Short Story: Losing the Past

It looks to be falling apart. I'll have to change tin a day; the way that I smoke, the way I relate, the number of laundry I clean. Still starving, but now "they" are taking my joys.
The last addictions I have. Why can't I keep them intact? They seem to me harmless, medicinal even. I don't know how to live without them.
It's not enough for me to be brought so low. To steal the last of my inner child's candy. I must also learn how to be around others who do not go without. Be around them, love them, live with them... live with them, without anger or envy. Without self-pity, competition, hurt, defense, manipulation, or beggary.
Ah beggary, how could I be without thee? To mooch and couch-surf. To bum and to find. These have been my way for far too long. I was still running, while others staked out land; cleared it and built homes. I was away running.
Now I find myself old, unable to afford sugar, remembering the cartoon I saw as a child: About a wolf who did no work, always begging from the hard-working pig. Always lazy, never working, the wolf always starved a little in the winter. But what when there is no pig? The pig gets tired of feeding him.
That cartoon always haunted me, like I could feel my future reflected in it...

As an adult, now, I can confirm that haunted feeling was right.

Story/Theory: The Shaman of Lascaux

The half-man/half-beast shambled deeper into the cave, using his femur-bone torch dipped in the last of the animal fat. The Cold was still alive outside the cave and his days foraging had not gotten him very far from the cave, nor any new food for his skeletal-thin body, draped in layer after layer of furry large-beast hide. The half-man hadn't seen a large-beast in many darknesses. Many, many darkness. Rotations of the sky even. All he had seen and eaten in the last sky rotations were the tiny-beasts. Hard to catch, energy-consuming to cut and clean, little meat and marrow to be got from such fair.

It had been so long since his last constant real food supply that he often forgot what he was. Forgot there were others like him somewhere out there... or used to be. He had come from somewhere once, but his memories of it were almost all gone now. Lost in days of constant, repetitive, survival. The half-man became more and more like his animal half every day. Trying new roots and nuts in attempts to satisfy his body's constant aching needs. The Great Cold refused to stop. Several times he'd been made very, very, sick by certain plants and roots. His body remembered these warily and avoided them by smell while foraging.

There was also the dirt-fruit that gave visions. Dirt-Fruit could be found often in the forests during the brief stops of rain, but also in the dark of mountains where half-men like him used to live. You had to grab dirt-fruit fast, because small-beasts ate it too, sometimes, and it took a lot of dirt-fruit to fill an empty stomach. But there were three kinds of Dirt-Fruit the man knew about. The first kind was was food kind, the good kind, and not all food-kinds looked the same. The second kind was the sick-making Dirt-Fruit. They were so bad they could make a half-man very sick or even dead. The third kind was the kind that was used mainly by the Two-Headed Men, Men of the Medicines, to cause visions, talk with the dead, make deals with the forest-spirits, and other things he didn't really understand.

The half-man did not know much about the third kind of mushrooms. Once, dimly, when he was the size of half a man, he remembered being pushed into a cave and prodded to the back. When he got there an old man made him drink a hot drink that tasted like dirt-fruit and a few minutes later the half-boy was in the in-between world with the Man of Medicine. All his ancestors were there dimly and they nodded to him, making ritual gestures he understood at the time but now forgot. It was many years ago and the half-man avoided the third kind of dirt-fruit because he was not a Man of Medicine, did not want to have visions, he just wanted to stay fed. The third kind could make a half-man sick in the stomach, too, but not dead-sick.

For weeks all the half-man could find was dirt-fruit of the third kind. These had bulbous white stems, and red tops, with little white dots on top. Very pretty and some could be quite big. To the half-man, in his condition of starvation, they looked delicious and filling. The half-man didn't know what to do. He picked them and stockpiled them, in case he couldn't get anything else, but he refused to eat them. Maybe he could trade them for some food to a Man of Medicine if he meets one. The Great, White, Cold had gone on longer than any the half-man could remember. Every scavenging trip a failure, not even a single small-beast any more. The half-man tried to think of a way to catch the small air-beasts, but he'd never seen it done and didn't even know if you could eat the air-beasts. He just didn't have the energy.

