What is gravity? When you think on it for a second, that’s not such a simple question, because we don’t really know what gravity is, only how it affects us and the things around us.
So what is TheFeel of Gravity?
What we experience throughout our lives are consequences and effects: the pressure of the earth on the soles of our feet; the resistance of our bodies to getting up when we’re tired or injured; the refusal of heavy objects to being lifted or budged.
But these things aren’t gravity itself, the force that holds the earth in orbit around our sun and impels parachutists in free-fall to terminal velocity… Our emotional and intellectual responses are consequential, too.
Gravity exerts its ubiquitous pull on every cell of our bodies, every moment of every day from birth to death; then it flattens the very dust of our having been into the sedimentary layers of geology and archeology.
What are the spiritual forces that draw us together, tear us apart? What is love? What is hatred?
Gravity is always and forever, yet we only become aware of its influence in moments of change, crisis or conscious reflection. That’s what The Feel of Gravity is all about.
Taken out of context, I can understand how that plea might trigger thoughts of collapsed mines, bombed out apartment buildings, avalanches or any number of natural and man… er, human made catastrophes. You could add car crashes to the list, strokes, falls off ladders, the tally goes on.
That’s not what I intended, though, lounging in one of the blue plastic Cape Cod chairs out on our back deck, watching the progress of another home run for God arcing through the infinity of blue sky over Mount Brenton.
“You weren’t thinking at all!” was how Ashley put it. “You scared the crap out of me!”
Actually, I’d been thinking about a lot of things, before Plato came along and jumped onto my lap. Good thoughts, mostly, about how lucky I am to be living my retirement era in Chemainus. As suburbs go, Cook street rates pretty good. It’s got a crime rate that flat lines somewhere near zero, there’s not a single traffic light in town, strangers wave and say hello on the street and in the aisles of the 49th Parallel Grocery Store, and it’s located in the mild temperate zone of Southeast Vancouver Island – accurately fabled as a bit of paradise afloat on the Salish Sea.
There’s some irredeemably grouchy types who grumble in their coffee mugs down at Nic’s Café that the best thing about Muraltown is it’s within easy driving distance of Nanaimo in one direction, Victoria in the other. I say to them: If you can afford a patch of turf in either of those two places bigger than a dish cloth, go for it. I’m happy where I am.
I was especially happy to be out on the back deck that day.
Not that I don’t like company. I do. And I really like Serena, even if she is smarter than me and can’t help delving excitedly into the details about her research into ‘mitochondrial DNA and the role it plays in aging and degenerative diseases’. She’s ‘good people’, our niece. And my wife’s good people too. But put them in the same room, and you might as well stick your head inside a beehive, the way they natter. A quiet guy like me can’t get a word, or even a thought in edgewise.
That’s why I retreated out onto the back deck. Once they’d talked their ways through the agony of childbirth, how to get your lemon poppyseed muffins out of the tray, the best deals to be had at the hospital auxiliary thrift shop, and so on, I decided it was time to take out the recycling and stop off on the way back for a snooze in the waning light of a balmy spring afternoon, while they went about the task of sorting through the family photo albums.
“Oh look, there’s you uncle Martin, fifty pound lighter, with hair and no wrinkles!” “Aw! There’s Panda. Remember the time he ate your socks and we had to watch like expectant parents for him to poop them out.” “Auntie Ash, you were such a hippie. I love that dress, and the army boots are ever so chic! Ha, ha, ha!” “The Half-Lemon! Oh My God, we actually drove around in a yellow VW beetle? Look at the price of gas… 48 cents a gallon! Christ, they don’t even mint pennies anymore, and gas is measured out by the litre.”
Even though I was happy for them, I have to admit to being pinpricked by envy, watching Ash and Serena babble on like partners at a quilting bee. I’m not a feminist or anything, but I was thinking, if more men could get themselves into that head space, there’d be fewer Putins in the world, and the people of the Ukraine might not be suffering through a senseless armageddon, watching their cities getting pummelled into dust like 21st Century Sodoms and Gomorrahs. I’m ashamed of my male gender sometimes. Wish I could have a bit less Y in my jeans.
We have strange thoughts in that fantastical zone between awake and asleep. There I was, reclining in the Cape Cod out on the back deck, the brilliant sunshine lighting up the inside of my eyelids like lava lamps when, plop, Plato landed on my lap.
