'via Blog this'
Monday, January 29, 2018
Joseph Campbell on The Journey of the Hero
"[T]he journey of the hero … I consider the pivotal myth that unites the spiritual adventure of ancient heroes with the modern search for meaning. As always, the hero must venture forth from the world of common-sense consciousness into a realm of supernatural wonder. There he encounters fabulous forces--demons and angels, dragons and helping spirits. After a fierce battle he wins a decisive victory over the powers of darkness. Then he returns from his mysterious adventure with the gift of knowledge or of fire, which he bestows on his fellow man.
"Whenever the social structure of the unconscious is dissolved, the individual has to take a heroic journey within to find new forms. The biblical tradition, which provided the structuring myth for Western culture, is largely ineffective … So there must be a new quest."
Joseph Campbell, interviewed by Sam Keen, in "Man & Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell,” Psychology Today, July 1971
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
The Phone Found in Rainy May
The Phone
Found in Rainy May
By Calvin Ya-Lu
I knew a
man who could breathe fire
And turn
water into blood
He could
strip metal into wire
And pull
gold lumps from the mud
When I
asked him how, he said with a hiss
“I learned
it from the abyss”
He
explained to me his strange way
The way he
found in rainy may
A public
phone
That stands
alone
At the end
of the street named “Worth”
A spot that
is not of this earth
He needed
to make a call
His car had
crashed into a wall
But instead
of a tone
He heard a
haunting moan
The moan
then changed to voices
They
offered many choices
“I’ll tear
out your eyes”
“We’ll
teach you to dance”
The man was
in a trance
He hung up
the phone and was left concerned
But then
just realized, that he had learned
The voices
gave him powers
And
nightmares lasting for hours
He wakes in
cold sweat
And drinks
to forget
You may
seek it if you must
But put
into me your trust
When I say
“stay far away”
Or it will
take you away
Let your
sanity stay another day
Avoid the
phone he found in rainy may
Incendiary
Incendiary
The bank was having their regularly scheduled armored truck delivery, each of the two cars containing at least $5,000,000. A classic place for a robbery. One of the guards was out sick, so they would even have one less obstacle in their way. But he didn’t strike there.
The museum was hosting a week-long exclusive viewing of rare gemstones from Africa and the Middle East. Even the smallest of these gems is priceless, but the man in the orange and black suit did not bother.
9:45 AM, a crisp early April morning. One of the first nice days after the winter cold, a gentle wind accompanies the city folk enjoying the nice weather, and a man in an orange and black diagonally striped suit and a metal helmet walks into the city governor’s office building.
Not even 5 seconds after walking through the main doors the man commands in a low, flat voice, “You have one minute to leave the building before these doors burst. I need to have a private conversation.” As a security guard begins to approach him, the man suddenly and without hesitation pulls out a silver handgun. BANG-BANG! He shoots the guard twice, leaving him alive but severely crippled. The man says one more thing before he opens the door to the stairwell, “You had your chance.” A millisecond later, the door shatters in a fiery shockwave.
Within seconds the four ground floor entrances and exits are all consumed in bursts of flame. As everyone else in the building frantically panics, the man in the metal helmet continues to calmly climb the stairs. Some start to flee down the staircase he is on, seeing their scared expressions reflected by the polished industrial-type metal that encases his entire head, save his face. A few take notice of the helmet’s details as they run to hopeful safety. A center stripe of rivets bolts over his head from the just above his forehead to the back of his head. Two larger bolts on the sides of his helmet hold a bulky, vicious looking mouthpiece that looks similar to the bottom jaw of a shark.
Firetrucks and ambulances can be heard arriving outside the building as the man meets his target at the top of the stairs. The governor frantically opens the doors to the stairwell from the hallway, quickly glancing to see if these stairs were already overwhelmed with flames like the first stairwell he tried.
“Oh, Mr. Governor,” the man says in a fake surprised tone. “I’ve been needing to speak with you.”
“Wha-what? Who are you? N-nevermind we need to get out of here!” the governor tries to push past, but the man easily stops him with his muscular arms.
“That was not a request. We can have our conversation now.” The man’s dark eyes glint under his helmet in the firelight as he sternly orders the governor. “After our talk, these flames will be the least of your worries.”
Estres The Farmer
Estres The Farmer
There was a young boy named Estres who lived in a rural village. He always loved to hang out with his friends.
