah! No small one either; he was perched high up in the air on that thing. Think he called himself The Space Cowboy. Cute ass too, but let’s not divert my ever so charming prose with such lechery.

There was this charming old gent cracking dirty jokes and innuendo as he made things disappear and reappear with a knowing smile. An American dressed in basketball regalia conjuring so many basketballs in a perilous balancing act on his head. Add to that an Indiana Jones themed performer who juggled flaming objects with some (unsuccessful but amusing) audience participation. Now that’s a day out, I tells ye.

I found it to be a peaceful and chilled-out place too, apart from the late night music of the main festival. I found myself getting into conversations with random people about whatever, and I found it all quite incredibly refreshing, especially compared to my hometown, where random people are more likely to shout obscenities at you from passing cars. After three days here, I was pretty sad to call it an end here, but I had to call it somewhere, the whole thing came to about 10 days in total and I was exhausted.

So that was pretty much it as far as my Grand Adventure went, in 2005, anyway. Did I learn anything? Well, you can’t underestimate the importance of good preparation, that’s for sure. It was my first time doing it, so I always expected things would go a little haphazard and then some. But it felt good to get out of this sheltered existence of mine, even when I was freezing my ass off during the night in a strange town.

I will certainly do the sequel someday soon; I still haven’t really overcome the dilemma of that whole what-to-do-with-my-life thing, and I could use a chance to do it all over again, but better. Little things need to be taken care of first, like getting a driving license that’ll help me get a job. I better insert a seamless segue here about the metaphor of life as a journey for no particular reason. Let me see, if the journey isn’t always a whole can of laughs, you can always guarantee a good ending, unlike this account, which does not.

By Christian Verotik

(Intro: How do you introduce a piece by the unpredictable Christian Verotik? Let’s just say you encourage readers not to expect the expected and just let the man take you on his lucid, crazy, thought-provoking and sometimes hilarious and frightening ride. - Charlie)

Let me assure you that I was once just like everyone else. In the beginning.

I’m trying to understand everything, at once.

I was lying in bed, reading my Bible, with my no end nowhere unemployed life seeping into my cerebellum, when a blinding flash outside the window aroused me. I wasn’t asleep, but it felt like sleep walking as I honeycomb stepped over to the bee washed windows. Peering through the periphery, I saw that the sky had been split in half. Looking across the horizon, I saw the normal sky as you’d see it every day, but in the middle was a gaping maw, but not a hole. It was a looking glance into Wonderland, X-Files, Invisibles, Narnia - all wrapped up into one. It was all.

When I turned around, my sepia room was bleeding colours. All the colours of the rainbow. First black, then white, then infrared, then yellow into orange into red. All the colours of the rainbow, all blended together at once. I knew at once physics was a lie.

The colours, they existed. They spoke to me. And, no, I’m not a drug-addicted, hydrogen smoking, schizophrenic, reality hopper hooked up to sexual stimulus overload meeting the dimension of hyper-non-senses deprivation.

This was real. Realer than reality.

Just because I can’t function, it’s the malaise of realization, the stagnation of the world, not anything mental. I is a word with vague memory meanings used to make our communication easier. Will Eye ever become I again? Eye don’t know!
My heart was racing the speed of light, and my arms and legs were jellyfish quivers.

Be calm. I was forced to obey, because it was like fingers pulling on the strings holding my brain inside my head. I was moving through a fugue state at this point. I think it was at the beginning, but it may have been the end or the middle. It’s all happens at once has happened is still happening.

The colours spoke to me from within my head, an ability lost to us 35 million years ago, if it ever existed at all in this dimension. It sounded like my ex-wife. The one that you can’t get over, who keeps you up all night, and sends you running and praying down the street to find a church like Oliver North without the homicidal, suicidal, genocidal tendencies, if you know what I mean? And, I do. They do too. Well, ok, maybe I lied about the not-suicidal part, but that was all before. The old reality, before I saw the panorama of reality spread out in all 5 dimensions and higher besides.

