(From Twitter)
Most families went. They stayed near the shoreline for safety. And it
was easier to make rest-stops that way.
The delicate stuff they had made with their neighbors was safer too in
the calmer waters near the shoreline.
It was strapped in a big cage to the rear. Sticks were bent and tied
with reeds at even distances. Some families used animal intestines.
They dried harder and were stronger, but his father ignored the extra
security measures. No one questioned him.
He made primitive flint-lock spear-heads, his body was all scarred,
and he was the shape of a beer-barrel; and hard too.
His skin was black like everyone else's, but bluer, but not darker.
The super black skinned ones of their neighbors had a lot of blue
in the skin tones, but the lighter the skin of their children or
relatives were, the more yellow it became.
His skin was less yellow, less, blue, and lighter. He didn't look like
any others, and he didn't act like any others.
Everyone of their neighbors was very respectful to him, but he made no
speeches, dances, nor did he stop people from being angry.
Everyone seemed to be very interested in making very fine things. They
made things no one made. Sent them off around the shorelines
trading them with the people who made other fine things that no one else made.
Certain people wanted certain things, others wanted certain other
things. A shoreline trading raft would load and unload many times.
Some circled the globe, they were massive. When one saw them all green
and with barnacles passing by,
you felt as big as it was, like you were strong and could drive one
someday; its great spirit gravity force tickled the closer it got
When it passed you felt as if a 100 foot- tall giant had stooped and
whispered a cool breezy secret in your ear that gave you shivers of
power and smiles and calm. The logs it was made of were 50 or more men
tall on the cut side; you couldn't reach across even one ring.
Sometimes many animals were roped to the shore and pulled along the beach.
Roofs and fires and towns and towers poked and glimmered from its
distant topside.
His father didn't even look up that time. The memory became his son's
responsibility alone.
His mother sat very elegantly- chin high, face to the warm sea wind;
baby nursing; red blanket unfurling like a fish-tail from her hips.
His younger brother had been lulled to sleep in the shade beneath the
roof off the storage cage.
He stood by his father's wicker-braided stool that had been lashed to
the deck, as his father pulled the tiller side to side in the shallows
of the bright tourquoise and white, neverending beach. The trees would
change some, and sometimes there was more rocks than sand,
but it was always the same, soft journey to trade what his father had
taught them all to make. There was a global demand for it.
People made different things, then traded for things they didn't have.
Most people on the planet had a modest collection of the finest
things made all over the world, from the best people that made them.
If you couldn't make the best stuff- you couldn't trade it.
They called his father 'Mac'. His son stood close by in the sun and
traced the line on his father's left hand; the hand that held to the
tiller. It looked like at some point his father had dipped his hand in
black stain. His fingers and palm matched his other hand, but
a circle like a tatoo bracelet of grey/black remained and was dry, hot
and leathery to the boy's delicate soft fingertop.
His father never felt the urge or impulse to speak to anyone who was
near to him, just because they were near.
Everyone else did, even him. It felt like one had to, or else it was
rude. His father rarely even turned his head in that instance.
The soft salty shore breeze ruffled the peeling splintering log fibers
on the aft and along the binded roping of the raft.
Remnants of what had been clouds had been mushed and streaked and
scraped across the delicate blue transition;
from a blurry light blue, fading up to a deep blue-green.
The raft slid along a smooth clearwater area that followed the shape
of the coastline.
Beyond this the water was wrinkled from too much sun and striped in
white hashmarks and tourquoise slashes.
If one looked straight ahead, you saw: the green from the left, white,
then blue that got more blue.
The salty air made perspiration dry and put a microscopic layer of
finely powdered salt all over everything.
It made breathing wonderful, it made touching things feel soft, and
everything looked very crisp indeed.
The tiller swished along, curling the transparent water around it,
accompanied by a soft, hollow, wooden clunking that seemd to echo
lightly
, as if it came from inside a tiny cave. His head was feeling big and
his eyes felt pushing out around them and from behind them.
From pushing himself upright on the edge of the raft he smelled the
very salty ocean smell which faded instantly when he was upright.
The delicate brown hair on his thin honey-brown forearms blew in every
direction as he now kneeled.
His oversized head had bits of sand in it. It gave his mother a
regular excuse to rub his head.
When his mother's long, soft hand rubbed his head it gave him chills
down his shoulders and back and belly that made him feel calm and
safe and not scared of anything. His father's hand caused a similar,
sharper vibration, and felt like a stone hat on his head.
