MeSan (A Story of the Streets)

He really couldn't say when they or where they first met.
All he could recall was that she was in a hurry to go somewhere and that he was never in a hurry to go anywhere. The streets of the city were a gray dirty affair like the stoic jumble of disorganized chaos crammed in between the orderly building blocks that defined his world. There were glimpses of color but most days were just gray, so gray that the word "were" drove him crazy with the desire to find a can of paint and throw it out onto the grayness just to change the predictability that existed from street to street.
Then she appeared in his path as he trudged through the city on his way to a job that was largely meaningless other than it gave him income to continue to exist in this dull sense of life among the gray boxes of the city. She was a thin girl, almost a whisper of a dream, in gray clothes like the other people on the sidewalks trudging midst the bland colors of cars trundling along in their collective gaseous wakes. what made her stand out to him as she was walking straight towards him, a RED blouse peeking out from under her torn gray coat.
When the intersection between them finally closed she looked up into his eyes and smiled. Then it was as if they had always known each other. A certain familiarity seemed to exist there between them, as the rest of humanity crowded around them as if they had become an island in the stream of emotionless motion. She reached out to touch his arm.
"There you are." She said. Her voice small yet strong.
His heart thudded into his chest, breathing was harder than normal as if her red blouse had awoken the blood in his veins.
"Where are you going?"
"To- to work." Help! I need to talk, I need to breathe. "I think."
"Great, I will walk with you."
She kept a hold of his arm as she turned to stand beside him and they began to move back into the mortal current of urban life.
Strangely, he could never remember whether they ever made it to his job or not.
The walk was all there was in that memory, that and the RED blouse, her smile, the touch of her hand in his.

Time passed.
He wasn't sure how much, but it could have been days, weeks, years. Each day, he would leave his small featureless apartment and meet her on the streets. He was never sure it was in the same place, he never stopped to consider that it was. She was always there before him. He seemed to be always late.
She would come up to him and say:
"There you are."
And the walk would begin, usually ending when (and if) they got to his job. It would resume when he left at the end of his shift. She would be waiting for him outside his building.
"There you are."
The soft touch of her warm hand.
Sometimes they would walk on by his workplace, and spend the day walking the streets looking at nothing other than each other, Him, trying to memorize every inch of her. She leaning slightly against his shoulder, the faint smile playing against her lips. They did not talk much, except to decide what turn was next.
At the end of the day, she would stop and he would realize that they were at his building. He would go over, every reason he could think of to ask her up to his tiny one-room apartment. Every cause that would make her come to his bed, but nothing came as they would look into each other's eyes.
Then she would let go of his hand, smiling up at him before turning away and disappearing into the crowd of people who always seemed to be all around them.

Time passed.
Seasons in the city are somewhat indistinct. It's warm, then it's wet, then it's cold, sometimes it's windy, some days it is so hot that everything slows down to a molten state. Nothing moves but the endless stream of vehicles moving across the overpass, the tarmac asphalt going nowhere but always going.
They stood in the rain, they were standing in the rain when it all changed.
"I've got to go." She suddenly said. There was no smile on her face.
"I'm running late."
He looked down at her, all his forgotten fears creeping out of the shadows where they had apparently been hiding.
"Will you come back."
She tried to let go of his hand but he found he did not want to let go.
She forced a smile as she looked down at their hands.
"I'm sorry." He said and forced his hand to let go of hers.
She looks disappointed for a brief moment, then she was gone and he was there standing alone in the rain.

She did come back, but it wasn't the same.
For one thing, He would walk out of his building in the morning and not find her where he was sure that she usually waited for him. She would eventually show up, rushing along slightly ahead of the wave of crushing humans pushing along towards their collective destinations.
"I'm running late." She would say taking his hand, pulling him along.
They would walk to her place of work, another featureless shell squatting in the concrete forest of buildings. She would look up at him and say:
"I've got to go."
Then her hand would slip from his and she would be gone into the dull monolith and he would be alone in the chaos of the day.
When he got off, he would not find her waiting for him so he would wander back to her place of work only to wait for minutes that seemed like hours and perhaps they were. She would finally emerge from her building looking tired and taut as if she was wound up to breaking. Then he would take her hand and they would walk away from that place back to his apartment.
They would pause there and as he would begin to search for the words that would not come she would slip her hand from his and smile sadly before vanishing out of his life once more.

He wasn't sure about what had happened until one day, when the rains had stopped and the chills began to fill the city streets. On that day, as he stood waiting for her, he knew what had bothered him for all the past few weeks or months, she no longer wore that red blouse. He felt, perhaps for the first time, a dread, a kind of despair as he knew that her hands were no longer warm either, they had grown cool, that they had become harder than the softness they had once shared. Such a sweet sense of sorrow filled him at that moment, there on the curb as a cold wind howled through the steel canyons of this unforgiving city.
She was there, in front of him, she looked up into his face, as the tears wet his skin. She smiled nervously biting her lip. He shook his head, he didn't even know her name.
"I'm running late." She said reaching for his hand.
Time stopped.
"I don't even know your name," he said.
"I've got to go," she whispered before she fled into the chlorinated fog rolling around them.
He didn't go back to work that day.
He didn't go back to work.
He lost that apartment.
He didn't see her again.
He went back to the place they met but she wasn't there.

