Karima Vargas Bushnell's Blog, page 6

A Maybe, or a Might-Have-Been

“Captain, it appears there is another relevant text from the EarthWorld, unrelated to the one we’ve already found.” TechieSquid paused. “Or only barely related.”

“Which of the . . . areas we are studying does it hale from?” inquired the captain. He had barely stopped himself from revealing more, shifting automatically at the last moment into vague and coded speech.  There were sometimes watchers and listeners drifting through the ship, not malicious, but not secure either. Blabbermouths and Gossip-inkers. Loose lips sink ships, thought the captain irrelevantly, wondering what a ‘lip’ was.

“As yet to be determined,” replied TechieSquid conscientiously.

The captain scanned the small blue cube, inhaling its contents. The scent of words was in the air, and the Squidren gathered round as they always did at such a moment. The pull was irresistible.

“Inauthentic,” he decided. “Grok this.”

” ‘Zohrane had power beyond conception, but she hungered for more. . . for the potential to travel outside the world itself, to pass the Gate of Death yet living . . . she was mad, of course. Only the dead may pass. . .’

“It gets worse,” he added and a few Squid officers writhed discretely in their equivalent of laughter.

” ‘But mortals must die, even the Gifted ones, and journey blindfold into the unknown.  Zohrane wanted to take that road with open eyes, breaking the first law of Being.”1

“But the First Law of Being is—” cried an excited Ensign.

“They are not fools—they have poetry and jet propulsion,” interrupted Four. “Surely they traverse this barrier twice each night, departure and return. Surely they are aware!

“Every Squidlet does this!” said a young one. “We cross that river daily.”

The captain glanced with mild reproval. “For all their talents, they may not be aware. We know development across the multiverse proceeds unevenly.”

A murmur of ascent.

“But look at this,” cried Four, shaken, for once, from her diplomatic calm.

” ‘The windhorse ran so smoothly she was scarcely jolted. . . Above and to her right soared a sky so thronged with stars that there was scarcely space for any blackness in between . . . starry sky merged into starry sea at a distance beyond guess. . . the sea itself seemed to be made of stars . . her own bare arms had acquired a pearly lustre. There was no sound but the waves breaking and behind that, like a distant harmony too complex, or too simple, for the ear to comprehend, came the rumour of an immeasurable universe.’ “2

“They know about the Sea of Stars. They know about the Windhorse!”

Ah! The Windhorse!

 And the Squidren, confident in the ship’s ability to guide itself through time, space, and dimension to the strange planet of the Earthlings, shifted higher and higher in consciousness, transcending plane after plane, lost to themselves in ecstatic contemplation.

When they eventually came down, there would be several new poems in the multiverse.

 

p. 91 Prospero’s Children, by Jan Siegel
Ibid., p. 131

 

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Is The Book of Squidly Light *ever* coming out??

Dear Tabby, that famous feline advice columnist (“Advice for Cats from Cats”) just had a little discussion with the Halycon Sage Editing Team.

Dear Tabby: I’m starting to get annoyed! When is The Book of Lighted Squid coming out? I have been waiting so long to read it!

Editing Team: October. We’re almost sure, October.

Dear Tabby (a.k.a. Tyranokitty): Well it had &*%$#* well better, or you will FEEL MY WRATH!

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I Met Halycon Sage

It was in Reno a summer or two ago, next to the frozen food wall at one end of a supermarket on a golden afternoon. Best-friend-from-college Jeneane and I were picking up a few items.

There he was: Halycon Sage, the hero of my metafictional novels, hub and center of my world-building, whose writing career began, like mine, with hearing the dream words: “One-hundred-and-one Cows: A Novel”.

I glanced again at his face, unobserved. Yes, it was definitely him. An Indian man picking out his groceries, maybe Paiute or Washoe considering where we were. There was a quietness about him. Shorter than I’d imagined, and he’d aged a little, hair a bit gray, an added fullness to his face. Sage ten or fifteen years after the first novel.

The aisle was empty except the three of us. I looked again, then walked quickly to my friend. She’d read the book.