Cat’s paws are the closest thing I can imagine to an angel alighting… until they begin kneading that is, their claws tugging at your clothing and pricking your skin. Plato circled round for a couple of laps, like he was tamping down the grass on his vast savanna, then settled in and started purring. I sat perfectly still, trying to make my bony thighs soft as down filled cushions. The rumble of his contentment echoed through me. You have to feel a cat’s purr to really appreciate it, let it permeate consciousness.
Please understand, Plato is not a lap cat. He’s aloof, a strutter through our lives, more likely to show you the pink petunia when you make a move to pat him than to rub up against your leg. Usually he stumps off like you’re beneath his dignity. Ash and I are lap-cat-people, though, yearning for that mystical connection between cat’s fur and human skin, and that reassuring deep vibrato of feline contentment. He was deigning to settle onto my lap for a snooze that afternoon. But lap time with Plato its like cuddling a land mine. Don’t touch, don’t move, don’t even breathe, or he’ll be gone.
Ash and I share the joys of those moments as if we’d experienced a second coming. I often wonder what it is we’re missing in our lives, that we hanker so desperately after our cat’s erratic affection? We have each other, isn’t that enough? Our death defying circle of friends? Our kids, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, our dog Sophie, neighbours who wave hello wherever we go in Muraltown? Isn’t that enough?
Not unless Plato loves us back, I guess.
How could I be so selfish as to not share that glorious interlude with Ash? So, risking all, I slipped my fingers like a bomb disposal expert into the hip pocket of my ever tightening jeans, pinched the top of my mobile and slid it ever so gingerly out from under Plato. He was still purring when the phone came to life and I pointed it at him in camera mode. His enlarged rump filled the bottom of the frame; my hiking boots, propped on the deck table, the top; the bridge of my tingling legs stretched in between.
‘Click’ went the camera. Plato purred on. I dared not breathe a sigh of relief.
Kids can thumb in a text quicker than ‘u or i’ can let go a fart. I punched my mobile’s runes the same way you’d poke at an elevator button, my pudgy index finger hitting the wrong key half the time, so that I’d have to go back and try again, and again, hissing like kettle too long on the hob. But eventually I got the message into the allotted space beneath the distorted image of Plato on my lap, then zip, off it went.
‘Help! I can’t move my legs!’ it said.
Panic is instantaneous contagion. It zaps the collective consciousness of a room like the sudden glare of a flood light. It’s another sort of bomb, its shockwaves radiating out into the neural network, forcing adrenaline to squirt like juice from a squeeze bottle into the guts of its infected tribe. On the one hand, panic gets us moving before the bus runs us over; on the other, it doesn’t give us time to think. The autonomic nervous system kicks in and we’re jerked around like puppets. If we’re lucky enough to survive, we analyze ‘the event’ after the fact, picking apart the threads of mayhem.
My theory is we’re predisposed to panic. The Doomsday Clock is always ticking closer and closer to midnight, shaving off half the remaining time, then half again, until the calculus of destruction tells us there’s nothing, no measurable allotment of milliseconds left between us and…
Duck, cover and hold! We don’t want to hear that bomb go off!
Ash, for example, is predisposed by images of me snacking on potato chips and sneaking chocolate bars, for the imminent possibility of a heart attack; she has witnessed my shuffle-footed stumbling often enough to anticipate my tumbling down any convenient flight of stairs; tick, tick, tick, the clock keeps on ticking, until…
‘Bing!’ The text message slid into the corner of her screen, without the cute, explanatory photo of Plato snuggled in my lap. It shouted: “Help! I can’t move my legs!”
So there I sat, swaddled in the joy of Plato’s fidgety affection, while Ash and Serena dashed about the house looking for the corner I had collapsed into, or the staircase I’d toppled down, expecting to find me dead, my finger still touching the screen after I’d shot off my desperate expiring plea for assistance.
“You scared the crap out of me!” Ash shouted, slapping me on the shoulder hard enough to trigger some kind of cardiac episode. “Serena was about to dial 911!”
Thoroughly harangued, I was left standing on the deck by my two saviours, who marched back into the house through the sliding door, shaking their heads, words like ‘inconsiderate’ and ‘stupid’ reverberating in their wake. I turned round, and looked wistfully at Plato, inscrutable as ever, purring away. “You little shit,” I said. “I really do love you.”