From time to time the raft pitched its corners from the opposite one
to the next. Even if nothing onboard had moved.
Everything one touched sounded like crispy dried grass and leaves. The
logs were sanded with wear and smooth and round and soft.
The neighbors would take turns traveling the old trading route up the
coast, but his family went more often.
Trading parteners were always wondering and inquiring as to innovative
new aspects of his father's glasses. Since he only taught the
neighbors how to to help him make more of them, and they were more
happy to be able to make something in such great demand, rather than
really identifying and cataloging in their own memories the
intricacies of all myriad of mystical components
He showed his son how to make the glasses, what kind of metal, what
kind of bacteria, what kind of grass reeds;
;how finely is the powder ground, how long is the fire burned, how to
use the right sand, how long to dry, how long to polish;
how to count the glass rocking, how to stop the seal cracking, when to
trust the metal springing;
how to command these tiny things with the respect of a General for a
great army, and how to never trust them; as cold-handed murderers all;
these tiny bits of grass, jelly, metal, and glass.
The groupings of them were finely wrapped in a certain worthy cloth
they traded for in the past to use to wrap them safely.
There they lay humped with so much hope, kindess, great spirit and
confidence, covered in their plaid swaddling within the security cage.
Some were different than others. Some allowed a person to see in the
dark of night.
Some allowed a person to see the pebbles on a mountaintop.
Some worked better in the fog. Some worked better in the rain. Some
were small. Some were bronze. Some were handled. Some were bright.
Jewlers liked the ones that made small things big, so it was easier to
see the patterns they would scratch into gold and silver.
Hunters liked the ones that showed heat at great distances, and made
seeing far away very much like seeing things in a room.
Cooks liked the ones that showed what else besides the surface of
their food was on the surface of their food.
Much of these fuctional specificities were aided by what his father
said were tiny plants that he carefully grew.
To his brother and him they were among the colors of poop paint that
were smeard on the walls during creative naps.
People and paths and ground color came straight from the diaper. But a
cache of hoarded canisters containing the colored jelly
served to give shape to trees and bushes and carts and clothes. It all
smelled like poop, and naptime was boring; one needed to create!
As he grew older, his insensitivity to the smell of algea and
bacteria, and poop grew. And these things became-
what they were to everyone else.
A technological revolution, a gold mine, undespensible, precious,
highly respected, worth a great deal in trade.
There were few functional necessities in their time, but in a global sense,
his father's glasses were among the top three highest grade military
secrets guarded.
Protecting the American, Austaliian, Pacific, Asian, European, and
African shoreline trading communities,
and their meager inland beneficiaries, was an easy task. Security came
in the form of trade. There was no need that trade couldn't meet.
Civilization was the beachfronts of all continents. Large animals,
irradic and violent weather patterns, disease, and other forms of
illness
made inhabiting any substantial portion of the inland of any continent
absolutely lethal.
And the coastal perimeter provided the perfect commecial transport
arena; water would displace an unlimited amount of weight.
Therefore, to provide a quaint example: A normal-sized donkey could-
tied by a rope to a barge across him in the water of the shoreline-
pull a donkey made of stone 100 times the size of the donkey pulling donkey.
His father had explained bitterly that this very principle that
brought stability and peace and convenience to billions of people,
had also timed its own demise. He said angrily, his leathery blue
black face all folded angrily, that the bigger they get,
the more they haul, the more they haul, the taller they haul, the
taller they haul, the slower they crawl,
the slower they crawl, the bigger they are, and the bigger they are,
the harder they fall.
... which explains why his father defiantly dis-acknowledged the large
giant smoking raft-city.
He knew his fate, saw the future, and had built the past.
He was angry and defiant regarding the future mess he had left to his son.
He had done too good a job.
People had had too many healthy children with plenty of food to eat.
Their children had plenty of food to eat and plenty of things to make.
These children had more things to make and more mouths to feed.
So these children built bigger rafts to raise...
All the more things for the more children they made.
His son didn't understand that he understood this far because he
hadn't gotten angry about it:
Like his father was.
So they journeyed on. Along the white lines to their left which were
shown by the moonlight even at night.
Those curls and rolls of foam and sea-sense.
And wide white band of reaching beachfront.
The glimmering backs of humping sandbars, lying around in the bright
specks of coral; like old lazy sacks bursting with snowflakes;
beneath the glass ceiling, of that ocean-bay inlet; in the quiet warm
night in the dark after sunset.