Cosmic self-awareness. I woke up to find the 3rd dimensional becoming the 4th, 5th dimensional. Every neuron in my nerve fibre tenuous cortex body was burning with napalm, but it was a sensation of calm, like a coat of serotonin dripping down over anxiety wounds. All I could smell were violets dipped in sex. Just like my dreams. No sound except every voice that ever existed screaming in your head, melting like candle wax into quiet so soft it made your brain feel like pins and needles. No motion but perpetual motion. My mouth tasted like barbed wire dipped in curry, but it’d taste different to you.

They’ve found freedom, and showed me the same, if only I could explain to you how.

They’re not higher beings, but hyper beings. Once fictional beings one and all of us. Imaginauts. I watched them move like punctuation marks between a space of thoughts.

Their voice/words exploded into my head with the force of the Sun going nova!

This is what they said, written backwards to make it read forward in your language.

They’ve found freedom, and showed me the same, if only I could explain to you how.

You can’t understand it from down below, in the ant hill, hive mind.

That’s why I have to go back to the beginning the Word.

The world opened up like the pages of a book and I saw the reality of our world existing as words. This is what I read.

They want you to believe the Logos giving it power with every dollar cent moral sold given to the Logos it was a warning from long in the past the ancients knew it wasn’t all tribal mysticism they had seen the future and we didn’t listen every day the Logos grows larger incorporating more mass into its Mammon mammoth greed body existing to multiply to grow it is the One the all and we worship it everyday not understanding the way it feeds but not caring for we want to worship the Logos

Death at two a.m., reborn. Stringing together two sentences, no! Paragraphs. I Am God.

Yahweh is Moloch. The two are forever one did not die became the two good and evil the same back to front line soldiers sacrificed on the altar.

Capitalism, a more omnipotent-present God than any other dreamed up by man, dreamed up by God, to be God, for God. You find it becoming One with God, inside God, all around God. An inoculation against God. You can become the God, move beyond the Logos. Only begotten Son, sent to Earth, to become a God on Earth. Humanity can understand.

This realization had me screaming like an abolitionist.

Yes, we all created God, but where’s the record. It doesn’t matter if the creation has been given the power of the creator then the inverse is the reality.

So, why don’t you all plaster 666 on your foreheads, for you are the anti-Christs.

Some Zen Buddhists teach that we all need to kill the Buddha. To become the Creator. This is the best piece of spiritual advice. Which is funny, because I don’t know anything about Buddhism. Crawling inside the canvas cranium of the Creator/nee Creation who have been given power by prayer and profit, burrowing outside from the inside, killing the roots. I am the Tree of Life.

It’s got me shaking to see what I’ve become/became/becoming.

This all probably sounds crazy to you, but that’s because it opened my eyes, all three of them, and I see everything clearly now. God is here on Earth. Let me explain.

In the beginning was the Word.

No. That’s two too far back. I’m getting behind myself.

We’re all trapped in time.

We want to get to today, to the Logos. We lost the power, they took it away, that’s what I’m trying to explain. Once you see, it’ll open your eyes, and you will be as unto God.

First there was Moloch, then there was God, then there was Trans-National-Corporation.

The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit - only in reverse and side-ways. The books is printed out of sequence and in the wrong spatial transmogrifications of the temporal.

Imagine the text as if it were alive, and you’ll see the way I’m seeing all of you right now.

See, I’ve been thinking about this, thinking it over. Moloch was a god of war, demanding the blood sacrifice of the first born infant. The God had gotten beyond us. It was threatening to overwhelm and destroy us. Perpetual war cannot sustain itself.

In an act of symbolism, Abraham refused Moloch. The sacrificial death of Moloch. We felt we had created a new God, a better God, the God of the Jewish named Yahweh.

What was misunderstood is that Abraham did not kill Moloch, he just transmogrified the altar. The Chameleon God. From the One, the Many, from the Many, into One.

Yahweh was a God of lies. Duality was a lie. The dual nature rested inside, like Adam and Eve, one into two, who became one. The snake. Unicellular replication evolving to the multicultural level.

