Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

Aura

By Ajay

I scanned the vault with a broken will,
the whimsical fool slid behind bizarre patterns.
Darkness seeped in as I caught a stench,
the spine ached.

Moments ago, I had ferried in the fever of my cabin,
sipping a seasoned potion under the lure of coal.
In the midst of a plunge,
Whiplashes had marred my face.

I cut through the woods with maddening speed,
slipped, swept and leapt across the murk-laden wilderness.
Cramps set me down, thirst,
I winced, immersed knee deep in the swamp.

The silence eased as I scooped up a handful.
Salt, a deep purple stirred below,
an unearthly whole rose above, neither man nor woman,
heat discharges flew from the shapeless aura.

The senses withered under the aura’s grasp,
a wave of chill eked from within.
I felt skinless, no essence,
blindness had tunnelled through my sockets.

A sense of closure, I blended in,
as I sailed, the sight hit me.
A barren expanse of land,
the horror unfolded, for me to see.

I had axed trees with false nerve,
meddling with earth’s life tissue.
Filth sucked into space, that’s me.
I dissolved, under the storm of our Mother.

Halloween brings certain things to mind
Of eerie nights and what one may find
Of Werewolves zombies and the likes
Those come to haunt on all hallo's night

Of Vampire bats in search of blood
Frantically seeking what they love
Werewolves with their lonely howl
Stalking on their endless prowl

Witches brewing evil on this night
Concocting poison to instil their plight
Ghost and ghouls now seen by all
Dance and play at the monsters ball

And as to those on lovers lane
Thinking only of their lustful flame
They will be forever changed
As night creatures make their final claim

People will see the Next morning unfold
And do the beckoning from creatures of old
Remembering only what they’re told
Believing in their lives, they have control

And people will in time continue on
To laugh to love and new life to spawn
Believing only the things they see
Till harvest comes again on halo’s eve

*



Monster's Night
By: Kat

Dark, moving shadows
Random blinking lights
Quiet, whispering voices
This night is our night

Loud, thumping sounds
Big, hulking figures
Long, piercing yells
The sacrifice sits on the altar

The sky is dark
No stars are glittering
The temperature is hot
And it's just right for killing

The blood tastes so good
And the bones are so crunchy
That all of the monsters
Start to get crafty

The trick is to format it in your editor using regular spaces. Then replace a pair of spaces with a pair &nbsp_;' - copy the mess into the screen and preview it. If it doesn't look right, then go back to the editor, undo the 'replace' all, then repeat; again replace a pair of spaces with 3 &nbsp_;s etc.

In this case, the 'pair for a pair replace' worked fine.

Now to come up with my own something. Hmmmm. Nothing's coming up from the other side.

Al, Ajay, and Stuart. Your guys's poems were like, 20 times as epic as mine XD Although, Al, I think, in line 37, I think you meant bear, not bare XD

Lol XD

This topic scares me. Good poems, everyone!

Ajay, what a way you have with description! Some of the passages, if they were paintings, would be like illustrations by Frank Frazetta. And this poem has a pointed moral: We despoil Mother Earth at our own peril.

I love Halloween poems, Stewart, and you know how to write them! “Werewolves with their lonely howl . . . Witches brewing evil . . .”

Kat, this poem of yours makes me a little nervous. I don’t whether it’s the “Dark, moving shadows,” “hulking figures,” and “Long, piercing yells” or the bones that crunch.

Interesting psychological poem, Alex, with a nice weaving of lines. My favorite is “The ghosts of her leave him mad . . .”

Succubus
by M


Someone’s trying to kill me
by slow poisoning.
I wake wretched and pale
and sunlight hurts my eyes
that dared to look in hers.

Now each night sickens, blurs
into a life of lies,
a soul thirst, and the stale
death taste that dawn will bring,
glaring, surreal, filmy.

She doesn’t know, the dawn,
who like a maiden lights
the room with a fall day,
I cringe from her embrace,
ashen until I rise,

till in the dusk, those eyes,
in deepened gloom, that face,
approaches in the way
she always has. Warm nights
of blossoms on the lawn

return from the dead past--
the surge of youth, promise
long wasted, is restored
by a dark chemistry
I practice as though chained.