The boy was startled momentarily by the motion of his father's forearm
in the corner of his vision.
His interest was then distracted again by a bird on the land-side
shushing up from a tree rustling;
he had noticed the familiar glint of the metal part of the casing on
his father's glasses and so decided to remain unmoved
by that distraction- meanwhile following the flight of the bird
bursting through the illusory green balloon of this tree.
The bird had been propelled by a monkey screech apparently, as the
sound and bird's speed were of the same moment.
The gaps in the tree's solid exterior gaped like rocking jaws of a
dead animal after the fact;
as if the tree itself was a monkey who swung it's arms in defeat or
calmed menace to distract
onlookers from the shame of its failure to catch keep carry or kill;
the old 'jump and run' after a trip on the curb.
Functional superstition, as it is observed in scientific study.
Superstition gaped greenly by association with it's violent friends,
and rocked and swayed in monkey-shame in this just-after.
The raft rocked gently beneath his father's hammer-steps.
And his son turned just his head to pick up where he had left off at
the binoculars;
the tree's screaming seeming to have been resolved.
The boy's eyes stared steadily at the glinting gold rim of the glasses
his father held.
His eyes moved between his father's covered eyes, taking into account
the tilt of his father's head,
angle of his arm, and plane of his shoulders in relation to himself;
and he was aware of the angle at which he stood
in that same relationship.
And the boy the guessed what his father was looking at- quickly like
an arrow shot from a bow his head snapped in that attack-
until it froze as still as he still stood, rocking gently.
There was absolutely no way he knew what his father was looking at.
There was something very far away now.
After the calm night the bright day blew in and up along the beachline
curving inward to the left,
chased by the rough, green grass on the one side, and slapped by the
whale's tail surf on the other.
The rafting lanes were much further out from all this commotion.
Tiny birds ran about like nearly invisible rolling thistle, or balls
of dried seaweed or grass,
needling the sand like sewing machine heads escaping from their
disembodiment with utmost determination and persistence.
There was something important in the distance that did not discourage
or affect his father.
His father's movements were the same and steady as they were as he now
turned his hulking huge frame round,
drowning his son in his shadow; head down reaching for a bottle of water.
A few drops escaped the whole way to the raft like crazy diamonds
violently reflecting the light
that his father's wide, rocky form had denied them protection from.
No more escaped as the bottle swung back to its cooler safe-house.
His mother sat in the shade by the cooler and did not make sure the
lid was shut tightly.
Her movements were always slow and gentle as well, in everything she did.
His younger brother just curled up at his mother's hip as was his
customary position.
Back at the tiller, his father's bracelet tatoo attracted wayward
glances from any searching waywardly with it's steady
and deliderate back and forth motion.
One keeping an eye out for moving things might also be attracted quite
often to the quickly flailing palm ends
along the lead edge of the canopy cover in front of the glasses' flimsy crate.
The crate had a cover but it wasn't turned over.
It rarely rained on the costal perimeter.
Behind the treeline way off in the distance the sky was darker in some
places than others.
The warm rain came along and vibrated thoroughly the topside of any
flesh it encountered.
It beat out a hollow tribal growling across the wooden decking.
And a spooky grey day-mist was stirred up between the area touching
any body of water;
and up arount their raft. The waves were naught nor the wind increased.
It was a warm shower which splashed the eyeballs momentarily then and again.
It made the eyes a little stingy and bloodshot, as the water- warm and
slick as it was- was by no means slimy.
It lacked completely the lubricative properties of oil.
Squinting from the rainshower, the boy looked about with his head down
and shoulders hunched,
keeping his hands up as if he were boxing if the need be to wipe his
eyes to see.
His mother sat quietly but attentive, firstly to his siblings on her.
Then also, as the boy was, to the large form of the father's shoulders
swinging his arms back and forth up the front,
engaging as he did, the heavy dock-rope spiraling from them in the air
to breach the gap between a dock and their raftside.
As the raft neared the dock; a row of logs itself looking no different
than any other raft-form;
the father at the front corner was pulled together with another man on the dock.
The corner clunked flatly, the sound matching more closely to the high
tones in the falling water than
the heavy 'clack', 'thunk', or 'knock' of wooden object on a clear day.
The boy stood in the middle and braced himself; his little gray form
shuddered in the greyness all around shuddering everything with gray.
