Posts

Posted on

Revisiting Shunder Bon Thon

About 18 months ago I wrote a short piece of exposition describing a magical workshop.  Shunder Bon Thon, ‘the mighty workshop of Shunder’, drew much of its inspiration from the dilapidated Santa Fe Railway shops in Topeka, Kansas where my Grandfather retired from upholstery before I was born.

https://1000days.douglasblaine.com/20071207/day-106-the-mighty-workshop-of-shunder/

This past week the workshop idea returned to mind from no discernable direction so I went searching for what I’d written about Shunder.  I’d not tagged it ‘come back’ but my recollection was enough that I found it near the top of my first search for ‘building’.  Obviously my thinking is to extend what I’ve written as well as to return to writing (each day).  The piece was not what I recalled.

This week Shunder’s glassy and rhythmic shop segments glittered in one angle of the sun and disappeared to near invisibility in another.  These high flown atria curled past mere arches to near full circles flaring out from the base in the mountainside then straightening to vertical at the shop floor level and finally ending over the top of the arc back in the mountain’s ragged slope.  The windows’ scaffold inside as unobvious as a dragon’s bones inside her skin of sparkling scales.  The armor, weapons, jewelry, vehicles, siege engines, and other charms crafted here made boys into men, men into warlords, warlords into kings, and then committed regicide upon them.  This week’s Shunder possessed an elegant nature.

What I’d written originally no longer influenced the world as much as it was influence by the world.  The mountainside caved in the northern segments of the shop where magic sails were woven.  Hundreds of years of rock fall smashed opaque windows here and there along the spine exposing the verdigrised and torn metal holding her up.  But the furnaces still smoked and the hammers still rang out.  Journeymen and acolytes still imbued their works with ancient chants.  Masters still incanted names not heard outside Sunder’s protective womb.

Ultimately I’ve been off looking for conflict.  I’ve imagine it dressed up fancy for a night on the town and me a dull humorless boy unable to charm it well.  But lately I’ve found conflict can be as unadorned as “If you want this, you’ll do that.”.  The plain difference between having a thing and having more—or less—of that thing.  The tension between now and once was.

Day 362

Posted on

The Famous Rocking Cock Ranch

Jessup set his boots on the asphalt outside the driver’s door.  Because he never drove in boots he shucked off his tennis shoes with the opposite foot and left them in the floorboard.  Instead of immediately slipping his boots on he straddled the boots—heels on the roadway—and let the cool pre-dawn air dry his sweaty socks.

His red hovertible sloshed a little on soft shocks as he finally tugged on the custom made Bluchers and stood to his full height.  Jessup ducked through doorways to avoid injury.  He tossed his Eskimo Joe’s ball cap into the backseat and went around to the front to get his cowboy hat from the trunk: a no-name 3X black felt.

The road he stood on, the fence that trailed it, and the gate that hung across the road from him were the only evidence that anyone but Jessup had ever been to this exact spot on the Earth.  Of course he wasn’t alone in having been here, but this morning it felt that way.  Initially he hoped that as the new owner of the 517 square miles of Colorado ranchland he’d be able to rename the place but it quickly became clear looking through the four different deeds dating back to an 18-something land grant no one had bothered to try and it would be a waste of effort for him to do otherwise.

This former Space Station III Chaplain and co-founder of the Orbital Commission for Morals and Decency was the chagrinned owner of the famous Rocking Cock Ranch.

Day 361

Posted on

Tuesday Morning Filler

I write.  I do it every single day.

Maybe you hadn’t noticed?

In the context of this 1000 days I’m losing my stride somewhat because life and work intervene.  I think this is OK, but I’d like to better dodge these obstacles then to simply step out of the race till they’re gone.  Regardless, I do write everyday.  I compose emails.  I jot down notes.  I twitter.

Writing when I’m writing keeps my words sharp and my attention honed.  These other contexts hold a different purpose than does this blog.  Each have different audiences: co-workers, myself, or disinterested others, but each requires my writing to be succinct.

I am reading a book in the evenings in which the main character continually rehashes her previous medical experience in the context of her new magical skills.  My perception of this character is that she’s standing at a locked door holding a key and can’t work out what to do on the next page.  I suppose the author felt as if she were building to this scenario more than I feel she did.  Each similar scene subtly different than the previous one.  Possibly she sees the events I find repetitive as progressing: character sees key, picks up key, wanders, wanders into door, matches key to lock, etc.  I don’t.

I don’t know that I could structure a novel of my own with such a repetitive theme.  Once I say something I find it hard to say it again.  I work at extending the things I’ve said once to make sure I’ve covered them well enough for a reader to follow.  I still feel as if I’ve shorted them.

Day 360