Old story drafts, drink stained,
clutter the place where she
spoke to me as I poured,
detained by a long kiss,
an evening’s amber cast.

Thank you, Alex!

What a nice clutch of ghostly poetical stories! I enjoyed all of them.

Kat, you're last line made me lol! Too funny, the image of monsters getting down with decoupage or scrap-booking!

Ajay, your imagery is strong and somehow felt real. Nice.

Stuart, I enjoyed the very Halloween feel to your poem. Some great images and movement. Great fun.

Al, I felt very dark after reading 'He used to see her.' Very effectively grim.

M as alway, there is lots of great imagery in 'Succubus'. For some reason the last stanza was for me particularly strong. It hints at something not quite expressed in the whole poem.

I haven't a clue what to write.

Hey, for a change I've actually got a story! (I cheated, and adapted an old one from a writing exercise.)

And I'm thinking I might cheat and use a poem I wrote for another group. Still thinking....

Of course, as soon as you wave the 'can't' flag in front of me, that's exactly what I can do. Will do, if nothing else comes to mind soon.

Ya’ll are night owls! I’m usually asleep by 8:30. Guy, I think Al is an INFP. She reminds me of me in too many ways. Her glasses, for instance.

If I feel pushed to do something, I’m soon at the mercy of an inner resistance that keeps me from doing it even if I’ve made up my mind that it needs to be done. On the other hand, if I’m told there’s something I can’t do or that can’t be done, all my creative energies recruit themselves and I find myself doing the supposedly impossible.

Funny that, M & Al because I have tested the same/similar. And I am a great starter poor finisher. When I'm not working, I tend to write into the early morning - 1 to 2 am. But when I'm working, my alarm is set for 5:20am, and so I try to get to bed before 11:00pm.

Alex, I’m thrilled that you’re majoring in psychology. You will be so good at figuring people out (and have so much fun figuring yourself out)! And imagine all the raw material your interactions will give you for writing.

I never liked writing essays. I made a D on the first essay I wrote in college and was sure I was going to flunk out. That I ended up teaching composition is proof that truth is stranger than fiction.

I start a lot of things but don’t finish many. I’d have four more degrees if I had finished all of them I started.

Al. That explains our differences. I'm an ESFJ. :P Loves, dear!

Speaking of psychology, Crime and Punishment is a great book for the weirdness of the mind. :P I'm not that far into it, but the dude's talking to himself! :D

An ESFJ. You’re good at detail, always know the proper thing to do, and interacting with people is as easy for you as swimming is for a fish.

Thanks M, Guy!

Nice poem M :) I love the wording :)

I have tested ISFP. :)

Week 100 already? Wow. Sorry. I just realized.

Lol.

Thanks, M and Guy!

Great poems, everyone! I enjoyed all of them. Another tough week to vote!

Thanks to the conversation about personality types, I just took mine. The result-INFJ.

Is it okay to include as 'paranormal activity' a poem about a dream? I hope so. [But if it isn't, Al or Stephanie,  let me know and I'll delete...]

The Walk
          by Guy (but excellently revised with the help of Rose).

In the dream I walked a great distance.
And I felt a clear sense of purpose
that lacked direction.
It was not confusing.

It was the walking that was important.
Suddenly I saw, from a great distance,
a structure that knew not whether to be
a house, a mausoleum or a monastery.
Somehow that provided comfort.

When I found myself inside the cross hatch of beams
and joists and partially exposed studs,
I felt the wind, now cool, racing
through the glassless windows.
As it moved to fill the empty rooms
it moaned that it was God and the end of God.
I understood its meaning.

It was then that the glassless windows closed.
I was no longer able to see outside.
I began to feel a rising panic running against my racing heart,
a race to find the door, a door, any door that would release me from the wind.
Somehow I knew that what I'd thought I was
had come undone.

