Filed under: Flu, Pandemic, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Communion of Dreams, Darnell Sidwell, excerpt, fire-flu, flu, influenza, jim downey, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Llywelyn the Last, pandemic, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, writing
Part of a scene from the chapter I posted an excerpt from a week or so ago. Context: at this site, when news of a pandemic flu has just broken, and governments are attempting to stop its spread with a variety of travel restrictions. If you’ve read Communion of Dreams you may find a connection here.
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Darnell couldn’t help himself, he turned and looked at the monument as well. He knew that it was of modern origin, but it felt as though it were ancient, like the sacred standing stones found all over Wales. A dark grey granite, mottled across the surface. It wasn’t very wide, perhaps just a meter or so. It was four or five times as tall, with the upper portion like a smoothed-over pyramid.
“This is where hope died,” said a man’s voice beside him.
Darnell looked at the man. He was shorter than Darnell, about the same age. Wearing workman’s clothes, a simple flat-brimmed hat. “Then why come here? Why now?”
“I dunno,” said the man, shaking his head slightly. “I just felt … drawn here.”
Darnell nodded. “You’re local?”
“Yes, jus’ outside of town. Family farm.” The man looked at Darnell, seemed to make a decision. “Look, iff’n you need a place to stay … you know, for the time being … you can come an’ stay with my family.”
Darnell considered the man. “This isn’t where hope died. It still lives in you and all the decent people here.”
The man looked uncomfortable with this praise. “I dunno about that. But if you need a place …”
“I’ll be fine. But you – you and your family need to prepare. I know about these things – trust me on this. Hard times are coming, you may need to hunker down on your own for a while.”
The man shook his head. “No mister. If hard times are coming like you say, then we’ll all need each other that much more. You’re welcome to stay, if you don’t have someplace of your own to go to.”
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Jim Downey
Filed under: Humor, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Communion of Dreams, Facebook, humor, jim downey, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writer's block, writing
A friend posted this little aphorism to my profile on Facebook:
Writer’s block: when your imaginary friends refuse to talk to you.
My response:
Hmm. Pithy, but not sure I agree.
For me, being blocked isn’t about the technical stuff – dialog, description, understanding motivations. That’s all pretty straight-forward.
Rather, it tends to happen when I am trying to see the whole arc, and how a particular scene will fit into the developing narrative. There’s always a balance between knowing that you want to get from point A to point B on the ‘map’ of your story, and then working on the scene-by-scene movement. It’s been described as being like driving at night: you may know your destination a 100 miles away, but your headlights only illuminate the quarter-mile of the road ahead at a time. Being blocked is like having your headlights fail.
Jim Downey
Oh, and if you’re not at least following me or the Communion of Dreams page on Facebook … well, you should. I’m obviously brilliant and share a lot of interesting links and observations about the world there. Just think of what you’re missing! 😉
Filed under: Architecture, Art, Augmented Reality, Connections, General Musings, movies, SCA, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: art, blogging, bookbinding, Chrissie Iles, Communion of Dreams, Double Negative, Doug Pray, Grinnell College, jim downey, John Bowsher, LACMA, Legacy Bookbindery, Levitated Mass, Louis Zirkle, Michael Heizer, Moon, movies, Paint the Moon, SCA, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Wikipedia, writing
I finally got around to seeing this the other day, and I have been thinking about it ever since:
* * *
I first heard of Michael Heizer in a sculpture class in college, sometime in the late 1970s. Well, that I remember. It’s entirely possible that I had seen some coverage of his work in the press before then. But my professor got me thinking about how sculpture defined space both by physical presence and absence, and I know that it was then that I became aware of Heizer’s work. I didn’t realize it at the time, but his basic concepts would manifest in my life in many ways, showing up in my interests in martial arts, book design, even writing.
* * *
In the movie, John Bowsher (then the Project Manager for Levitated Mass at LACMA) says this:
His ideas are incredibly simple, when you pare it all down to just its physical nature, it’s really quite simple, and you see it again and again in his work. To achieve that degree of simplicity is like, almost the hardest thing in the world to do.
* * *
Not being there when your opponent strikes.
Drawing the eye to the empty space.
Allowing the reader to fill in the suggested, but missing, description.
Each of these engages and enlightens in ways that no amount of force, or color, or detail ever could.
* * *
Chrissie Iles, Curator at the Whitney Museum, talking about Heizer’s Double Negative in the movie:
Micheal Heizer makes you aware of space and your relationship to space and how you move through space,the role of the sky, the role of the land, beyond what you’re looking at. You have to rethink the nature of who you are physically in relation to what you are walking around inside and observing from a distance and up close.
* * *
We’re not always aware of what we do while we’re doing it, or why. Sometimes, the trajectory of a life is determined by little things, subtle things. Even things which are mssing.
