Vernon Baker's Blog, page 6

An Interview with Vernon Baker, Dreams and Beaujolais

An interesting interview of your's truly, well sort of, at my friend and fellow writer , Paige Pendleton's blog.

<a href="http://vernonjbaker.blogspot.com/2012...http://pwpendleton.blogspot.com/2012/05/interview-with-vernon-baker-dreams-and.html">Interview with author Vernon Baker</a>

Prologue to the Arimathean

I've been away a while. The call of real life and the non-literary world has held sway over my time. But the Arimathean rises, it lives and it nears completion. I promise.


The Arimathean

Prologue



There was a time in this life when I did not fully understand what it was I had become. It was early on after I had been left alone to find my way. I had come to this city, something within its watery soul a beacon and a source of peace.

In those days I would walk, in the light of day, amongst the people of the city, unaware myself of what I was.

For a reason I did not understand at the time, I gravitated to a small park situated on the grounds of one of the minor churches not far from my home. It was full of trees, large expanses of open grassy spaces, and as parks are today, full of small children brought there to escape the confines of dark and dreary homes by their mothers and grandmothers.

I would end up there in the early afternoon drawn to a stone bench that sat beneath the boughs of a stately oak. There was a substance woven into the fabric of this place by the running feet, the laughing, the crying raucous sounds of the children, which filled a void, or a need I could not fill elsewhere.

And so it went, my wanderings and explorations of the city, interspersed among my frequent calls to my new duties, always ending at the same bench, under the same tree.

It was only occasionally that I would look around me and see the time spun differences in the world around me. While I stayed the same, the city grew, buildings raised in open spaces I once walked. People who I had passed in market stalls, on city corners, day after day had changed, grown old and disappeared.

And my favorite haunt, that wondrous park, was not spared time’s wear. The stone bench I cared for, surreptitiously repairing and nurturing it over the years. I could not do anything for the tree which shaded my seat. Its limbs grew heavy, reaching low towards the ground, its roots clawing their way to the surface creating canyons which I learned to navigate by rote.

It was the children though that changed the most. As I watched day in day out, year in and year out, they grew as their mothers and grandmothers aged. They would disappear and then reappear with small children of their own, now themselves the mothers and as time wore on the grandmothers. It was always the same but for me it never grew old. I drew some sort of nourishment, established a bond with each one whose tiny feet graced that place.

And then one day it happened. Why it hadn’t occurred before I don’t know, but the shuffling sound of feet coming close drew my attention. An old woman, stooped low like the limbs above me, shuffled around and across the cavernous roots until she stood before my bench. I kept my face forward not daring to look her way.

After a time she sat; I heard the creak and crack of her bones. I’m not sure I breathed through those awful minutes as she stared at me, silent, as I stared straight ahead unmoving. Finally I turned and looked at her and in that moment when our eyes met I recognized her and she smiled.

She used to wear a brilliant blue dress, in those days it stood out amongst the drab brown many of the other children wore. Her tresses, now white streaked with gray, had been a golden wave of light cascading across the fields then. I had watched her grow until one day she had gone. I’d watched for her for days, months, years and then she had re-appeared, a grown woman, tall, still dressed in blue, shepherding a small boy. He too had grown and gone away, taking his mother with him.

Now as I looked into her eyes I saw them fill with tears, yet the smile remained.
“I knew you were real. From the first time I saw you as a young girl to that last time, when I moved from this city, I knew you were real.

“I asked my mother one day why you sat here, under the tree, never moving, just watching. She told me you were an angel, my guardian angel.

“When I brought my son to this place and I saw you, still the same, no older and still watching over me, I told him what you were.

“And then one day sitting in my son’s home, far away from this city, I knew I needed to come here and thank you for watching over me all these years. I knew you would be here.”

Her tears coursed down her face in and out of the creases and crevasses that reminded me of the canyons created by the roots beneath our feet. And then she reached out a hand and placed it on mine and I too began to cry.

After a time she drew back her hand and without saying another word she stood and shuffled off across the grassy field toward the now old and decrepit church. I lost sight of her as she passed through a throng of yelling, laughing children.

In those moments as she faded away I came to realize the danger of what I was, or seemed to be, to those whose mortal eyes might linger and come to recognize me. I was not some angelic being. I was a man; nothing more, nothing less.

That was the last time I ever visited that place.

Music to write to...

It's official...Here is the cover to "The Arimathean"

Well here it is. After some tweaking and reworking Carl Graves has done it again and produced what I think is a perfect cover for the followup to Slow Boat To Purgatory.

Carl took my sometimes rambling and I'm sure half coherent visions and produced a cover that speaks directly to the contents of the story. Of course you'll have to wait a bit to see if you agree as I'm still pounding away at the guts of the book(in between pounding away with a hammer at my fingers and the guts of our almost 100 year old restaurant building).

