Vincent stared at the back of the caerulean blue cell phone on the tripod. He did not blink. The video picked up the slight tic from the corner of his green right eye. There was a crust of dried blood on his bottom lip. His lips were tightly closed now, giving a droop to the otherwise vacant expression most were accustomed to. The single drop of sweat that meandered from the forehead down the nose, a bead forming at the tip, until it dropped into the three-day growth of his ginger beard.
The lawyer sighed. The veins of her left hand were bulging from the fist she hid under the table.
“Look, I don’t have all day. Speak. Now.”
Vincent heard the exclamation point. It came into focus in front of him, a dark royal red. He felt its disdain. It shimmered over his lawyer’s head, fuzzing with golden tufts that faded away in a glowing haze. A breeze entered the sealed windowed room, a soft hum that buzzed into a howl. Vincent felt a chill from his sopped chin, moving inch by inch along his jawline.
He heard blackbirds calling from behind her, off in the distance. They took off as one, flying just past her shoulder. The three landed on a dead tree, perching on the same branch. They cawed intermittently, a basso screeching that pounded inside Vincent’s head.
“Spppeeee,” cawed one.
“eeekkkk,” another.
“Nooooooooowwwwwwwwwww,” came the third.
Vincent looked up and out of the ceiling; the sky was swirling. His eyes were blistered by the refracted light of the dying sun as night came to claim everything.
Vincent did not move. He felt his hands merge into the arms of the chair, his back becoming an extension of the wood and fabric he sat on. He was able to move his eyes but wished he hadn’t.
The biggest of the blackbirds, beak extended, leaned in. Its breath was hot, smelling of the dead flesh it fed upon. Black eyes. Vincent felt the eyes eating him.
“I give up,” the lawyer said, turning to guard. “I’m going for a smoke.”
She looked up at the camera in the corner. “He’s not to be spoken to until I return.”
Turning off the camera, she got up from the table, pushing the chair back under. It screeched like the birds to Vincent. The chair was another carrion.
The door buzzed to let her out. She stopped part of her wanting to return to Vincent, put her hand on his shoulder, shake him, pat him, slap him. The urge to punch him propelled her to the locked door.
A buzz. The lawyer was able to open the door. She turned, her instinct to go back, get him to talk. Her feet chose a different path. The door slammed behind her.
She left him staring up at the ceiling of the room.
Please check out the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge #AtoZChallenge a-to-zchallenge.com
The annual Blogging from A to Z Challenge begins tomorrow, April 1st, 2023. For those of you unfamiliar with it, those joining in are asked to create 26 posts during the month. The title of each day follows the alphabet, with April 1st using the letter A, the next post starting with B, and so on, with Z falling on April 30th.
All those in the challenge are asked to post a reflection on May 1st.
I started this blog in 2011, joining my first A to Z that year. I’ve been intermittent with my commitment to the challenge since then. It has been a couple of years since my last foray. This is also a very last-minute entry into the challenge. We were supposed to do this much earlier in March.
Procrastinators unite tomorrow?
What To Do?
For those of you who have followed me, you know I am partial to a serialized story as opposed to one-and-done. This year will be no exception. I will do my editing best for brevity, but we also know that that promise can easily go out the window depending on the day’s writing.
So, Rum Ball, please…or Black and White Cookie (preferred):
Wrote you a love letter
Then tore it up to bits
Took the shredded pieces
Threw them in a pit
Setting it on fire
Watched the passion glow
Each piece flared from another
The flames of nevermore
Wrote you a love letter
Knew I would not send
Wrote you a love letter
Sealed it with my blood
Stood there with the ashes
As they crumbled away
The wind sent some flying
Forever out of reach
The seasons took the rest
Let it slip away
Walked away in silence
Left behind a stain
Wrote you a love letter
Knew I would not send
Wrote you a love letter
Words etched in my head
Wrote you love, and
Sealed it with my blood
Woman meets Woman. Women split. Misdeeds and transmogrifications happen. Women become one. ℵ2+. Time is a douche. Love rules. The end.
What was this all about, Stu?
