The Planet Walk

[Danik 2016]

Hi, Sebastian,
I see "Planet Walk" is progressing. I´m adding a link about some of more recent articles of the "Astronomy" thread. Some of the more recent researches focus on the interaction between celestial bodies and their consequences. Maybe that might interest you:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...tronomy/page89

[FREI]

Thanks Danik – that is of great interest to me!

All the very best, Sebastian.

[FREI]

I knew this would happen. I knew I could stay this, but not forever, I knew I would have to confront it, I knew I would not get away with staying away: I’m on my way home. The fact that I entertain a notion of ‘home’ is in itself a symptom of growing up, surely. Growing in. Growing through. Through the crises, the awaynesses of it all, the doubts and the fear.

Between Horror and Terror I stand on the Seat of the Gods and I feel me a warrior. Hah! Who would have thought that I could answer the call. Hold my head high and keep my gaze straight and look upon Earth in the distance and say: I salute thee, Mother, and I charge thee to welcome me back. “Be a Man” he said, and I knew what he meant. No controversy, no hesitation, no confusion and no offence. This rust coloured dust, this thin-skinned robustness. This unflappable sense of the just. Of the righteous. Of the direct, of the cause and the anger. The Anger. The wrath.

The outrageousness of it all. There’s nothing twee about it, nothing humorous, fun, camp, harmless or charming. Ere I lose my sense of proportion I shall steel my spine to this ire. Stupidity, wantonness, cruelty and fear. The stubborn ignorance of greed. The tyrants, the egomaniacal butchers and keepers of slaves. They are an outrage. One as destructive, as unenlightened and as inhumane as the other. There the slaughter of innocents, the imposition of rule; the indoctrination, the violence, the cult. Here the wilful deception, the making of unholy myths, the falsing of facts, the aggrandisations and the buffoonness; the rhetoric, the gestures, the meaningless phrases, the orange, the hair.

The beateous soul in my sinuous body wishes it were not so, but "nature is war," and until I dissolve into the particle waves and the unnamed insubstantiality of connexion I have to make a stand and be counted. Too long, maybe, have I tried to avoid this. Too long shied away. Too long have I hovered above ground thinking it all – the dirt, the blood, the grit (that word I never, ever, liked or was even willing to use), the bone and the marrow, the shıt, the severed limbs, the crushed skulls and the unwanted guts spilling into the mud, the jealous, the mean, the preoccupied with survival – thinking them and it all quite beneath me. It is, of course, quite beneath me, under my feet: will I or no, I trample the trodden no less than the soldiers who scavenge the field, I only know how to behave. Politeness. There is virtue in civil conduct and in a refusal to simply succumb, but form on its own now won’t function. Sad, sincerely, but so.

The scorn. To be put in this position. To not be released. To have to respond. To be set against something so real. So unavoidably ugly. In this land of the alien. On this inhospitable neighbour. My sense of humanity and what I want it to mean here is challenged, de-ranged. I am out of joint but not out of scope. These forces can not be contained, perhaps, but they can be conquered. With spirit, with wisdom, with core. With arguments? No. With reason? Not likely. With strength (not with force) and with purpose. But it is still a war. There are battles that need to be won.

I survey the Plane of Utopia and pronounce this my moment of muster. Here of all places. This desert has nothing that I want to own except my presence, and that is now no longer negotiable. There comes the instance when you know that all else is mist. The haze doesn’t clear yet, in the distance, but I do sense the bridge. This tying together of thoughts with the elements that are also in me, lest I ignore them. The substance that I fashion to my own design. Titanium and graphene. If there be materiality, let it be exquisite, sophisticated and strong.

There is no feebleness in wanting good.

There is no harm in seeking softness. No despair in keeping faith.

There is no shame in hope, no loss of self in selfless love.

Embracing all of it, being it and sending the signal. I take me a clue from the lingering trojans and inwardly smile, even laugh. Haha! Now is the time to go forth. I have no fear and no loathing and nothing to prove. Less, still, have I to lose. I have quite left me behind my despair. I see me one coming towards me whom I may yet be willing to join, or he me, and if that be so then so much the better, there is a lion yet to the eagle, but it is not the content, and not the end, it is but a chance to make some things completer, and I’m sure now of the simplest of things: I am.


From EDEN by FREI

[FREI]

And so, back. Down. To Earth. Where I belong? This, my home? This desert wilderness of beauty and voluptuousness, this abundance of colour, vegetation, insects and beasts; these cities, these people, these civilisations? This art, these quantities of stuff and rubbish; these tears, these cruelties, these abominations? This joy? These excellences, these wonders? These tastes, these smells, these flavours, these sensualities, these sweet transgressions, these experiences? This catharsis? This messiness, these quarrelsome foibles; these imperfections, these obstacles? And this weather? This air that I breathe, this need to do so; these urges, this hunger, this thirst for immersion, this drowning, these rocks on the road, these symbols, these signs? These abstractions? These metaphors, this poetry, this song and dance? That we make? About what? This love.