“Look, it’s Halycon Sage. See? Should I talk to him?”

“Yeah, go for it.”

Did she and I even talk, or were there only gestures, a nod of the head, a shared eye-sparkle? You know how you communicate with someone you’ve known forever.

I needed to acknowledge him, but I didn’t know how. Obviously I couldn’t say, “Hello, you’re my imaginary author that I made up.” Stepping up to him, I told my inner truth, lightly disguised in a form that made more sense.

“Excuse me, sir, I had to say hello to you. You really remind me of someone I knew a long time ago.”

There was no questioning or challenging, no social embarrassment. He turned and looked at me, saw I was sincere and that it mattered a lot.  Like Halycon Sage, he was so kind. Gentle, unhurried, a face full of experience and depth, full of knowledge and a deep courtesy.

He shook my held-out hand. We looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. I don’t know if he thought my treasured friend was dead or just swept from me by the winds of time, but he understood. Our words were soft and few.

Then we went our ways, having shared love, respect, and understanding. I think he knew how much it meant to me. And I will never forget him.

 

 

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Why Are There No “Dogagories?”

We on the Book of Squidly Light Publication Team have received a comment from an anonymous dog. Feeling that The Cat Fatty Lumpkin (deceased) is the best one to handle this inquiry, which is not precisely relevant  to what we are doing, we have turned the matter over to him. Here, for your enjoyment and edification, is a record of their correspondence, offered in dialogue form.

ANONYMOUS DOG: Why Are There No “Dogagories?” I Protest!

FATTY LUMPKIN (F. Atty. Lumpkin, Esq.): But in all the annals of world religions, you will find no mention of  “Catma”! This cuts both ways, my canine friend!

ANONYMOUS READER: How does the cat type if he has no thumbs? He isn’t some strange new ‘thumbed cat’, is he?

SQUIDLY LIGHT TEAM: Reader, please pay closer attention. This cat has migrated to the Spirit World. He does it with his mind, of course!

 

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Tom Bombadil, Fatty Lumpkin, and The Book of Squidly Light

“ Tom was here before the river and the trees…He made paths before the Big People, and saw the Little People arriving…When the Elves passed westward, Tom was already here, before the seas were bent…before the Dark Lord came from Outside.”*

TOM BOMBADIL! Sound familiar? Or if not, how about The Lord of the Rings? Tom was in the books, but didn’t make it into the movies. “What does this have to do with The Book of Squidly Light?” you ask.  A lot.

Tom Bombadil lives in the Old Forest with his wife Goldberry, entwined with nature, full of joy, always singing. Inconceivably ancient, he goes about his business unaffected by humans, elves, dwarves or hobbits, though he sometimes helps if needed. The One Ring, symbol of ultimate power which fills everyone else with fear or desire, means nothing to him.

Tom is a friend of nature and the earth, perhaps a personification of them, and he’s a friend of the Ents, the great, wise, slow-moving and utterly convincing tree people. (Those who think ‘tree hugging’ is funny haven’t done it right. Each tree is different; you can feel this if you try.)

“C’mon!” you say impatiently (unless you love Tom Bombadil), “There are no Squid in this!”

Alright, alright, I’m getting to it. Tom has a string of ponies. The lead pony — the wisest, cleverest, most magical of them all — is called Fatty Lumpkin. And the anonymous orange cat from The Life and Times of Halycon Sage, stepping up as a major character in this new book, is his namesake: Fatty Lumpkin, as clever a cat as ever walked the Earth Plane.

If this isn’t a close enough connection for you, Tom would be down with our characters’ core mission of saving the lovely Planet Earth. We’re all on the same side here. Except for a couple of villains.

Hasta luego. Catch you on the flip side.

