Making it Pirate-ey

So not so recently I saw that the Geek and Sundry vlog by Nika Harper spoke about pirates and international Talk Like a Pirate Day. In her vlog she laid down the idea to write a short story about something pirate-ey (it is not a proper word I know... well now it is :-p ) so I decided to see what could be constructed. 

To see her vlog here is the link:

 

So I decided to be a little pirate-ey (see it is a word now)

“Yarr! Har har har!”

The Captain laughed as he stood upon the main deck, his curved blade strapped to his waist, a dark red and black bandana tied to his head. He stood frozen like an ice sculpture for a full five minutes taking in the vista of the sea before him. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath tasting the salt in the air, though there was a strange scent to it; something was not right yet he could not put his finger on it. It was like the scent of pine.

Bah! What did it matter? Any person who tried to tell him otherwise would feel his steel in their gut.

“First mate!”

“Aye Captain?”

“Set course for over yonder shoals!”

“Aye Captain!”

The first mate strode towards the wheel and gripped it, a smile on his face. The Captain knew his first mate was a solid and dependable man, one who had sailed with him for many years. He could never understand why his first mate wore such strange clothes this day – dark breeches and an equally dark jacket over a white shirt, neither cutlass nor pistol festooned his waist and about his head was a ridiculous head band of some striped material tied with the tassel on the side of his head. The Captain turned towards the wheel house and strode over to the first mate, five steps on two small children ran out in front of the Captain.

“Whose urchins are those?”
“Umm your son’s, Captain... Remember?”
The Captain grunted in reply and his eyes took on a slightly glazed look, “Yes... Where... Where is my son?”

“He died last winter, remember? He was in London.”
The Captain’s face softened and tears brimmed quietly in his eyes, a second later he blinked and roared “Arrr! The English!”

The first mate watched his Captain, sadness mixed in with his smile, he would miss this. The Captain turned from the first mate and spied a woman that had just stepped on deck from the dark cabin.

“YOU! Wench! Harlot! Be gone from my deck!”

A woman walked in through the door leading from the drawing room. She wore a severe, dark dress-suit and stared at her brother in disbelief.

“Well I never! Harlot!”

With that she flounced off back the way she had come. Her brother stood upon the large dining room table, a hand-kerchief tied about his head like a bandana and in his hand he brandished a wooden sword carved into the likeness of a pirate’s cutlass. His daughter’s son stood in a dark suit, tie fastened around his head like some headband, the son’s nephew and niece ran around enjoying their adventure even though their own father had died earlier that week. It pained the grandson that the old man could not distinguish the stories he told from the grand stage productions he used to do and the faded tapestry of the old man’s mind.  

But he loved his grandfather nonetheless for the grand adventures he had listened to since he had been a young child. Though his grandfather could not find the light to the bathroom in the dark he could still make one believe they stood upon the deck of a pirate ship.

Harlot indeed.  

His grandfather died a week after his uncle, chasing shadows with his cutlass until his heart gave out. Many people came from all over the world to celebrate the passing of a true story spinner. When the first mate stepped up to the podium to speak about his grandfather his entire speech was forgotten. He simply put his notes down and started to speak.
“Yarrr. Har har har.” 

So make something pirate-ey and keep a weathered eye on the horizon.

Something amazing

Something amazing is within in all of us :-)

Here is another version done by Gavin Aung Than of http://zenpencils.com/

It must have feeling

Another activity that I enjoy is karate, well more martial arts in general. If one wonders how the idea of jumping up and down in angry pajamas while kicking people in the face translates to one of creativity ...

Yahara was once teaching a student about the kata (karate form) called Unsu -

Here is the world champion Luca Valdesi performing said form

- and he said that Unsu must have feeling. No matter what you do Unsu must have feeling.
Bruce Lee had a similar thing to say in Enter the Dragon where he is teaching a student to and says that he must have emotional content.

This idea links to creativity - we need to have emotional content in what we create. Just creating with nothing behind it will have us missing all the "heavenly glory" - we need to have feeling in what we create to be able to create things from the heart. Whether it is a painting or a novel or a statue we must have feeling.

Like Unsu must have feeling. 

Habit of creativity

Writing has to become a habit, a habit of getting down to it everyday or at least almost every single day. Even if it is on three of four different stories or articles or ideas; a habit of writing needs to be created. I know that sometimes getting out of bed can be a chore, or sitting in front of that blank, flashing screen where that small black area marker blinks and blinks at you like some kind of seedy guy looking for a good time in a city's red light district. Or that blank white page that glares at you with ill-formed malice, the page lines burning themselves into the back of your brain like some malignant force. But if the habit is created then the act of writing comes easier, or the act of drawing, painting, creating Photoshop art, we need to cultivate a habit of creativity even if just for ourselves and that small part of sanity that remains after a day of tax returns and bad radio music and memo after memo after memo.