* * *
I finally got around to seeing this the other day, and I have been thinking about it ever since:
Shortly after I had conceived of the idea behind Paint the Moon, I knew that it wasn’t actually feasible. But the idea delighted me. And after some thought, I realized why: it was taking the principles of Michael Heizer’s art — of paring down art to the very simplest, physical elements of experience — and going one step further. Remove the physical object altogether, and replace it with pure experience, pure concept. Hence my description of the project as a “collective lyric fantasy”.
You can’t see the artifact of that project at a museum. There is no massive boulder to walk under, or a negative space in the desert to encounter.
But there is the Moon overhead, and the memory of a moment in time.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, excerpt, Habren, jim downey, Lydney Roman temple, River Severn, Roman, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, writing
It’s been a few months. Have another taste, from the chapter of St Cybi’s Well that I am currently writing (meaning that this is very much just a rough draft, subject to change or deletion). Links added for your amusement.
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“Here’s your fish,” said the girl as she placed the basket down in front of him. “Will ya be needin’ anything else, then?”
Darnell looked down at the golden planks of Haddock and the pile of chips. Then back to the girl. “I think that’ll do it. Thanks.”
She nodded, turned and went back through the small chippy, which was still mostly empty, it being before the usual lunchtime. Her amber hair bobbed as she walked, and that jogged a memory in him. The memory of a dream he had had the night before. He had stayed at a little inn not far from the River Severn in Gloucester, and had eaten in the small pub there. While he sipped his ale, waiting for his dinner, he had read about the history of the inn, and the legend of the river’s name. That legend had evidently fueled his dream.
It was a strange dream. A real dream, during real sleep, but with … echoes … of the ‘dream’ he had experienced earlier in the day at Stonehenge.
He was standing on a high hill, looking down at what must have been the Severn, watching the bore surge coming up the estuary. Just behind him was a great temple, classical in design and almost new, but empty save for himself and the old man. The air still held the fragrance of burnt herbs and offerings, banners and ribbons still fluttered from standards marking some kind of ritual path down the hill.
And there, on the bank of the estuary below, was a wide wooden platform, covered in a bright and colorful canopy. It had a score or more of people on it from what he could see, and they were looking down on something on a smaller, lower platform just above the level of the river. The tidal wave swept up the estuary, two meters or more high, and swept over the low platform as the people watched. As it did, there was the distant sound of horns and the deep thrumming of drums.
“That’s it. She’s gone,” said Eleazer, standing next to him, watching the scene below.
“She?”
“Habren. The river has claimed her, and henceforth will carry her name as well as her spirit.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bipolar, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Depression, Discover, General Musings, Mars, Predictions, Ray Bradbury, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Charles Lindbergh, Chris Hadfield, Globe and Mail, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Mars, Martians, predictions, Ray Bradbury, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, technology, The Martian Chronicles, writing
The Globe and Mail has a wonderful essay by Col Chris Hadfield as an introduction to a new edition of Ray Bradbury‘s The Martian Chronicles. Here’s an excerpt:
Bradbury’s Mars offered unlimited new opportunity for exploration and discovery, and expansion of human awareness. Yet virtually every step in the Chronicles, as through much of human history, is a misstep. Mutual ignorance and distrust between normally peaceful peoples leads to violence and death. Greed causes unfathomably bad behavior; uncomfortably reminiscent of gold-hungry Conquistadors in the New World, five hundred years previous. Anger and frustration at the constraints of an intensely bureaucratic society somehow permit the craziest of personal behavior. And the ultimate threat of the destruction of it all somehow draws everyone back into the maelstrom, as if there is no escape. As if we all have a necessity to accept the consequences of everyone’s actions, and take our punishment, no matter how deadly.
Bradbury’s inclusion of the repeated patterns of human behavior, right down to inadvertent genocide caused by external pestilence and unfamiliar disease, makes The Martian Chronicles an ageless cautionary tale. It made me pause and ask myself – could it be possible that we are forever unable to go beyond who we were? Will every great opportunity of discovery be tainted, tarred and eventually destroyed by our own clumsy, brutish hand?
Are we so cursed by our own tragic humanity?
Wrestling with that very question … and depicting it … has been at the heart of my struggle to write St Cybi’s Well. And wrestling with my own demons at the same time has led me into some very dark moments, particularly over the last couple of months.
But there is hope. Here is the closing of Hadfield’s essay:
Their spaceship will be improbable, and the voyage will have been long. But as our first emissaries thump down onto Mars, stand up and look around, they will see who the Martians really are. And with that sense of belonging will come the responsibility and appreciation that has allowed us to flourish and grow on Earth for millennia, in spite of ourselves. By the time we land on Mars and first step onto the dusty, red soil, it will be alien no longer. We will know that we are home. And that may be what saves us.