“Come Estres, we’re going to the kite festival!” his friends would ask.
“Oh boy! Let me get my kite.” Estres would excitedly answer.
“Come Estres, the carnival is in town!”
“Oh boy! Let’s hurry!”
“Come Estres, we’re starting the birthday party!”
“Oh boy! You won’t believe the present I got you!”
Estres always found time to have fun with his friends.
Over the years, Estres and his friends grew older. Now a young man, he also inherited a section of farmland. He worked very diligently, with little rest, everyday from sunrise to sunset. His friends also began to have work of their own, but Estres worked harder than anyone in the village. His hard work was certainly noticeable. His potatoes were bigger than babies, watermelons the size of small boulders, oranges juicy enough to make a river, and so much rice he could swim in it. By himself, Estres’ farm could feed the entire village. His friends would ask him to join them in celebrating.
“Come Estres, we’re going to the kite festival tomorrow,” his friends would ask him.
“I cannot, I must till the soil.” Estres would blandly answer.
“Come Estres, the carnival is in town!”
“I cannot, I must seed my farmland.”
“Come Estres, today is the wedding!”
“I still need to weed my farmland, but I cannot miss your wedding.”
Estres rarely ever hung out with his friends now, only attending important events such as birthdays and weddings. Whenever he did go out with his friends, he seemed to distance himself from others and was always ready to leave.
Many years later, Estres and his friends were now old and retired. At least his friends were retired, as Estres still worked everyday on his farm. By now, Estres had completely stopped interacting with anyone. He only left his farm to sell his crop and restock his supplies.
“Estres! It’s good to see you again. Come, let us catch up on old times.” His friends would ask him when they saw him at the market.
“I cannot, I must tend to my crops,” Estres would dryly answer.
Not long after, Estres died. He undoubtedly had the most impressive and successful farm in the history of the village. He produced enough potatoes to build a castle, watermelons so massive they used them for the village walls, oranges so delicious they were renowned across the land, and so much rice that it became more common than dirt. But he also undoubtedly had no wife, no children to inherit his labor, and his social communication in general had effectively ended years ago. The townspeople all came to his funeral, but more out of respect for his death than for personal connection.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
The Building
He woke up each morning the same way by the ringing of the breakfast bell, which echoed through the building. His eye shot open, his thoughts raced through his mind, and turned around, his head facing the nurse that brought his pills.
“Here you go, sweetie,” the nurse told him, placing the tray of pills on the table next to the bed, where he sat. The nurse left the room soon afterwards without a thought against it. She never heard him speak, the last time a word was uttered to the nurse was 20 years ago, when he was first brought into the building. Sometimes she heard him say thank you very softly as she left the room, but the nurse just thought it was all in her head.
After 20 years, he gave up hope of ever being cured of whatever was wrong with him. He took four pills in the morning, three pills at lunch, and five pills at night before he went to bed. However, if we woke up in the middle of the night he would take a sleeping pill.
He stood up facing the mirror, his reflection staring back at him. The mirror showed him shirtless, because that was how he slept. The six-pack abs were exposed and he saw the scars on his skin. However, he forgot how they were inflicted. Then it was the cross tattoo, which gave him hope that he wasn’t crazy.
The doctors couldn’t really give him an explanation of how the tattoo got on his chest, one day it showed up out of the blue. It was because of that, that it allowed him to believe that his dreams were real. Everyday was a painful reminder of how his dream was a nightmare. As a kid the man watched his mother and sister die in a house fire, and he and his father were the only survivors. However, death came, not long after, to take his father away, leaving the man to be stuck in this building.
Everyday he heard in the back of his mind the screams of his family as the fire burned them alive, and he was forced to listen the painful memories of his mother and sister. That’s why he took the pills so that the screeching would halt. While the day flooded his mind with screams by night dreams invaded the mind. He dreamt that his family were still alive, that one day he would escape from the building and be saved. The man kept trying to sell the false hope to himself.
The man took his morning pills, slipped on a clean white shirt, and walked outside the room into the hallway. In the hall nurses covered the area and to him he felt as if they were guards, trying to keep in from leaving; however, after 20 years he learned not to escape. He did try once to abandon this building but it didn’t end well, and later after being restrained inside his room Dr. Hillary visited him. Dr. Hillary was the head doctor inside the building, and while most of the time he stayed inside his office that one day he came out and talked to the man.
