Ah, characters ...

It's always interesting to be part way through a draft and have your own understanding of a character do a complete 180. And also to realize that novel is probably going to be a duology - with a third in potentia - assuming I get around to it.

Short on sleep this morning

Headline was "Faced with mortal threat, Pakistan chooses denial", which I read as: "Faced with mortal threat, Pokemon chooses denial"

And then it seemed perfectly sane and logical to wonder, if Pakistan is Pokemon, what is Israel.

Stream of consciousness bit

You know.

Others may guess, stabbing lonely questions into the ever dark. Not you. The only thing relative are relatives. The absolute is you. The absolut, perhaps. A fist into a brick wall. There is a fable-tale about the energy in a brick, you let it loose, enough to shatter cities, but one thrown, just so, through a certain window, would do the trick just the same.

Everyone stopped making sense. People speak, but all words are lies. People act, but they are only marionettes to the unconscious mind within. The squamous depths, and all abysses: inward. All try journeys are inside. To travel in the outer world, to leave one place for another -- to shed a skin! -- and all that's sought is escape. We travel not to find, but to give up, to forget, to flee. The things we seek to lose more important than those we find.

And you know the secret of the Great Chiefs is that they need not be real to have influence. And you know this is the secret of God, who is the wizard in Oz. Only as real as dreams. Only as true as beauty. Metaphors carry us, wind-swept, but soon we exit, needing not to drown, hopping, and you know

what we hope to, hop to, and your silence, in your silence, is (the) only hope.

Another mythology ramble

I'm currently poking at a novel involving angels, demons, and exorcism. The one mentioned in the previous post, really. It brought to mind my other issue with mythology in novels/tv series/etcs.

Generally, you tend to get All The Stories Are True. Or at least there's some basis for them. And guess what? The characters learn The Truth(tm) and things end however they end. But in the real world, no one myth is inherently superior to any other. And, in the real world, no one finds out they are Right.

So no one will in this novel. The MC had the working hypothesis of his parents to go by, others will be added as the novel goes along, but which -- if any -- contain a grain of truth, and what that grain is, will remain unknown. It won't stop Aiden from deciding one theory IS the right one, just not ensure that he is actually correct.

The Last Easter

People were crying in the streets
mom's hand closing the blinds
slapping me light across the face

"I told you to keep it closed,"
she whispered; her eyes were like mine
when I saw the monster in the closet

I'd never seen mom afraid before
but it somehow made me strong
like chocolate makes me happy.

"Why is everyone sad, mommy?"
"They aren't ... sad," she said
and laughed, clown-like, not funny.

"They're hurting themselves!" I said
because I could hear the moaning
and screaming and all the loud shouting.

(Mom would have told us to be quiet,
sternly, by now; their moms must be
screaming to, or maybe not afraid)

"The Lord has returned," mom said,
and: "An actual Good Friday."
Her smile odd, crooked, sad. Funny.

"Mommy?" I said. I knew about Jesus
from Sunday School, and how he'd return,
but everyone sounded wonderfully afraid.

"We all hope He has rose-coloured glasses,"
mom said, nodding to the door outside.
"Your father says only the heathens will be spared."

"Where is daddy?" I said. "Is he okay?"
Mom just stared at the door, holding
my hand too tight, saying nothing.

"I guess this means no Easter Bunny?" I said.
"I liked chocolates," when mom looked at me.
And she laughed and laughed and laughed

And she hugged me, so tight, as if I'd break,
or she would, and she laughed again and
told me she loved me, so much, and didn't let go.

Mythology and novels

Several years ago (in the wilds of 2005) I turned a poem into the start of a novel. The result was Waking The Dead, which was about the dead waking, gods, mythology, and other things. One of the reasons I began it was to make use of a mythology -- in this case a blend of Sumerian and Haitian -- that wasn't common in modern urban fantasy. Generally without exception the cosmology is either:
A) Christian
B) Native American
C) Ireland/Fae/what have you
D) Japanese of late

And it bugged me that some of those were taken as flat out 'this is the order of things'. So I did Waking The Dead, and decided to avoid making use of any Big/Trendy mythology as the way of things in any future novel.

That was then. This, however, is now. And 20K into one novel, the plot of another -- one involving angels, demons, and a passage from Genesis -- is saying hello and refusing to shut up. Mind you, my take on all of it is decidedly somewhere left of normal, but it is still a very odd thing. And shall be interesting to see what comes of it.