Where I have been: The Nine Worlds

It has been some time since I dusted and pounded the pillows on this porch. Some time ago, long ago, when I sat and virtually contemplated. Work got in the way, as it always does. I know alot of you have come by and called this a 'slacker's blog but know at least that I have been quite busy as of late.

Since I was 14 I have been into Role-Playing Games. My life has turned away from the dice, the tables, the people, the rulebooks that cost WAY too much money. Plus I live in a city that LIVES its fantasies, does not just play them out. We ar just emerging from a month of fantastical revelry. While that is great, the actual rping that is done here is slim compared to places up North.

But while my DM Screen is long gone my need to role-play has not. I have resorted to serious archchair adventuring. Living on the internet are my adventures and I have visied a million sites and played in someone else house. The thing is that there comes a time when you just want to have your own place. I created:


The NIne Worlds is a collaborative story-telling project to keep me in the ink. There I have started stories that allow me to explore those little-known universes that exist in my mind. The thing is I have invited others to do the same. Things appear ot be moving quite fast, thus I invite you all to join me there.

If you cant find me on the porch, then I am at 'THE NINE'

For a moment back to 'The Life'

For a brief moment I go back to the life I blissfully created and lived for 2.5 months. Here on Labor Day weekend I am once again waking up and writing. Waking up and imagining, waking up and hiding for three hours behind a cup of coffee. It makes me happy that I have not become totally separate from that bliss, totally alien to that habit of non-habit- the only chore a bit of resting. Yes, a day where all of time is measured by either what am I going to eat for lunch, or the afternoon nap. It will only last 3 days, so I hope I can make the most out of it. Like a man on parole from a life sentence. and in that time he wants to taste, smell, hear, see, and touch everything that he will be denied for the whole sentence. Ah the sentence of work, how much does it keep us from what we have to do?

But not forever, for we have these little times. These small times in the middle of the night, when all are asleep and the house is quiet. Perhaps that is why so many write during moonlight.
Then after that whole night has been filled with one satisfying the imagination, there is one prize.

The morning. Within those first moments of opening your eyes, your brain tells you. 'I have nothing to do'

The Bliss of 'The Life'.

1992 Exile

They were not days of wine and roses
But afternoons of rum and platains.
Where Victorian gingerbread raveled
around plantation style wicker.

Often facing the Bayou- waves gleaming in the sun
the siestas turned to carefree nights
Conversations swelling to tales
Bottle after bottle

The seasonal calendar of the Crescent
Allowed times with the muses
as they passed on on the Canal- floating
Flinging plastic treasures to the adoring mass.

Time was measured not by clocks
But by meals and the contrast of light
upon the porch slats
As it moved across our blurred vision.

Like the exiles of a faded island
we try and recreate that sunny orb
In dozens of cafes, tiny porches, and concrete patios.
We drink the same sugar
We ravel the same tales.
Yet the laziness of that time is gone.

For so many of us, muse not for muse's sake
But muse of work and payments
We refuse another sip for its influence,
or skip another round of fried plantains
Because of the excess of carbs.

And thus we are exiles....
From our own lives.

Trying to Hide

I just had to, this is the hour of the most productive words that I have in the day. With coffee, with the sun barely out of its western conch shell, its coral rays spreading across the day. Yet at this time the sun is not hot, it is inviting. Perhaps for that reason is why I can write fully at this time. It is the hour of the porch of possibilities. This is the time that we can honorably hide behind a cup of coffee, filling the cup until the demands provoke us into movement. It is a better time done in the house, there invulnerable from the day.

But now sitting at work, waiting for the clock to strike the hour of movement, the hour of momentum. Where I will roll until I find that impenetrable object called quitting time. I know by that time the sun will be out, and my eyes will return to normal. No longer able to see beyond what is there. My mind will no longer be able to float, and glide and be free. The humidity will be up and ready, crashing upon us in that August Vacuum called Summer in the South. By 3 o clock, I will dented, soiled, bullet-ridden by the day. It is at that time that I retreat once again to that cup of coffee, it becoming my respiratory, bringing me back to life.

The problem is, just when I am living like a human being again, it is time to return to the Thunderdome. The experience similar to taking attendance before a barbarian horde.
With the crash of the bell, its rim of iron cascading across campus, seizing all dreams and hopes.

The world stops the imagination, pushing the day forward, like a clock without a snooze button.

Distilling Spirits

Are we so different from those alchemists
that turn sugar into rum, potato into vodka,
rye into whiskey or water into wine?

The stylus, the engine of spirits,
from which we give and we drink,
ferments and turns our thoughts into phrases.

Do we not become intoxicated in that rich trickle of the keys?
We taste and we change,
we add and we subtract,
measuring the weight of every syllable against the ideal.

Our patience allows the reaction to wait,
to ferment…
and age in its own time and distinct bouquet.

Folding the material into a drawer,
or oak barrel,
we wait until the yeast eats away at the pages.

With the passage of time, the script can fill with imagery,
caramelize and sweeten to the mind.
Then and only then, is when we open that cask,
pull that creation from its dark cell,
and taste.

For what can reading be,
other than sipping the mind of another?

Purity and potency are the maxims
of both the distillers of elements and language.

For when we believe we are done,
it when we are to begin;
perhaps even again.

While alchemists attempt to turn lead into gold,
distillers turn nature into spirit,
we turn gold into graphite and ink.

Whether shot glass or script,
tale or tankard, bottle or book-
we follow the same brewer's rules
for creating the uncommon from the common.

Collect, mix, distil, pour, and drink.