He stood near the middle of the raft, and had learned this moment of
action, though never confidently adjusted to it,
and had always been caught off-guard and off-balance no matter how
hard he tried in as many times.
As he looked at the shrinking pie-shape of tickled water to his left-
hissing at him-
it felt as if their speed had become increased and uncontrollable;
like they slid now wildly out of control sidesliding like
on a sheet of ice and sinking to the right as the water between
compressed and swelled to fight them away!
And... 'clunk'... the boy was inevitably tossed over onto the dock;
tripping lightly to control his balance and
regain his footing; despite the effort of the furious ubiquitous rain
and the weight of his large-melon-head to force him to his knees.
The men had already navigated the gray breakable strings of atmosphere
and had tied the things off long before the boy regained his balance.
The merchandize was safely away down the docking platform.
Protocol was followed and there was no throng of excited people,
customers or theives, jumping about excitedly as dogs greet a pack.
Two men shared a crate-bar for a handle waddling stiff-armed to meet a third.
The crest of every hill was faintly darkened by the smudge of a
cloaked perimeter guard.
The mechandize floated not across sand but along the boardwalk up to
the boardwalk proper.
There a fourth man met the assembly, now worthy of being titled a 'group'.
And that group grew blurry.
The distance became to great for the boy's entranced large eyeballs.
But his head guessed a point in the future and his eyes appeared to
address it true.
But as loyal and sincere as his sightline was, it was in its effort
deceived. He couldn't see where the men with the crate had gone.
Their shapes had been interrupted by so many vertical gray liquid
strands that at some point they ceased to be.
And he was comforted by his mother's presence, and the lump of his
brothers with her.
They were entirely dry.
The light frame of the leaf'd canopy directed the water as surely as
it wished with absolutely no effort.
The canopy was not tri-form, or pedimental, or traigular in any way,
and its shape was definitely not patterned after that of a triangular boat-hull.
Such a pattern did not exist.
A cone was to be found here and there in use. But rafting was more
practical and effective. As sure as a floating log rolls-
no human would sit in a 'capsize waiting to happen'. It just wasn't
safe. It didn't make sense.
The ocean was unpredictable and these people spent enough time on it
to learn how surely its power must be outmaneuvered
to survive for tens of thousands of generations just between the cheek and gum.
And to flourish in peace, harmony, wealth, and humility- these generations did.
The boy, still in the rain, standing as if oblivious to it, looked down,
mainly because it was easier and quite a relief from staring wide-eyed
into a driving summer downpour,
at the dock. It was the same as any raft. Logs were lined up all the
same length,
lashed together with an ever-repeating series of figure-8's. Since the
rope was flexible and the logs bouyant,
they rose and fell with each passing swell in dutiful harmony.
The perpendicular aspect of the bordwalk minor, joined of couse, at
some point in the future, with the major,
caused it to perform at once during low-tide as a boardwalk, and at
high-tide- a dock.
Now, the boy followed the swirling anchor-rope at his feet untill it
disappeared 6 inches or so beneath the agitated surface.
Normally one could see the rope softly swaying alongside the seagrass,
disco-ball light-spotted and very thick, deep and greenish blue,
a very long ways beneath the log's edges.
Today of course, it was raining heavily, so it could barely be seen at all.
He remembered his father explaining that the rope was attached to a
ring, embedded in a boulder, buried in the sand.
It could be loosened, or tightened. The dockmaster checked it daily.
The boulders, hundreds in number, were not large enough to pull the
dock under- 'in the case that the bottom drops off the world'.
The whole of every village was also a raft.
Many a huge storm and rising deluge had carried one off to sea.
Gardens, storehouses, stables, houses- all joined together as one
little, man-made island.
Like great hamster-pens, filth drained along with the rain, between
the cracks in the deck.
Some western cities had become eastern cities overnight.
Many African cities had become Austrailian cities.
Indian cities had a quaint penchant for navagating in Austrailia's direction.
Many cities on America's east coast had become cities in Europe and Africa.
All cities were coastal, floatable, portable, flexible, joinable, and
essentially based on the same traditional, tried and true design.
Each new generation of people had no need to shred and claw at the
architectural and foundational principles of the society.
There were, however, some older coagulations of certain populace.
They had been coached; manipulated to purpose.
United, forged and stacked solidly puposed, these unusual groups of
specialized force built like ants in furious symphony.
They raised armies to defence, hoarded grain in fear, and primarily
busied themselves with mining and quarrying rock and metal.