It was made clear to the man that there was nowhere out of the building. Not to mention the fact that if by some miracle he could escape, then he would have to get off the island that the building stood on. He gave up long ago, so now he just walked through the hallway, moving closer to the kitchen where he would have breakfast and talk to his doctor, Dr. Phil.
He turned the corner and went straight, the kitchen in his sights until Dr. Phil stood in his way. “Why don’t we talk inside my office today, Anthony?” Dr. Phil asked him, but there was no choice in the matter. The doctors inside the building spoke like there was free will, but there wasn’t. It was something they learned before entering the building, they had to make it seem he was the one in control, but Dr. Hillary made it very clear that he wasn’t.
The man just nodded his head and followed behind Dr. Phil, his eyes staring down at the ground as he walked forward. It was in the matter of seconds that they came up to the door, which led to his office. Dr. Phil opened the door, turned the lights on, and went inside. The man, once again, following after. Behind the large desk Dr. Phil sat, and as for the man he just took a seat on one of the chairs.
“Anthony, I just want to say that this is a safe place, like always, you are free to speak,” Dr. Phil explained, but the man knew it wasn’t. He wouldn’t talk to him, or anyone, his silence was the only thing that he had control over in this building. No one would take that away from him, not Dr. Phil, the nurses, or Dr. Hillary . . . no one.
When Dr. Phil realized that he wasn’t going to talk to him, like always, he moved on to a different topic. “I heard your pills are working, but you keep hearing voices sometimes? Is this right?” The man nodded and Dr. Phil flipped through some of his papers, writing a few words down on them. “Well, to make sure you don’t hear the voices anymore we will be adding two more of pills onto your lunch meds. Is that okay with you, Anthony?” And again the man nodded. “Alright then, that’s all, thank you.”
He stood up and walked out of the door, and in that moment he didn’t seem like eating, so he headed back to his room. Passing nurses and the kitchen he found himself in front of his door to the room. His fingers touched the cold metal as he turned the knob, pushing the door opened, staring at the emptiness around him.
The man made his way to the bed and sat down on it, but then he saw something on top of the blanket . . . a phone. For a moment, he forgot what it was, he hadn’t seen a phone in ages. He studied the black metal device that flipped in half to show a keyboard, and saw inside the contact list a single number. His thumb hit the number and the phone began to dial and beep as the number shown on the screen.
He pulled the phone to his face, close to his ear to hear the person on the other line. When the dialing and beeping stopped a female voice spoke, “. . . Hello? Anthony?! Is that you?” He didn’t respond. “You don’t have to talk, but please, just listen to me. This is very important . . . stop taking the drugs. We are coming for you, Anthony, please don’t listen to anything that they say. Mom and dad are safe and so am I . . . Anthony . . . you have to listen to me, you’ve been missing for a month. I love you, bro. I got to go, but I’ll see you soon, very soon . . . Bye.”
“Here you go, sweetie,” the nurse told him, placing the tray of pills on the table next to the bed, where he sat. The nurse left the room soon afterwards without a thought against it. She never heard him speak, the last time a word was uttered to the nurse was 20 years ago, when he was first brought into the building. Sometimes she heard him say thank you very softly as she left the room, but the nurse just thought it was all in her head.
After 20 years, he gave up hope of ever being cured of whatever was wrong with him. He took four pills in the morning, three pills at lunch, and five pills at night before he went to bed. However, if we woke up in the middle of the night he would take a sleeping pill.
He stood up facing the mirror, his reflection staring back at him. The mirror showed him shirtless, because that was how he slept. The six-pack abs were exposed and he saw the scars on his skin. However, he forgot how they were inflicted. Then it was the cross tattoo, which gave him hope that he wasn’t crazy.
The doctors couldn’t really give him an explanation of how the tattoo got on his chest, one day it showed up out of the blue. It was because of that, that it allowed him to believe that his dreams were real. Everyday was a painful reminder of how his dream was a nightmare. As a kid the man watched his mother and sister die in a house fire, and he and his father were the only survivors. However, death came, not long after, to take his father away, leaving the man to be stuck in this building.
