I waited and watched. It was a few minutes after dusk, and the skies had already turned a deep shade of indigo, all pretence of blue and orange and pink shed quickly after the sun's departure from the heavens. The green of trees was gone from the world, as the green of trees had always gone from the world for centuries before the moment I knew would come soon.
Bough and bark was bathed in a strange darkness that was not merely the absence of light; it was a darkness of and by itself, a monster that spawned other terrors in the minds of those who knew fear and other doubts in the minds of those who knew loneliness. It consumed everything, even my home from where I looked. I was out of matches, or I knew could've scared the monster away, chased it into the corner whence it had come, no longer to pour out from my past as the echoes of my youth.
I looked at my watch again, making sure I was on time and wouldn't miss the awakening. The lamppost, the pillar of metal that had my unwavering attention, was a few hundred paces away from me, straight ahead, its crown lost in the thick foliage of a banyan planted by the side of the road. Cars passed by beneath the tree, their eyes shining light into the black blanket that buffeted their forms, they pushed through with an industrial groan into the future that awaited their arrival.
It was either war or hatred they drove into, but it was a future of some sort nonetheless, and when cars and other wheeled things went into the future, they went into the future with hope. A hope that things would be different, or a hope that they would make them different. One way or another, the cars passed by, momentarily caught in my present where I would consider them thus and then let them slip out through the corner of my eye.
All this while, I was only seeing ahead, I wasn't looking, I wasn't watching. But now, I watched because I could see a dull amber glow come on amongst the banyan's leaves, and there was light suddenly as it blossomed steadily to become white, whiter, and soon, the blackness around it was gone. The monster was gone from my world, and the dark green of the leaves became discernible from even this distance, even though they possessed the penalty of thieving from the brilliance of man and were tinged with dirty orange.
No matter, though: let there be light, said man, and there was light. God, I knew, would have been taken aback at that moment because man had usurped him, brought in a darkness upon himself that only he could save himself from, and the need for godliness was no more. He was his own anti-particle, a bringer of light and in its shadow, a vast darkness, a creator and destroyer of worlds and worlds—trapped between the two layers of a consciousness that was turning in on itself.
Further down the road, there was a bridge, a flyover, and it was painted entirely blue. Like the lamppost, it reminded of something else other than itself, a representation that so far away from the real so as to be entirely different, a nature removed by Sputnik as much as to be art. The construction reminded of a sea I had seen somewhere, either beyond the shores near my home one night or on a television scream, a sea of orange and pink and blue and yellow and cyan and black like the contents of a lava lamp spewed on a sheet of Alamogordo glass, its bomb-hewn surface gently breathing radiation.
Tens of lampposts flanked its long, serpentine body, and even though some of its scales peeled away with a nostalgic redolence, I thought it was absolutely beautiful. Maybe because I also thought it was human, the way it breathed, the way it swallowed, digested and spat out, the way it stood still between the past and the future, basking in the glory of its creator that was also man.
My environment was not of divinity's making but of its defiance’s, a new formless world ridden with confusion and scepticism, full of windows that opened into walls and doors that opened onto the ceiling, but still filled with people trying to fix things. A mound of clay that was still slightly wet even after the child's hands had massaged it into an ugly lump.
There was hope, a hope that the day bridges would be taken for granted, the day lampposts would be turned off to make way for an equalizing darkness, the day I would walk amongst the tress and the forest's animals and birds and not find the raging wheeled in my presence, man would regret what would have befallen him by then, a world bereft of his intelligence and a world of surrender.
There was hope that the day man learned of his antithetical character to divinity and the destructive deck waiting to be dealt between his five fingers, man would also learn he could chase god away from his kingdom and fashion in the beast's place a throne for himself. There was hope that man would sit upon that throne.
Showing posts with label description. Show all posts
Showing posts with label description. Show all posts
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Charter city
Moran is a creation of mine, a massive, albeit fictitious, city that functions as a dump of my imagination. Anything I write that doesn't find a place elsewhere finds itself chamfered to fit within its walls. There's science fiction, too, hidden beneath layers and layers of magic - which I tend to desist and instead reconfigure as something scientific. The following is only an archive of the most basic ideas surrounding the city. If you think you could make a story out of something, feel free. It's an OpenSource city.
