Loki Listens

Richard Matheson wrote What Dreams May Come in 1978, as a love story to his wife. It pops up every so often in my life, and reminds me of the things that I love, and gives me hope. I may disappear from time to time, but it is within my nature to run. Run to her. Always searching for what I’ve already found.

It’s easy to forget that we have perfection in our hands when times are rough. Richard Matheson spent a lifetime writing horror and dark fantasy, to end up his masterwork as one of the greatest love stories ever told. Why did it take so long? Love is so hard to express, even for the most sensitive of us. Passion is so much easier. This is why we are barraged by “love stories” that are nothing more than sex driven fantasies. In the rare instance that passion and love meet, we find something truly great. Something that transcends words. The love story is now even harder to tell, and it can become downright scary.

As writers, when we find this kind of extraordinary relationship, our first instinct is to run. We want to run because for the first time in our lives we have no words to describe what is happening to us. It’s confusing, we stumble, we fall. We falter. You see, in running, we can understand, in words. The only way we really understand anything.

With love comes fear, but hopefully passion and love together can offset our natural fear of loss.

In Matheson’s What Dreams May Come, the main character has to come face to face with not only his greatest fear, but also the greatest fear of the majority of mankind. Is that what makes it so compelling? It is definitely what makes it ring so true in the hearts of so many.

By using this novel, I’ve skirted myself(safely around), for now, the subject of my own feelings and fears. Eventually I’ll face them down, as Matheson, and so many others have, finding the strength in their constant growth.

Jack.
I Listen.

Fragments
#4

Tags: 1978, age, dreams, drive, fragment, Fragments, growth, hope, jack, life, loss, love, love story, master, mind, nature, novel, now, old, OS, Othin, richard matheson, rive, search, stories, stumble, time, true, US, what dreams may come, why, words, work, writers, writing

Between ideas and talk and rain and dreams and broken hearts and lack of ambition.

Somewhere, there’s still a spark.

I might not be around, as once I was. Everyone goes disappearing.

Think in the cracks in the sidewalk. Wrap your head around cement shattering. The knowledge of rock. Our foundations are deserving of deep thought. Play in the mud. Take a chisel to granite.

Break the walls you have forgotten you erected.

—

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101

Lesson #18
Rocks

Tags: Basic Ideology, broken hearts, dreams, forgotten, granite, ideas, ideology, jack, knowledge, mud, now, play, rain, rock, rocks, sidewalk, spark, stone, stones, talk, thought, walls

Sometimes you wake up, and you find yourself in those quiet moments. Like a dream was about to begin, but it was cut short by consciousness. It’s hard to say if the dream you missed was worth the waking. You look at your life.. and think, “Where the hell have I been?” The thoughts are not your own. Or are they?

You feel like you’ve been comatose for most of your adult life. Or you maybe you hope that you have been. Events swirl past you in vivid bubbles, caught in time. Am I? Was I? Clarity becomes confusion, confusion becomes pain.

You struggle to open a pack of cigarettes. After chain-smoking your way through four or five cigarettes, you reach for the bottles of pills. You choke down the last vicodin with fruit juice that may have been sitting on the desk for 2 or 3 days. And you wait. You wait for beautiful numbness. You wait as the clarity dims, and the scorching depression bubbles down to lukewarm.

Jack.
I Listen.

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
Update

Tags: 2009, cigarettes, depression, hope, jack, life, moment, Odin, OS, past, pills, short, thought, thoughts, time, update, US, vicodin, waking, war

I’m starting to get caught up with things here at Loki Listens. The Cost of Magic is moving along nicely. We haven’t heard from Loki Fallen-God in sometime, so I’ll try to dig up a Basic Ideology lesson this week.

In other news.. oh wait.. that’s right.. there isn’t any.

Jack
I Listen.

Monday Update
March 30, 2009

Tags: 2009, Basic Ideology, Cost of Magic, god, ideology, jack, Loki Listens, magic, march, monday, moving, new, news, OS, The Cost of Magic, time, update

This is the 26th section of my novel. If you haven’t read the first 25, you might want to start here.

Jane’s Journey
—-

In the astral world, Jane’s soul was exploring. She saw the pyramids of Egypt in their greatest glory. She flew over Atlantis, populated by ethereal glowing balls, that she could only assume had once been something like human.

In this level of consciousness, she could move at the speed of thought. Was this alacrity in it’s first stages? She wasn’t really sure at all.

In all of these wild and wondrous places, she felt like an observer. No one seemed to notice that she was there, even when she tried to get their attention(which she did. Often.). Even without interaction, she was learning much by observing.