In the end, Love. You may argue this, but for me it was about Love. There are many interpretations of Love the emotion and Love the word. Then there is a sliding scale for every iteration. Love astray. Love together. Love.
Add Love with: Existentialism + Nihilism + Greek Mythology + Block Universe Theory + Quote: “Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.” by Kurt Vonnegut + Quote: “Time is an illusion” by Albert Einstein + Time Conceptualization & its relation to what we’ve been experiencing in the last year plus + the quotes I used, all picked out before I began the challenge + Philosophy + Physics + Math + Assorted Doodads =Liquid Time.
No animals were harmed during the writing of Liquid Times. No drugs were a part in its evolution.
My experience(s) with Liquid Time
I put in a shit-load of research, playing around with (and still hating) the formatting of the “new” WordPress Block Editor. And, of course, writing the darn thing. I gave myself many stress headache moments, simply because I am a Pantster and write my A to Z post ON THE DAY as the letters roll by. I usually have Story Beats/Story Spine floating somewhere in my mind, but as the characters & plotting develops, I may end up in a whole different direction. 2019s A Car In the Woods (Science Fiction/Horror/Thriller, 27 posts) is a prime example of that. I originally planned 26 separate flash fiction pieces on the theme. By D, I dropped that idea as it became a larger whole story.
So it goes.
Liquid Time was unlike any other of my A to Z’s in that I had NO CLUE what to do with it. Time has been on my mind for a long while. That was the starting point, and my meandering tangent mind went where it went. I also knew that this needed a very different approach in how I tackled the subject(s). Plus, I needed to really challenge myself in writing style(s); I started to feel I was getting in a semi-rut. As I was discovering the story along the way, I pushed myself even harder.
Tales of Tale Spinning will bring you to a listing of my previous A to Z worlds. You’ll get what I mean.
As to the overall mechanics of Liquid Time:
The color blocking (or with specific words/concepts) are all related to the normally accepted meanings of those colors. Slight variations occurred as needed: Red could be anger or danger. The context around it drove the interpretation. The colors themselves will most likely need to be excised if this is to be taken further. I am thinking on what to change and how.
I choose to work with the line verifications (left-middle-right) with a variety of thoughts: POV change, dialogue without the “she said/he said” designations of who was speaking, change in the style (prose vs pinprick, almost bullet-like, actions/thoughts), free-form poetics, and one or three other things. You might realize that I do not like conjunctive words and did my best to minimize their use.
The formatting on this drove me crazy. The Block Editor of WordPress (great horror story title) that I hate with a passion. The inability to highlight one word or idea without the entire block changing really threw me for a frustrated loop. Same with adding color to one word/name. Couldn’t do it as a whole.
A lot of my “choppy” lines were forced on me due to this not being really user friendly. Probably the only positive out of this whole formatting mishigas.
As to the rest: I know that Liquid Time was challenging to read. I did my best to reincorporate things I threw down. The big one I never came back to was the Snow/Ice demoness from the first of Janaculum. If I DO return to LT, she will definitely play a bit of a larger role, in a way. Does the letter K connect anything for you?
Also, If you’ve read my previous work, you should know I’m not a big fan of spelling everything out. I enjoy books where I have to dig to get it or let my interpretation be and move on. Cloud Atlas, Ulysses, and other books anyone?
I saw by stats that I had a decent readership with a larger reach than last year. Yet, I had a HUGE drop in comments after the first five posts. I know I blew it on my blog hopping and I plan to rectify it. Liquid Time was too much, at Times. Pun intended. So, pretty disappointing, but as Lou Reed sang at the end of Perfect Day: “You’re going to reap just what you sow.”
Bottom Line: will I be back for next year’s A to Z? I plan to, but who the heck knows what the frig I will be up to in 2022. So, most likely yes. Maybe. Probably. We’ll see.
Time will tell.
What’s A to Z April Blogging Challenge Got To Do With This?
Created in 2009 by Arlee Bird, the A to Z Blogging Challenge has united hundreds (thousands?) of Bloggers throughout the Blogaverse. If you blog, you can join & post 26 times during the month of April, beginning on April 1st and ending on April 30th. Sundays “off” for good behavior. I’ve been involved with the challenge since 2011, not participating a few times. I’ve been introduced to many bloggers whom I may never have come across without the A to Z; many I can now call friends. There are too many to link to at the moment. Look at the commenters from April 1st forward on Tale Spinning. That’ll be a good start.
