BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN (front page)
Saturday, 19 May 2012
SITE SECTIONS
- BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN (front page)
- In The Time of Losing It All (blog, paradigms & observations)
- Wilderness Survival Skills Prophecy (blog, spirit & visions)
- The Lost Cache Journals (blog, life & times)
- Visions of Paradise (short stories, fiction & non)
- When The Candle Flickers (poems & vinettes)
- PRIMITIVE VOLITION (novella, fiction)
- Table Of Contents
- Author Bio
- Contact
SIDE TRIPS
SHORT STORIES
Requiem to the Frontier I'd always entertained the notion I'd just fade into the sunset, repentant for my sins, yet glad I chased my dream, followed my heart--truly lived. I'd be far and away, high in the mountains, watching with peaceful eyes my last days pass before me. As the relentless encroachment of civilization approached, the Great Spirit would take me, mounted on my medicine horse, across--over to the other side, to the buffalo grounds, back into the wild, forever...
The...+ Full Story | WormwoodIs there anything where of it may be said, See, this is new? ... Ecclesiastes 1: 10
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There went out across the land a pale horse ... and the name that sat upon him was Death, a grievous wailing and gnashing of teeth rising up, all manner of abomination being visited upon the earth--
Pride and prejudice, the wickedness of man; greed; envy; jealousy and rage. Despots, Rulers, Kings and Queens--an economic meltdown. Famine. Wars, and rumors... + Full Story |
| Introduction |
I was just past twenty-one when I finally said to hell with the box life was trying to shove me into and cut for the wilderness, three years in the Rocky Mountains and then damn near three decades in the Alaskan bush, trapping and guiding, trying to make a life. Always chasing the dream, hoping to find it just over the next mountain range, or down the next wild river and at times in yet another girl's bed till I finally lost sight of it all together and lost my way in chaos. . Too much to just tell in casual passing I've slowly tried to gather it up on this site. I forget when I put my gamble on words, but after three years as a horseback mountain man in the Rockies and then three decades trapping & guiding in Alaska, alone much of the time, thoughts prying the writing seems the only thing left to do with it all. I've had a life like no one else I've known, so what if it's been rough-broke trail, 'least I've got a story to tell instead of just a stack of old time-cards. That said, in spite of knowing it was coming my whole life, writing still snuck up on me and hit me in the head like a sucker punch when I was down, kind of like looking in the mirror and seeing some gray streaking through--once actually acknowledged, you wonder how long were you kidding yourself, unwilling to accept the fact that time don't stand still. It takes a while to sink in, but after days of seeing it clearer, it's like taking another one in the guts. At that point there is no escaping the progression, everything in your life has just rounded a deadman's curve on a narrowing one-way trail. You know or maybe just sense--there is no time left for deviating from the path--no excuse for falling away from the trail-- And you realize even more so, freedom really is nothing more, than nothing left to lose...and that it never has been free-- But then, maybe I'm just being narcissistic? When yet young I read much. Lot's of Jack London. Some Huxley and Gibran (my Mom gave me The Prophet when I was nine or ten), Hemingway still stands out, as does Orwell, Bradbury and Poe. The other Jack's madness came later, along with more of the beats and hard bitten social critics, Robbins always an enjoyable read in-between, with the muse of Robert Service continually close to hand. The easy reading L'Amour and Haycock a delicious escape when the mind was too full, the Bible when not full enough-- It's all affected me--profoundly I'd say-- Any insight I may luck onto as to this commonality of life thing I've got in my mind, is a product of what I've come across, mostly reading. And in all candor must admit, the inalienable truths I believe, have indeed dictated my constant, seemingly reckless direction for as long as I've strayed from the nest. For instance, who can deny?  Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums . . . who find prison so soul-destroying.--Evelyn Waugh (1903-66), British novelist. Decline and Fall, pt. 3, ch. 4 (1928). And I hasten to add--school indeed does have the same effect upon the mortal soul if you comply as instructed. Numbs the free spirit, if you ask me. And we must admit: the American Government school system was patterned on the English model after all--the tragedy is, the clumsy indoctrination has worked on most of the population. But then, what do you expect? Think About It!!! Our world manipulated from long before-- Snuggled somewhere between the paradigmic [sic] fabrications of Ricky Nelson and Leave it to Beaver, like Manson's death howl in the canyons of Beverly Hills of years later, every afternoon the sounding rising up, the moan of alarms right before recess to shake up the adolescent mind, taking our safe, secure baby boom head games and blowing them all to hell. "Hurry under your desk, kneel and bend over (as if to kiss your own ass goodbye, it would seem). CLOSE YOUR EYES! Whatever you do, don't point toward the window--you'll go blind." Regardless, I was already well beyond their influence