And as to the 'starting not finishing' thing, I was able to get a degree in nothing by not finishing anything that I actually started. My General Studies degree, with that obnoxious extended minor in economics, is comprised of Physics, Math, Chemistry, French, Women's Studies, Communications, Economics, Accounting, Statistics, English, Education, Sociology, Canadian Studies. Talk about not finishing anything! Sigh. And I work in an engineering department. Go figure! Truth is M, truly stranger than fiction.

Interesting. A sense of purpose without a sense of direction. The speaker is glad the house doesn’t know what it’s intended to be. It’s open to the cool (autumn of life) wind (spirit). I can’t figure out at the end why it makes any difference whether the paneless windows are open or closed.

M house is self so the closed windows are removal from the connection with spirit (wind) while trapped by the isolated wind as singular truth. (Or at least that is a possible explanation!)

Al, your description of your dreams is very interesting! I have been fascinated by dreams and have been a prolific dreamer all my life - dreams are the why and how I was introduced to Jung. (I knew you were a Jungian candidate!)

My dreaming equivalent to your dreams of windows and wind is, oddly enough, elevators, buses and trains. Too funny!

Glad you enjoyed the poem, but I will re-iterate that Rose helped it A LOT with her editing.

When you can control what’s going on in a dream, it means you’re asleep and awake at the same time. It’s something you can learn to do, though I haven’t worked at it, probably because my dream recall is poor. In the 1980’s, Stephen LaBerge wrote a book called Lucid Dreaming, in which he describes his controlled experiments.

The method I remember is waking up into a dream. It involves a kind of self-hypnosis, in which you give yourself the suggestion beforehand that you will remember to become aware that you’re dreaming.

I don’t remember dreams unless something causes me to wake up in the middle of one. Mine are the typical dreams of being chased down an endless staircase, or of being in public with no clothes on and hoping nobody will notice, or of buying a house with an enormous upstairs bedroom that has leaking pipes. Years ago, when I kept a journal, I remembered my dreams more easily. For some reason, writing them down makes a difference.

Yes, I have developed the ability to 'control' my dreams in the sense of lucid dreaming - which is the technical term for becoming aware while dreaming that you are participating in a dream. An excellent introduction to this is Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge. It includes exercises to help that along. For me, whenever I become lucid in my dreams, I fly. I've visited the moon, for example. On another occasion I've swam with whales - that was FUN! I've been underwater in lucid dreams quite often - walked along the bottom of a deep lake once - I have no idea why. But flying is the big thing for me.

When I get home (I'm supposed to be working right now) I'll copy you a couple of fascinating dream 'things.'

As to Jung, every psychology major I've talked to has barely been introduced to Jung, and most who have dismiss him as one of those 'non-experimentalists' - despite his documented experiments that convinced him that dreams were the most effective means of psychological growth. We could have a long discussion about that.

As to Skinner and Pavlov, the linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky in Language and Responsibility dismisses the behaviorists as having no concrete evidence that behaviorism actually works in any significant way - despite their ostensible science. And that could also be a long discussion.

Nightmares and naked dreams (I've had lots of them too) are excellent cue dreams to initiate lucidity, because they usually have a familiarity. On more than one 'being chased' dream, I was able to become aware that I was in a chasing dream, and so stopped the chase, turned to the chaser (or chasing thing) and demand 'Why are you chasing me?' Very interesting!

And I wrote the previous post before seeing M's reply.

It’s interesting that you’re called Allison in dreams. I don’t have the feeling that I write my poems and stories, but that they come from somewhere else, and it’s in dreams that I’ve gotten a glimpse of the somewhere else--the someone else--they come from. I personify the source as a muse because that’s the way it sometimes shows up in dreams, such as the one in which the muse drowns herself in a giant urn. In another dream, she has numbers tattooed up and down her spine like the depth scale on the bows of ships. The name I associate with her is Alison, perhaps because of something I read years ago about the Alison Doura, a schooner that washed over the seawall at Galveston during a hurricane in the early 1900’s.

lol.l...there are a lot of great poems here. Ales....your a Psyc Student...this is a great place for you to examine others lol.....we're all nuts! rofl

One of my most amusing dreams was when a stranger in a trench coat walked up to me where I was sitting on the edge of a sidewalk and asked 'Are you Guy?' I answered 'Yes,' and he pulled out a gun and shot me in the chest instantly. I felt the bullet go in and then fell sideways. I felt the blood running out of me and my cheek on the the cold exposed stones in the warn sidewalk. I wondered if I was indeed dead. Then I woke up.