Everyday he heard in the back of his mind the screams of his family as the fire burned them alive, and he was forced to listen the painful memories of his mother and sister. That’s why he took the pills so that the screeching would halt. While the day flooded his mind with screams by night dreams invaded the mind. He dreamt that his family were still alive, that one day he would escape from the building and be saved. The man kept trying to sell the false hope to himself.
The man took his morning pills, slipped on a clean white shirt, and walked outside the room into the hallway. In the hall nurses covered the area and to him he felt as if they were guards, trying to keep in from leaving; however, after 20 years he learned not to escape. He did try once to abandon this building but it didn’t end well, and later after being restrained inside his room Dr. Hillary visited him. Dr. Hillary was the head doctor inside the building, and while most of the time he stayed inside his office that one day he came out and talked to the man.
It was made clear to the man that there was nowhere out of the building. Not to mention the fact that if by some miracle he could escape, then he would have to get off the island that the building stood on. He gave up long ago, so now he just walked through the hallway, moving closer to the kitchen where he would have breakfast and talk to his doctor, Dr. Phil.
He turned the corner and went straight, the kitchen in his sights until Dr. Phil stood in his way. “Why don’t we talk inside my office today, Anthony?” Dr. Phil asked him, but there was no choice in the matter. The doctors inside the building spoke like there was free will, but there wasn’t. It was something they learned before entering the building, they had to make it seem he was the one in control, but Dr. Hillary made it very clear that he wasn’t.
The man just nodded his head and followed behind Dr. Phil, his eyes staring down at the ground as he walked forward. It was in the matter of seconds that they came up to the door, which led to his office. Dr. Phil opened the door, turned the lights on, and went inside. The man, once again, following after. Behind the large desk Dr. Phil sat, and as for the man he just took a seat on one of the chairs.
“Anthony, I just want to say that this is a safe place, like always, you are free to speak,” Dr. Phil explained, but the man knew it wasn’t. He wouldn’t talk to him, or anyone, his silence was the only thing that he had control over in this building. No one would take that away from him, not Dr. Phil, the nurses, or Dr. Hillary . . . no one.
When Dr. Phil realized that he wasn’t going to talk to him, like always, he moved on to a different topic. “I heard your pills are working, but you keep hearing voices sometimes? Is this right?” The man nodded and Dr. Phil flipped through some of his papers, writing a few words down on them. “Well, to make sure you don’t hear the voices anymore we will be adding two more of pills onto your lunch meds. Is that okay with you, Anthony?” And again the man nodded. “Alright then, that’s all, thank you.”
He stood up and walked out of the door, and in that moment he didn’t seem like eating, so he headed back to his room. Passing nurses and the kitchen he found himself in front of his door to the room. His fingers touched the cold metal as he turned the knob, pushing the door opened, staring at the emptiness around him.
The man made his way to the bed and sat down on it, but then he saw something on top of the blanket . . . a phone. For a moment, he forgot what it was, he hadn’t seen a phone in ages. He studied the black metal device that flipped in half to show a keyboard, and saw inside the contact list a single number. His thumb hit the number and the phone began to dial and beep as the number shown on the screen.
He pulled the phone to his face, close to his ear to hear the person on the other line. When the dialing and beeping stopped a female voice spoke, “. . . Hello? Anthony?! Is that you?” He didn’t respond. “You don’t have to talk, but please, just listen to me. This is very important . . . stop taking the drugs. We are coming for you, Anthony, please don’t listen to anything that they say. Mom and dad are safe and so am I . . . Anthony . . . you have to listen to me, you’ve been missing for a month. I love you, bro. I got to go, but I’ll see you soon, very soon . . . Bye.”
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Tweet by Main Street Rag on Twitter
 | Main Street Rag (@MainStreetRag) |
Poets are invited to send three unpublished poems online; the deadline is January 15th, 2018. . Winners will... fb.me/53FSw3RKC | |
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Sent from the iPhone of
Paul R. Koch
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Tweet by New Pages on Twitter
 | New Pages (@newpages) |
#Litmag @Foliate_Oak is seeking to celebrate newness in 2018. They are seeking fresh writing and art that is upbeat, zany, and humorous from those of you not yet published by them. Check out past issues and consider submitting, #writers. ow.ly/LurM30hxhnE pic.twitter.com/SSwkl6fQjT | |
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Sent from the iPhone of
Paul R. Koch
Monday, January 1, 2018
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