Arlee has had a semi-rotating team of amazing talent surrounding the event(s) and the site(s). They all need a big hand of applause. This year, his co-host team has been: J Lenni Dorner, Zalka Csenge Virág , John Holton, Jayden R Vincente , and Jeremy Hawkins . Please click on their names to visit their blogs. To find the other bloggers who participated:
I am most likely moving Tale Spinning to Blogger by the end of May. I’m in the setting up phase, doing my best so it looks and acts like I’d like it to. Tale Spinning Redux. I’ll announce when the time is right to end my time with WordPress and go back to Blogger. Gotta figure how to link up all of my work here to a new hosting site. Not today. Headache arose just writing that.
“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.” ~ ~ Bertrand Russell
“The Lotus opens. Movement from earth, through water, from fire to air. Out and in beyond life and death now, beyond inner and outer, sense and non-sense, meaning and futility, male and female, being and non-being, Light and darkness, void and full. Beyond all duality, or non-duality, beyond and beyond. Disincarnation. I breathe again.” ~ ~ R. D. LAING
Paris, 16th arrondissement, le restaurant de l’Hôtel sur le toit vide
In every form of communication: “This is a beautiful view. So many beautiful views.”
♁ Ananke is a whisper without sound. She is. (ZV) acknowledges this forever knowledge. They revert to two, standing on a rooftop over Paris, lighting on other vantage points across the universes. They are among the cosmos. Limitless. No boundaries.
There is nothing outside of the box if there is no box to begin with.
Zehara and Valentina are tangible here, as they are elsewhere. Their essences remain connected, corporeal or not. Wrapping arms around the other, foreheads touching, breaths mingling, all lasts infinitely in the fraction of that second. They know the “why here?” before the question forms between them.
“This is where we first met,” they absorb the words in unison. Ananke, Necessitas, Ge, the Mother, allows the countless stars to lighten the darkness.
“As it was meant” fills any void.
The rooftop unfolds as it was: café tables, the mosaic tops iridescent waves of hues of blues and golds balanced on wrought iron Art Deco curlicues, red leather chair seating at the tables and for the chaise lounge settees. Gold thread embroidery traversed the fabric. Fine crystal flutes at the ready filled with sparkling champagne of prime vintage. Vegetarian Aperitifs strategically placed, the colors complimenting one dish to another.
Valentina.
Valentina was the guest of honor at this soiree, lauded for her breakthroughs in Biogenetic Engineering. Every government wanted her. She forced a laugh at every bon mot, listened to and fobbed off the enticements, both scientific and sexual, and was thoroughly bored. Funding was a core ingredient to continue her work. Valentina was tired of being brought out as a gift to be bid on. Exquisite as the champagne was, she only sipped the first hour of the evening away, looking for an opportunity to leave. A spilled drink near her, the endless apologies, cleaning of the stain on her dress that was invented, was her chance. Her chance.
Zehara.
She came late, her entrance marked by the flurry of paparazzi yelling her name, the model of the moment. Zehara was weary of this game, being seen to be seen. She accepted the invitation only with the caveat that this would truly be a closed affair. Champagne in had, Zehara ditched the executive she arrived with, wandering the roof, taking in the panoramic view of Paris. She allowed herself to slink into the shadows, loving the absence of demands. Another was the center of attention. Zehara relished that, for once. But not for long. She grew deathly bored.
Zehara, full glass in hand, was making her way to exit the engagement. In her path was the honoree, surrounded by a pack waiting to eat their way in. She hadn’t paid Valentina much attention, but now. Everything changed for her. The attraction was magnified beyond anything Zehara had experienced before. One step, and Zehara faltered. Valentina took notice. She was in the process of taking in the wonder of Zehara, a rush of empty lust washing away her normal reticent ways, when the champagne made a splash.