I'd love to hear your comments on the cover and thanks Carl, you're a master.

VJB

Val Kilmer as Mark Twain...

These aren't words. They are something else indeed. If I had to guess, this is as close as one gets to literary lucidity.

Got into some bones today...

For those who don't know, when I'm not being a husband, a dad, a proprietor of a place of lodging and an erstwhile scribbler of tales, I'm a restaurateur.

Anyone who has ever owned a restaurant and been successful at it can tell you that you must be able to do all the jobs. Just in case. Which leads me to this story and why I found myself covered in grime, sweat and the essence of something that I can only describe as otherworldly...

Got into some bones today...

Spent the day, hammer, crow bar and sledge in hand, delving into the guts of Papa J's. I'll not bore you with the details but only share this otherworldly moment.

At some point, knee deep below the floor, clearing away the remnants of some past proprietors shoddy construction, I came upon the bones of the place; huge beams, two of them showing signs of being carved by hand and literally holding up the place. What had evolved into a remorseful endeavor full of loathing and the more than occasional oath, became a metamorphosis into an understanding of the place. If that makes sense.

I've often wondered why it is that late at night, when friends and staff have gone their way and I sit, glass in hand, listening to music, trying to unwind, that characters, people, come to me here, telling me stories I have no right to conjure.

I'm starting to understand it a little more. As I get into the bones.

There's an ill wind blowing tonight...

Tis an ill wind that blows warm in March…in Maine.

It carries tidings of war, pestilence and more. It opens a door long closed, a door to a realm not suited for men but a door that beckons to angelic beings looking for lost souls and a glass of wine.

Tis an ill wind that blows warm on Penobscot Bay.

It blows to shore brigantines long sunk, with blood thirsty pirates at the helm, in search of rape, pillage and souls to plunder.

Tis an ill wind that blows warm through the windows of an old route one tavern.

It slithers across a marble bar behind which stands a man in black, a bottle of red in one hand and a book in the other, reading tales to dead pirates, angels and the bringers of war…holding back the tides of a warm March wind.

Tis an ill wind that blows warm in March in Maine

Outside a horse is tethered awaiting it's rider and I'm just sitting in the corner going along for the ride watching it all unfold.

The man in black he's got them and the wind under his thumb. He's telling them a story of lost love. Love lost in a wave of unholy rage and darkness, lost in the ancient warrens of a Venetian palazzo. A once in many lifetimes love never again to be risked.

He spins the tale like a banshee and he doesn't move, he lets the words do his work. And as the tears fall from his eyes, his voice weaves a spell of remorse and understanding that holds sway over the assembled mass of soulless beings who in the end weep with him.

They know I'm here but this is their soiree and the wine in my glass keeps being refilled by wispy remnants of ring clad fingers crisscrossed with scars and welts that tell only one tale.

And now the wind is cooling.

As he pours into the assorted gold, bronze and wooden goblets, held out in ever growing supplication, from a bottle that never empties, he glances across the room at me and smiles.

A sound like the songs sung by the angels who guard the dock on heaven's shore reaches my mind and while his lips don't move I know he's singing to me. He's telling me the stories I've never heard, the ones I've always imagined but could never quite conjure.

As the wind fades away so do the vagabonds, one by one, until it's only me and him…and the stories.
I can hear the breath of his horse outside my door, the occasional stamp of an impatient hoof shaking the time worn floor beneath my feet.

Now, two glasses rest on the table before me and as I lose myself in his words and the endless depths of the red nectar in my glass, I'm taken back in time, into the past lives of a man whose feet have trod this earth for seven hundred years.

I see the lives torn asunder in his wake, by those mortals who have and do pursue him and what he guards, by the angelic beings on both sides of the eternal divide some of who toil on only in the darkest hope that one day they may taste his soul, and the lives lost at his hand.

I see it all in a never ending tableau, a parade of darkness and light, pain and torment and the righteous hope of salvation. Someday, some way, all this will end. Until then...the stories, and the wine, flow.

Book cover concept #2 for The Arimathean

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks to all the new readers who downloaded Slow Boat!

I wanted to say thanks and welcome aboard to all those who took advantage of the two day promotion and downloaded Slow Boat to Purgatory. Over 1500 more copies are now in the hands of readers and I hope to hear from some of you soon.

We arrived back in Maine(65 degrees upon arrival)today and the final push on the followup to Slow Boat, The Arimathean, begins now!

Thanks again,

Vernon

Slow Boat to Purgatory is FREEE!!!!!

Starting at midnight tonight Slow Boat To Purgatory will be free on all Amazon sites. That means wherever you are in the world you can pick up a free e-book copy. The promotion will last 48 hours and I'm hoping to connect with some new readers so spread the news and climb aboard the Slow Boat for free!


Slow Boat To Purgatory free promo