The Ghost in the Cloud

Science fiction is kind of a new genre for me, but one that seemed suited to express some ideas that I was trying to think through. I was watching the series called “Transhumans” and found it to be a very thoughtful and provocative series on science and the many possible options it may present to us for changing us human beings from what we are, improving us so to speak, and making us better, stronger and healthier. Among the many ideas discussed is in this series is the possibility of “uploading” one’s consciousness into cyberspace where one could presumably live forever with increased consciousness and memory. I found the idea ridiculous on one hand, and very disturbing on the other. This story was taken from trying to think through one possible result.

Red Pen

“Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
John Donne

O, Red Pen,

much maligned, mark in blood, the battle ground of
academic paper that would be
black and virgin white.

Expose the naked hypocrisy of my mediocrity;
and break, like Hymen, my dull, dun draft with
the marks of your passion:

bloody me, cut and write on me,
wound me to the edge of Death and
through Perfection, make me free.

Elizabeth and the Cinnamon Buns

Just as I used to tell my son Peter the Pirate stories. I also used to tell my daughter Elizabeth Cottage Stories. This is a story I told her many times although it changed and changed with every telling until it emerged in its final form. I have forgotten many of the stories but they all began the same way, “Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a cottage on the edge of a meadow…” and so forth with a very long string of prepositional phrases that she didn’t seem to mind too much. The vocabulary was a reach for a girl of four, five, six, seven and for however long I would tell them, but then she has an excellent vocabulary to this day and I cannot help but attribute that to a love of words and a love of stories for all the years of telling them to her.



The stories are told with a slow steady pace as if there were all the time in the world to tell it. After all, what is the use of a story if the real reason is not just to be close, to spend a good deal of time together, and to enjoy the comfort of loving and being loved?

Sultan's Farm in Al Wathba, UAE

Recently a good man by the name of Sultan Al Q’basi invited me to go out to his camel farm in the desert in an area of the UAE called Al Wathba. I accepted his invitation and he picked me up in his pick-up truck. His little boy, Ali, was with him and I always enjoy children. What I discovered when we got to his farm was that I was spending time with true Bedouins, modern Bedouins, but real Bedouins. I used to look at the pictures in the National Geographic from years ago. My father had a collection going back to the thirties and the forties. I looked long and hard at those pictures and a strange desire to go to such a place and see such people was in me. I never thought I would actually go and find them.

The Bedouin left those pages long ago and now, in the UAE, they are wealthy and live in fine big Villas in the city, but the men I was with still keep something going of the old culture. They told me they go out to the farm almost every night like this, as we sat around the fire drinking gawa (Arabic coffee made with cardamom), dates, and fresh fruits while waiting for the servants to bring the chicken bryony. It had been a wonderful afternoon of finding out about camels and training falcons. When the Pakistani and Indian attendants brought the bryony on a large silver communal plate, the Arabs taught me how to eat with my fingers by mixing the yogurt in with the rice and chicken and wadding it up into a ball to eat by hand. They offered me a spoon, but I wanted to do it the way they did it. I felt rich. I felt that I was involved in a true experience of their culture that no tourist could ever really get. It was a wonderful sample of Arab hospitality. I loved the falcons, the camels, the kettles and teapots, the food, the night sky and the full moon, The sand and the desert expanding out seemingly forever. Every night? I thought, out here, every night with good friends and plenty of gawa, good manners, and sweet arid desert air. Now that is the good life.

There are so many prejudices Americans have about the Arabs, but my whole experience with them here in the UAE is that these are some of the most peace loving, kind, and generous people I have ever met.

Willow's Dance

Willow danced before the moon
With her arms outstretched and waiting
The moon he saw her dancing there
And took her for the taking.

And said “I’ll dance with you a while,
Until the dawn starts breaking,
And spend the night with you fair maid,
Until the sun starts waking.”

“O may the sun then never wake!
That sun then I’ll be hating.”
“Nay, say not so” replied the moon,
“It is his life I’m taking.

But come and dance with me at night,
Engage in merry making.
And love the night and love the stars,
And take life for the taking."

A Midwinter's Mantra

Midwinter!
And I welcome its coming
for I now know that this is the
Midwinter of my life
when the Sun has sunk as low as
he can get
And can go no lower.

Now all must change;
all must be made new.
I will no longer be that man
sinking into darkness,
but I will feel the new heat of my own rising.
Everyday I will commit to burning
brighter and brighter.

Ah, I will become a pirate and seize what I will!
let no man say it is not mine to take!
for I will take it and
make it mine or die trying,
and this shall be
my new mantra as I journey
into Summer.

Peter the Pirate: Christmas on the Moon

This story is in audio only. Grab a cup of tea and sit with a comforter, watch the snow falling outside, and plan to listen to a story in ballad form for about an hour. It is the third part of the Peter the Pirate St. Nicholas stories. I wrote these over the years as apart of our family's St. Nicholas Day celebrations.

In the first story, Peter the Pirate and the Christmas ship, St. Nicholas comes to Peter's Island and takes Peter away on an adventure on the Christmas ship. The Ship is a magic ship, and like magic ships in other stories, it can fly, not just in the air, but across celestial seas. It is in this first story that we first meet the children who man the crew of the Christmas ship

In the second story, Peter the Pirate and Christmas Island, we find out that these children come from a cursed land called Christmas Island that is frozen in time at one minute until 12 on Christmas Eve so that Christmas can never come! The Children were rescued by St. Nicholas on the Christmas ship, but the Saint, is unable to remove the curse. In this story, Peter travels to that land and finds a way to remove the curse on that Island. The children are finally returned to their parents and Christmas comes to Christmas Island at long last. It became a tradition then that the Children from Christmas Island should crew the Christmas ship thereafter. This third story takes place many, many years later.

For music, I have used clips from various songs by Blackmore's Night. (Awsome music! I hope you check them out.)

Kingstontown

My daughter recently visited her grandparents (my mom and dad) who gave her a bunch of photos that my mom took when she was little. She scanned them and sent them to me. My appologies to my son who appears in only two of the pictures here. If it is of any consolation to him, I have to say that the same thing happened to me. My older sister got all the press since she was the first born, so there are more photos of her than of me in my mother's scrap books and piles of photos.

One of the nice things about cyperspace and digital photos is that it frees room in the closets. I regard these videos as a kind of scrapbooking and journal keeping without all the bulk. I love my blog because I can't lose anything on it and the photos never grow dull or get beat up. It is also cool because I can share my life with people all over the world that I know and love.

Regarding the music in this video, I enjoy Harry Belafonte's singing. Kingstontown kind of conveys the feeling I have of being so far away during this season. The ship, the Rose also called the Surprise is from the movie Master and Commander the Far Side of the world, based on the books by Patrick O'Brian.