Creation
The walls of Moran descended almost the length of a league before quickly plunging into the dark-brown soil of the Peruhn marshlands. Its once-white walls now sported stains of ochre that rivulets of dirt and grime carried down daily from the lifeless ramparts. Of course, that was only to the north, wherefrom assaults in the city's recent history had been all but absent, while the other three quadrants remained heavily and persistently manned hour after hour, a clear signal to the hardy settlement's neighbours about its attitude.
The city itself began a hundred yards from the superstructure, the concentric proclivity of its roads emerging as one moved centripetally. Not surprisingly, they also designated the formal contours of wealth accumulated by those living in the quarters flanking them, as if emanating from the quatral mines at the heart of the city. The metal itself was precious simply because it weighed almost nothing but could resist damage for periods much longer than a blade of steel.
Administration
Halfway between the innermost ring and the outermost row of soldiers' lodgings toward the southwest, the sprawling ministerial conclave housed the Moranian senate, called the Padun, and the council's meeting chambers. A short but rather bloody 700-year old history had ensured that power within Moran didn't rest in the hands of one man or woman, but a group that was somehow always skilled enough to disrupt daily life but conduct wars with clinical precision.
At this juncture, it becomes necessary to understand the city's design for what it is: with the slaves working at the mines at the center of the city, the necessity for them to pass into the more affluent areas becomes eliminated, in effect making Moran a huge prison populated by hundreds of thousands. At the same time, before condemnation is heaped upon the ministers, it must also be noted that Moran was, overall, a traders' establishment. If not for the quatral, there was no reason for such numbers of people to settle down next to a marshland.
Now, the members of the council, known collectively in common parlance as Dryjhna, "the veiled ones", were sixteen men, women and eunuchs, in no fixed numbers, who presided over the goings-on of the city. Although all of them effectively represented the merchants, the blacksmiths, and the marketeers of the city, the relevance of a ruling council as such became significant only in the face of pestilence and/or war. The first priority was to regulate the export and price of the quatral, and quick to follow was the sustenance of an ambition to forge an empire around the only quatral mines on the entire continent.
Politics
Moranians had rivals everywhere. The harbor on the southern tip of the city serviced a bay that banked the smaller Borean tribe and a colony of the much-more formidable Tarthenal, a race of barbaric warriors who had settled down on the continent more than two millennia past, the building of Moral thus only serving to spurn them. Even though trade flourished between the three, diplomatic relations were cold with no solution in sight. The Tarthenal wanted the Moranians to go; the Moranians wanted the Tarthenal to leave them alone.
Toward the east and the northeast, the Me'avulo Empire laid claim to all the lands, including the Karp mountain range that rent the kingdom in two. Ruled by the Lord Kulpath, the kingdom was passive in every way and, consequently, relations with the Moranians were peaceful. However, despite the monarchic polity, Lord Kulpath ruled in the name of the deity called Nuhe, notorious on the continent itself for the rumored cannibalistic rituals and other ritualistic excesses surrounding its worship, Nuhevin. Of course, these were all practices keenly guarded.
On the northern front of the landmass were the remains of the Shattered Dwellings, a mysterious stretch of rubble and hubris that seemed to all have been blasted to the ground by unimaginable forces, for the pillars that still stood seemed of immense girth and even greater resilience. Swathing an area of almost 2,000 leagues to a side, the vast rectangle reeked of godliness and immortal conflict. However, a more important cause for concern presented itself in the form of the Dwellings' destruction: who? And how?
More soon to follow...
Creation
The walls of Moran descended almost the length of a league before quickly plunging into the dark-brown soil of the Peruhn marshlands. Its once-white walls now sported stains of ochre that rivulets of dirt and grime carried down daily from the lifeless ramparts. Of course, that was only to the north, wherefrom assaults in the city's recent history had been all but absent, while the other three quadrants remained heavily and persistently manned hour after hour, a clear signal to the hardy settlement's neighbours about its attitude.
The city itself began a hundred yards from the superstructure, the concentric proclivity of its roads emerging as one moved centripetally. Not surprisingly, they also designated the formal contours of wealth accumulated by those living in the quarters flanking them, as if emanating from the quatral mines at the heart of the city. The metal itself was precious simply because it weighed almost nothing but could resist damage for periods much longer than a blade of steel.