I kept waiting for the amusing part.

M, the amusing bit is me getting shot in Canada. Quite a rare occurrence. Also, getting shot by a guy in a trench coat? That is funny!

The vividness of the sensual feelings involved was remarkable. Even now the texture of the sidewalk on my cheek is just about tangible.

Another funny lucid dream occurred when I was being chased by a train. When I remembered that that meant a dream, I turned and stood in front of the train like Superman, but let it run right through me. It was incredibly exhilarating, the sound and feel of the wind of the train rushing through my dream body.

I rarely become conscious enough to recognize that I’m dreaming. Some of the most terrifying dreams I have take place when I think I’m awake but I’m not. One night, I awoke (but didn’t), only to find a rotting corpse standing beside the bed, waiting for me to open my eyes.

Al, as it has been said in song, ... "I don't know man, ah she kinda funny, you know." I said "I know, everybody funny, now you funny too." "Me funny? You funny. Everybody funny." LoL

M it seems you have been struggling with one of the great puzzles posed by Chuang Tzu when he wrote:

Once upon a time Chuang dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. He didn't know that he was Chou. Suddenly he awoke and was palpably Chou. He did not know whether he was Chou who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was Chou. Now, there must be a difference between Chou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things.

Chuang Tzu. Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1994. Translated by Victor H. Mair, p. 24.

Take your time! I’m just getting started on mine.

Another version comes from a very funny and very interesting dream series, comes from a man who fully mastered lucid dreaming and made himself the king of his dream world.

However, there is more to lucid dreaming than meets the eye. The story comes from Laberge's book Lucid Dreaming:

Since pretending to have a socially desirable feature is more frequently rewarded than truthfully admitting not to have it, much of our mental map of the Self becomes pretence. The pattern of social pretence, of playing a role intended to deceive others, is later applied to oneself after society's standards have become internalized. If we are to pretend successfully to ourselves, we must also pretend that we are not pretending. Thus the person behind the mask forgets he has another face. The actor becomes the role, mistaking the part he plays for the whole he is; appearance usurps reality; the original plan is forgotten; and clothes mock the man.

Lucid dreams are experienced and interpreted, by such an ego, as my dream. But the dream ego is not the dreamer; rather than dreaming, it is being dreamed. The unenlightened but semi-lucid dream ego falsely believes itself to be the only reality, of which all other dream figures are mere projections.

The case of Ram Narayana vividly illustrates how far delusions of grandeur can be taken by the semi-lucid dreamer. Narayana, an Indian physician and editor, had been perplexed by the problem of how to convince "the creatures of his dream, during the dream state, that it really is a dream." He finally gave up trying, having decided that even if he succeeded, convincing them could serve no useful purpose. Therefore, Narayana resolved to enjoy himself instead and to pass his time while dreaming "as comfortably as possible." Consequently, next time he went to sleep, he addressed "the assembly of his dream characters" as follows: "Friends, why don't you try to attain the state of ecstatic and immortal bliss, entirely free from pain of every description? This sate of bliss can be obtained only by entering into the celestial region, the abode of the Supreme Creator. To this region I go daily and enjoy its pleasures for twelve hours out of every twenty-four. I am the only incarnation and representative of the Supreme One."

Narayana indicated that "the majority of the dream creatures believed in the above speech." A minority were sceptical of this claim of being the "only manifestation of the Supreme Deity." What about Krishna, Christ, Buddha, or Mohammed? demanded the doubters. They received the reply that "all those great men had come from the lower regions and were only theoretical in their teachings and nobody ever attained salvation through them, that the dreamer alone came from the highest spiritual plane, and that he would teach them the only sure and practical method of reaching that region."