The firewood was dangerously low as the half-man lay by it, shivering in starvation. Finally his body's needs overtook his sanity and the half-man began gorging himself on his pile of medicine dirt-fruit. He didn't care if it did make him sick, it would be worth it to stop this feeling of his body eating away at itself from the inside. No sooner was his belly full of the red and white dirt-fruit, than he felt the dirt-fruit wishing to come back out again. He tried to hold it inside himself, picturing the energy he badly needed staying inside him, but failed; projectile vomiting onto the cave wall and the corner floor. He lay down in the puddle, totally exhausted, ready to lay down and die, knowing he had probably kiled himself on bad dirt-fruit.

As he continued to lay there, breathing, chest rising and falling, listening to the crackle of the embers of the fire, hearing the whistling, howling, winds of the cold outside the cave, seeing the shadows reflecting on the walls getting larger and smaller in time with the fire, the wetness of the puddle he was laying in seeping into his furs, feeling back to when he was a small-man and he first felt this strange feeling. The Old Man of Medicine nodding to him. He was dieing again. He'd died before with the Old Man, now he was dying again. It's how the Medicine was done. But this time it was much stronger and this time he was alone, he had no Man of Medicine to Guide him.

He lay there. Feeling the pulsing waves around him. Trying to feel something that would help him now. Had he seen something like this? What was he to do now? He did not know the grunts and symbols the Old Man had used, had no other plants or beasts-parts to work with. His days and nights began to pass before his eyes. First slowly, than with increasing speed. But time was going backward. He saw his days in the cave, many and many of them. Saw his days of wandering before the cave. Came remembering back to what must of been his people. He wished he could stop it, wanted to stop, to see his people again, to think about them, but his vision sped on ever faster until he was coming out of his female blood-door, then he was inside, then, nothing.

Endless night. Eternity. There was nothing everywhere, extending to infinity. The half-man no longer had a body, was no longer in a cave, all that existed was a light which lived in eternity at the center of the half-man's being. This light saw that inside the nothingness were other light's like it, an infinite number, like the stars in the sky, and that each light sphere radiated beams of light which touched every other luminescent point, thus all were connected in a web of sentience. Every point was conscious, just as he was. This was the reality, the underworld, the spirit world. The rest is the dream. This is where the Man of Medicine works. For what is affected here is Eternal, and it naturally changes what's out there, what's transitory, what's physical. It's opposite, it's twin and it's lover. The half-man's small sentient point of life asked the web of life to provide food for him and the answer from the sentient Universe web-of-life came to him instantly. It gave him his answer and it gave him his name.

Back in his cave the half-man tapped his chest and grunted two-syllables together, "Ka-Ba." This would be his name now. For meeting the Universe, This name was so the Universe would know who he was, when we was working with it. He did not need a name for other half-men and he did not have one. A name was his creation alone and he would keep it between him and the Universe. Who else would know what to do with one?

The dirt-fruit had not worn off yet and the cave looked unnaturally bright for it's small fire. Ka-Ba began to worry about his little amount of wood when his point of light made him feel warm inside, made him feel not to worry, so he didn't, just enjoyed the warmth. The feeling of the Universe spoke to him again, this time from the blank brown cave wall he was staring at. The web of light seemed to be pulling him to change the images on the cave wall. Images made by water and moss, images made by time and nature. If he changed the wall,-universe, the universe-wall would change his inside said.

Scooping up puke, excrement, blood. soot, and any other color making substance he could, Ka-Ba painted on the wall pictures of all that would make life perfect for him. A sun in the sky, a whole group of middle-sized beasts, and even a few huge-beasts. And painted next to it all, of course, stood Ka-Ba. Armed with the weapon of a warrior he'd seen once and idolized, Ka-Ba painted himself as a great hunter and the great number of tasty-beasts he would kill, and how rich and happy he would be. When he was finally finished he felt as if the Universe had agreed with him and he felt strangely and deeply that all would be well.

Exhausted from all this he fell down to sleep by the coals of the dying fire and sleep well he did.