She could sink her soul down to the material realm and fly through cities. People using magic, or even attempting to, shot up lights like a beacon. Jane would fly to these beacons and watch the people. Sometimes it was someone walking down the street, and she couldn’t tell what was causing the light. Other times, people would clearly be focusing on an antiqued and mundane spell of sorts.

Every now and then, as she floated through the streets of large cities, people would see her. They would give her funny looks and walk off. Children would smile and giggle. Dogs would bark at her. Sleeping cats would send their astral selves to her hands, floating lazily in the air, until she would stroke their oddly soft fur. It was an odd feeling, petting these not so real cats.

Jane thought of all the Earthly places she had always wanted to see. She visited them one by one. She thought of places that had disappeared with time. She visited them as well. She was experiencing history.

When Jane realized this, she also realized that she was not bound by time here. She could watch the past, and to an extent, the future.

She watched as hundreds of men built the great wall of China. She saw the Berlin Wall torn down. Julius Caesar died a bloody death before her. Yeshua ben Yoseph preached his new ideas to a crowd of Romans and Isrealites. Years later a man named Paul would twist words and confuse people with the teachings of ben Yoseph.

Jane could see beyond that. She could see the tiny bluish-white lines that tied all of these people to their history and to their destiny. She could see that undeserved pain was sometimes necessary for the world to grow. She thought it was odd that the history of the world so often hinged on one person. One person’s self-sacrifice to appease the lonely astrals.

She was getting tired. Very tired. Astral travel taxed her physical constitution. She needed to sleep. She thought of her body and of Minus’ basement. She closed her eyes, and could feel the rapid movement. When she opened her eyes, she was not in her body, but instead, inside a large building filled with books. Thousands and thousands of books.

“Fuck. What? Where am I? Is this the Akashic Library?â€

A booming masculine voice answered her. “Some beings call it that. But it is so much more. Welcome to my home, Jane De la Moore.â€

She went silent with shock. Someone could see and hear her! She felt a sensation of shear excitement. If she had been in her body, her heart would be racing.

“I am the Keeper,†the voice boomed again. She saw a robed and hooded figure coming down a set of stairs to her left. “This is my home. You are welcome to use my library. I have expected you for some time.â€

—-

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #26
Jane’s Journey

Tags: 2008, action, age, AIR, akashic, akashic library, alacrity, astral, attention, basement, being, book, books, call, Cost of Magic, crow, death, focus, fun, future, history, human, i am, ideas, jack, Jane, learning, library, magic, Minus, movement, new, novel, now, OS, past, people, sleep, soul, teaching, The Cost of Magic, thought, time, travel, US, USA, walking, words

You know those nights, when you can’t sleep? No matter what you do? It’s 4am on a Tuesday. There you are. Staring at the ceiling. Counting proverbial sheep. Your mind racing, any kind of distraction will do. Anything to slow down. Anything at all.

But every Tuesday that this happens, it gets a little worse. Life looks a little more bleak. You can’t count sheep anymore. You stare at the back of your eyelids in a daze that seems, almost, like sleep. It’s so close, you can taste it. You can smell the dreams at the boarder of your thoughts, screaming to come out.

But they don’t. And it’s no where close to sleep. It’s worse than counting sheep. It’s worse than racing thoughts. It’s emptiness. Silence. Loneliness. Apathy.

And sometimes you wonder if it’s ever going to get any better. It’s more than Tuesdays now. Then, you find yourself reading something like this. Something totally asinine.

When I started writing the novel, The Cost of Magic, which is unfolding slowly on this blog, I grabbed a few characters from a novel I could never bring myself to finish a few years back. The name of that novel was to be: Blame it on Tuesday. It may still come together, as I allude to it more than a little in The Cost of Magic.

We’ll have to see how bad these Tuesdays get first.

Jack
I Listen.

Fragments
#3

Tags: action, anxiety, blog, Cost of Magic, dreams, fragment, Fragments, insomnia, jack, life, magic, mind, novel, now, old, OS, sleep, The Cost of Magic, thought, thoughts, time, tuesday, writing

This is the 25th section of my novel. If you haven’t read the first 24, you might want to start here.

Delirium
—-

When Minus opened his eyes again, it was raining hard and he was soaking wet.

He heard a voice say, “You’re almost there, boy.â€

When he looking around he could find no trace of the All-Father or the ravens. Or anyone else for that matter.

The rain made his arms sting. He lifted one arm, and then the other, up to see them. The scarred Runes that Odin had made several days before were completely healed, aside from the glowing pattern. But new marks had appeared below those. They were fresh, and bloody. They ached at the rain’s down pour.