As chance would have it, yesterday I started working on another conservation project which, in its own way, also affirms how exploration may save us. You’ve probably heard of the author, who had his own struggles and failings. Here’s the title page:
Maybe there’s hope for all of ‘we’, after all.
Jim Downey
Thanks to Margo Lynn for sharing the Hadfield essay.
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Google, movies, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: Alexei Oreskovic, Amazon, art, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Google, jim downey, Matt Weinberger, predictions, Science Fiction, Soli, technology, writing
From the beginning of Chapter 6:
There was just one other person in the room, standing at the side of the holo platform, hands dancing over a control board only he could see.
* * *
Jon looked to the dance Ng’s hands played in the air. “About ready?”
Ng said nothing, but just his fingers tapped a command in the air. Instantly, there appeared an image above the holo projector. It was the artifact, pretty much exactly as Jon remembered it from the first meeting a week ago.
There are many such passages in Communion of Dreams, just part of the augmented reality technology which exists at the time of the book. The basic explanation is that the user is wearing contact lenses which allow one to see a virtual reality overlay on the real world, and then within that overlay you can manipulate virtual objects/controls thanks to hand-tracking. When I wrote the book I figured that such technology would be available eventually …
… and here it is, even sooner than I expected:
Google’s new finger control technology is straight out of a science fiction movie
* * *
The company’s lab for advanced projects showed off new technology on Friday that lets users move their fingers in the air to control objects in the virtual world.
It’s called Project Soli, and it uses radar waves to detect precise finger movements or finger “micromotions.”
The result is something that looks like it’s from a science-fiction movie such as Minority Report or Her, in which characters manipulated virtual objects by gracefully moving their hands or fingers in the air.
Bingo.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Humor, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, cats, entirely too cute, Greystoke, humor, jim downey, kitten, Shakespeare, writing
A drama in three acts.
ACT I
SCENE 1: A bedspread, The Queen Mel in her comfort. A quiet, rainy summer’s day. Enter the young challenger.
ACT II
SCENE 1: A bedspread, The Queen Mel defending her position.
ACT III
SCENE 1: A bedspread, the young Lord Greystoke surveying his new demesne.
Exeunt.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Book Conservation, Connections, Guns, Humor, Writing stuff | Tags: 1776, ballistics, BBTI, blogging, Boberg, book conservation, bookbinding, cats, entirely too cute, humor, Independence Day, jim downey, kitten, predictions, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Remember this little fellow?
That was three weeks ago. Well, here he was about an hour ago, watching me from a rag bag under my workbench in the bindery:
Kinda hard to tell from those pics, but he’s grown and is starting to take on more “cat” characteristics, though he is still *very* much a kitten. And my shins have the scratches to prove it.
* * *
Been busy: Ammo test results in the Boberg XR45-S
Prep & clean-up took most of a full week. But good to get that test sequence done.
* * *
“Spirit of 1776”? It’s a little early to be invoking Independence Day stuff, isn’t it?
Yeah, I know. There’s more than a month before we get to that.
But that’s the number of this blog post, in the running tally which WordPress keeps. Who woulda thunk it?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, cats, Greystoke, jim downey, kitten, Tarzan, trust
He doesn’t even flinch a whisker when I pet him while he sleeps in my lap like that.
That’s trust.
Trust almost beyond what I can even glimpse an understanding of. So innocent. So pure.
Welcome, Lord Greystoke.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Astronomy, Babylon 5, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, Fermi's Paradox, Gardening, Habanero, J. Michael Straczynski, Man Conquers Space, Marketing, Promotion, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Babylon 5, Bad Astronomy, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, Dukhat, feedback, free, gardening, Glen Tickle, Habaneros, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, Kurzgesagt, Laughing Squid, Mother's Day, promotion, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, video, writing, www youtube
Via Laughing Squid, a nice little animated exploration of the Fermi Paradox:
(Does not contain spoilers for Communion of Dreams. 😉 )
* * *
Been a busy week. Part of it was putting in my garden:
(That’s just the tomato plants — the super-hot peppers will go in next week.)
Part of it was a MASSIVE job converting a 16 x 16 storage space into the beginnings of a workshop:
(There’s still lots to do, but man, what a change from being hip-high in grungy boxes and scattered junk!)
And part of it was we have a new addition to the family:
(He’s just 6 weeks old, entirely too cute, bold & adventurous, and tiny. For now. No name yet, though given his grey color I suggested perhaps we should go with Dukhat … )
* * *
I’m just now finishing up the first major revision to the working copy of St Cybi’s Well. I already have a couple of people lined up to take a look at it with fresh eyes, but if anyone else is interested also having a preview, leave a comment and I’ll get in touch with you.
Lastly: for Mother’s Day weekend, the Kindle edition of Her Final Year will be available for free. Check it out, download it, share it with others!
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 