Literary Humor: Call Me A Poet

Every now and then, OOC conversation does wind up going beyond the usual bullshit and gets semi intellectual. Humor still remains, and, I would say, that is a good thing.  And to show the sort of stuff that I speak of, here is an excerpt from a recent discussion on poetry:


***** *****1: Well call me a poet.
***** *****2: Uh huh.
Iohannes Crispien: Well, if you've been waiting years to get poetry published, then go drink one's self into a stupor, die young, and then people publish you and tell the world how brilliant an unsung hero of literature you are, then you can call yourself a poet.
***** *****2: Except for the young part, it's too late for that for him.
Iohannes Crispien: well, there's always an exception to the rules.
***** *****1: Only in western cultures. In the east, it's common for a man of my years to write poetry.
Iohannes Crispien: But can still go into a drunken stupor and make all sorts of bawdy poetry that one day becomes canon of literature under some genre you never knew it was while writing it.
***** *****1: It's not required it be good poetry.
Iohannes Crispien: Have you seen what makes it into the canon these days?  Indeed, no it doesn't!
***** *****1: Too true.

The Story of the Felines

Note: This is a very rough draft of something that I had been inspired to start to write last night.  It holds within it bits and pieces of other concepts and ideas I had for almost three years now, but with a slightly different twist.  I'm not sure who, among my characters will be the narrator.  I may just decide to keep it ambiguous and unnamed. Though, those that know my characters well enough may have some idea who might be most likely to be speaking.

At any rate, hope some of you who read this find it at least mildly entertaining or of some interest.  It's still a rough draft, so don't tear it down too much, if you don't like it. :p

Also, don't get hung up on the title.  It's bound to change eventually.

The Story of the Felines

Approximate Page Count: 2

Approximate Word Count: 1486

Synopsis: Introduction to the story.  A telling of a particular mythos, leading into concepts and ideas that may (or may not) have bearing or relevance to the underlying theme(s) of the story as it unfolds.

Theme Song: Canvas - Imogen Heap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csrQgWBgfo8

Slow, hard, dark, weighed down love, black canvas

revolve within, you understand.

Fragile Earth where cracks in the temperature,

keep it cool to give, you understand.

Hijacked, lost track, light fades, another day left.

It's long shadows lure you in.

The more you look, the less you see.

So close your eyes, and start to breathe.

---

I have a story to tell. I want to tell you a story. Or, more to the point, I want to take you on a journey. A hero's journey. I must warn you. You will not like it. Not at first, at least. And maybe you won't like the ending. I don't know what you like for a story, nor where you would like to go. All I know is, that this journey goes where it goes, just like how the wind blows. Maybe that is fitting, being a Gemini. Like the brothers of ancient legend, Castor and Pallox. The one brother being a demigod, while the other just a mortal. And yet the immortal one chose to give a portion of his time in the heavens to his mortal half. And that was a story of brotherly love from the Hellenists. That one brother would sacrifice his time to descend into Hades so that the other could spend time exalted in the heavens. And this but one note in the story of the heroic. The stuff of legends.

Centuries, maybe even millenniae later, a similar tale of heroic deed and brotherly love is given to us in a more universal way. This one having the humble beginnings in Bethlehem, further east of the Hellenic shores. A child born, who was not merely known as a demigod, but became known as the Son of God, and God incarnate. Much was said of him in his temporal stay here among us, and after. But his love was a similar sacrifice, but not just to one brother. He visited Hades and brought from that pit many who would become his brothers through past faith in his Father, as well as, among those living, make brothers of those who accepted him, and believed.

But none of this matters. Or, better put, it only represents a small perspective of the journey. Of the story. It is something I have no ending to, because I am still on this journey, and still creating this story. Nor can I say where the beginning is. I can give a starting point at the particular place and time that this portion of a much larger story, and journey shall be noted. However, do not expect any times nor dates of when this takes place, just be happy that there is a place, and persons to which inhabit this place.

Setting. A woods. Not just any woods. But a woods with a particular creature that dwells in it. This creature is a cat. Not just any cat, like the four legged variety you see here among us in our particular shared reality in what we call the real world. But rather a humanoid variety, with like variety of origin of species, to which there may be at least two main sects that still live – the ancients, and the new breed.

