Back Lit

Sunset’s glow 

gilds barren trees ~

back lighting for 

electricity.

“When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.”

~ George R.R.Martin

Progressive Lenses

Laughter ~

A not so silent rumble

from a crossover space 

between my gut and my heart

spreading like electricity

brightening my eyes with sparkles, my face

with a big smile

filling my personal space

with lightness and joy.

“The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. 

You can’t fake it…try to fake three laughs in 

an hour - -  ha ha ha ha ha - - they’ll take 

you away, man. You can’t.”
~ Lenny Bruce

Stillness ~1

Stillness

Electrifying was not the word I would have used for the magnificent scene below me. Grand. Awesome. Even the much overused word amazing. Watching the rolling mist crawling  up the mountain side, threading and weaving it’s way through old growth forest green was a scene that reminded me of prairie clouds pushing their way across the land. The sky had always fascinated me. It’s very blueness and broadness. But when the clouds began their silent march from a very distant horizon to cover and hover over everything, I was transfixed.

Jim and I stood frozen to our skis, clutching our poles and breathed in the stillness. A stillness that matched the trees around us pillowed with the snows of yesterday and yesterday. We both knew the science behind the winter mists in the mountains. Arctic air. Moisture from warmer areas trapped in valleys. Blah, blah, blah. Only in pencilled side notes of the oldest dog-eared texts were there hints that there was something much more. Something so very soul stopping that wordy description failed. The glistening silence was broken by an eagle soaring higher than mountain tops and clouds. And then another sound interfered. My growling stomach. Accepting that our basic needs could pull us more strongly than the glory around us was difficult but necessary.

Whispering as quietly as possible, I breathed 'Jim' 

‘Shh’

Still whispering I said. 'It’s lunchtime. Let’s eat.'

“When there is silence one finds 

the anchor of the universe within oneself.”

~ Lao Tzu

Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Dystopic. Hopeful. Alive. Three words that come to mind when I sit down to write this review. When a flu pandemic decimates a majority of the world’s population, only a few survive. They survive in bands, communities or on their own, travelling through an unfamiliar world with no internet, no telephones, no vehicles, and most importantly no electricity. Every convenience we enjoy today, grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, are no longer active.

Parallels run through this story set in the Great Lakes area of North America. In the opening, Arthur Leander, a famed Shakespearean actor playing King Lear, dies of a heart attack on stage in mid sentence. Jeevan Chaudhary, an ordinary man training to be a Paramedic, rushes to try to save his life. This pivotal moment, with characters that will be followed throughout the story, is minimized by the massive pandemic that collapses civilization as we know it. Also on stage at the time of Leander’s death, is an eight year old actress, Kirsten Raymonde, who grows through Year Twenty in the post-apocalyptic time, her own surviving family an older brother, learns by experience. A brother who dies, leaving her on her own. She carries with her two graphic novels, never published, written by Arthur’s first wife, Miranda. The story is of an alternate life on earth and those people sketched are from her personal life. 

Kristan joins a roving and disjointed Symphony. They perform Shakespearian plays in the tiny communities that sparsely dot the land. Their motto, painted on the side of their horse drawn vehicle, is a quotation from a Star Trek episode: Survival is insufficient. One very closed community is led by ‘the prophet’, a very unpleasant character who is introduced near the beginning of the story, but the reader does not know where he has really come from until towards the end. Another character, Clark, although not a specifically a leader, establishes a ‘Museum of Civilization’ in the community that grew up within an airport. In the early days of community, a young girl frantically searches for someone who has Effexor, the antidepressant prescribed to her. This brought me up short as I have my own medications to take daily to live life - and not just survive.

Acceptance of this dramatically changed life comes with great difficulty to everyone. Emily St. John Mandel takes all of her characters through learning, not only to survive, but to live and love in the moments that followed. She showed us that hope was in babies born, in the automatic building of community, and in the belief of the travellers that art and music must and will continue. Kristen, her friends and fellow travellers walk carefully through the destruction, see beauty of nature growing up over houses, rusted cars and buildings. See the simple beauty of deer in this new world, yet always alert for dangers from other ‘feral’ survivors or their surroundings. Their survival becomes anything but insufficient.

“Survival is insufficient.”

~ StarTrek Voyager, Season Six, Episode Two

Title:  Station Eleven

Author:  Emily St.John Mandel

Publisher:  Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Copyright @ 2014

Format: Soft cover

ISBN: 978-1-44343-486-7

Type:  Science Fiction

Going with the Flow

Electric passions ruffle still waters

of a soul troubled into stagnation 

welcoming the freshening current

flowing with depth and strength 

bringing fresh perspectives against

a menacing canopy of tears and fears.

“There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”

~ Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Inside Outside

Inside

neurons fire

synapses open and close,

routinely, regularly

except when they don’t

Inside,

when they don’t ~

neurons fire 

synapses open and close

no evident routine or pattern

electronics short circuit and spark

Outside

an unmannerly twitch or shout

a body flung brutally on the floor

breathing harsh and loud

false or foul words chatter without thought

Inside

where is the world 

who are you

swimming in electronic haze

fear and anxiety bubbling and brewing

Inside

slowly all is calm

neurons fire

synapses open and close

electronics restored to regularity

Outside,

violence calms and sleeps

breathing deep and regular

words struggle to make sense

tears and crying plead forgiveness

Gut Feelings Ignored

Warning lights turned off

when we learn to ignore

flickers and flashes 

almost too faint to feel

almost too dim to see,

but electricity still 

flows and sparks

without warning.

Not severely destructive,

at least not noticeably so,

it burns through the air like

a cut of fork lightning.

leaving in it’s wake 

a vague, unsettled feeling that

something is amiss.

An aura of char and burning.

“A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing 
testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain.”

~ Llewelyn Powers