So create the habit of creativity.  

A musing

One of the things I have noticed is that if I neglect my writing then my brain stutters over the words it has to use. They do not flow and I seem to have to re-start my brain and re-work it into a writing mode.

It just goes to show you - do not stop.
Keep writing everyday.
Write anything you can: short stories, long novels, characters, lists, ideas, grammar notes, words of the day. Just keep writing.

I know that there are days your mind feels scraped clean and empty, but if you keep at it you will find the words are there. We just have to put them in the right order.

So I leave that little idea out there in the ether of the World Wide Web - Just keep writing.

And with that I also give you one of the songs from Metal Gear Solid 4 - Old Snake as inspiration:

This one from Super Idiot on Deviant Art
http://supridiot.deviantart.com/

Melodies and tunes and bass; oh my

Melodies and beats, harmonies and rhythms - music is one of the biggest creative forces and one of the biggest created items around. It moves people, gets them moving and filters into their minds to sit there so that two days later they are still humming the tune behind their office computer. So it is not really difficult to think that the universe could have been created from some grand harmony out in the depths of space somewhere.

Music is both complex and simple, just like the universe - great burning stars that spew forth vast fires down to simple single-celled organisms. A child's melody through to an entire orchestral movement. All of it intertwined.

Here is the simplicity of drum beats turned into something much bigger.

And Queen - 'nuff said

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Once darkness lay stretched out.

There was a hush of expectancy within that darkness as if the darkness was alive and waiting for someone or something. After an Age a low hum filled a space in the dark; the low sound of many voices that rose and fell in complete harmony. A singular voice called softly over the hum and called for light. Three perfect spheres formed from that request giving forth pure light unfiltered and unfettered.

A figure appeared out of the vastness of the dark and lifted its arms to the cessation of the humming but in its place a simple melody sprang up. The figure, male in appearance, disappeared back into the dark. The melody he had started still carried on, simple and beautiful, now light then low. The three spheres still spun.

Another figure appeared but she was made of stone. She danced to the simple melody adding her own song to it, making it more complex. The stone figure’s dance was slow and graceful; a waltz made for rock, her voice deep and husky with a solemn tone to it.

She left the lit space, dust spread out where she had danced; with small bits of rock spinning in the dark. 

Another female figure suddenly landed in the light. She was made from dancing, living fire. Unlike her companion her dance was light and fast and fierce, each movement highlighted and enhanced by the three spheres. She danced with vigour and speed; up and down, her own voice high and mighty and filled with laughter.

She walked off triumphant and breathless, small flames dancing in the night void behind her. Some of the small flames twirled and flew to the spheres rotating above the dance, adding red glints to their pure light.

A third figure walked onto the sheet of dust and spinning rock that glimmered where the fire had fused some of the dust to thin sheets of glass. Water streamed off her body into the dark, and she listened to the song made from fire and rock and twirled and spun and leapt, water behind her like streamers. Where her water encountered the left over fire it burst into steam and floated in a thin mist; still more water spun into the void freezing into flowers of ice. She added her own voice, clear and bright, to the melody, which had grown with the addition of the two and flowed out of the light.

A fourth dancer slowly floated down onto the dust cloud that now gleamed with added ice, like small diamonds in the dark. Her dance was long and elegant; slow then fast then slow. Her voice was low and strong, and also mournful.

Her body was made from cosmic wind that fluttered and flew about. The fires that still burned, fanned and grew brighter; the water not yet frozen whirled about; and the dust rose up to join her dance. She ended her dance arms held up above her head, her voice echoing with the others.

The music swelled in the dark and finally exploded in a crescendo of sound and light and fragments that flew out into the darkness. The five figures, the four elements and the first man, looked at the glorious mess around them and laughed in joy.

The music and dance had infused the darkness with life. The fire and rock; water and wind that had been left over spinning and dancing its own dance in the void formed into stars and planets and comets and dust clouds. And in these elements life formed, life that still remembered the music and dance like a fragment of a dream. And often that life would try to recreate the music and dance the five had created.

That music still echoes in life trying to find its way out. 

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Planetoids and stars and meteors; oh my

So again we talk about the idea of the creation of the universe. This is the second part with one more after this one. 