~ The End ~
Hope you enjoyed The Cat’s Ass Trophy. There’s more in The Feel of Gravity collection.
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Mystic Beach – January 2022
Until now Mystic Beach has been a name on a map that conjured images: glittering vistas, sea breezes, the white manes of a thunderous surf.
The young woman we met at the trail head told us the hike was not too difficult. Some ups and downs, exposed roots, puddles and mud, nothing worth a fret. She and her frisking, mini Labradoodle have not yet conceived the true meaning of fate.
We wondered how it must have been for First Peoples to traverse this place, before the scrape of human infrastructure made it easy for our invasive species to cross its gullies, breach clinging underbrush, reach sacred strands?
Down, down, down we went. Our deepening descent staked by snaking steps and ramps, which would have to be retraced in an uphill climb… when we’d be left behind by younger sprites, sprinting by in the fast lane, leaving us to complain about weary muscles, creaking bones.
Down, down, down into our vision we homed, seeking that place that astounded, where senses are confounded, and the promise of wonder becomes a something known.
And, Oh! What a sight it was. Not the Vatican, or Taj Mahal, or an interminable, stone-faced wall marking boundaries between us and them, but a thrashing, crashing place where ocean, land and sky converge, making sense of an inner urge.
As always, wherever human feet have trod, there’s monuments to past descents, marking the supposed extent of human mind. Mystic Beach? There’s a thousand of its kind, a thousand more inspired vistas to be seen. But none that I have dreamed.
A technique I sometimes use, the False Lede tricks readers by taking them in a direction that turns out to be illusory. It can take a couple of forms. In First Sighting, a Mural Gazer episode, Buddy Hope is jolted from sleep by the yapping of a small dog, which he first heard just before he retired for the night in the cab of a camper-pickup truck parked at Nixon Creek on Lake Cowichan.
The reader has already been primed for something to happen by Buddy’s first encounter, just before he bedded down, and by an earlier episode in the novel, Mural #1 – The Steam Donkey, where his friend and companion on the camping trip, Harry Sanderson, had experienced a similar event.
It’s important, when using this device, to have the reader ‘primed’ – that is, anticipating where the story might be going based on earlier events.
They are not surprised when Buddy reacts instinctively. Nor does it seem unlikely he would be further alarmed when a boy calls out “Gypsy” to the phantom dog – the same name the boy in Harry’s vision had called out in The Steam Donkey.
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If it’s been executed properly this false lead will convince readers that Buddy is actually experiencing these events – the action fits their preconceptions.
Then Buddy awakens, and realizes he was dreaming – a pretty common exit-to-reality scenario. What has been created, though, is a portent. There’s no such thing as ‘just a dream’ in the mindscape of a novel, and the reader will anticipate further encounters with Gypsy and a mystery boy Arthur after this episode.
The Writers’ Trust of Canada asked in a survey that will be open until Jan. 18, 2022, how they could improve their mission statement. I have to confess, in my case that’s like asking a guy with a loaded pistol in his hand what you can do for him. I used up just about every one of the 200 words allowed in my response, and still hadn’t run out of bullets for my list of reasons they should include ‘Advocacy’ in their mandate. Here’s what I wrote…
‘Advocacy’ on behalf of writers should be explicitly included in the WT mission statement.
Rewarding individual writers through grants and prizes is a good thing, but it’s not enough. Writers’ incomes have been declining significantly over the last decade or more and measures need to be put in place to ensure payment for work done.
Most urgently, in this era of quick turn-around ‘used’ books, is the need for royalty payments to authors on the resale of their works.
Also needed are protocols and programs that assist writers and publishers tapping into the online market through ‘Direct to Web’ – that is, books as websites – or similarly formatted and targeted publications.
D2W enables writers to:
promote books more effectively on social media;
engage ‘audiences’ at every stage in the writing and publishing cycle;
reach global audiences;
explore new revenue options.
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Literature is foundational to the Arts & Cultural wellbeing of our society. It is a discipline that permits a unique blend of individual freedom of expression combined with the ability to critique and celebrate modernity in depth.
‘Advocacy’ should be a word that appears in the Writers’ Trust mission statement.
Ditto to other organizations whose overall mission is to foster and sustain literary excellence in this country.
“You’re a writer! Trust the imaginative magic of your words!…” And respect the genius of your readers and listeners to envision your storytelling.
