AND SO, EARTH CONTINUED TO shake off the irritants that had plagued her since the rise of the Industrial Age…”
— Barbatus the Elder
Prosatio Silban and the Affable Invitation
AS A COOK-ERRANT, PROSATIO SILBAN perhaps knew better than anyone the importance of first impressions.
“What a charming turn of phrase!” exclaimed the elegant middle-aged woman sitting down at the beefy cook’s table-and-chairs in the afternoon shade of his galleywagon. She was commenting on his signature greeting, “With what may I please you?”
“Thank you,” he said with a slight bow, and waited for her order.
“How did you come by it?” she asked.
On Writerly Spirituality: Yom Kippur Edition
THIS DAY IS STEEPED IN regret — and resolve.
Yom Kippur is not as joyful as Pesach or Shavuot, which respectively mark the exodus from Egypt and embrace of the Torah[1], but it’s a day which carries its own spiritual riches. It is both comforting and discomforting to take stock of one’s last-year deeds, deciding what to build on and what to discard; call it one soul-bending enrichment experience.
Child’s Play (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
THERE IS A MOMENT IN AN out-of-control situation when its utter wrongness becomes agonizingly apparent – and it’s the same moment that the experiencer realizes there’s not a damn thing to be done about it.
Such were Prosatio Silban’s thoughts as his galleywagon slid sideways off the ridge-girdling road and down the steep cliff he had been so carefully avoiding.
He barely had time to realize what was happening as he was thrown from the driver’s bench hard against a cliffside boulder. He bounced onto his back, head downward, near the cliff’s base. The sharp pain in his ribs made him want to cry out, but he couldn’t get his breath. All he could do was watch and listen to his portable home-cum-livelihood roll over twice and come to rest upright at the cliff’s bottom.
Disposathon!
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE: IT IS easier to get rid of everything in one big purge than a few things in a bunch of smaller ones.
The time: June 1985. Hopped-up on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and The Dharma Bums, I aimed to do a bit of my own road scratching of experience-itchy soles. So I bought some necessaries, stuffed them into a backpack, and invited my friends to a giveaway-the-rest party. The reserves (my great-grandfather’s holy books, my birth certificate, a deck of Tarot cards, a loaded pipe, and such) went into two small boxes destined for a trusted friend’s garage. When I returned a year later, they were waiting to greet me like cardboard puppies.
I AM A FANTASY WRITER; that is to say, I fantasize about people reading my writings.”
–Your author, in a truth-pensive mood
Prosatio Silban and the Sudden Feline
(Three printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)
IT BEGAN WITH AN ALMOST automatic kindness, and led to an inevitable but gracious end.
Prosatio Silban was tidying up after a somewhat slow morning when he first heard the mewing. His galleywagon was parked in the marketplace at Rathlu, the centermost of the Thousand Villages of the Uulian Commonwell. He was standing at the sink; one by one the beefy cook selected plates, bowls and cutlery from a small pile of dirty dishes; passed them through a large, teak-mounted voonith-bone hoop; and stacked the now-clean ones on the adjacent counter. I almost feel guilty using magik instead of water, he thought, seeing how there are so few of these. Still, it’s a relaxing noonday ritual.
He cocked an ear at the open half-door. Rathlu was known for its robust feline population, and the cats he had seen that day were magnificent specimens of their secretive race: cats large and small, black, grey, striped, yellow, and white, all sleek with loving care and lavish feeding. His favorites were the tiger-stripeds, and when he opened the door’s lower half, a smile lit his face. Before him sat an ancient grey-and-brown tabby, looking up at him with one golden eye; the other was a filmed-over blue.