The universe is a big place so the idea of us being the only planet with life on it would make it a very lonely place. So somewhere maybe there is something out there just like us, except with an extra finger, four eyes and scales with fiery manes... So not like as in the end.  


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Once the deepness of space hung like a dark garment.

In that darkness a Being swam though the night comforted by the lack of light. This Being had neither name nor origin, it just was, though it had been in the night for an Age. In that lost age the Being meditated on the night, slowly spinning and turning.

And as the one Age ended the Being divined a name, a sudden flash of creativity in its vast mind. It opened its ethereal lips and slowly whispered the name out into the night.

And the universe awakened at its true name, spoken only that one time and never again. A light appeared in the garment of night, only one, then slowly another, like scared animals facing the sun for the first time. Then more appeared and more. Soon the night was filled with blinking lights. The stars had awakened to the call of the universe. These fledgling stars gave off weak yet warm night and the hidden planets were drawn to that warmth.

But some planets got lost on their journey towards the stars. Some crashed into other planets, their giant forms destroyed in their collisions, with only dust remaining behind. Others died out in the coldness of the night, their husks drifting slowly through the ebon deep.

Even with their great fires some stars could not keep those fires lit and died out, guttering and failing, the planets around them dying in the cold. Others burned and consumed their planets becoming bloated on the sustenance. And they shone even bigger and brighter. But often their yellow warmth changed; some now glared angrily at the universe with red baleful eyes; while others glowed in irradiated blue glory, bringing death to the planets that had survived the feast. Others failed, unable to bank their flames and keep them burning brightly but steadily. These collapsed in on themselves and shrank to blind, dead orbs.

A scant few consumed their planets and burned even brighter with glorious light, giving off reds and blues and purples into the night, burning the void with their fanfare. Such light would never be seen again until the universe ended. But they consumed their own lives to burn brighter and brighter. And so they died burning their own husks in the end to fuel the colours they had been so proud of. These few collapsed like the others and broke down, their cores imploding deep in their giant bodies.

But the hunger remained.

Even though the stars were consumed the terrible hunger they had known survived and great swirling vortices slowly formed. Great black holes in the garment of the void, ever hungry yet unable to move due to their great appetite and the weight of their endless feast.

The universe wept at the life and death, at the glory of turning planets and bright stars and at the death of the titans and the gluttony of the suns. And the Being that had first whispered the universe’s name gloried and wept with it, sometimes holding its hand in grief and other times dancing with the universe at the hope of life.

One of the last stars to awaken was a bright, yellow thing, small compared to many of its older brethren. But it was warm and its light was good. It called out to some of the lost planets; some of the last still wandering, clinging to hope. Nine wandered and limped out of the void to stay near the star’s warmth, slowly revolving around it.

One of the smaller planets remembered a fragment of the word, of the name that had started it all. It kept the name secret, hidden deep within its own body, it knew that the fragment was sacred and not yet ready to be shared with others. But that fragment, that echo had its own power.

And slowly life grew on the small blue and green planet. Simple at first but it grew more complex with each passing age. This life also knew the fragment of the name but it knew it as a distant echo, some half heard word deep in its mind.

The planet knew that the life would forever look for that word and its meaning even if it did not know it yet. Maybe it would find the true name like the Being who had divined it aeons before, or it would spend forever searching until the Being uttered the name that was the universe’s opposite.

Until that time the life that had grown on the small planet, and on other planets that remembered other fragments of the name, would continue to grow and search.

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And added is a small quote from Neil Gaiman:

"will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down."

Keep writing out there.

 

Planets and suns and comets; oh my.

No one really knows how life started.

Oh there are theories and stories and myths, like the Greek myth of Erebus appearing out of the void and Night. After them came Love and Light and Day. And Gaea appeared after Light and Day. Then Erebus slept with Night, who gave birth to Ether, the heavenly light, and to Day the earthly light. Then Night alone produced Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Nemesis and others that come to man out of darkness.

Zeus by the seriously too talented Genzoman on Deviant Art :-)
http://genzoman.deviantart.com/


The Norse tales tell of a giant chasm, Ginnungap, that was bound on either side by fire and ice. Where the fire and ice eventually met Ymir, a giant, and Audhumbla, a cow, appeared. Audhumbla nourished Ymir while she licked salt blocks for sustenance. From one of these blocks Bur/Buri (grandfather of the gods) emerged. Much later Odin killed Ymir and fashioned the world from his body.