The blood sacrifice never stopped, it changed. Instead of killing within their own tribe, the tribe found those outside of itself to kill in the name of God. Moloch was well pleased. Perpetual war cannot sustain itself.

God continued to adapt, permeating every level of society, we thought we could contain God.

First came Revelation. Earth is not the center of the universe. Life-forms evolve, they were not created. Nature works outside of God’s laws, a self-replicating force of its own.

Nietzsche told us, God is dead! He was wrong, and I can prove it.

God continues to recreate himheritself way, inside our technology. Your computer? Look at it. What does it say? Compaq? Microsoft? Don’t you see the Logos?

God became less transparent. He no longer talked from the bush. A new God for a new age. Technology created through the Industrial Revolution, giving way to Capitalism. No longer were our leaders picked by God, but through Godmoney.

Everywhere you look, you see the Logos. We’re not branded at a unicellular level yet, but soon the time will come when the barcodes will be on our very souls. A mass market cash grab to save our souls.

Look around you. McWorld, NBC mergers, AT&T telephone marketeering. The Logos is inside of everything. Our food, our communications, our technology.

And through it all, God has not become any more loving. He’s become more blood-thirsty, more greedy. Not content with tribal killings, he wants the whole world.

God is growing. The Corporation, the host, has leavened and mass-multiplied through asexual reproduction. The One into the Many, the Many into the One. The Trans National Corporation.

God has nuclear powered thermal biological chemical death.

That corner of the world isn’t infected with the God-Virus yet? God’s soldiers will move in and unleash the blood sacrifice, an invocation to God to materialize on the earthly plane.

What does this God want? Our souls? Why would hesheit want something himherit already owns? Quite simply, hesheit wants mere existence.

Everytime the paper changes hands, it’s a sacrament.

The Most Holy worshippers taking more and more of God’s rewards, trying to buy their way into Heaven.

The New Age Pope in the Pentagon trying to save his soul through the ultimate blood ritual. The orders from on high. A gushing geyser of molten blood, gushing, 43,000 non-believers, lost souls, and virgins sacrificed in God’s name. The pentacle sits dead center in Baghdad.

God needs more. More blood, more money, more land, more oil.

That’s what I understand. Those are the words I can tell you. This is what I’ve figured out when my eyes were opened and I moved into the realm of hyperspace for mere momentshoursdaysmonthsyearsdecadeseternity.

They brought me back too soon, too late, not soon enough. Impregnated my mind with The Word. It was the ultimate orgasm.

I need more coffee to write the sentences I don’t understand down on the paper. Physical speed working with the fastness of mental stimulation. The immaculate conception.

You see, I’m not a smart man. Barely graduated college. No more brilliant than you. It’s like implanted speakers speaking words from another dimension out of my mouth, from across the room and up in the ceiling. You see how hard this is for me to translate? My thoughts are moving on two time speeds.

Listen to me, my favourite colour is tachyon. It’s like the best PCP trip down to the occult book store.

So, can you get me some more coffee? No, no. Don’t get up. Just think about me drinking a cup of coffee, in your mind. Imagine me sitting here, talking to you, with an aardvark cup of coffee in my left hand.

Excellent. Now, let me continue.

Are you ready now? Here’s the message.

Forget your revolutions or your terrorism. Controlled conscious evolution. There’s no way to fight. God is in everything, is everything. The thing to remember is MolochYahwehCapitalism (The God Virus), were all created by man, for a reason. A reason so important we kept evolving the original concept.

Our only choice is to create a new God, a different God. Tearing the old paradigms down. One we won’t allow to control us. The Godform inside each of us, instead of outside. A God of individuality, instead of conformity.

The power will rest solely in US. Where it rested before we gave it away.

The Word.

There. That’s what they said. Word for word, because my mind is like a dictionary womb now. They got back in their flying funnel frog time machine and went back through the breach. Trans-temporal teleportation. The world closed up and became whole again. The 5th shrinking down to the fourth divided by the 1st dimension. That’s how best to describe their actions. It doesn’t work with our verbs. Verbs are insufficient to describe the new hyper realities quantum physics will unfold.