He found another job. A job he could remember doing each day. He became a courier, ferrying packages and messages from one building to the next. One day, a message brought him to her place of work, the squatting behemoth of glass and rock clawing at the ever-present smog above it. He looked up at the doors of the place and fear and dread and excitement filled him. His heart hammered at his chest but he went in any way. He delivered his message to a man sitting behind a big desk who did not acknowledge his existence save only to take the letter from his outstretched hand, open it, read the paper and crumple it before dropping it into a waste can by his big desk. He left, as he walked down the long halls lined with windows, he could see the cubicle drones working away at their computers.
It was then he saw her. He froze in place in the hallway. She looked thinner than she had ever had and sad as she frowned at her monitor in concentration. She wore no colors in that white room with gray walls and gray desks, Her clothes were featureless as were those of all who sat around her.
I hate the word "were," he thought.
He wanted to pound on the glass but he knew it would do him or her any good.
He knew he had to act, to do something to bring the color back into her life.
He turned and walked away with a new confidence that he never knew he had.
She watched him go, trying to decide where she had seen him from.

Fear is the nature of life, she thought as her fingers rested on the keys of her keyboard. Who had that strange man been? No matter, there was always more work. Life is about the progress of work.
You can track it, see how far you have come, how far you can go.
Really, there is no time for anything else.
No time.
Her hands are shaking as they hover over the keyboard.
Carefully she pulls them into her lap where no one can see the fear grip them. Calm, I must be calm.
"Is there a problem?"
She looks up at the Man towering over her desk.
She shakes her head.
"Just a cramp, sir."
The Man tuts. clicking his tongue against his teeth in disgust.
"Sorry."
"Back to work." Is all he says.
She must force her hands back up.
The hours go by.
The day drags on.
The walk home is dull, a dull ache pushes against her brain.
She finds her small door, the narrow room that makes her apartment looms before her.
The narrow bed, gray sheets, the solitary window that faces the alley, the dead flower in the window box, the faded curtain drifts out on some current that filters down the alley promising a breeze that never comes.
She lies in bed waiting for sleep. She doesn't long for any comfort of it in the grey city in the gray night where the city illuminates everything with a subdued light that becomes gray as it clears the streets.
When sleep comes, the bliss of the Abyss follows folding her into a dreamlessness.

Except she did dream.
Once her formless soul fell into the REM state, she found herself in the colored dream.

Morning came.
She awoke staring at the ceiling of her apartment wondering what had happened in the night.
She tried to reach for it with her mind but the memory of the dream slipped away into the grey morning.
She got up.
She dressed in the drab clothes.
She brushed her teeth.
She ate the grey oatmeal.
She locked her door.
She walked out into the light.
She stopped at the corner almost sure she was supposed to meet someone.
Someone who never came.
She walked to the bus.
She rode the bus with the grey people there.
She walked into the grey slab building.
She rode the drab elevator to the 17th floor
She walked down the rows of identical desks
She sat down at her desk
Where a RED rose sat in a glass vase on her desktop.
She stared at the rose in shock.
The Man came to stare at the rose as well.
"What is this?' he says.
"I don't know, sir," she says.
It's a lie. She knows that somehow her dream has found her.
"Get rid of it." The Man says. "Then get to work."
She carefully lifts the rose out of the vase.
It is so light and soft, she almost fails to see the YELLOW note.
Carefully, she picks up the note, it reads.
"MeSan" that is all. but she remembers the name and what had happened before
she lost the dream. Now with the rose in one hand and note in the other she turns to find the Man considering her.
"I quit," she says.
"You can't quit. You're fired." He says.
She smiles at him, he flinches, no one smiles at him. She turns away and runs down the rows of identical desks past the drab sameness of people until she finds the stairs. Through the RED door and down the stairs. She barely notices the descent to the street. She steps out onto the curb to find him on his messenger bike there.
"There you are," he said.

DefCon Final

Just a quick note to remind you the DefCon story has moved to my website and it's own blog page.
A lot of experimentation has resulted in a book format for those of you who are new to this story, should be ready by Christmas, plus new installments there soon.

Life

is short and sweet.
or so they keep telling me

The Lion walks commentary

I started this project as an idea that my mother and I discussed trying to publish a book that was a collection of Witch Doctor and similar stories that captured the wealth and depth of the mystery that was and probably still is South Africa. I felt that the collection would need a framework or vehicle to carry the reader from one tale to the next. I was not comfortable with the idea of just presenting the public (reader) with another collection of stories. So I took a page from Robert Aspirin's Sanctuary series which were a series of short fantasy stories told by various authors all under the roof (or rather within the walls) of a Fantasy setting called Sanctuary. To some degree those books did work for the most part.
I later was forced to abandon the project as running down enough source material became tedious and bothersome to collect and my own creativity was pulled to other projects and the requirement of basic income consumed my energy to expound on the original concept. Added to that was a failed attempt to return to SA to add to the collection and give some fresh experiences to fill out the background more thoroughly.
Finally, and perhaps most disappointing was the total lack of enthusiasm I received from pretty much everyone I talked about the project to.

