Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara is so busy working on his second novel (buy his first one here and my Irish genealogy here) and sending me excerpts that he's stopped sending blog posts for the time being - and who can blame him?
He's also now a full-fledged member of WriteOn Joliet and read this piece to the group last Thursday evening.
For a sneak peek of where Ed's mind (and writing) is heading, read on.
Four Words to
go Forward or Four More to Drop Back
Who are you and what do you want? Whatever it is, now is not a good
time. You see, I’m dropping into my imagination right now, which is trickery
than it might be for you. To me, imagining is like waking from a deep,
disturbing, desolate, dream to find myself in the middle of something that
should be important but doesn’t feel that way because of the incomplete
transition. The sounds are sharper, the colors more vibrant and the consequence
more enduring, but the facts confuse me and I’m unsure which concerns are from
the dream, and which are of my compulsory imaginary life.
Right now, I’m in an office of some type and everyone is angry, which is
why you should go. I can feel your disembodied presence lurking in my mind. I
believe you can perceive my conscious thoughts as clearly as if I said them
aloud, but I can’t hear your thoughts at all but rather I can guess at what you
might be feeling. I can’t tell your gender or specie, but I do know, without
knowing how that you’re here for some sort of story. You’re not going to leave
until it’s told, are you?
But enough about you. Let’s talk about me.
As
always when I’m waking from reality, it takes me awhile to reckon much and I
need clues to reinforce my memory. Still, I can always remember five things
that give me a starting point to fill in the details.
First, I am the famous, one and only, Ed Calkins. Really? You’ve never
heard of me? I am the soul and creation of the most prolific novelist of all
time, and thou that author, the Goddess, never realized it, I am the true
meaning of her work. True, I did exist before she wrote about me, but my
existence was just a bad excuse for unrealized dreams of world domination. Once
the series was written, world domination seemed unworthy of my greatest.
I won’t judge
you as an ignorant person. I chose to focus on how courageous and honest you’re
being by admitting that. Clearly, you’ve never read any of the novels written
by the Goddess who crafted the ‘Bryony’ series; something you should be doing
now instead of haunting a mixed up mind. That, or you read only the later of
her books and totally missed the point. Perhaps you’re from an earlier time?
Lesser folk might judge you and name you, ‘Ignorant’ or ‘Caveman’, or other
such insulting nick names. I shall think of you as ‘Cah’ the first letters of
‘Courageous and Honest’. But really, Cah, you should leave.
The second thing is that I am ruthless. In saying so, I left out the
word ‘very’ which belongs before the word ‘ruthless’ and should be repeated a
varying number of times depending on the various variances that my mind will verify,
which is way I left the word ‘very’ and all its forms out of my statement. Are
you as confused as I am? Yet right now instead of wondering how best to clarify
my thoughts I am wondering who would trouble with the English language and not
read the Goddess’s novels? To put it plainly. ‘Ed Calkins’ equals ‘ruthless’
times ‘very’ raised to the nth power where n is the variable representing
‘situation’. By rights, I should name that variable ‘s’, but I don’t want to
come across as a nerd.
The third thing is simple but center to my existence. Newspaper delivery
is important. If it weren’t for the need for newspapers to find their
customers, I would simply not exist. Don’t waste too much time I that as I’ll
circle back to it.
Fourth
and final is that I have many wives all over the times and places of the planet
and will continue to marry more; many without their knowledge. I’m allowed this
as marrying Ed Calkins is painless and easy as the word ‘yes’. However, I can
only bed one being who is my eternal lover. This is known as the pink machete
rule. Relax! I’ll circle back to that one too.
You’re still here.
Please try to understand. This meeting seems very important and judging
from the fact that everyone else is situated around the large oak desk, and I’m
the only one behind it, I’m supposed to be leading this anger…or at least
answering to it. The meeting seems to have short middle aged men on one side
and attractive young women on the other. Maybe by suppling you with that detail
you’ll forget that I forgot the fifth thing.