Odin by the incredible Ida Mary Walker also on Deviant Art
http://idalarsenart.deviantart.com/

There are also your usual creation stories like Christianity's creation of the world in seven days with Adam and Eve and the Serpent and the Garden being sealed away from Humanity. With Islam and Judaism following a similar story.

 

Eve by Genzoman

So I had the idea in my mind of creation which I got from a website that asked "How would you explain how the universe was created to someone who has no concept on creation or mythological beings?"

I know my stories do not exactly answer that but I wanted the stories out there as they appeared in my mind. :-)
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Some say it started with a bang; a massive explosion from the centre of the universe out into the then sterile void. Planets and stars, dust and rocks strewn all out across the vastness of space. Others say that that is started with a whisper, the true name of the universe. When that name was spoken the universe came into being, not yet ordered but alive with possibility. Still more say that it was sung and danced into existence, beautiful melodies and sublime currents of song woven together to form the complexities inside of stars, the beauty of revolving planets and the icy crystalline of comets. These were the beginnings and endings of so many things.

Once there was a void of pure darkness.

Not just an absence of light but darkness that was alive. This was not darkness made from the stuff of nightmares but Darkness that was the opposite of Light, natural and free. This Darkness was sterile though, free of any form of life except its own shadowy existence.

There was one exception.

The centre of the Darkness held life, of a sort. This was all the matter of the universe, all the matter that may have been and may well be. All of it bunched up together. And with each passing aeon this matter collapsed more under its own intense weight, tighter and tighter. All the blind cores that would become suns, all the icy tears that would form comets, and all the dense planet centres; all of it falling inwards into the universe’s meditation of the void.

After an age the universe blinked once. And in that blink all the pressure of its meditations exploded outwards. Rocks went spinning and colliding out into the Darkness, star hearts rotated at impossible speeds igniting in their passage. And planets spun out dancing amongst themselves finding the right steps. The Darkness was no longer sterile, it had life in all its glorious mess.

Ages passed as the frenetic dance slowed down. Planets found their positions in the dance; stars grew and shrank, their fiery hearts beat slowly with the meditative cadence of the universe; comets left their tears strewn across the Darkness, frozen at their out-flung journey to find the way home.

The stars gazed out at the void with their blind eyes listening to the now slowly revolving planets around them as they meditated on the Darkness and what they heard therein.

In all of this, one small blue and green planet slowly formed from the dance around a young star, whose heart beat with a bright yellow strength. And on that planet new life found a way to start and to flourish. It grew from the deep oceans, salty with the frozen tears of journeying comets. This life grew and grew, not really sure why it was filled with a melancholy and wanderlust to explore.

The life was warmed by the star’s heartbeat, succoured on the small blue and green planet; it wanted to dance like its parent planet spinning and turning; and its own tears salty like the wandering comets. The life truly was a child of the universe and one day it would set out to explore that universe. Some would even find the centre of the explosion where the universe blinked and marvel at what would be found there. But that time was not yet. So they danced and searched and meditated on the universe’s faint heartbeat.

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Stay hale and hearty out there

Arachnophobes need not apply

Here is a short story that I got the idea for yesterday and wanted to get out before it left my mind. Arachnophobes need not apply. Just be careful when you next time see a normal, harmless house spider. It may be more than you think.

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Naked he looked at himself in the mirror and posed, sticking his chest out. The gym sessions were getting him there, the ladies would love him. He stuck his tongue out at the reflection, who dared to do the same back, and glanced at the corner of the roof. There was a small hole in the ceiling and the more he stared at it the more he got a feeling that something was watching him. The tiny hole seemed to grow bigger, darkness oozing from it. He stared longer and a small brown spider crept out. It had a white stripe on it, almost like a racing stripe he mused with a chuckle as the spider waved its fore limbs in the air. It was a common house spider; it would not bother him. He walked the few feet to the bath and dipped one toe into the water; though he aimed one toe half his foot got wet. Lowering the rest of the foot he suppressed a shudder as the warm water sent a rush of heat through him. He stood on the foot now submerged under the water and leaned against the wall with one hand and daintily lifted the dry foot off the floor submerging it into the steamy warm water, this time shivering a little at the ecstasy of heat. Standing for a minute he swished one foot through the water, letting it swirl around his ankles. And slowly he lowered himself down into a squat pushing his feet forward, holding onto the side of the bath. He fell back with a splash and a thump as his feet slipped out from under him. Luckily it was a short fall. Spluttering he sat up and blinked the water out of his eyes, he laughed, it seemed that this time the bathtub had won the round. He settled in and stretched his legs towards the end of the bathtub and turned on the tap set in the wall. More hot water gurgled into the bath and he sighed as the warmth rushed through his whole body. It was ecstasy.