They ignored the chaos, walking as far away from the clashing as they could. As they made their way to the roof’s railings, their hands found the others’. A now empty settee caught their eyes. Zehara broke hands, sped to the seating, and turned it so that Paris was fully before them. Hunkering down on the settee, doing their best not to be seen and interrupted, Valentina and Zehara began.
“This is an appreciation, a thank you,” a vibrato from Ananke, primordial personification of compulsion.
(ZV) held themselves tightly. Turning to the manifestation of The Mother
TRANSITION
IS
Time continues to scream
Time continues its fragmented shrinkage
♁ Ananke Is
A wavering, touch like, and Time is stilled
(ZV) is in attendance
Another entity as well
Ananke
Khronos
Time holds them all
Life is sustaining
A mewl of confusionweighs heavy
Something new, for the constant Time
♁ Subvocalizes
we wereONE
Khronos. Ananke.
progenitors at creation
that had existed, is existing, will exist
we emerged self-born
formed the ordered universe(s)
set in our tasks
of Time
of Life
of being the cosmos
Yet
a divergence
an expenditure of Chaos
a swelling of Entropy
an order corrupted
the continuum of Time
became a corruption of Time
destruction amplified
erosion amplified
deaths deaths deaths
fell before their
time
this was Ragnarok
which never was to be gained
the final destruction
was upon ALL
my worlds
my creatures
my planes of existence
I
separate entities
Khronos applied Death
at a rate I could not change
we were in balance
were suppose to be balanced
existed for balance
I was not enough
JANICULUM
“We were created. Z in the Pod. V at control”
Statement
“Yes”
“You mixed with the extreme radiation. A fusion of Life”
“Yes”
“From our meeting?”
“From the first seeds of unbalance”
“To disrupt Time”
“Yes”
“To weaken Time. To permeate Time. To bring Life into Time’s equation.”
“Yes”
“And to bring and emotional sequence that Time never held”
Silence
“Truth: were we ever really in love?”
“Yes”
Quiet is sustained.
The other is still there but not noticed.
“What of you, Gaia? Are you unbalanced? Have you undergone a parallel disrupture?”
Silence
“If we are a counter point for Khronos…we are, yes?”
“Yes”
“What is yours?”
Into the void, the other makes themselves noticed.
Silent Khronos extends to (ZV)
“They are my balance beyond Khronos. You are Time’s balance beyond Ananke.”
“Time is a feature of creation, and the creator remains apart from it, transcendent over it.” ~ ~ James Gleick
EVERYWHEN
♁Ananke
Is witness to all beginnings; to all ends.
The End of All Things rips apart the progenitor with every erasure.
Erasures are Endless.
Endless.
There is nothing to measure.
It is or it is not.
Everything Is.
(☿+♀+☾+♂+♃+♄+♅+♆+♇+☼)+∞³⋝ω
Khronos is a part of the process, as is
Ananke
They were
♁ ⋝ t (⨍⨳⊎∞) =⨿
Khronos upset the balance
The Screams Must Stop
JANICULUM
(ZV) feels the sacred knife from their temple slice into the ethereal-corporal sync they have manifested. They feel a rift, a change, yet pain is of the past, not the present. What comes can not be seen from here. They have been severed from an aspect of themselves that has left the feeling of <.
Only for that time of piercing
A great severing occurred.
They experience the force within them ascend to a higher intensity
What was a standstill finds Khronos waver
Wavered
Khronos meets level meeting level
Balance happens
Khronos identifies the truth
(ZV) shares the truth
Awareness that the blade Ἀστερία bore sliced through the other
“Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.” ~ ~ Mahatma Gandhi
elsEwhen(s)
∃∀
E = GHA (apparent Sun) – GHA (mean Sun)
Entropy exists for all in Time
Khronos encompasses Entropy
Decay, destruction, non-existence
Khronos is the medium
Neither
Striving for or against
yet
All life ends
The stars go Nova
Galaxies are consumed
Universes burn
Dimensions fragment,
Reduced to the dust of the dust
In perpetuity
Obliterations
Happens
(ZV), the Goddess
Blocking the passage of Time
Time works against (ZV)
Ἀστερία fell
The sacred knife
Smeared with her blood
With outstretched arms
In determination to end the madness
A tool in another's hands
She screams the primal scream
Of the universal trauma
Of creation
The blade plunges into
The ooze that has bound
Khronos with (ZV)
As she is torn asunder
Her scream continuesBringing
“Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment. That is what’s real.” ~ ~ Sara Paddison
JANICULUM
The Oracle of the Peak leaps from the outcrop
The sacred knife is raised
Blood smeared from tip to hilt
The Oracle’s descends at the rate of 10-21 seconds, a trillionth of a billionth of a second.