When the the half-man awoke in the morning it was with the feeling of one waking from a bizarre dream. His heavy head would not get lighter and he had strange memories of an Old Man and a group of herd-beasts he was hunting with success under a sunny sky. When he finally saw the painting on the wall many more strange memories came flowing back to him, including his new name Ka-Ba. Confused about what to do with this name he'd acquired and shivering Ka-Ba made his way to the cave entrance to find that the Great White Cold had finally stopped. The Sky-Father Disc was actually visible and warm to the skin. The whiteness was slowly melting into water he could drink, but before he could bend down to drink some he saw them. A beautiful group of herd-beasts, the like he hadn't seen in a very long time. Grabbing the closest sharp sticks in hand he made out in a joyous and wild pursuit, exerting far more energy than he thought possible still remaining in his tiny skeletal frame.

By the end of Ka-Ba's spontaneous and sloppy hunt he'd successfully killed two and wounded three others. A total victory. Enough meat to last for many days. Hide to make blankets or even a hut from. Bones for tools. Ka-Ba was suddenly rich. There was much work to be done with the skinning and gutting of two herd-beasts, tracking of the wounded ones to finish them off, and foraging for fresh dry wood now that the sky-disc had reapearred.

By nightfall Ka-Ba had been working all day on his food preparation and cave stockpiling. He didn't know how long the Sky-Father would protect him until the White Cold came back and Ka-Ba wanted to do as much as he could. He had not spent a single moment that day thinking about his cave drawing or the medicine dirt-fruit visions of the night before. It was only after eating himself full of roasted herd-meat and drinking several skulls of water that Ka-Ba began to look at the paintings he'd done. He'd painted the Sky-Father and the Sky-Father had come. He' d painted the herd-beasts and the heard-beasts had come. He painted his being a successful hunter (which he was not always good at) and that had occurred too. The only thing that didn't happen was him having a made weapon and the appearance of anuy huge-beasts. Ka-Ba remembered talking to the Universe, the Universe accepting. He thought it very strange, but beyond that he did not think anything of it. He had enough meat for a bit and there seemed to be more outside. The reason it was there was unimportant and still Ka-Ba was no Man of Medicine, he was a hunter.

After eating and thinking more (concerted thinking a process that he did only rarely because it caused head-pain and didn't seem to lead anywhere) Ka-Ba took some of the bones of the herd-beasts and sharpened them with rocks to make better weapons for his next hunt. The next morning he went outside and the first thing he saw was two huge-beasts, just like in his painting, and this time he was holding weapons. Stopping in his tracks, he didn't know what to do. In his long lost days of being with a tribe, killing a huge-beast was a great accomplishment because it fed the whole tribe and stopped a natural predator. Now he had enough food, he didn't need the huge-beast. He thought about this shortly. In his painting he won. If the painting was Medicine Man magick then he would be able to beat these two huge-beasts. Ka-Ba already had enough food so it would be foolish to attack the to huge-beasts for no reason. But Ka-Ba was a hunter and he had been stuck in that small cave for a very long Cold White. Though still weak and undernourished Ka-Ba ran at the Huge-Beasts screaming with everything he had, plunging the bone harpoons repeatedly into both of the huge, tusked, beasts before they knew what hit them.

Ka-Ba raised an ululating victory cry to the Sky-Father and the Earth-Mother the likes of which he hadn't done since he was just becoming a man. The two shaggy beasts simply fell over on their sides and died, heat steaming from the open gushing wounds on their chests. That night he had an even finer blanket than herd-beast-hide. The shaggy, furry, material of a huge-beast is prized for it's warmth and comfort.

Again it was after diner on a full stomach that Ka-Ba gazed again at his cave painting. He had painted huge-beasts and his success over them and that is what happened. Is this what the Men of Medicine knew? Where there really two-worlds, depending on each other? By changing one you could change the other? The idea gave Ka-Ba a headache. It felt like too much was trying to be squeezed into his small head at once. He didn't want his painting and the world to be connected, but they seemed to be. He decided to try an experiment that night and drew a crude female creature of his own race out of the blood of a huge-beast.