He closed his eyes and started humming a song, his head moving side to side with the tune in his head. Up above him the small spider walked across the roof slowly, tasting the air. Then it scurried forward, its eight, jointed legs moving almost soundlessly across the white plasterboard. It reached the cornice and slowly extended one leg carefully testing the bump between the ceiling and cornice. After a minute it climbed over the small bump onto the cornice and hurried down the wall. The man still lazed in his bath, humming to himself. The spider stopped as an ant crawled out of a thin crack in the wall. The hunter crouched, its body utterly still. Ants were crafty prey, and fast on the uptake.
The brown spider thrust out and half of its body jettisoned forward, its two front legs grabbing as its body slammed into the poor ant. The mighty black fangs sank into the hard chitin and injected its poison into the struggling victim. Tonight was important work and it would need the energy. Ten seconds later the ant was nothing more than a husk, which the spider stuffed back into the crack its victim had crawled out of. Four globular spider eyes stared down and watched the man in the bath. As the black depths examined the world below it a slim crack appeared above its two front eyes. If the spider had not been so small the man would have heard an audible crack as slowly a fifth eye opened; unlike the other four this one swirled in a milky white fluid which ran from the eye down the spider’s head and slowly made a viscous path along the clean bathroom wall. The spider twitched, its hairy legs shook as if in anticipation. Its fangs slid in and out slowly and in again. The now five eyes stared out from its bulbous head, the man below the spider half-asleep and completely oblivious to the small brown and racing stripe white spider above him. The spider waited a full minute before moving again but this time its body moved in a creaking fashion. Its legs jerked forward like an epileptic’s hand in seizure as the spider walked down the wall. It reached the end of its climb where the bathtub slotted into the recess against the wall. The spider now moved faster and made its creaky way to the back of the tub where the man’s head lounged against the rim. His eyes were still closed and the humming had stopped. The spider moved slowly towards the rim of the bathtub and scuttled closer to the man’s head. Closer it crept, its hairy body shivering now constantly, small movements that jerked it left and right. But its legs remained deathly still except for its careful march forwards. It reached the rim of the bathtub where the man’s head lay. The small brown forelegs caressed the hair gently like some obscene lover. It drew back its forelegs and its whole body went still, back legs bent to jump. 
And then the man sat up in his bath.

The spider seemed to freeze as if dumbfounded then it swayed to and fro in agitation. Its prey was no longer in front of it, he had moved. If the spider had been human it would have sworn in anger but its black eyes just glared in front of it, the fifth milky widened with a creak. It widened so much that the hairy flesh of the spider pulled away from its edges, showing the red and black underneath. The man was whistling now, a jaunty tune he had heard on the radio. He was missing something… The facecloth, he had missed picking up the facecloth... again. He half turned to get it on the floor next to the low tub. And SMACK! An angry spider flew into his face. Gagging and half screaming in fear, he raised his hands to brush whatever had flown into his face. The spider’s back undulated and moved as four more legs unfolded, four extra legs even longer than its normal ones; four legs all tipped with tiny black points dripping with the same white viscous goo as its extra eye. The points flew straight as the man’s hands neared the spider. Four points punctured the face the spider was standing on. The man screamed, a harsh almost pig like sound.
Then stopped.

His arms fell limply back into the water. The spider hugged closer against the man’s flesh, its eight normal legs splayed out to grip crevices in the man’s skin. Slowly one of the four new limbs flexed in the man’s face and the man’s left arm slowly lifted then went back down. Another limb shifted and the other arm lifted itself; though this one moved towards the spider and stroked its back gently and then fell back down where it thumped against the edge of the bathtub.
The spider shivered in ecstasy much in the same way the man had when he had entered the bath. Slowly the four black-edged legs withdrew, milky white fluid seeping from the bloodless wounds in the man’s slack face and the eight hairy legs drew themselves in. The spider rode the falling body as it slumped backwards into the water, the head bouncing against the rim with a crack. The spider launched itself as the head bounced and landed back on the wall and walked sedately back to its hole.

Darkness in fact did flow from that hole, a living darkness and the spider daintily made its way back into that dark hole. Its young would feast well.

If it had been human an evil smile would have crawled across its face, it was not human. But the equivalence of a smile flashed through its mind as the fifth eye closed with a snap. 

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Remember to keep writing, like Neil Gaiman says "Create good art."