She becomes her own variables, phasing through every who she is/was/might be
Her scream is infinite
At a standstill, the god and the goddess
Clash for control over the other
Seek non-existence for the other
Fight for what is theirs
He was right; they were wrong
They were right; he was wrong
Time hangs in a balance
The scale does not tip
Still, The Oracle of the Peak falls
As she prophesized in dreams
In her dealings with the dead
Seeing the future
Living all of her linear pasts
Breathing through all of her linear moments
Seeing nothing nothing nothing
Of what’s to come of her
She falls, with the sacred knife now in both hands
She screams, with the sacred knife now thrust forward
Ἀστερία
The Oracle of the Peak’s name
Ἀστερία falls, and as she does
The sacred knife plunges into
Prebioticorganic synthesis ooze
Ἀστερία’s screeches fades…
THIS IS NOT
LAB
FLOAT POD
CONNECT
A touch of a thought
Breaks the seal of the trap
The shrieks, set free,
CoalesceThe particles bond
A form arises
Changes pitch and tone
A Goddess, intervenes
They have somewhen to be
“Time is a construction of our consciousness.” ~ ~ Maria Popova
LAB
FLOAT POD CONNEC
O, the delicate keeningBehind the trap of lined lead
Disintegrates unscheduled times
Goddess driven
Pain of particles peeled
Flung
To reform
A new scream
A new scream
A Goddess
Intervenes
(zv) runs hides strikes falters dies repels repulses defeats rejects dies allows checks subjugates overthrows disintegrates rises liberates dies fights dies overcomes dies resists dies resists dies resists resists resists resists
Janiculum
Collision at Janiculum lasts a triennium at a stretch, only to repeat. The god of Time confronts the Time Thief-Violator. Named for elimination, named to never exist. Janiculum, newly reformed, crumbles into broken stone and dust. (ZV) retaliates dividing Time’s ceaseless attacks into fractional fragments, searching for the moments the power is hers for the taking. Nothing lasts while everything continues.
Their confrontation falls into synchronicity across all that falls under Time’s sway. Galaxies perish. Time lines are erased. Different paths begin.
The three plunge to the “end” of Time. To the “beginning” of Time.
There aren’t any boundaries
Space exists. Time is. Necessity is.
The measurement of Time is a construct
Janiculum, a recurrence
The god and the goddess
At a standstill
The Oracle of the Peak has lived and died upon the rocky outcrop
Always remembering
Immobilized, bearing witness
‘now’ compels her mind
The Oracle’s body responds
She draws out the sacred knifefrom the Temple of Alcyeyx
(ZV) crunched, borrowed, were on, lost in, and held Time on/in/between their hands.
They shattered the barriers of Time
Which mended itself, begin anew, restored the orderliness of Time
Only to be reduced to states of constant flux
To begin again
Yet
The disruptions of Time were judged as provocations of the rule of Time
Khronos noticed
Khronos was all the time Time needed.
Khronos was the cosmogony with Ananke
Consort, Equal, Progenitor
Creating the seeds of the universes
Overseen by Time
A roiling blast of primal anger fell
At every interference of Time
Which spanned all beginnings, all ends
via (ZV)
Who did not/will not/won’t back down
At any Time
(ZV) was expansive
For every fall, obliteration, discarnate state of nothing
(ZV) held
Reincarnated, reborn
The ultimate Samsara
The realization of this
Was/is/will be
Spontaneous
Time stood/stands/will become
Still
Just joining in? This is the final Arc/Act/Part of LIQUID TIME, a tale told in 26 posts. Maybe one or two more. Click the link above to take you back to April 1st, 2021, the first “official” posting for the A to Z Blogging Challenge.
Tale Spinning 