Current books:
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi
A City Year – Suzanne Goldsmith
Author: R. Jean Mathieu (Page 20 of 21)
This one’s a little different from the last ones. The Gallery of Henri Beauchamp is the name of one of my favorite creepypasta, the urban legends of the Internet age, where shadows wait in the datalinks as they waited in the streets of long ago. But, as Sister Miriam would tell us, it was never the streets that were evil. Without further ado…
First, Dégénération, just to get you in the right mood.
I’ve had a rather bumpy ride, employment wise. Especially since China, I’ve lived in this weird place where I’m overqualified for most work and not qualified enough for the rest. I get by by working for my parents or gigging. Once, in 2008, I took my father’s advice, buckled down, and looked for work.
As a result, I ended up $1400 in debt, still unemployed, after submitting (I counted) 119 applications through the classifieds, through my networks, and through craigslist. This was when we had a “good” economy, remember.
My father told me I just wasn’t looking hard enough, that I frightened employers, and for awhile I believed him. But I don’t think so any more. My cousin recently put up her own story, (link soon to follow), of crushing student debt and the same mantra, a hundred applications and no bites. I have friends who graduated in 2007 or ’08 and are still looking for a post college job, now applying at Taco Bells and skeezy gentleman’s clubs and competing against high school kids. San Luis Obispo has the highest rate of unemployed PhDs in the nation. Jeph Jacques summed it up eloquently when he had Marten say “I make 20k a year and I’m 80k in debt” to a trucker who thought he had it bad.
Just think of all those bright-eyed college kids, graduating into this economy, to find…nothing. We’re not the “boomerang” generation that comes back home after college because we’re Peter Pan, we come back home because there are no jobs with which to pay for apartments with. Mine is supposed to be the idealistic generation, the youth vote that swung Barack Obama into office and the biggest participants in civic society since the Boomers. Have you ever seen what crushed idealism looks like? It’s dangerous.
I’m starting my own business in part because I’m insane and in part because it honestly seems more secure to me and in part because it’s not like there’s any other options waiting for me. I don’t think everyone has quite this kind of healthy reaction, or the opportunity to make use of it.
So, out of this, I wrote a story. It is dark and bitter, like good chocolate, the darkest and bitterest I’ve done in quite a long time. If I can pare it down, I think it stands a good chance of winning this year’s NightWriters Short Story contest. Generational conflict certainly fits the theme of trust and betrayal, wouldn’t you say?
Today’s Red Penny entry comes from the Kwaidan of Lafcadio Hearn, a wonderful collection of strange tales from a very strange man. It’s been one of my favorites ever since Adam Cuerdan sent me a copy when I was a young man:
…have you ever found again a fairy tale or an old song you heard once in childhood but never forgot?
And there’s that eerie feeling of the mists retreating but not really dispersing? And it’s kind of a relief through the hot days that the mist of the false light and the waking dreams aren’t ever really too far off?
I’m going to do something like this every Monday, here on out. A bit of good creepypasta, an old fairytale, or an urban legend. The stuff that dreams are made of, and nightmares. It’s red penny Mondays, and our first story is one that’s never left me though I heard it once as a small boy, courtesy of Sur la Lune:
“THERE was once an old castle in the midst of a large and thick forest, and in it an old woman who was a witch dwelt all alone. In the day-time she changed herself into a cat or a screech-owl, but in the evening she took her proper shape again as a human being. She could lure wild beasts and birds to her, and then she killed and boiled and roasted them. If any one came within one hundred paces of the castle he was obliged to stand still, and could not stir from the place until she bade him be free. But whenever an innocent maiden came within this circle, she changed her into a bird, and shut her up in a wicker-work cage, and carried the cage into a room in the castle. She had about seven thousand cages of rare birds in the castle.
Now, there was once a maiden who was called Jorinda, who was fairer than all other girls. She and a handsome youth named Joringel had promised to marry each other. They were still in the days of betrothal, and their greatest happiness was being together. One day in order that they might be able to talk together in quiet they went for a walk in the forest. “Take care,” said Joringel, “that you do not go too near the castle.”
It was a beautiful evening; the sun shone brightly between the trunks of the trees into the dark green of the forest, and the turtle-doves sang mournfully upon the young boughs of the birch-trees.
Jorinda wept now and then: she sat down in the sunshine and was sorrowful. Joringel was sorrowful too; they were as sad as if they were about to die. Then they looked around them, and were quite at a loss, for they did not know by which way they should go home. The sun was still half above the mountain and half set.
Joringel looked through the bushes, and saw the old walls of the castle close at hand. He was horror-stricken and filled with deadly fear. Jorinda was singing —
“My little bird, with the necklace red,
Sings sorrow, sorrow, sorrow,
He sings that the dove must soon be dead,
Sings sorrow, sor — jug, jug, jug.”
Joringel looked for Jorinda. She was changed into a nightingale, and sang, “jug, jug, jug.” A screech-owl with glowing eyes flew three times round about her, and three times cried, “to-whoo, to-whoo, to-whoo!”
Joringel could not move: he stood there like a stone, and could neither weep nor speak, nor move hand or foot.
The sun had now set. The owl flew into the thicket, and directly afterwards there came out of it a crooked old woman, yellow and lean, with large red eyes and a hooked nose, the point of which reached to her chin. She muttered to herself, caught the nightingale, and took it away in her hand.