**https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2013...

 

 

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The Book of Squidly Light Back Cover Blurb

For lovers of sci-fi, fantasy, and literary satire who want to laugh and restore hope: a dizzying and highly entertaining menagerie of characters swaying between world’s end and  ecstatic rebirth. Personalities and perspectives interweave as Halycon Sage and friends–human, alien, and animal–try to save the earth while negotiating parallel universes, intergalactic communication snafus, and the vagaries of time travel. One reader writes, “Delightful apocalypse…a beautiful tapestry of today’s headlines. It reads like science fiction, but feels like REAL.”

 

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The Book of Squidly Light

The Book of Squidly Light
The Continuing Chronicles of Halycon Sage

 

Upon being asked by the Editors to write something about his new novel, Halycon Sage provided this:

“The Book of Squidly Light. Contains everything. Coming soon.”

Some of you may think this is funny. I do not. Basel Vasselschnauzer, Ph.D. (ha!) having threatened a nervous breakdown and gone off to get a sandwich, I was left to deal with this alone. With the aid of Ruby, Jenny, Preisczech, No-Name Stupid, the attorney-cat Fatty Lumpkin and a number of the larger Squidren, I have prevailed on Mr. Sage to reconsider his authorial responsibilities. (I believe a Squid is sitting on him as we speak.)

— Sophie McGregor, Valedictorian, Dry Gulch Creek High School 2018.

The Book of Squidly Light is an intensely passionate and serious rollicking romp filled with hijinks and intimations of doom, with the dual purpose of amusing and instructing you, while doing our best to save the Earth!

From the Afterword:

Like the metaphysical system of the Squidren, The Book of Squidly Light contains various threads:

life in a post-apocalyptic desert town
multicultural people and cross-cultural or cross-species romances
the thoughts and behaviors of space aliens
suddenly-sentient nanobots
rituals — both holy and unholy
poetry written by cats and horses
a critique of some life-denying attitudes that threaten us all
and even a few Secrets of the Universe.

If you read this book, you will also get to know (and perhaps, love), the enormous sparkly blue, word-obsessed, sociologically-aware, intergalactic, telepathic, time- traveling, dimension-hopping Squidren!

Now please get off me. I understand the Nanobots are serving sandwiches.

 

— Halycon Sage, founder of the Post-Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature

 

 

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It’s COMING! . . . . SQUID, that is.

The sequel to The Life and Times of Halycon Sage, temporarily called SQUID!!!, is nearing publication.

All edits have been done. Now to the proofreader for a final check, then formatting.

The front cover is immanent, and I love it!

Old friends from Book One are back,

along with some eccentric alien Squid (hence the name).

Actual title and cover coming soon!

 

*The accompanying picture is The Nixon Eggplant. It has nothing to do with the book, but we thought you might enjoy it.

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“Imaginary Author Goes to the Airport”

In mid-June of this year, literary lion Halycon Sage wrote the following story about one of his characters, an imaginary author. While this is a work of fiction, in Sage’s Alternate Universe it happened exactly as described*.  If you do not know about the Alternate Universe, that is because you have not yet read SQUID!!! If you have not yet read SQUID!!!, that is because it has not yet been published. (Coming in August.)

*   *   *

Imaginary author Karima Vargas Bushnell has certain things in common with her creator, Halycon Sage, and one is a tendency to drag way too much stuff with her everywhere. Thus she approached the TSA security line in the Alternate Universe with:

a Rolling Widemouth Leather Underseat Carry On, this being a warm-buttery-brown miniature suitcase
a newly purchased brushed-copper laptop computer
a shiny, bright red violin case
a little army-green purse crammed with everything else.

The laptop was supposed to fit into a Special Slot on the side of the suitcase– the reason, other than its luxurious beauty, that the little suitcase had been bought in the first place. The purse was supposed to occupy the interior of the case, along with a lot of other stuff. This worked as long as there was an elephant around to sit on it.

After minor misadventures and the usual juggling-act scramble with tickets and ID, our protagonist removed the laptop from the miniature suitcase (as per posted instructions), heaved the items into the white plastic baskets on the conveyor belt, and prepared to add the fiddle case.

Agent: You can’t go through here.

Karima: What do you mean, I can’t go through here?

Agent: Not with that. It’s too long to fit in a basket.