Having made the usual promises, they were charged the usual price, being then told the chief condition of initiation was "to have implicit faith in their preceptor, the dreamer." Narayana went on to explain, in terms well known by the leaders of cults everywhere, that "the most effective means to hypnotize them all in a body was then employed, which consisted of looking intently into the eyes of the guru, the dreamer, while sacred hymns and songs of love and devotion were being recited in a chorus. They were further impressed with the idea that ultimately every one of them would reach the highest region, after one, two or more re-births, but one having complete faith in the dreamer would reach there soonest."

Narayana claimed that "the method proved so satisfactory that the dreamer was actually worshipped by every one of the dream creatures and was pronounced to be the only true spiritual guide. He now considered himself in no way less fortunate than so many leaders of the various faiths, in the waking world, who enjoy the pleasure of being devotedly worshipped by their disciples."

This comical parody of spiritual cults would have its tragic aspect as well, were it not for the fact that Narayana was eventually able to progress beyond this state of inflation. He dreamed that he fell in among a group of yogis who managed to enlighten him in the following dream:

. . . another elderly figure from amongst the dream creatures rose from his seat and overawed the assembly with his long grey beard and his yogi's staff. He began his oration in a curious and amusing manner, though with an authoritative tone, his voice quivering with anger and his gaunt index finger pointing towards the dreamer. "What reason have you to call us your dream creatures and yourself the creator of us all? If you are our creator we say equally emphatically that so are we the creator of yourself. We are all in the same boat, and you can claim no sort of higher existence than ours. If, however, you want to be convinced of my statement, I can show you the Creator of us all, i.e., of yourself as well as ours." With these words, he struck the dreamer on the head with his heavy staff, who, in consequence, woke up and found himself lying in his bed with his mind extremely puzzled (Narayana 301-5).

The yogi's point is that the dream ego (mistaken for "the dreamer" by Narayana) is just another dream figure. The actual creator of the dream is not a part of the dream at all – being, in fact, the sleeping self.

This is the insight fully lucid dreamers realize through direct experience. They know that the persons they appear to be in the dream are not who they really are. No longer identifying with their egos, they are free to change them, correcting their delusions. As an immediate consequence of this, the self-representation of the ego becomes a more accurate map of the true territory of the Self. The ego now encompasses the fact that "the map is not the territory," which makes it more difficult to mistake one's self-image for one's true self (LaBerge, Stephen: Lucid Dreaming, p. 264-6).

Now I have always found this very funny — and very interesting, because I have in my lucid dreams, once and a while, asked the dream characters if they knew that they were in a dream. Almost always they did not. What does that mean?! If anything?!

Yes, Alex, I have also experienced that, although not quite as frequently as you have. And it gets even more confusing when I have had the double wake up: when my dreaming self wakes from a dream, usually something frightening to find my self now in something even more frightening. And then I wake up again! How can I really know that I am not in yet another nightmare?

Now that I have come to understand — I think! — Chuang-Tzu a bit more, I appreciate how he put it: "Now, there must be a difference between Chou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things." There is a difference, but it is subtle.

When I talk with people who are philosophically inclined, I have been known to give them the following exercise: Ask yourself, two or three times during the day how you can know for sure that you are not at this very moment in a dream from which you will awake and forget? What is the tangible proof that you are not right now dreaming?

Funny to think that I have held down a complex and responsible job for 30+ years isn't it?! Yup, we're all funny.

From these descriptions you are undoubtedly a prime candidate for Jung and his dream skills. I have read dream books — it is a fairly long list — that turned out to all be Jungian by accident because I didn't know Jung or read anything by him when I began reading them.