They walked on stone, ate with metal, sat on stone, killed with metal;
dwelled in stone all lined with metal.
And were wholly dependent on the trader-raftsman as they were too busy
working to cook, brew, farm, or herd.
The massive cities of solid rock and metal and glass were hot.
Sun-baked stone perfectly contained the sun's heated photon waves
and metal beams nearly glowed as if they had never left the blacksmith's forge.
And innocent glass window-panes became lethal conversion portals for
lazer-like death-rays.
No weeding was necessary in the city streets, for little weeds found
no refuge in persevereing the cracks from the relentless wicked beams.
City-dwellers lived nocturnally. The stone dwellings, so heated on the
exterior, but so cool many bricks in.
As with the traders' societies, cities spawned great and elaborate
harbor-systems; but all of stone and chain.
The boy's father, imposing and fearless as he was, avoided trading
with the builders of stone harbors.
All save one.
Their little raft pulled gently alond the coast of Ethiopia, and
rounded the familiar tip.
It never rained at this equatorial penninsula in years past, yet now
this trip would not see the drops shrink even to evaporate upon the shore.
A second rafter's trading port appeared midst the steam bath at the
lesser horn's interior curve.
Again the boy was tossed lightly with the 'thunking' in the gray.
Again the flimsy crate floated away... into the stringed gray.
And again returned swiftly through sorcerers' deceit with the bond of
laden truths; the fulfillment of their traveled quest.
Amber, glass, various chemical powders, bits of gold, aluminum, and
red quicksilver;
carried by the brawney black and blue men;
bowls and jugs of the most exquisite design and manufacture, inlaid
with polish and cloisonee;
abalone, blended melted amber and jeweled mosaic;
enamel so meticulous in its layering that it was as if dipped in
glass; gold flakes and specks suspended,
rioting with delicate beauty in the reflected shimmer of and light
trapped in with it.
There was a baby sippy-cup studded with split pearls showing their
rings, smoothed and inset with flat diamond studs.
The boy knew who this was for, but no jealous glance betrayed his
knowledge of it.
Their were bolts of fabric of silk and wool and spider web;
bold blues, quiet yellows, and seemly reds.
They received lotions and soaps and spices and books.
Potions and salves and rare jellies and spreads.
Tumeric, paprika, pumpkin and such.
Jerkies of mammoth, buffalo and shark.
Yogurts of animals from here to the arctic.
But by far the most exciting acquisition for the boy, was the hard
cheeses from the north of the bay.
It was hard as a rock, salty and sweet; had all the flavors for all
sides of the mouth.
Beneath the canopy and out of the pour, he knelt quickly with a pick
and tack-hammer and chipped off a bit and placed it in his cheek.
He would scrape it against the outside of his teeth for hours and
hours without chewing at all.
The flavor was intense, tart, and neverendingly satisfying and entertaining.
The boy didn't care much for fabric, he hated wearing shirts. He
didn't care about jewels and fancy table-settings.
He hated spicy things that burned one's tongue and complicated
mixtures and confusing flavors.
But he loved that cheese.
His father gestured him over. It was time for his lesson- a strange
obsession of his father's, it was uncommon to any family he knew.
His father made primitive flint arrowheads like he was addicted. He
was very serious about it- never explained why, just how.
And he made sure his son was a master primitive arrowhead maker. He
was forced to wear his handymanship in his belt- visibly so.
In the one hand with the tattoo bracelet that faded up in towards his
fingers he held the white rock.
In the other hand, he held down the shiny flintstone firmly between
two fingers, braced with the other fingers hard on a flat rock.
He glanced up; his gentle order to pay close attention; and counted as
he aimed two practice hacks.
And then a third sharp whack which whittled in violent fracture, bits
of deadly glass-shard flint fragments,
containted masterfully with kinetic direct control as if the sphere of
a force-field directed from his mind alone had allowed the shards
to fall gently and stick like an Olympic Gymnast their landing.
Neither the father or the boy had any thought of bits of microscopic
flint shredding their eyeball lenses.
The force of the boy's concentration was weaker, but it was there, and
the father was not concerned,
for their combined generated Gamma-radiation and magnetic fields of
their focused concentration
were sufficient to physically deter the force of any errant bits.
This followed along whacking on by whacking off in three strokes those
little bits by both men.
And there raft rocked along quietly amidst the sharp whip cracks they
battled between them in the atmosphere they shared.