Karima, momentarily bereft of speech, is unable to explain that she has put the fiddle case on the conveyor belt without a basket many times previously.

Agent: You have to go down there (indicating a lane by the far wall).

Karima: But my stuff is already on here.

Agent: It doesn’t matter.

The imaginary author retires in defeat, leaving shoes, sweater, suitcase, laptop, lipstick, wallet, cards and ID in the hands of bored strangers and dashes down to what turns out to be Lane Six, where the fiddle is put through without incident. Running back to her original Lane Whatever, she successfully recovers the items and hikes cheerily down a number of conveyor belts, this time for humans, in search of Gate G 6. (Approximately 15 minutes.)

Arriving there with a pleasing sense of triumph and ample time to catch her flight, she feels an icy chill down her back as she realizes that the coppery laptop is not in its special side slot. It is gone.

 Back she goes to Security, re-traversing the cavernous rooms containing the human conveyor belts. Hesitating to re-enter Security from the wrong side — forbidding signs say, “STOP!” “GO BACK!” and “DO NOT ENTER!”– she looks at the abandoned items above the various lanes. Nothing. Bravely she approaches an Official, explaining her separation from her Items and the whole sideshow.

Official (male, emotionally neutral): Which lane did you come through?

Karima: I have no idea. One of these around here. Then they sent me to Lane Six.

Official: Go and look at the lanes.

Karima: I already did, but I’ll look again. (She does. Nothing. She returns to the Official.)

Official (After some checking around): Well, it’s not here. Did you come through South or North Security?

Karima (hearing this distinction for the first time): I have no idea. I think I was going south, so I must have come from the north. (How she knew this she does not, as of this writing, remember.)

Official: Well, that’s the other one. You should go back there.

Karima: Thank you.

(Approximately ten minutes.)

With a new official (female, friendlier), she goes through the whole dog and pony show again, explaining about the fiddle case, the baskets, her separation from her belongings, and the missing laptop. Except:

New Official: You can’t have come through here, because we don’t have that rule about the baskets.

Karima: Excuse me?

New Official: If you’d come through here, you could have just put your violin on the conveyor belt.

Karima is once again speechless, and probably appears about to cry.

New Official (kindly): Go back to South again, you must have come through that one.

Karima: Thank you.

She goes. (Approximately 10 minutes.)

Back at South Security, she again approaches the Podium on High of the supervising Official. It’s a new person. Nice looking but not excessively handsome tall young man with short hair and glasses. She explains the whole thing again, adding the latest adventures and the info about how she must have come through South. She shows him the Special Slot on side of the Very Special Suitcase.

Official (gently): Have you looked inside?

Karima (stunned, as if confronted with a problem in physics): What?

Official: (gently): Have you looked inside?

           She does. There it is.

Karima: Oh . . .

Official: They’re usually inside.

Karima: You are a genius!

Official (kindly): I’m not a genius, I’ve just been here a while. Ninety-nine percent of the time, people put them inside. That’s where they are.

Karima stands stunned. The author of Autobiography of a Yogi used a special phrase for the condition in which she now finds herself: “Like a cow staring at a train.”

Official (very gently): Would you like a hug?

The world stops and she considers, feeling no pressure, either inner or outer. The young man waits quietly. It is one of those timeless moments that seems to occupy either a long time or no time at all. She considers, calmly and objectively, whether or not she would like a hug.

“Yes, I would,” says Karima.

There is a hug.

The End

Imaginary author Karima Vargas Bushnell would like to thank the underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated TSA officials for their kindness and compassion, especially the one at the end of this story. Or she would have liked to thank them, had she and they been real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*This is a work of fiction. Names, places, incidents and characters, living, dead, cryogenically frozen or supernaturally ascended are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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She was just a name in a song . . .

 

 

But now she’s a real live imaginary heroine in a post-modernist minimalist pseudo-realist neo-symbolist novel! Even within the novel, she may be imaginary. But Preisczech (pronounced “Price check”) really hopes not! Listen here.

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