Dang! It’s hard to deceive someone intruding in your stream of
consciousness. Believe me, Cah, this is no time for a story.
Ok, I give up. Go ahead with your story.
Wait.
You’re the silent one. I’m supposed to tell this
story? Well, as much as I’d do anything to make you happy, my telling a story
is impossible as it requires me to know a story. I’m sure it you hang around
long enough for my memory to come back I’ll be able to come up with something.
Hey, here’s a better idea. Go to the library and look under ‘Author’ for
‘Goddess’. You’re not going to do that, are you. Ok, I remember Goldilocks and
the Three Bears…most of it. I don’t remember how it starts.
Maybe I supposed to tell the story that’s happening in my imagination
now…just tell it as it happens? Bad idea. Why is the fifth thing I always
remember that I just forgot. The fifth thing is four little details so less
important than the other four that it’s easy to forget but it makes story
narratives a really bad idea. I’m a dyslexic, psychotic, time traveling,
vampire. Cah, none of this is good for you.
The vampire thing…that can be fatal. Forget about biting. Vampires,
especially long enduring ones, are often literally bored to death, and I am the
longest enduring vampire in history. While its truth that those other four
things that I never forget mitigates some of that boredom, empathizing with me
might bore you to death. Time travel is very confusing, and dyslexic makes a
mess of the order of words and numbers, not to mention when words sound similar
(remember the ‘very’ thing) Don’t even get me started on the psychotic thing
which will drive you crazy.
Cah, if you want me to do this, I’ll try, but damn it would be so much
better if you used your library card.
Let me start by describing the room a
little better. It would be a good guess that I’m in Ireland right now…or at
least as I imagine it. The two parties, which seem to be as angry with the
other as they are with me, are leprechauns and merrows.
Stop!
Cah, put the damn digital dictionary down!
I
told you I was dyslexic, which means, if I’m to tell the story with my
thoughts, I have to do it the way I’ve learned to think. I can’t just give you
the background, I have to map it out first. That means I’m going to say things
you can possibly understand, use words you might not be familiar with or even
don’t exist. But I’ll circle back to all of it and explain it better when you
have more contexts. That way, it won’t matter if I forget a detail or two, or
even mix up the order. You’ll have some of the answers to put it right in your
own mind. Besides that, you’ll have perspective of the other narrating
characters to form your own sense of the plot. In that way, you might come to
know the story as well as I do, or even better. You might disagree with me on
what happened. What fun that would be!
Think of it this way. When I was young and as confused as I am right
now, my future self appeared before me and insisted that I memorize forty
words; made me repeat them until I said them all without any mistakes; and
disappeared without explaining any of it. The forty words made no sense, and
some were words I never heard before. Try as I did to remember all of them, I
started forgetting some as I practiced in my head on my way to wherever I was
compelled to go. I found myself in a classroom where final exams where
happening. I had no memory of ever taking a class on the subject, but when the
test appeared on my desk, I realized those words were the answers to the forty
questions. Even the words I thought I forget, when prompted with the question,
I was able to recall. Not everything made complete sense, but I did know a lot
more about forty words. I still flunked, however, as I knew how to say the
words, but didn’t have a clue how to spell them.
Cah, you are in the same position here, expect instead of forty words,
you have four. If you wish to understand the story, you need remember only four
words…Ed Calkins, ruthless, newspapers, wives (or the pink machete rule if you
prefer.) If you want reasons not to understand the story, the four words change
to dyslexic, psychotic, time travel, vampire. Either way, the answers are
before you. The point is, don’t give up just because you don’t understand, I
don’t understand half the stuff I’m thinking either, but I am mapping it out,
and it will all make sense in the end.
But you wanted to know about merrows. For now, I’ll just ask you to
think of them as Irish mermaids with legs.
Together, we’ll look for the next clue, which might be this letter on my
desk.
