Writing - On The Cascade of Humans

Writing - On The Cascade of Humans

Oh what these glorious monsters, astride in silence looking out into the darkness. I sat in quiet vantage, contemplating their movement and found myself alone. To behold their freewheeling paths, that which made them both envious and enviable.

Words bespoke one another, and gestures too. They tried to share their experiences, but words and language fail, they turn to pictures and then to long pieces of video, carefully constructed for the human mind, frame by frame at a galloping 60 per second.

These too fail.

I kept a silent vigil, long into the night. A cloak of cascade water, and a weary eye alight.

Celebrate - World Theatre Day 2015

Celebrate - World Theatre Day 2015

World Theater Day Message 2015

The true masters of the theater are most easily found far from the stage. And they generally have no interest in theater as a machine for replicating conventions and reproducing clichés. They search out the pulsing source, the living currents that tend to bypass performance halls and the throngs of people bent on copying some world or another. We copy instead of create worlds that are focused or even reliant on debate with an audience, on emotions that swell below the surface. And actually there is nothing that can reveal hidden passions better than the theater.

Quotes - Erik Larsen

Quotes - Erik Larsen

"The audience is not wiser than the creative people. If they were better writers and artists than those in the field, they would be employed in the field. They’re mouthy amateurs and their suggestions should largely be treated like the witless ramblings of an insane person."

-Erik Larsen 

Poetry - Come

Poetry - Come

Come the darkness, and wind and rain
Come chains to bind the unwilling
Come fall the best, let angels rest
For my lady shall walk the world again.

-From the collected books on Nysanna

Life - Watering On A Rainy Day

Life - Watering On A Rainy Day

I walked past a man on a rainy day in Vancouver. In and of itself not an unusual occurance. My arms laden with groceries, earbuds in and loud music playing..a kind of slow discordant soundtrack to my life.

It is raining, the slow fall of water from the sky, a cascade of glorious pitter patter on pavement and leaves.

A man stands out the front of his house, on cobbled stone steps. He wears shorts, and a shirt, sandals, and a vacancy in his eyes. In his right hand is a watering hose, and it is still. He waters the cobbles quietly, unmoving, The press of the hose does not move, he waters the same spot as I approach.

He is not aware of my slow approach.

I reach up and remove the headphones from one ear. Looking concerned, I ask.

Are you, alright sir?

A long moment, of stillness save for rain.

He turns to the sound of my voice, but doesn't look quite at me. As though restrained in movement, unable to fixate quite all the way.

I'm fine. I was just...somewhere else.

Like an old clockwork, he turns back to the vacant place he was before.  And again grows still.

I put my earphones back in, and walk down the street.

I guess we're all somewhere else.

Endless Horizons - Flatline: Upgrades

Endless Horizons - Flatline: Upgrades

Kangiol was not a planet that Tso liked very much. It wasn’t like his home at all, and you couldn’t ignore the press of the UV lights, the overpowering heat and crush of too-many people, or the ever-present smell of Neo Taco-Bell.  The grunge of gangs and criminals were everywhere, more than a few people, at least when they caught sight of him, eyed his technological finery and gear with ill intention. But a quick flash of the pair of Autopistols on his chest holsters deterred most problems.

And whatever wasn’t deterred by a pair of pistols on a teched out spy-bandit was probably a little intimidated by him being shadowed by the leather-cloaked, shotgun wielding crazy bitch. Or hopefully really intimidated.  It paid to keep her in good spirits. Literally.

Endless Horizons - Flatline: Tech

Endless Horizons - Flatline: Tech

Tso didn’t exactly luxuriate. But he did relax.  Hernando had given him a state room a little further away from the rest, telling others that it was because he didn't want anyone bothered by all the computers, fans and blinking lights.

That was partially true. One wall of the room was racks of cobbled together electronics. Wires dangled from the removed ceiling panels where he’d installed cooling vents that pushed warm air out into the bulkheads.  Sets of tables adorned the rest of the room, it was like some kind of mad scientist’s lab. Equipment was strewn everywhere, wires and welds, tools lay out everywhere and in rolling racks. It seemed like the bed was a complete afterthought.

D&D - Why

D&D - Why

Why do we play D&D?  I had this conversation a few weeks ago with someone.  She said that for her D&D was more just an excuse to get together and hang out.  An excuse to drink and order pizza and see people.

I shook my head.

Endless Horizons - Flatline: Contingency

Endless Horizons - Flatline: Contingency

“Sir, you have incoming.” Intoned Guin suddenly.

“Onscreen, Guin” said Flatline distractedly.

“No sir. You have actual incoming.” At that Flatline looked up. A map display of the building snapped into holo-view above his cobbled rack from where he’d been working. The three-dimensional model showed four blips moving through the abandoned under-floors of the building, obviously moving with purpose. He was sixteen floors up, a half-constructed apartment complex that had been abandoned for one reason or another. Squatters occupied the bottom 5, but up here the wind was too strong against the open concrete for people to actually stay. No running water either, but there was electricity, and a hook into the SolarNet that functioned just fine.

“Shit. Eta?”