The next day the weather was still bearable with the Skyfather still visible in the sky for most of the day. Ka-Ba travelled around the perimeter of his cave, the land he roughly counted as his current living area. He counted more herd-beasts and a few more huge-beasts, but he ignored them. He had enough meat. What he was seeking he didn't find; no female.

That night again around the fire after dinner Ka-Ba thought about his painting and the world. Why didn't the woman appear that day? Was he wrong about his painting? Did the painting have no true Medicine after all? He continued to think long after his head began to hurt. Replaying the night he lost his mind on the dirt-fruit over and over again, until finally it hit him; the dirt-fruit. As soon as the thought occurred he knew he was right and stopped thinking. He went to the corner of his cave and grabbed the remaining dried stalks and caps of the dirt-fruit medicine he used.

This time Ka-Ba began to recognize some of the things that he felt and saw. He was first forced to lose his name, his body, everything that was not his bright center and then he was a bright pinpoint again in the endless field of night. Again he was united with the Universe and again he painted a woman. Again the Universe heard him.

The next day Ka-Ba awoke and began with a feeling of uncertainty. He did not know what he would find today, but he had no wish to eat any dirt-fruit again any time soon. Just the thought of it made him sick in his stomach. It was the late afternoon at one of the water reservoirs that Ka-Ba first saw her. It took her some moments before she saw him, too, and moved guardedly to her weapon (a (sharpened femur bone). The pure shock and awe that aroused in Ka-Ba at the sight of this beautiful female must have shown from his face, for she quickly felt at ease with him and could see in his eyes that he posed no danger to her. This became a daily courtship ritual at the reservoir that would continue for many months until they joined to each other for the rest of their lives and Ka-Ba showed her the painting he had made long ago.

Ka-Ba only used the dirt-fruit-paint magick a few more times in his life before he died, preferring to simply hunt, let nature occur, and be with his family, though he did teach the way it worked to several ambitious young Men of Medicine who would later go on to create or discover other forms of sympathetic magick, and occaisonally did a few works to help his small tribe.

Story: Pattern Recognition

This is a pattern. I've been here before, or a close variance thereof, many times. Five, Six, Ten? More? I don't really know, but at least five.
The morning after I feel so consumed. Raw. Frustrated, sick, depressed, and a little angry. I leave in search of peace. Take double-doses of medicine, too early, and forgo breakfast. Endure a terrible morning commute BART ride, all just to leave, to go back to peace. Vowing to myself never to endure such emotional torture ever again. Yet somehow I keep coming back.

As usual, I leave. She's sad and confused and hurt. So am I. But every moment I spent there just made me feel worse. Why is there always such pain in that place, in that house? Why, why, why. Never a useful question. My head aches just being there. So I start over.

It's afternoon, I get there. She's in the garage. We start to hang out and she begins to complain about her safety in her house and how random men are always breaking in, etc. So this freaks me out incredibly, possessively, and instantly my feelings drop to Hell as I begin to worry about her safety, which is something else I do not control. I mean, she controls it, if anyone does, so there is nothing I can do about it but worry more. So I do. So twenty minutes into my visit I'm already depressed and scared for her; all amorousness gone. That means not horny. Just both of us nervous and scared together. Ew. No, I was not enjoying thigs. I tried to lighten matters up with descriptions of her happiest places, etc, but I did not seem to succeed much.

Eventually, we semi-mechanically retired to her bedroom, where I become unusually super-conscious of the sound of her mother in the kitchen nearby; I could hear her mother chopping carrots, I could hear her mother walking around, I could hear her mother breathing. And no, she wasn't super sexy. All of this a turn-off. This added to the fact that during intercourse my lover refused to touch my penis, contributed to a lack of amorousness on my part. The final result was us making love only once that evening. My lover obviously wanted more, and usually we would have, but my mood was in the dumps, as was also becoming unfortunately typical as of late. My lover sensed this too, I think, but did nothing to help.

My feelings were so hurt that I thought of leaving, just going home, several times that night. Maybe I should have, but I was determined to make it through the night for "my lover's sake." I wonder now if perhaps it was just masochism. The self-inflicted shame of going home that early would have been great, even with my PTSD excuse.

