More Self-Promotion

Book two, anyone? This one is shorter than the last one, but maybe not any more readable. Still in my early phase here, so there thee's and thou's sprinkled about pretty liberally. Just pretend Homer wrote it and everything will come out right. Oh yeah, Japan is alright. But it's well past my bedtime (about 8:30) so I'll have to catch up with myself a little later. 6:30 comes disgustingly early. I've got a couple pictures of me playing a private guitar concert for a homeless man I've gotta stick up. Also, I've always been in love with the youtube phenomenon that is people webcamming themselves in their depressing bedrooms doing acoustic covers of songs, so I'm going to do that. Expect a link to Wet Sand, or maybe Wagon Wheel, to be up and running soon. Rock on.




Time passed, and for the accustomed
period the land was dark, though
brushed with the softest silver in wash from
the constant stars and a wild moon.
The night was like a sable blanket tucked
under the chin of a slumbering world, but it was
like Triton had kicked off the covers and there
were only nightmares. He shivered and shook
like a child who sees terror in the dark, weeping
softly but violently into the indifferent emptiness
around him. Nobody saw, but as day threatened,
and it still seemed as if his berserk grief would never
end and that his pitiful condition would soon
be revealed to all inquiring eyes, Triton stopped
wailing. He clutched tightly at the tattered and useless
shreds of his sanity, the pitiful remnants of his
godly mantle which now seemed more like a
beggar’s vestments, and looked far to the East.
There he saw the first glowing tendrils of dawn,
as Aurora softly drew her yellow robe across those
Oriental skies. Animated by his great shame,
Triton mastered his quivering body, and slipped
quickly beneath the cover of the waves,
forsaking to their sullen fury his crumbling
throne of coral, whispering a dirge as it sank.

And so it came to pass that Aurora blazed
beautifully across the entire sky, lighting it
from her shining lamp first with tendrils of pink,
then blossoms of orange and peach that spread
like smoke from a harem fire, wafting into the
lightened sky before disappearing in the aery ocean
of early azure, all without alighting upon
anything amiss amongst the heavenly ranks.
Maybe the gulls calls were forlorn,
and maybe the sea seemed a bit hollow,
but what were they to her whose realm
was the conduit between night and day?

His introduction made in Aurora’s heraldic colors,
Apollo led his orb over the edge of the
world, its golden spray spilling over
the mountains and into the valleys of the earth
in a dramatic, sweeping moment of light. Ascending
his fiery throne, the great Archer looked down,
seeking maids of virtue and beauty to caress
with a beam, and glory to wreath with a laurel.
He too gazed at the distraught sea,
but from ignorance took its restlessness
for playfulness, passing it over.

So it was with all the other spirits
of the world. Flora tended her flowers, Ares
raged and slew, Hephaistos put the bellows
to his forge, Athena played her subtleties,
Demeter ripened the amber grains
growing in the farmer’s fields, Hades fumed
down with the dead, and so on and on
ad infinitum, up to Zeus, who sat on his throne
of clouds and threw lightning bolts where(ever)
it pleased him to. Only the spirits of the sea and
mighty Poseidon knew of the infliction of their waters.
The extent they knew not, however, for how could
they guess at the truth?

There was one who knew the truth of her lord’s
afflictions; a naiad feeling upon her soul the salt
of his wound though knowing it not. Seeking its cause
she found him, though not it. Joanna she was called
by her sisters of the sea, and seeing her lord, she hailed
him thus. “ My lord, glad am I to find thee here,
whence so much deadly pestilence hath sprung, though
it’s source I perceive not. It feels to me as though
the waters bleeds, and when the water bleeds,
I feel it poisonous upon my skin; I think that I should
not weather its unnatural sting much longer.
Dost thee feel it too? For though I would that it were
with me, and not this my beloved sea, I think not
that I am so far off the mark. Lord, what
is this anathema, from whence....”

Seeing here her lord’s sparkling wound, she
broke off sharply, and was greatly shocked
to see its drastic degree.
“ O Triton, it is not the sea that bleeds, but thee!
How camest thou by this grievous wound,
and what mighty god under the Pantheon struck it?
It is no wonder that the waters cry out, for its Monarch
to be so assaulted. But still- I see thy wound is grave,
a gaping ruin of muscle and skin, yet even then there is
more pain here than the rending of heavenly flesh,
so easily repaired, could confer. Please, what befell
thee that makes my heart tremble so?”
Here, apprehending fully her lord’s
shaky condition, she was stunned
by what she saw. His crown of shells
which once so lightly and proudly had adorned
his wide brow hung askew and crumbling,
forgotten amongst his wild locks.
Like the forsaken grandeur of an ancient ruin
mostly lost beneath a sheath of jungle creeper,
they framed the growing madness on his haggard
face. Unkempt and ragged, he looked a bedraggled
beggar at the side of a road, wild and covered
all in smut. Twin pasty paths followed a
frantic trail down his cheeks to converge
on the unsteady point of his chin, clear
evidence of the passing of many sorrowful
pilgrims, divine tears marking divine suffering.
This recognition nearly drove the naiad to weeping
herself, so out of place they seemed on that strong
face. Worst of all, though, were his eyes,
those windows to the soul, and his swam
with uncontrolled frenzy. Even when respectable
control of his body he would regain, still his eyes,
opaline shot with ultramarine round the bindings,
would be illumined with an unhealthy light
and a lurid tint, wont to flick about furtively
as if searching and deathly frightened
of what they might find.

Yet, god he was, and in the boys’s absence
he was able to remember, and affect at least
a passing resemblance to his former station.
Looking into the watery eyes of the Naiad,
he composed himself, and like Theoden before
the staff of Mitrandir he seemed to grow.
That this being so proud and so high was weeping
like a baby only moments before was impossible,
so massive seemed his presence and iron
his will. It was almost enough to make
one forget the profound wound ‘cross his shoulder,
almost enough to make it insignificant;
but his regeneration never reached his eyes,
though they filmed a little, and the turbulence there
was only momentarily turned aside.
Raising his chin, he spoke to the nymph,
dissembling, but not without love. “ Dearest
daughter, I would fain thee had not seen me
in my distress, but truly ‘twas nothing
more than a passing storm, a sudden squall
quickly come and quickly gone; already
it hath passed and I feel calmed, nearly placid,
say true. See how my countenance is eased?
As for this, as you say, a trifling,
for there is no hurt the healing arts
of the Immortals cannot mend.
Yet it brings me pain, here, and indeed when I hurt,
the sea follows suit, being tied so neatly
to the flow of my soul. As for the author
of this hurt, ‘twas nobody, and at any rate
matters not, for it closes already.
The only consequence now is to soothe
it completely. Let us go to my father,
as his skill with wounds like this is supreme,
and though it should be within my limits
to make it alone, I would not mind
your company and support should I falter.”

So convincing was his speech and
so eager was she to believe it that, ignoring
the niggling unease at the back of her
mind, and forgetting mostly the violent
doubt that had wracked her so recently,
she smiled and swam off in the direction
of Poseidon’s palace, while Triton, a sea
serpent twirling momentarily ‘round
his fishy half, followed with a cozening
hope kindling in his outer heart.