After two years of brain wracking and image bank trolling for eye-catching graphics to go with my website and social media posts, I suddenly stopped, and asked: Why?
Why invest all that time and energy trying to match the fantastical and soulful imagery of storytelling with stock pictures and more or less random internet pulls?
The obvious answer – an excuse actually – is that media like Facebook et al require pictures (preferably moving pictures) to earn views, clicks, shares, etc. And without the ‘reach’, ‘engagements’ and ‘likes’ a high-traffic site reels in, you won’t even get a glimpse of the golden goose called ‘monetization’.
That’s all true, I suppose. But only in the sense that a matador’s cape is the true goal of his distracted victims. Time for a rethink.
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“You’re a writer! Trust the imaginative magic of your words!” I clattered in a recent Facebook share. And – I should add – respect the genius of your readers and listeners to envision your storytelling.
I’m not alone on this slippery slope, I’m sure. Many writers see the internet in general and social media in particular as essential modes for sharing literature, and so they should. What I am warning against is being lured off course by the marketing lingo most of us have learned to talk these days.
Own the medium. Use it in a way that doesn’t compromise the true strength of literature as an arts discipline.
Words, sentences, alliteration, simile, metaphor… these are the brushes authors use to conjure images for an audience. The true gift of a story delivered in a book, or from a podium, or round a campfire is the miracle of words that readers or listeners transform into scenes, characters, feelings, conflicts, each in their own imagination.
Like no other art, literature engages audiences in the creative process.
That’s not to say I won’t complement my online stories with images from now on – the same way every book has its cover. But when I make the quest for visuals to cloth my stories paramount, I’m revealing my own lack of confidence in the evocative power of creative writing.
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From Flibber T. Gibbet The most mischievous elf in all Chemainus A soon-to-be-released adventure story set in MuralTown * Asterisk indicates a note below
Story Craig Spence / Illustrations Diana Durrand
Lincoln didn’t really want to go farther. He knew Nana West and Grandpa Grumps would be upset and angry when he made his way back to their house on Maple Street*. But he just couldn’t stop, and certainly didn’t have time to think. The yellow footprints hustled along at a gallop, barely visible on the crunching gravel of the E&N trail.*
“Slow down!” he complained.
But the pace quickened, as if the footprints were trying to lose him, either that or draw Lincoln on and tucker him out at the same time. He fell behind at one point, making his way up a steep grade, but rallied and caught up, hurtling down the other side.
Then, suddenly, the footprints veered off the trail, plunging into the bordering forest. Lincoln lost his footing, changing course so quickly on the loose gravel. He fell and skinned his knee. “Ow!” he cried out. But there wasn’t a moment to lose, rubbing the wound. Scrambling to his feet he peered between two boulders at the head of a trail, which disappeared beyond a stand of gigantic cedars.
For an instant Flibber T. Gibbet made a ghostly appearance, spinning wildly atop one of the boulders, taunting, cheering, daring Lincoln into the dense forest beyond the cedar pillars, then dashing ahead once again, become an infuriating set of tracks plunging into the bush.
Bushwhacked! If he could have spared the breath, Lincoln would have smiled at a remark Grampa Grumps might have made. But, gasping for air, warding off the clinging stinging blackberry canes, and trying to keep up with the manic elf, he was in no mood for joking.
Common sense warned him to stop. Give up the chase. “No way!” he rebelled, urging himself farther and farther up the Hermit’s Trail.
Suddenly, Flibber T. vanished into what seemed an impenetrable thicket. Lincoln dove in after him, warding off the clutching branches, leaves and thorns with his arms, crouching low to the ground, where glints of light penetrated through chinks in the dense vegetation. He’d only advanced a few steps when, without warning, he broke into a clearing. Dazzled for a moment, it was too late for him to react before he realized the ground had sloped away from under him. For a puzzled moment Lincoln pedalled desperately in midair, then pitched forward, tumbling down what he realized through his battering descent was a flight of stone steps.
“Yaagh!” he bellowed and thrashed all the way, amazed to find himself coming to rest on a stone terrace, looking up into the clear blue sky through an overarching canopy of trees. The teasing babble of a brook mocked from nearby.