The ancients are a particular sort. They have long standing traditions that date back to the time of the Golden Age. To the dawn of time. With that said, there are two denominations of this sect. The male denomination that has as its matriarch the Egyptian cat goddess Sekhmet. The female denomination takes their origins from the sister of Sekhmet: Baast, or Bastet as she is sometimes called. Both formed the society of the, the first humanoid cats, and they spread throughout the east and west, and left their prints in all areas of the world. But, eventually, the Golden Age died out, and the feline society nearly died with it.

Remnants of the Sekhmets and Baasts lived on. But most survived by hiding from humans when the Age of Man came to be. Ruins that used to be sacred to the Ancients became the new temples for Man. And eventually the feline features were diminished and altered to look more human. Even so, some humans could hear the whispering mews and purrs and scratchings of the cats, that some men came to revere cats, maintaining the dignity of the feline, and even praise them as divine.

However, some humans resented the ancient felines, and chose to abolish the way of the cats. They started the first known war between the humans and the cats. And though these original battles did end in treaty and alliance, the memory of Man is not very good. Thousands of years later, these once held divine creatures came to be hunted by humans of a militant age who wanted nothing more than the cat ears and tails to claim. Other humans were curious to what made these felines, and so robbed from the dead ancients the twisting spiral strands of their essence. And from these strands is born the New Breed.

To many of the Ancients, those that still live, the feline sect of the New Breed is a bastard child. For the New Breed is the product of the pure helix of the Felix that has been tainted with various abominable breeding mixes of the wild to domesticated four-legged cats, as well as the more impure strands of human essence. At least, to the Ancients, this is true, and they attest to it being proven even by humankind's own ancient texts that speak of a stain upon the strand of their species. So thus, the New Breed shares in that stain, and the darkness that veils it.

But to the New Breed, that knows not of the Ancients, or only bits and pieces mixed in the illusions of prejudices of Man, they only perceive what they can from day to day, and upon the whims of what they experience among humanity. The most common of experience is slavery. Slavery to humans. Slavery to the whims and will of masters made so by malevolence, and passing it off in the name of science. But does science dictate that cruelty should be the hand played against these creatures that have fallen, and not of their own will, but by the already tainted will of Man?

The Ancients do have pity for the poor beasts. Not for Man. The treacherous lot that violated what should have been time honored treaties. But for those felines of the New Breed. Yet pity does not mean acceptance. Nor understanding. If anything, it is a lamentation in knowing the past of this wretched New Breed, knowing their origins cam from the fall of loved ones – brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and many other members of a once proud and mighty race of the Days of Gold, before the world became cold and old, and Night and Day would meet and mingle in a never-ending twilight, where both Sun and Moon stood together in the same sky to watch on the land as all creation passes on by. When the heavens truly in that commingling looked like gold. And no one knew that the treachery of Man would one day end these great and legendary days of old.

Even so, this is still nonsense. It has little to do about this story. This journey, and our hero never saw these days. Much of them have passed from common memory, or are locked up in the mixed bag of the memory of poets and priests, or the data of research that has long since been covered in the dust and piling of classified files among men. Only the storytellers and record keepers of the Ancients hold in frail memory and decaying parchments of this time. And, unless the more pure helix of the Felix holds some osmosis power, the felines of the New Breed are all but lost to this grand history.

This does not matter. For the starting point of this story and the journey it tells is within the woods earlier spoken of. It's not even the beginning for this particular cat, or group of cats, but it is the beginning to this story and the journey that these felines take. They rest among the treetops in rustic housing, both quaint and cozy. It is among the few lands that is predominantly feline and free. The freedoms of these particular cats may come from being on a relatively remote mountain top. While in the spring and summer, it is quite clear and green, and even seems like a slice of the heavens, after the break of fall, and on into the winter, the place becomes so harsh that, for those not acclimated to such cold, it would be a near portrayal of if Hades had frozen over. But even so, the felines that live here call it their sanctuary, their asylum. And so, from here is the beginnings of the story of a hero's journey, and I shall tell you the story of these particular cats – the good, the bad, and all else that comes upon those that play a part in the pathway that these cats travel upon to reach their destiny.