Minus hadn’t had any food or drink for several days, so he took this opportunity to drink as much of the rain as he could. It was clean and tasted very well.

He heard hysterical laughter that seemed very far off. It was getting closer and louder. Then, as the laughter was so close and so loud, he realized it was his own.

—-

Jack
I Listen.
The Cost of Magic
Section #25
Delirium

Tags: 2008, aside, Cost of Magic, food, jack, laughter, magic, Minus, new, novel, Odin, OS, rain, raven, ravens, rune, runes, The Cost of Magic, unity, US

This is the 24th section of my novel. If you haven’t read the first 23, you might want to start here.

The Tao of Minus
—-

Mancini was a little startled when Jane asked about the Akashic Library. But he knew that she had that right, even if she did not have that power.

So, they talked at length about the great teachers of the past, about the holy guardian angel, and about the Akashic Library.

He suggested she take the six month sojourn to learn about the Holy Guardian Angel before trying to access the Akashic Library.

“But… hmm.. When Minus returns, we will talk. He may have a short cut for you. You have every right to view it for yourself. Especially since I have an oath to not speak of what I see there. Minus is not allowed to enter. But neither of us really know why. Sometimes, it’s almost like he has no book. Like his lifetime is not recorded, as it is with the rest of us.â€

Jane didn’t know how to answer. Mancini appeared puzzled, even in his ghostly astral form.

Mancini continued, “The information I have about Minus is from my personal experience with him, and from reading the life books of others that have interacted with him. There are large blank periods, that I can find no information on. Five years ago, shortly after we had met, he completely disappeared. No one knows why. Or where he was. He refuses to talk about it.â€

“From what I’ve learned of alacrity,†Jane interjected, “Is it possible that he got lost in it?â€

“It’s possible. But Othin practices alacrity too.. I’d think Othin would have been able to find him…â€

“And then he disappeared for three years with me, at that bar..†Jane was trying to string together the facts. This whole mess was terribly confusing to her. She had never known magic like this. All of these things were brand new to her.

“Yes, that’s right. Minus is… well, odd. It’s almost like he has a cloaking ability. Kotoko witnessed it with trying to find this house. This house is totally off the official radar. Only a handful of people know it’s here at all. But it has been here for fifty years at least.

“Although it wasn’t his fault, you two were completely masked inside that bar. In the same way, Minus is completely hidden now, at the world tree. No magic can find him there. If you were to walk up to the exact tree he was on, you would not be able to see him.â€

“Does he know this,†asked Jane.

“Sometimes.. Definitely not all of the time. He doesn’t dabble in divination, so he really doesn’t understand the concept at all. All of his magic comes naturally, through self-sacrifice.â€

“Like now? Like his trip to the world tree?†Jane’s curiosity was peaked.

“Yes,†the doctor answered. “Just like now. This is not the first time he has performed the self-sacrifice rituals for knowledge, or power. It’s almost like the gods favor him. His family has no history of magical blood. Unlike me and you. There is no reason for Minus to have the power and understanding that he does. I’ve spent a long, long time trying to figure it out.â€

“What about Othin? I thought he was Minus’ uncle?†Jane interjected.

“Othin is not a blood relative. He was a friend of Minus’ mother. But she never knew about Othin’s magical side life. You see, to most people, Othin just looks and acts like an old, burned-out hippie. I’ve known him for five years. He has not aged a day, but we can discuss that later.

“It really boils down to the fact that Minus basically gave me my powers. I’m certain that he has had a positive impact on your magic as well. Probably Kotoko, too. Othin often tells me about personal relationships with gods, but I usually chalk it up to metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Most of the gods are dead, or were never there to begin with. Maybe I should reconsider that. We’ll talk to Minus about it when he returns. Not long left.â€

And so, that night, Jane began to practice astral travel to see if she could find this Holy Guardian Angel and the Akashic Library. She was tired of being out of the loop. She was worried about Minus, and she had to do something about it.

—-

Jack
Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #24
The Tao of Minus

Tags: 2008, age, akashic, akashic library, alacrity, astral, being, book, books, call, concept, Cost of Magic, facts, family, god, history, jack, Jane, knowledge, Kotoko, library, life, magic, Mancini, Minus, new, novel, now, old, OS, Othin, past, peak, people, practice, relationships, short, talk, teacher, The Cost of Magic, thought, time, tn, travel, uncle, understanding, US, why, world tree

Things are very, very hectic right now. The economy is killing me, literally. this site’s domain expires at the end of this month, and I doubt very seriously I’ll have the $10 to renew it. Yes, it really is that bad.

Tags: domain, new, now, update, US