Administration
Halfway between the innermost ring and the outermost row of soldiers' lodgings toward the southwest, the sprawling ministerial conclave housed the Moranian senate, called the Padun, and the council's meeting chambers. A short but rather bloody 700-year old history had ensured that power within Moran didn't rest in the hands of one man or woman, but a group that was somehow always skilled enough to disrupt daily life but conduct wars with clinical precision.
At this juncture, it becomes necessary to understand the city's design for what it is: with the slaves working at the mines at the center of the city, the necessity for them to pass into the more affluent areas becomes eliminated, in effect making Moran a huge prison populated by hundreds of thousands. At the same time, before condemnation is heaped upon the ministers, it must also be noted that Moran was, overall, a traders' establishment. If not for the quatral, there was no reason for such numbers of people to settle down next to a marshland.
Now, the members of the council, known collectively in common parlance as Dryjhna, "the veiled ones", were sixteen men, women and eunuchs, in no fixed numbers, who presided over the goings-on of the city. Although all of them effectively represented the merchants, the blacksmiths, and the marketeers of the city, the relevance of a ruling council as such became significant only in the face of pestilence and/or war. The first priority was to regulate the export and price of the quatral, and quick to follow was the sustenance of an ambition to forge an empire around the only quatral mines on the entire continent.
Politics
Moranians had rivals everywhere. The harbor on the southern tip of the city serviced a bay that banked the smaller Borean tribe and a colony of the much-more formidable Tarthenal, a race of barbaric warriors who had settled down on the continent more than two millennia past, the building of Moral thus only serving to spurn them. Even though trade flourished between the three, diplomatic relations were cold with no solution in sight. The Tarthenal wanted the Moranians to go; the Moranians wanted the Tarthenal to leave them alone.
Toward the east and the northeast, the Me'avulo Empire laid claim to all the lands, including the Karp mountain range that rent the kingdom in two. Ruled by the Lord Kulpath, the kingdom was passive in every way and, consequently, relations with the Moranians were peaceful. However, despite the monarchic polity, Lord Kulpath ruled in the name of the deity called Nuhe, notorious on the continent itself for the rumored cannibalistic rituals and other ritualistic excesses surrounding its worship, Nuhevin. Of course, these were all practices keenly guarded.
On the northern front of the landmass were the remains of the Shattered Dwellings, a mysterious stretch of rubble and hubris that seemed to all have been blasted to the ground by unimaginable forces, for the pillars that still stood seemed of immense girth and even greater resilience. Swathing an area of almost 2,000 leagues to a side, the vast rectangle reeked of godliness and immortal conflict. However, a more important cause for concern presented itself in the form of the Dwellings' destruction: who? And how?
More soon to follow...
Monday, 24 January 2011
A posse ad esse!
Any reality is better than this one.
Nebula had lifted early, his sanguine underbelly hoisted with the rising currents of this cauterized morning. The blue and green rays of light sprang through the miasma of constriction, vacillating between some vague yellow of progress and another pink proclivous of preservation, infinite lines bent around a myriad wrong choices and half as many right ones, bastard bubbles of turbulence surfacing here and there, intermittently. I turned away, shielding my windows with two vulcanized tentacles that seemed to have prostituted their comfort for subconscious pleasure; despite the desuetude, they stiffened in a trice to their embryonic vigour.
Smoke was soon at hand, seeking some sign of a susurration, some sedulous sweep of season over my stirring silhouette. I was a weak guest, a mannequin doomed in the confines of her hospitality to announce prowess, to proclaim achievement, to provide attention, to attain perfection, the convolution conspicuous for everyone to contemplate on, for my soul to smoulder under, for in the absence of fight, I am slave - united not by blood to some ancient sinew of perseverance but by endurance to a thew of rebellion; unfortunately, the cerise fruit needed years to ripen, to turn chartreuse. Until that spell conceded, I could and would survive in that receptacle of patience, walled in by a past fecund with enlightenment. Also, coffee, fulminated.
Propaganda occluded, with errorless aplomb and occupation, every orifice of audacious idiocy in the abode, a wild lope across the thousand tiles leaving a spoor of precipitous overawe assured by augmented obeisance or a reservoir of obloquy accrued by authority, all so voluptuously asinine as to leave some Communist speaker tower somewhere horribly jaundiced. A momentous blow to the occiput being the cause, so astounding was the devotion to routine that all the reproofs of religion unduly lolled forgotten under mountains of conciliatory atrocities, held by the throat in the throes of commitment.