Father and son battled it out for volume supremacy; father gently
encouraging the child's confidence by undetectable gesture and
modulation.
Building in his son those violent urges and the subtle control of that
innate bloodlust of the animal spirit of life-force extant in all life.
Both upon finishing their focused craft of primitive mastery removed
the point previously made from their belt-loop,
Threw it in unison; their black arms agaisnst the fetid gray glow of
sunset were darkly illuminated as the brightest of blackness;
like stork-necked crows frozen in the arc of the throw;
they were replacing the new shard in the belt loop with the same
synthesis of movement.
And they rinsed the log-deck of their work area on the raft nextly,
flushing through the cracks all the back bits of chipped flint;
so many little bugs of pestilent form, irresistable to the splashing
attraction of the seawater's own form.
Were lost in the slight swirling of that seawater's foam.
Beneath the wood rolls, ropes pulled, and green glow, which lit the
boys arms from beneath and between,
in soft green stripes, reflect'd of that light in the rippling echoes below.
Their raft tolled on, rocking oddly like a bell.
It seemed monsoon rains became the norm. The rain only let up for a
few hours in the clear, cool hours of the twighlight and early
evening.
His father mentioned an explanation which was meant to seem incomplete
in conversation with their mother:
He said something about the particular Nile Coast City Region being
nearly completley saturated; that they must get some local bread.
Their mother responded that when the continental shelf of Egypt fills
in and the Nile becomes a proper river, it will be like a desert.
The father agreed with emphasis on his, "YA, as if his response had
been squeezed out of him by a higher power with increased foresight.
Right now the whole of the North African and its closely Neighboring
Indian plate was the densest, most fertile region in the whole globe.
Egyptian bread would be a thing for millenia.
The boy's favorite part of the journey was to come. His father pulled
the till in the rain as he had for weeks and days and hours.
The swishing and screaching of a pack of dolphins alerted his heart to
a level of glee usually reserved for northern hard cheese.
His little brother, who rarely unclutched himself from hugging his
mother's sides was standing on the raft's side patting his chubby
little
hands together awkwardly and frantically like he was trying to rejoin
two magnetically charged fried chicken bits with opposite charges.
The cherub of chubs squeeked along with the dolphins, and they clearly
understood eachother.
The little guy waved his chicken wings and knew they would turn to
fish; motioning the dolphins near
with crazy symphony conducter phrenetics. The dolphins agreed and
believed him that they would, and desired it so.
They formed a slow pinwheel together, which brought the one at the top
cresting the surface by about a foot,
and sliding the tiny splayed-fingered mini-potato along their backs,
one after the other, round and round,
so that the small boy was petting their shiny, slick, machine-wheel
continuously with no effort of his own.
The hissing swish of the dolphin pinwheel was complimented and
conducted in apparently to the new symphonic delight,
a new hissing brief and steady, by the father letting the pressure
valve vent on the pressureized fish bucket.
The tiny fishes were chilled by compressing the air around them to
preserve them for when the dolphins and seaturtles came to visit.
As the father gestured to the older boy, his eyes squinted and face
crunched in a half-smile like it was made of stone; his expression;
his face burst not, from pride and happiness at the sight of his
little boy's joy,
The lidded coffer pulled off with a 'pop', and the father's crouch
swiveled laterally to hand off the bucket over to the boy, who, in
turn,
squealed with delight at the inevitable prospect of feeding the dolphins.
Two looped leads lay hanged beneath the raft's flat bow.
The small boy roughly grasped at the frozen slippery fish with little
mallet hands. He held one up as if offering it to the rain-veiled sun.
And he threw it away from the dolphin pinwheel with subtle surety of
slight command as a drunken monk would, into the water at the front.
The pinwheel immediately broke in elegant parsing of smooth gray forms
into folding florets of seawater and the front edge of the raft jerk-
ed gently downward. A thin film of clear water was quietly expressed
through the soft rounded openings between raft's structures, and
welled
smoothly before revealing the rough texture of the wood and bark again.
The increase in speed threw not one of the ancient family off guard or balance.
The raft lurched to attention and sped up to a motorized elegance as
the dolphins happily harnessed themselves like Poseidon's sea-horses;
floating the sun itself determitatedly in it's holy triumphant arch
across a level horizon in a flattened world; a mottled, ungilt
chariot,
rolling on thickened wind, above the underworld
As more fish awkwardly pelt the water surface above the pulling
dolphins' blowholes, other loop-harnesses were filled,
as they hung beneath the length of the raft's full length and breadth.