Actually, what got me started reading Jung was the following dream interpretation I read in a book by Dr. Bernie Siegel about the psychological characteristics of people who survive 'terminal' cancer. Paraphrased it goes:

A medical doctor whom Jung knew went to Jung one day with a piece of paper upon which was the dream of one of his patients. The doctor asked Jung what he thought of the dream. The dream was of a man, the dreamer, wandering in a large factory-like building, with several floors. No one else was there and it was dark. There was a milky white liquid dripping, and it was pooling in the basement. In the pool there was a mastodon and another prehistoric animal which the dreamer couldn't recall upon awakening. Jung told the doctor that his patient was suffering from a pooling of the spinal fluid at the base of his spine. The doctor was shocked, because that was indeed the correct diagnosis, and so asked Jung how he came to the conclusion he did. Jung explained that the roots of the word 'mastodon' was the Greek for 'breast' and 'tooth' and that there is a breast shaped bone in the base of the spine. ( Greek mastos, "breast" + -dont, "tooth," from the similarity of the nipple-like projections on the crowns of the extinct mammal's molars.) Jung also said that to understand why he'd come to the conclusion he did would require a full course on why a horse is horse in a dream.

When I read that I was shocked to learn that dreams can be used for medical diagnostics! It turns out, I later learned, that not only can they be used to diagnose ailments, but at one time, for about 500 years (350-400 years more than 'modern' medicine has existed) induced dreaming was used to treat illness as well.

Alex wrote: "Hahaha. If I were to ask anyone in my dreams if they knew they were dreaming, they'd say no too. You read the GTKYC thread right? My characters think that is their reality and have a hard time unde..."
Your description of the GTKNYC thread is one of the appeals it has to me: you and M, in particular, bring your characters wonderfully, independently alive. (I feel a little guilty that I haven't brought my characters in to meet me and you and M and the rest, but this working for a living is a time killer! I have to choose between writing about dreams, here, or ... well, everything. I finished a book last week that is yelling at me to write its review. And here I am instead! LoL!)

One of the brilliant poets here in Goodreads suffers from migraines and wrote a great poem. Here's the link Migraine.

This was edited from an earlier poem she'd written: migraine which is equally as good (or even better).

Here they are:


Migraine

Do not look for logic
in this shift of the ordinary
when reason is corrupted
by the conventions
of dread. Hallways telescope
doors bang shut, a chill
rises by the bed.

Because she will turn up
with malevolent resolve,
her fingers rake the hair
stuck in tangles to your neck.
Her rank breath the air
around your face.

The house remains
insensate,
oblivious to these torments of ice
and visitation.

Outside a doe is frozen
to the weeds by the road.
She was killed by physics,
superstition's sullen brother
idiotic, relentless and sure.

The pain that woke you last night was for her,
cried out in the shape of a prayer.

Koeeoaddi 2008



Here's here earlier version:

Migraine

The very house
must be malign. The boiler, pulsing,
has be tapped down and shunted.
The hallway telescopes, doors bang shut.
A chill rises by the bed.

But the house is insensate -
oblivious to these torments of ice
and visitation.

Outside a doe is frozen
to the weeds by the road.
She was killed by physics,
superstition's sullen brother;
idiotic, relentless and sure.

The words that woke you last night were for her -
cried out in the shape of a prayer.


for Hazel © Sara, 2003

http://headaches.about.com/library/po...

Alex! That poem was beautiful! :D You get my vote! Now, there's some serious competition between us, dear sister! :D

This is an intriguing poem! I love the line “I said as the clock spun round . . .”

Our receptionist had migraines. They got better when she started taking a preventative (something she took every day whether she had a migraine or not) called Inderal, but there are others (Cymbalta, Topimax, Tegretol) that might work as preventatives. Those are things your primary care physician would have already told you about. Some patients quit taking the preventative and seem surprised when the migraines come back.

That was my favorite line, too!
I get migraines too, sadly. Terrible ones lately. :(

I’ve never had one. I’ve only heard about them. It sounds as though they vary, that some are worse than others, and that the pain can be excruciating.

Yeah, the worst in my opinion are the ocular migraines. Big, dark blotches and rings of tiny gold sparkles might sound cool, but they're NOT.