I was left alone. With my old, ragged bed and my Bible and my TV that only plays “Hogan’s Heroes.” A feeling of sadness washed over me, but not like a sink without a drain, less than that but more than sum of the parts. I don’t need to explain sadness to you. You’ve experienced more than your fair share.

My eyes stayed open. No sleep. An insomniac fit of vortex.

Please, you have to believe me. But, you never will. Cowering behind the safety of your outside organized enforced society, keeping you so safe through the blindness of ever looking behind the fourth wall.

I realize now there’s only one way to prove this is all true, and that’s to write myself out of existence. The purest freedom experience, hyper space, existencenonexistence. I become the Devil
.
Once this done, you’ll know this is the Truth, and it’ll be up to you to share the message with someone else.

I may be a fictional non-entity to you, but I’ve taken the power, and am now an actualized being. The creation has become the creator, and I choose to no longer exist.

by Pål Hellesnes
Artwork by Vasudha Shankar

(Editor intro: This really needs no intro from us, as it explains itself so well and is a very entertaining and inspiring piece. - Charlie)

It’s a common enough game for young boys (and girls?) to play: one sits around a table and discusses the martial prowess of various warriors against one another. There are really no limits on who can be involved in these virtual battles: one might as easily pit the ancient Spartans against the Mongol Hordes as the X-men against Superman. In comic-book circles this kind of debate has its own label: They’re called “vs.-debates”, and among more sophisticated comic-nerds (such as yours truly) it’s seen as sort of inane. I mean, WE don’t care who’d win in a fight between Morpheus (of Sandman fame) and the Incredible Hulk — to our cultivated sensibilities it is the STORY that matters.

And yet…

Recently such a debate arose on the internet forum I frequent. The subject this time was “Who were the baddest asses in history?”, and serious contenders were the Samurai, Spartans, medieval knights, and many others. Notably absent from the poll were my forefathers, the Norse Vikings. Now some Norwegians would be offended at this, but not me. After all, we really don’t have much to boast of: some coastal raids, some slaughtered monks, an aborted colonization of America (WAY before Colombus, mind you…), trifling stuff all. True, we DID conquer England, but come on, how big a deal is that? The upshot of it is that as conquerors, the Vikings simply don’t have the mustard to be up there with the Romans or Alexander the Great. This does not bother me.

BUT, on a more individual level, the chronicles of Viking prowess has several cracking good yarns. One of my favourite stories is the story of the death of Tormod Kolbrunarskald. In said internet-forum debate, I felt compelled to recount it to the gathered masses of geeks. And there was much rejoicing, and the honourable Charlie K saw it, and saw that it was good, and said unto me:

“Hey, that’d look good on our webpage.”

So without further ado, I present to you, in a not-very-official translation by yours truly, the story of the death of Tormod Kolbrunarskald.

…

Actually, I lie, I have to give you some context before I tell you the tale: This story is part of the saga of king Olav the sainted, one of two kings who tried to Christen Norway. Both of them were called Olav, and both of them were killed in the attempt – apparently the Vikings of Norway weren’t all that keen on conversion. Either that, or they really didn’t like kings that much. Anyhow, Olav the saint met his end at a place called Stiklestad, in a huge battle where the assembled masses of peasants soundly thrashed him and his army. Tormod Kolbrunarskald was a bard in the king’s company, renowned both for poetry and fighting skills.

Now, on to the story:

…

Tormod Kolbrunarskald fought under the king’s banner during the battle. When the king had fallen, and the battle was at it’s hardest, the king’s men fell one after the other, and most of those still standing were wounded. Tormod was grievously wounded. He did what the others did, pulled back from where the battle was thickest, and some fled.