Tiny frozen fishes plopped between the contrastingly delicate
raindrops, and the raft surged ahead to Atlantis.
Before the Pyramids of Egypt housed the bejeweled murdered corpses of
Pharaohs gone wild, they stood as foundation-blocks;
great mechanized lotus blossoms; ancient power-plants, generating
quite a bit more than mere electrical current.
Before the great pyramids, pyramid-structures abound about the
Egyptian continental shoulder. The boy's father had explained in
detail.
The women there wore the lotus blossom tatooed on their shoulder-blade.
The great pyramids spotted the shores of the shoulder's plate like
fantastic blazing blooms. At night, in the rain, as their raft pulled
to,
their glimmering metallic bulk, sliced elegantly through the sheeting
rainwater, upward and curvaesiously, like so many liberty torches.
Jagged yet smooth, the folded gigantic petals mimicked the action of
an actual flower in the absence of the sun.
The boy recalled the last trip here. It was daytime then. The Great
Lotus were open to the chariot crossing,
and the air crackled and sparked with errant escaped electrons. He
could feel his neck-hairs tickling.
The rain was so thick. They could barely see the docks. The boy stood
in the drops at the bow to watch the dolphins retreat.
They were just silver slashes and streaks that slid away to the right
and around and underneath, flitting with a curl and gone.
The harder he squinted, the more he blinked. The heavy water droplets
hit his eyelashes like feathers over a shaking duckfeather.
The more he blinked, the easier it was for the drops to invade. The
rainwater was a chill to his warm eyeballs and they absorbed them;
sponging the water in to blur his vision all the more
The docks here were of logs despite the insitance of the large ancient
generator structures which were of an obvious permanent nature.
Although protocol was observed, there were many more people bustling
about here and there. This was a very wealthy city; soon to be empire.
He remembered the last visit, relieved to do so in the cool rain. When
the arrived last, it was too hot. Then he was just as wet with sweat.
He had hung off the raft to wash and cool. The great lotus blooms were
full open, prostrate to the sun.
As with the sun, one could not look at them directly. They were far
too bright and burned the eye sockets in full on view.
If one looke at some point in the sky above them, a great yellowish
arc could be seen; more of an oblong hairy ring of fire and current
and
ozone and smoke. The lotus drew the lightening and heat of the sun. A
few days open would see lightening on a clear cloudless day.
The heat was tremendous. The whole area was an oven until the
atmosphere could no longer bear the radiant heat of the flowers,
and they drew in the clouds like a black hole sun.
A man-made storm, the heat ventured too far and heated, and drew a
ring of storm clouds to rush in wanting.
They brought riots of lightning bolts, nearly non-stop; and so loudly
they screached and thundered.
Everyone there spoke loudly, not for competeing with the thunderbolts,
but to hear over the tinny ring in their ears.
One could not compete with Zeus' crash, and would not fool a try.
This stop they would stay at for a few days at least. The hotels were
grand indeed. The stone-walk streets were laid smoothly and true.
A mixture of melted amber and gold and mineral conducters was melted
and poured over the stone.
The electricity from the lotus was channeled through it; and indeed in
varying degrees of voltage throughout the entire city.
Every surface was amber-coated, inside and out. Elaborate decorative
patterns and painted symbols, shapes and representative things, from
people, to places and distant lands animals decorated every wall, walk
and signpost.
Varying hues of luminescent pink green and blue hovered in the mind's
eye with delight long after their short stay.
Beneath layers of amber, raised and lowered upon the surface,
paintings of beautiful things shown through and were illuminated.
The boy followed his family after the raft was secured at moor. His
feet tingled as he felt the smooth paving through his toes.
His head was down in fascination and frustration at the glowing,
glittering street and bowed from the opressive, cooling rain.
The family strode and tottered and skulked along the welcome road.
All the tiny hairs on one's body stood erect and tickly.
They passed a glowing pink house beside a glowing blue house beside a
glowing green house;
flowers of such beauty lay beneath the walls' surfaces as if trapped
in some liquid, irredescent paradise.
Woemen with beautiful glowing eyes, men rippling with strength,
fighting to please them,
were trapped shallowly like the bee in the amber stone- almost living preserved.
The surface of the amber was moulded in low-releif so that an arm,
fist, shoulder and hip jutted out from here and there.
A mammoth's tail, a lion's paw, a hunter's bow- these things jutted
smoothly from the undulating, polished surface of the architecture.