Mansuetude was marked the hour of the coming of Sister, a distant vengeance stained on the blunt side of a knife, dried like dead blood, and it was dusk. Any reality, was it prophesized, to have been better than this, for in this hour the verdict is altered: she is the first among equals and second to none. Nefariously humbling was the spirit encumbering my desuetude shoulders – as had advanced the quick night. I suddenly found myself rapt on the other end of the swing of time, nay, a pendulum, and all was reset, for what had commenced with putative note now had crescendoed with palliative counterpart. Servabo fidem! Hic sunt leones! A posse ad esse!
A posse ad esse! A posse ad esse!
Notes
The above is intended to be a work of surrealist creative writing. Each paragraph describes a different time of day, different people, different objects, different conflicts - all at the same time. Feel free to interpret, to deduce, to infer, to be offended even.
Nebula had lifted early, his sanguine underbelly hoisted with the rising currents of this cauterized morning. The blue and green rays of light sprang through the miasma of constriction, vacillating between some vague yellow of progress and another pink proclivous of preservation, infinite lines bent around a myriad wrong choices and half as many right ones, bastard bubbles of turbulence surfacing here and there, intermittently. I turned away, shielding my windows with two vulcanized tentacles that seemed to have prostituted their comfort for subconscious pleasure; despite the desuetude, they stiffened in a trice to their embryonic vigour.
Smoke was soon at hand, seeking some sign of a susurration, some sedulous sweep of season over my stirring silhouette. I was a weak guest, a mannequin doomed in the confines of her hospitality to announce prowess, to proclaim achievement, to provide attention, to attain perfection, the convolution conspicuous for everyone to contemplate on, for my soul to smoulder under, for in the absence of fight, I am slave - united not by blood to some ancient sinew of perseverance but by endurance to a thew of rebellion; unfortunately, the cerise fruit needed years to ripen, to turn chartreuse. Until that spell conceded, I could and would survive in that receptacle of patience, walled in by a past fecund with enlightenment. Also, coffee, fulminated.
Propaganda occluded, with errorless aplomb and occupation, every orifice of audacious idiocy in the abode, a wild lope across the thousand tiles leaving a spoor of precipitous overawe assured by augmented obeisance or a reservoir of obloquy accrued by authority, all so voluptuously asinine as to leave some Communist speaker tower somewhere horribly jaundiced. A momentous blow to the occiput being the cause, so astounding was the devotion to routine that all the reproofs of religion unduly lolled forgotten under mountains of conciliatory atrocities, held by the throat in the throes of commitment.
Mansuetude was marked the hour of the coming of Sister, a distant vengeance stained on the blunt side of a knife, dried like dead blood, and it was dusk. Any reality, was it prophesized, to have been better than this, for in this hour the verdict is altered: she is the first among equals and second to none. Nefariously humbling was the spirit encumbering my desuetude shoulders – as had advanced the quick night. I suddenly found myself rapt on the other end of the swing of time, nay, a pendulum, and all was reset, for what had commenced with putative note now had crescendoed with palliative counterpart. Servabo fidem! Hic sunt leones! A posse ad esse!
A posse ad esse! A posse ad esse!
Notes
The above is intended to be a work of surrealist creative writing. Each paragraph describes a different time of day, different people, different objects, different conflicts - all at the same time. Feel free to interpret, to deduce, to infer, to be offended even.
- Most of the words in the second paragraph, commencing with "Nebula...", place a stress on the alveolar ridge when they're pronounced - making it sound reinvigorating and aggressive when read aloud (alveolar plosive, dental plosive, uvular trill).
- The first line of the third paragraph has an obvious alliteration in the first line.
- The second line of the third paragraph has an alternating alliteration ("announce prowess, proclaim achievement...").
- The whole of the third paragraph is built to reduce the stress placed on the alveolar ridge, instead diverting the tip of the tongue to the alveolar process of the lower mandible (alveolar fricative).
- The fourth paragraph involves frequent usage of the phonetic alphabet that describes the pronunciation of the word "awe" (/ɔ:/).
- The penultimate paragraph ("Mansuetude was...") contains a prosaic acrostic - with an ambivalent dedication to a friend - as well as completes the chronological cycle begun in the second paragraph.
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