Joringel could neither speak nor move from the spot; the nightingale was gone. At last the woman came back, and said in a hollow voice, “Greet thee, Zachiel. If the moon shines on the cage, Zachiel, let him loose at once.” Then Joringel was freed. He fell on his knees before the woman and begged that she would give him back his Jorinda, but she said that he should never have her again, and went away. He called, he wept, he lamented, but all in vain,”Ah, what is to become of me?”
Joringel went away, and at last came to a strange village; there he kept sheep for a long time. He often walked round and round the castle, but not too near to it. At last he dreamt one night that he found a blood-red flower, in the middle of which was a beautiful large pearl; that he picked the flower and went with it to the castle, and that everything he touched with the flower was freed from enchantment; he also dreamt that by means of it he recovered his Jorinda.
In the morning, when he awoke, he began to seek over hill and dale if he could find such a flower. He sought until the ninth day, and then, early in the morning, he found the blood-red flower. In the middle of it there was a large dew-drop, as big as the finest pearl.
Day and night he journeyed with this flower to the castle. When he was within a hundred paces of it he was not held fast, but walked on to the door. Joringel was full of joy; he touched the door with the flower, and it sprang open. He walked in through the courtyard, and listened for the sound of the birds. At last he heard it. He went on and found the room from whence it came, and there the witch was feeding the birds in the seven thousand cages.
When she saw Joringel she was angry, very angry, and scolded and spat poison and gall at him, but she could not come within two paces of him. He did not take any notice of her, but went and looked at the cages with the birds; but there were many hundred nightingales, how was he to find his Jorinda again?
Just then he saw the old woman quietly take away a cage with a bird in it, and go towards the door.
Swiftly he sprang towards her, touched the cage with the flower, and also the old woman. She could now no longer bewitch any one; and Jorinda was standing there, clasping him round the neck, and she was as beautiful as ever!”
Out of the blue, my cousine Jessie Gagnon Hlister, aka Lady Laura Jones, aka the Mistress of Adventure, aka my Distaff Counterpart, contacted me over Facebook. She asked what I’d been up to since last I saw her. To let you know, I met her for the first and last time on my family’s trip back to the ancestral stomping grounds in New Hampshire and Québec, a week before I left for China. This came out, and I can post it because it’s my blog and I can be as self-indulgent as I damn well please:
So, sometimes the world works correctly.
Thanks pretty much to Facebook and to the BBC, a former Guatanamo prison guard and two of his inmates have met in person for the first time in five years, and talked about women, rap music, and reconciliation.
Gentlemen, ladies, I don’t know how else to put this: The world is just awesome.
I am now the newest member of the SLO NightWriters. This is a very Good Thing, and I’m glad I missed karate for it. I’ve made overtures towards linking up NightWriters and the Cuesta Literati, given that I’ve been unceremoniously made president of the latter. Exciting stuff down the way…with not too much work on my part, I could easily leave the Literati as much more than three or four people gathered around a table every now and again.
Then my car broke down.
I woke up early yesterday due to a combination of Lenker’s taste in movies and bladder content. I wandered downstairs, thinking about a note I left in my notebook about six years ago, made myself a big sandwich, sat down, and started working on my morning pages. While I was writing, I brought the note up again, which was half a story and just needed something to focus on. Then I wrote out “Hyperspace,” and specifically the setting development I did on it for another story last year. The idea for a plot and the ‘focus’ of hyperspace worked perfectly, and today I tidied it up and sent it out to my regular editors.
I notice a lot of my fiction seems to be coming together like this: I have a lot of halves lying around, and most of my stories recently have been a matter of putting halves together and figuring out how to dress it. “Only the Good Die Young,” which I’m submitting off to the Music for Another World anthology, came from crossing my uncle’s death with a setting I’ve been toying with for two years, and “No More Final Frontiers” seems to be combining a character I’ve had forever with a dream I had when I was barely sapient.
Sometimes, old fire stew is the best stew.
My Chinese is horrible. When I left the country three years ago, I could flirt and tell bad jokes. Now I have a hard time putting a sentence together and can write maybe two dozen characters, including Marissa’s name. So, as an experiment, I wrote my usual email to her entirely in Chinese, liberally using Xiaoma Cidian and my grammar guides. The result is … almost but not quite incoherent.
Therefore, I also proposed that I write a short essay a week, in Chinese, at my leisure, taking time to get it right. She’ll review it and correct me. I learned in China that this was the best way for an adult 老外 to learn to write the language, if s/he’s fool enough to try. This will involve a lot of looking stupid in front of a woman I respect.
And that’s how you get good at a language: fail a lot. You have to be absolutely willing to trip over your own tongue and look like an idiot or you’ll never get good enough to be eloquent and look like Joe Cool. It’s like a workout at the gym: Success through failure. You keep pumping iron until your muscles fail and give out, then you let ’em heal and you do it again. A language is exactly the same thing: you try to express yourself as best you can, and you go until you can’t find the words or put them in order any more.
Daunting, yes, but doable. And some things make it easier. If you have a lust for the language, like you’re learning Japanese to watch anime, something you’re really passionate about, you’ve got the motivation to really dig in and try to figure out how it works. Some education in linguistics helps, too, so you know what’s going on even if you’ve never seen it before. Chinese was easier for me than a lot of other people because I know what an isolating language is, what kind of features it usually has, and how it theoretically works. Same with being pro-drop and tones. And, of course, after the third tongue it’s all downhill from there, because you know how to learn.
The most important thing is to be willing to look godawful stupid, though, and no mistake.
But, I still remember the six most important words: 我爱你,巫燕婷.
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