Then commenced the battle known as “Dags-ria”, and every able-bodied man from the king’s army went there. Tormod couldn’t join in the fighting, wearied as he was from the wounds and the fighting, but yet he stood there with his comrades, though unable to do aught else. He was hit by an arrow in his left flank. He broke the arrow shaft, and walked away from the battle back to the houses where he came to a cabin. It was a large house. Tormod carried his sword unsheathed, and as he went inside, a man came towards him and said:

“What awful noise there is in there, screams and cries. It’s a great shame that strong men cannot bear being wounded. These kingsmen may have been strong in battle, but they carry their wounds like weaklings.”

Tormod gave him answer:

“What is your name?”

He was called Kimbe.

“Did you fight in the battle?”

“I did so,” he said. “I fought with the peasants, who were the best.”

“Are you wounded?” Tormod asked.

“A little,” Kimbe said. “Did you fight?”

Tormod said: “I was among those who were best off.”

Kimbe could see that Tormod carried a gold ring on his finger. He said: “You must be a kingsman. Give me the ring, and I will hide you. The peasants will kill you if you cross their path.” Tormod said: “Take the ring if you can, I’ve lost far more today.” Kimbe stretched out his hand to take the ring. Tormod swung his sword, cutting Kimbe’s hand off, and it is said that Kimbe carried his wound no better than those he had ridiculed. Kimbe went away, while Tormod sat down to listen to what people were saying. Most of what they said was about what he had seen in the battle, and there was talk about the prowess of the fighters. Some lauded the king’s fighting, while others held other men no less.

Tormod quoth:

“Olaf was brave beyond all doubt, –
At Stiklestad was none so stout;
Spattered with blood, the king, unsparing,
Cheered on his men with deed and daring.
But I have heard that some were there
Who in the fight themselves would spare;
Though, in the arrow-storm, the most
Had perils quite enough to boast.”

Then Tormod left, and wandered to a small house, where he went in. Inside were many other men who were badly wounded. A crone was there, tending to their wounds. There was a fire on the floor, and she warmed water to clean the wounds. Tormod sat down near the door. People went in and out who tended to the wounded. One of them turned to Tormod, looked at him and said: “Why are you so pale? Are you wounded? And why did you not ask the doctor to help you?”

Tormod quoth:

“I am not blooming, and the fair
And slender girl loves to care
For blooming youths — few care for me;
With Fenja’s meal I cannot fee.
This is the reason why I feel
The slash and thrust of Danish steel;
And pale and faint, and bent with pain,
Return from yonder battle-plain.”

Then Tormod rose, went close to the heat and stood for a while. The doctor-woman said to him:

“You, man, go outside and bring me the firewood lying outside the door.”

He went outside, carried the firewood inside, and threw it to the floor. Then the woman looked at his face and said: “My, how pale this man is! Why are you like this?”

Tormod quoth:

“Thou wonderest, sweet sprig, at me,
A man so hideous to see:
Deep wounds but rarely mend the face,
The crippling blow gives little grace.
The arrow-drift o’ertook me, girl, –
A fine-ground arrow in the whirl
Went through me, and I feel the dart
Sits, lovely girl, too near my heart.”

The woman said:

“Let me see your wounds, and I will tend to them.”

He sat down, and took his clothes off. When the doctor saw his wounds, she felt the wound in his side, and felt that iron was stuck in it, but she could not find what way it had taken. She had cooked up a broth in an iron pot, onions and herbs cooked together. This she fed to the wounded, so she could find out if they had wounds in their belly, as she could smell the broth through the wounds that pierced through. She came with some of this to Tormod, and bade him eat. He answered: “Take that away, I have no porridge-plague!”

Then she took out some tongs, to pull the iron out, but it was stuck fast, and would not budge. Not much protruded either, as the wound had set. Tormod spoke: “Cut down to the iron, woman, so the tongs can get a hold. Then pass me the tongs, and let me pull.” She did as he said. Tormod took his gold ring off his finger, and gave it to the woman, telling her to do what she wanted with it.

“But this is a good gift,” he said, “King Olav gave it to me this morning.”