Flower petals curled towards you. One bore no sympathy for the trapped
creatures and things, they so rapturously endured one's love,
that one could no more resent them than one's own mother for not
confining a creature to her womb.
Certain elements clouded certain elements. A leaf had a mineral
component of metallic compound which glowed green and a bit more
opaque than
another leaf, petal or stem, so that this added another layer of
transparency to the #art and lay in more layers to the glowing
spectre.
The family sloshed on, lit with the ambient glow from around and below.
The boy turned his head in the sounds of the rain and all the people
saying his father's name, 'Mac', 'Mac', 'Mac'.
His eyes met Boticelli's grace, those black-ringed eyes of noble, glazing blue.
Startled but impressed, he glanced away quick. The woman was trapped
and burned with St Elmo's fire, she, offended not, stared on in
The group wove their way through the spotty, wet crowd in that ancient
neon-bright Las Vegas city.
They arrived at their hotel, a small, three-room, one-story, slightly
sunken building.
The building was not sunken literally, it just was low to the ground.
The mud-brick foundation was excavated to the interior a few feet
deep, making the walls look quite short from the outside.
The boy followed the family, stepping down into that magical space.
His father laid a hand flat on the wall as they entered.
The textured amber sent a ring of light vibrating outward.
It was followed by a few others more faint as the walls' lit softly
and grew in intensity and lumino'city.
Like ripples from a stone lobbed in a pool, the light fed itself from
the father's hand and soon the room was lit from every walls' surface.
The room glowed softly and steadily, flikering gently like a
battery-powered candle here and again.
Softly hued, gold and blues; mauves and browns all center-back-lit.
Purple, silver, orange spent, and even here- a little bit of reds.
The beauty and calm was outrageous in its union.
A small pathway amid their cusioned lair allowed them the path of a
cross in each room. The corners- all pillowed- advanced on the center.
In the center of each room was a circled clearing around a circular
low-set table. It's height could be adjusted.
One might stand to make use of it, or one might grab a pillow off the
great beds around in an easy reach, and sit upon it low.
The cross-path, table, walls and ceilint were all aglow. The beds were not.
The fine fabrics and upolstery shimmered in certain areas of metallic
thread embroidery and multi-textured fabric combinations.
It did not look like a middle eastern Sheik's tent.
The patters sewn into the fabric did not compete in horrid cacauphony
with the art'ed walls; they were in no way Oriental or Islamic.
The patterns sewn into the lusxurious fabrics did not display strage,
complex versions of spotted, writhing paisley.
They did not trace curved 'x's or diamonds throughout.
Gold thread was not embroidered into swirling lattice mini-roads that
jumped and leapt,
curling from under and dissapearing on a pillow's round.
There were not pairs of prurple silk pillows embroidered with silver
threaded garlands, hiccupping allong like frozen, sparkly
waves-crests.
And there were no velvet maroon blankets with golden silk hems.
The patterns were dynamic and dimensional. They were like Japanese
natural formation artwork.
The tones were earthen, violent, and harmonious.
Each pillow did not volley for one's singular attention.
But each was unique, lovingly handmade, and brilliant.
His mother made him towel off. But then he jumped and flew, arms
outstretched, and faceplanted into the flower-smelling bed closest to
His mother did not chide him immediately for jumping on the bed. She
wasn't disturbed at all by the swift action.
The fabric was cool and soft; silkier than silk; smoother than butter.
He remembered his father telling him about the man who developed the
formula and method for weaving spider's webbing into cloth.
His cheek and eyelid were caressed so softly and comfortingly by the
sheeted pillow-tops,
that wonderful calming chills and shivers galloped like tiny
fairy-horses across his neck and down his sides.
Maggots on rotten flesh were bred, the meat was marinated in metallic
compounds which bonded and altered the iron and magnesium;
causing certain chemical reactions in the fetid blood brood as they fed.
These compounds were metabolized by the maggots and turned them bright red.
Upon the subsequent metabolic explosion and conversion of the larvae
from their gory Michelin state,
the genetically altered worms calcium expansion entwined these new
metallic compounds into the belly juices of the baby flies.
When born the flies were fed honey slightly diluted with ammonia and
ground silica.
Born blind, fatly fed, the flies flew up and straight into the webs.
The fabric on his face was smoother than silk, cooler than cotton,
softer than velvet, stronger than broadcloth; delicate as tissue.