Thus in my dark, sour, mood, she asked me if a friend of hers whom I didn't know could stop by to meet me, knowing full well that I wouldn't be up for it; and I was not. This further darkened my mood and our short, serious "talk" at this time made my emotional matters even worse.
Not knowing what to do, not wanting to run away in theory while my body screamed "flight", horrified at the painful prospect of more "talking" with her, I did something new for me: I fell sleep. Or close to it. I simply went comatose around six in the evening and refused to be roused. My lover lay with me for a bit, but for the most part she ignored me completely, smoking outside and talking on the phone. Though sad, this option was at least less painful than others. Though cowardly, it was surprisingly efficacious.

The next morning I woke her with a shower of kisses and genuine good cheer I had not expected to have. Last night's sadness remained in my heart, but for the moment it was in the back of my mind. I gave way to the unexpected cheer and made coffee. She wanted sex, I thought, which brought back last nights feelings stronger and I gradually became quieter and more withdrawn.

I drank my coffee and chatted with her sister, things seemed okay enough... though the darkness and the heaviness of the house atmosphere was still oppressive, still tangible. My lover came out to smoke with me... we sat in silence, I think, unusual for us... she seemed so sad, though... she might have invited me back to bed and I night have refused, still hurt by her strange fear of my penis. I can't really remember clearly. I talked with her about this fear and she agreed, saying she understood how I felt, but how could she really? She did not apologize for anything (though I was secretly hoping she would), nor did she seem to understand how deeply it all hurt me. I got quieter again...

I went out to her house's garden to meditate by their tree, as I usually did. My sitting was shorter than usual. Rather than soothing me it seemed to awaken in me a fervent desire to run away from the horrible place, my lovers psychically poisoned house, and her similarly poisoned heart. To leave now, at all costs. Upon reentering the kitchen with the full intenet of grabbing everything I had and leaving ASAP, still holding the door open I saw she had made me breakfast.

A beautiful act. Something she'd never done for me before.
So simple, so kind. It looked delicious, but my stomach felt sour and I still felt I had to get away. Looking to her for strength I found none. I refused it, with tears in my eyes. I did not feel any hunger. Flight, freedom, the only things on my mind. Add to that now Guilt, for refusing my lovers sweetest of intentions. I didn't even take a single bite. I had to go. Sadly, almost wordlessly, we hugged numbly, said almost nothing to each other, and I left.

A jerk, an ingrate, an early-leaver, spent, stressed, a lover at his wits end.

Poem: Retreat to Fortress Solitude

Retreating back to the Fortress.
Fortifying my position,
the last battle was lost.
The war continues.
It's cold here, freezing cold.
You can see your breath.
The soldiers are grumbling,
stamping their feet on the
hard-packed snow of the courtyard.
Chain-smoking, complaining to each other
in low voices.
But they are glad to be safe again.
Better to be cold and alive,
than hot in the midst of battle,
facing death.

I gave the order to retreat.
The battle started small,
I was sure we would prevail easily.
I was horrendously wrong.
Some casualties latter
I opted for retreat,
bloody and bedazzled by the ferocity
and sheer number of enemy soldiers.

They had been silently mounting
for a surprise onslaught
and the advance of my small raiding party
gave them reason to unleash their fury.
Days of frantic retreat
as we were actively pursued
by an entire squadron of enemy forces.
Exhausted and trail worn
we plotted to ambush our pursuing squadron
at a choke-point we knew of.
But even this,
our last attempt,
backfired.
The results were more casualties,
for our already small fleeing party,
and the loss of some supplies
we had to through overboard
to speed our hasty retreat.

Back to the Fortress.
Our only safe, securely defensible,
position in the area.

And here we make our stand.
So far the remaining soldiers
are doing well enough considering
our recent spate of failures.
Most are happy just to still be alive, I suppose.
The Fortress is an infinitely defensible position
and we have enough supplies to last us
through the Winter.
Baring some unforeseen plague or disaster,
we should be able to hold this position
just fine.

There have been no further direct attacks
by the enemy soldiers as yet,
though the smoke on the horizon
and the occasional disappearance of Outriders
clearly speaks of their
continuing intentions of
violence and harassment.