Everything suddenly feels disconcertingly real again, and I'm not sure I like it. I'm sure I don't dislike it, not as such, but I find these certainties confusing. These obligations to respond. These figures of speech, these formulations. These competitions for superlatives. These hyperboles. These headlines, these star-ratings, these ceremonies, these awards. These absurdities. These traumas of rejection or attraction, of interpretation of behaviour of looks and of glances, these whispered words, these games I refuse to play. These rules. These obediences, these categories, these schedules, these expectations. These parochial wordlinesses. This world.

This world perplexes, awes and bewilders me. Here I am, stunned to find myself on it, in it, part of it, and I am momentarily paralysed. This will not last, I feel sure, though why I should feel so I don't know. For a long time now I have felt like wading through treacle, slowly, cumbersomely, glued to the ground by a sticky morass that would not let go. There is no escape from gravity in this place, except perhaps on aerial silks and skis. The former are not for me, the latter very much so. I think me on the mountain gliding down the glorious white with the Alps in the distance and the molecules in my lungs, and I know what it is to be free. That I know; that, I can relate to. Everything else does not quite make sense. Which is strange: I've been learning and trying to understand, but it still is mostly as alien to me as the planets from which I've returned, richer in mind yet not much the wiser. At the end of the day there is always the here and now to make something of, and now that I'm here, I might as well make the most of it. Thus I tell myself, over again.

'Most' meaning 'best': meaning all I can do. What could that possibly be? If I allow my youth up to say about eighteen, nineteen — why not twenty-one: if I allow that to be my formative phase that doesn't yet count as my adult existence, then I'm now halfway at least through what my adult existence can reasonably be expected to be: I can still look forward, but as much can I, must I, look back. That frightens the hell out of me. That I'm here on Earth, effectively halfway through – way over, if you're counting from birth – feeling pretty much as I felt right at the beginning, and not having made any impact at all. Not having really moved from the spot. Not having done more than tried, but without ever really succeeding, to take flight. Does that mean it's too late? Is it ever, can it ever be simply too late? But for what? For some sort of attainment, of what? Of acclaim, recognition, notoriety, 'fame'? Or just even of love? Can love be attained?

"Be not afraid of moving slowly, be only afraid of standing still." I want to know what the soul is. At a quantum physics level: the science, the understandable, perceptible, conceptualisable part of existence that is not material, not intelligent, not rational, not emotional; intangible, insubstantial but essential and real. A Quantum Philosophy. I want to know what that is. That part of me that I can't see when I look in the mirror and that I can't choose one of my names to put an identity to, that I can't express in words – and if I write another million or ten – that I sense is forming and taking shape (without shape, of course), that is there and that others, some others, recognise in an instant (others, of course, never will): that is what interests me, makes me curious to go further, encourages me, yet to delve.

And so I take my cue, once again, and affirm: I'm here now. I might as well make the most of it. Whatever that turns out to be: it probably really doesn't matter at all, but for my soul – if nothing else – it's better to sense me alive than just there, more joyful than to reject, to embrace; more gracious to receive what is given with thanks; and wiser to change what I can, but leave for someone else and another time what I can't; more courageous to take the challenge, than to say no; more human, altogether, after all, to say 'yes'.


From EDEN by FREI

[FREI]

Hello Friends

I don't mean to hog the forum, but hard on the heels of The Ice King, The Planet Walk has now also come out as a handsome small paperback in the EDEN miniatures series: these are several short stories and texts from EDEN by FREI, an ongoing online publishing project where they both first appeared. The idea is to make these pieces of writing available for people who enjoy a physical book as much as the words, so they're a compact six by four inch format, generously laid out for a comfortable read, and one can mostly be yours for less than five dollars.

You'll find The Planet Walk on Amazon here, or if you want to support your local bookstore, you can also order it through them with ISBN 978-1-64255-369-7.

Planet Walk Cover 1-small.jpg

And of course, as always, if you just want to read the story you can continue to do so here or over at EDEN by FREI.

Thanks & Enjoy

FREI

[FREI]

Hello Friends

For those of you who liked The Planet Walk, I've now also released this as an eBook.

You can, of course, continue to read this 'poetic perambulation' here for free, but if you'd like to have it as a neat reflowable ePub on your Nook, Kobo, iPad or otherwise compatible device, in a tidied up and in the process somewhat improved edition, then head over to https://www.books2read.com/theplanetwalk where you have choice of digital stores, including, as it happens, also Scribd.

(I would gladly update the entries on this forum too, to bring the text up to date, but that is sadly no longer possible. If you do want to read the updated version, but don't have three dollars to spare, or have them to spare but don't want to spend them on this, you can also always still read it where it originally came from, at http://EDENbyFREI.net )

Thanks for your continued interest and great support!

FREI

[FREI]

And for those of you who prefer to read your short stories on a Kindle, The Planet Walk is now also available on Kindle here.

Thanks & Enjoy

FREI

[FREI]

Hello Friends

For those of you who enjoyed The Planet Walk and would like to own it as a handsome, compact paperback (or give it to someone as a present!) – Amazon are currently running a promotional discount on it, which means you can get hold of a copy for an amazingly modest $2.35. (Amazon set their own prices – I have no control over this – and they do so very dynamically, so things may change any time, but the information is certainly correct as I'm posting this.)

Have a look here, if you're interested: http://amzn.to/2tYql9S

Thanks & Enjoy

FREI