The first thing that frightened Lincoln about the place he’d landed was… no pain? Bruised and sore as you’d expect to be, having landed with such a thump, he felt nothing. Sedated, he floated in a sort of dream, cushioned by the swaddling air, which seemed to sooth any sensations that might have made him wince or groan.
What is this place? he wondered.
He tried turning his head to get a better sense of his predicament… Tried again, but couldn’t move. No matter how hard he strained, his muscles wouldn’t respond. What’s happening! he pleaded, desperate to twitch a finger or even an eyelid… Imagine yourself a stone with a brain, able to see and hear and smell everything around you, but totally paralyzed, and you’ll get an idea of the state Lincoln found himself in.
What would you do? What could he do, but panic!
Notes
Lincoln has been lured from Mural #36 The Hermit, onto the E&N Railway Trail in Chemainus.
Flibber T. Gibbet leaves yellow footprints wherever he goes, but they can only be seen by people who believe in elves, and the vanish quickly ‘like invisible ink’.
The Mural Gazer is being published Direct-to-Web at MuralGazer.ca
Since December, 2019, I have been writing and publishing The Mural Gazer, a Direct-To-Web novel set in Chemainus B.C. I’ve posted 63 episodes to-date, and have 17 more to go. My best guess is I’ll be finished the ‘first draft’ of my online edition by the spring of 2022.
It’s been an amazing experience, and I’m emerging from it more convinced than ever that Direct-to-Web books have a place in our writing and publishing mix. But I know I’ll go about it differently when I launch my next title, and that a conversation about D2W with follow writers and publishers would prove invaluable.
So in the coming months I am going to review what’s been done, why and how, inviting people to join me in a critique of The Mural Gazer, not only as a literary work, but as a mode of writing, publishing and distributing ‘books’. Questions I’d like to address include:
Why is literature more important that ever in the 21st Century?
Why should it be necessary to expand the definition of a ‘book’ in the digital era to include D2W?
What are the features and benefits of Direct-to-Web writing and publishing?
What are the obstacles to books as websites?
What steps can be taken to overcome those obstacles?
How will writers and publishers incorporate D2W into their creative and business processes?
How do writers and publishers derive income through Direct-to-Web releases?
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I’m not used to thinking in these terms; I’m more of a hands-on type. But if Direct-to-Web is to be viewed as something more than a gimmick (and I think it has to be), questions like these must be answered. I hope you’ll join in the conversation. Please subscribe to my email list if you want to receive updates and notifications.
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A recent Facebook conversation triggered by the graphic above has shed some light on why I am a spiritual existentialist, and what that means. Before the concluding reply below, I had described my daily morning mediation, which includes a vow to ‘value life’…
‘Value life’ is an interesting ethical statement, one I affirm daily, even though it inevitably and immediately leads to contradiction. To live, I must kill. How can I square that with my ideal of valuing life?
I think that’s pertinent to the original question: What are the limits of comprehension? Try as I might, I can’t round that square ethical peg. I have to decide, and reaffirm my beliefs in spite of uncertainty. That tension between believing and knowing keeps us questioning and reevaluating who, what and why we are. It’s the essence of existentialism.
My spiritual self is always looking into the world and saying there’s more to life than I’ve learned and experienced so far. There’s a love that’s larger then what I can conceive, an idea grander than anything I can imagine, a sensation more vibrant than anything I’ve felt.
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I have been reading This Much I Know is True by Wally Lamb. Chapter 17 is an excellent example of a literary device that really builds tension and explores character.
Dominick Birdsey, the novel’s protagonist and POV character, is listening to recordings of his identical-twin and schizophrenic brother in a conversation with psychologist, Dr. Patel. On the tape Thomas is recounting incidents of extreme abuse perpetrated by their stepfather Ray on their mother and themselves. The incidents are deeply disturbing, and unbelievably violent.
So when Dominick insists they never really happened, but are hallucinations of his brothers disturbed mind, the reader is inclined to agree. However, as Dr. Patel questions Dominick more closely, he seems hesitant and vague with his denials, and the suspicion grows that he might be concealing (either intentionally or subconsciously) what are possibly true accounts of a brutalized past.
The tension in these encounters pries open Dominick’s character, breaking through the hardbitten persona he presents to the world, and revealing a tortured soul.
The overall tone of this book doesn’t appeal to me, but this one chapter has demonstrated a literary technique I certainly want to have in my repertoire!It’s a brilliantly written episode.