So, I put it all to the side and begin work on some non-fiction project that have consumed me (for the most part) until recently.

Who knows if I will return to it. it would help if I knew I had an audience for the amount of effort that it will ultimately take to produce it with any real quality.

A Lion walks under the shadow of the African Valley of the Moon: A Trek into the stories of Southern African and one man’s heart.

Bartlomeus Ridder lived a life filled with trouble and turbulence of which his boyhood chum, Michael knew nothing of save that he had always suspected that Bart’s future would not be promising or bright. Bart’s life ended at forty leaving a shattered family and a lost brother somewhere out in Namibia not knowing that Bart had died. Michael, who had found Bart through Facebook and had just begun to recover the lost years since he had returned to the States, did not realize the impact his friendship had made on Bart during those brief years at Max Stibbe.

            Michael had already looked in returning to South Africa to meet up with his old friend and look for others who made up his own past. His experiences with Facebook had forced him to reevaluate his own interpretations of his life, but with Bart’s sudden death had made it unavoidable for Mike to confront his own demons rather than just consider them. Michael decided that it was time enough to return to the Dark Continent, the land of his birth.

            To those of you, who have never been to Africa, know this, Africa is about land and this fact has more impact on a person’s soul than most can possibly recognize. Once in Africa always in Africa, the land is as inescapable as the promise of death. There is something about the land that will never let you completely go. Sure you can go somewhere else, live someplace else, even call it home and believe every word of it in your hearts of hearts, but Africa still owns a piece of that soul regardless. This was especially true for Michael.

            Michael had the advantage of being born there, so the part that belonged to Africa had settled in his soul from the beginning. He considered East Tennessee his home, did not long to live elsewhere and figured he would die there as well. But when he would close his eye and let his mind run free it would return him to the veldt of the Transvaal and he would run with the buck through the long grasses.

            He could not explain it to anyone who had never been to Africa, had ceased trying to talk about how it was almost like hearing the mythical drums in the jungle when his mind would wander. The drums had sounded louder and louder over the past few days since the news of Bart’s death had reached him in a tearful phone call from his estranged daughter Natasha. Michael knew that he would have to go and help Natasha put the pieces together, never mind say goodbye to his old friend.

            Michael’s mother was from East Tennessee and his father was from the Transvaal. His parent’s had met in Europe in the sixties and fallen in love and later married after his mother came to South Africa. They settled down to life in the largest city, Johannesburg. That was many years past and life had not gone quite what it should seem, but Africa had gotten into his mother’s soul as well. Michael had come along after another child and apparently was a bit of a surprise for his father when he did.

            Michael’s parents had not remained in South Africa long; his father had dreams of American living and persuaded his mother to return there. So an ocean crossing by ship was arranged and they were bound for the promise land. American life was very much a dream for Michael, a waking dream from which awakening as the eventual return to South Africa seven years later. His parents could never quite explain the reasons for going back, at least his mother had a firmer idea of what she had wanted, but his father avoided the topic completely for many years following.

            Michael first met Bartlomeus Ridder in the spring of 1981 at a school out in the middle of nowhere in the veldt east of Pretoria, the capital city of South Africa. Max Stibbe School was a boarding school on farm outside of a small town (someplace) east of Pretoria about two hours northeast of Johannesburg.

Juliet

Juliet, 

She is my poem, my muse, my love song
I sing it to her above me up there on her 
balcony
Under this full moon out from her bedroom
her hands fall upon the iron rail
my Shakespeare fails and speechless my words
run dry in my arid throat
words no longer rhyme as if the stop thump of 
my heart has forgotten how to start
She sings my name into the night
I find the pen is in my hand 
it is heavy with my sudden delight
to scratch to scrawl to write our names 
entwined on the white city walls
Juliet, I love you more than the stars
above, more than the flowers in the spring
more than the water in the well
more than the empty oaths I will tell
call to me and I will come to the
window where her lamp light breaks
on a stage, on the paper on the tattered page
her ink is scribbled on my heart
her lines are read written for her part
I life is a play and we stand now upon his whim
will William give me a chance like this again?

let's start again

       Paul sat up slowly, his face was  on  fire and it was wet. He absently wiped at the wetness on his cheek. Fucking women, why did  they have to get so violent? In his own opinion it was all this women's lib and  medication that was making them so unreliable. If we had been alone, I would have hit her back, he thought sullenly. He clambered to his feet, something  ran down his cheek.
       That Bitch! Monday,  when he got into the office,, he would  call that asshole down at the Police Station and tell him that he was going to press charges! He  was  right by God. He  wasn't going to take this  lying down. No one threatened Paul Murray  and got away- his bladder chose at that moment to remind him to be elsewhere. He inwardly clenched then began walking towards the men’s restroom.
        “She sure knocked the spit out of you.” cheered a man in blue jeans and black shirt that said something like `Hell Yeah!’ on it.
        "Fuck you asshole." Paul mumbled as he strode past  the overweight man.