Then Tormod grasped the tongs and pulled the arrowhead fromn his side. It was barbed, and heartflesh was stuck to it as it came out, some red, some white. As he saw this, he said:
“Well has the king fed us; my heartroots are still fat.”

Then he leaned back and was dead. Here ends the story of Tormod.

(All the poetry has been translated by someone else, and I stole it from this webpage.)

…

That image, of the guy having ripped out half his heart and then calmly commenting on how well he’d been treated by the king stuck in my brain like glue after I first read it in high school. If there is some sort of badass heaven, I’m sure that Tormod is right up there at the head of the table.

By Yining Su

(Editor intro: In her essay about struggling with the French lagnuage as an English-speaking Canadian, Yining Su tells of the shortcomings of her early education and shows us that sometimes, even when standardized tests are wildly inaccurate, they may know us better than we know ourselves.)

How did I end up here? How did I get myself so deep into this? Those were the thoughts that went through my mind as I sat in front of my midterm French exam. During the following hour and a half, I was expected to read a poem by Charles Baudelaire and write a five hundred-word analysis on it. In French. So, how did I end up there?

Five months before that midterm, I had gone to my college gymnasium and taken a little test that would determine my level of French. The test contained relatively easy and not so easy grammar questions as well as questions about my education in French. I had been to French schools from kindergarten up to the sixth grade, before attending an English school until my graduation from high school. I answered as much in the questionnaire and I suppose from that, I was assumed to have a superior level of French; after all, I lived in Montreal, a francophone city, and had French as the language of instruction in my education up to age of twelve. In those five years at English school, I doubtlessly took an advanced French class, right?

The truth was that whoever went over those tests generously overestimated my high school’s facilities. There was only one French class at my high school, and it was dangerously easy. In fact, it was designed for students who did not speak a word of French and who barely spoke any English. The most basic grammar was being taught to students who, after three years, still could not conjugate être and avoir in the present tense. In such an environment, I languished for five years. At the same time, I was busy forgetting my French in other aspects of my life. I watched no French television and no French movies, listened to no French musicians, read no French books. I had no francophone friends, and I spoke to clerks in stores in English only. My French became rusty with disuse.

After a while, I could no longer deny that my command of the French language was deteriorating. My friend from elementary school told me, after I spoke to her in French, that I had an (horror!) anglo accent. People I spoke to in French would change to English for my benefit. One day, I realised that I didn’t know how to say the letter “K” in French. It was pathetic.

And yet, first semester of college, there I was in the really hard French class. How did I get here?! Well, it might have something to do with the fact that everyone else I know who could speak French fluently purposefully botched his or her placement test to avoid taking the really hard French class.

On the first day of class, our teacher, the youthful and flamboyant M. Duval handed out a poem by Baudelaire and asked us to write a short analysis. Panic overcame me as I read it. Something about an albatross getting mocked? So this is what being terrible in a language class feels like. I’d forgotten. I wrote some gibberish and handed it in, sure that come next class, I’d be sent out and down a level.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t. On the second class, my teacher told me that I was weaker than the others, but that I could stay. I’d have to work hard, though.

Those sixteen weeks of class were quite an experience. I learned plenty of things, such as the plainly ridiculous rules of French verse and the general characteristics of major literary movements like Romanticism, Surrealism, Naturalism, Realism, Existentialism and Dadaism. Somehow, during that term, we managed to read three plays, one novel, at least ten poems, we watched one play and one movie and we listened to three songs. I read writers I never dared tackle before, like Dumas fils, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, as well as many others. Best of all, I read them in French.

It wasn’t easy for me. There were plenty of times where I felt like the stupidest person in the room. I nearly failed that midterm. Often, I couldn’t string two words together to form a question to say to the teacher, not to mention write a coherent argument on paper.

Ultimately, though, I was glad I stayed in the really hard class. It brought me to the classics of French literature. Sartre and Camus no longer seem so impossibly remote and difficult to understand. I now speak French with much more ease and confidence. And the only cost was the worst mark I’ve had in French since the sixth grade.