by the time it began to matter. When I started paying attention enough to realize I had a choice, I realized I'd already made my decisions. Without question I always knew what to believe from as far back as I can remember. Hunting with my Dad, in the traditional American sense, steeped in such a mystic and deep respect for our communion with the whole Mother Earth it was impossible not to have those values. Essentially self-sufficient from a young age, feeling quite free and independent because what i knew, a quiet confidence you don't know of, unless you lose it was always with me... So staying outside the box wasn't surprising I guess. Owning my own gun, being given that awesome responsibility at such a sweet tender age; cleaning dead birds and shotguns, being hunting partners, comrades in ams, part of a brotherhood, if you will, with men ten-times my age, with my Dad and younger brother well before I even started up in first grade, gave me a grounding no one can ever shake. Thank God for the blessing, and luckily, in an unlucky way, I've always been just a little more free than they like to allow. Not in any great sense of mischief mind you, but more in just being blissfully unaware I am indeed expected to grovel and ask their permission for living in a God-given World.  That said, I wrote my first anything (of anything I was confident enough to share) (a poem) in 1979, and have officially aspired as a writer since '94, a manila folder of rejection notices from various New York Glossies still floats about somewhere to prove it. Although I never did get published back in the good old days of snail mail submissions, I did get wonderfully hurried, hand scrawled notes from an editor or agent, often enough, with a bit of acknowledgment to somehow keep me studying on my own while I licked my wounded pride, staying drunk and stoned for weeks--And when strong enough, feeling somewhat fully recovered from the gutter of artistic rejection would crawl back to the path and do the shakedown again. Full of new ideas, having read more books on how-to by someone famous in my down time--or not. I'd start kind of slow-like, searching for inspiration into another rewrite or new piece, suddenly bond upon an idea, bleed with it anywhere from a few months to years, take a deep breath and send off again. Those were good times--young bravado, another mystic feeling, excited with the study of words, discovering their incredible power in the way that you stack 'em all up--but frustrating too, and oh so poor. And then I got back on the web 4:20 2005 (a mere coincidence I assure you I was blissfully unaware of till renewing a year later--no, really!) after having dropped off in Y2K with another long foray to the bush. And as was the case in 1992 with my first web presence on the net, once again for my guide business, or so I thought. That second guide site, now a sub domain of the original domain I'd launched in '05 turning through the years into more a requiem to a youngman's dream than anything else. Guiding, living in the woods, the whole perception of a primordial life and what it means, has changed so much through the decades I feel like an ol' frontiersman cursed with having fallen into the next hundred years. As in the Old west for it's frontiersman, I am quite certain I have seen and am witnessing the end of an era, and perhaps an Entire Age, and so explains what an ol' mountain man is doing as a web privateer reinventing yet one more time. And now look--over 60 active sites, dozens more I've built and let go. I couldn't help myself, what a medium for expression as a writer--perhaps truly so the cursor is indeed mightier than the sword--the bloggers, news sites, writers, musicians and artists what an epic thus far-- So convinced they had the increasing mass brainwash and control grid development in hand, the elite popped the genie out of the bottle when they let free enterprise get in on the net. Hell, it worked with TV, why not even more so the web. And it's been biting them in the ass ever since with their secrets now out in the open, and even more catching on everyday. Straight out of the mind control--civil surveillance war games of DARPA and RAND--the CFR, TLC and Bilderberg funded think tank projects for how to fuck with mankind, they figured to have the same paradigm convincing people they are free as they get further into the jaws of new hi-tech--cloning upon itself time and again like a twitter in the cosmos with each new entry of self absorbed info-bit being data-mined and based in a file--but therein lie the problem--they've made it fun, exciting, and so relevant in real-time it attracts the brightest and best-- Me, and a few others excepted-- For it is the cutting edge--the old media dead and dying, long live web's alternative Media, why do you think they're trying to nut it and shut it all down. It's such a perfect paradox. As ying-yang as loving a woman. But this one we have to win. the biggest, baddest think tank in the world is at work, the collective unconsciousness of the web as it stands today--so it's a deadly race to the End Game, that's why they want it shut down--that's why we must keep the power to the people and preserve the free web-- Well If nothing else I've learned, I do know: To write, one must first live. I have attempted to do so, not often with grace. This is some of the map of that long strange trip. Of course any resemblance to people living or dead, or to events real or imagined are but a coincidence of fiction and I duly enter my requisite disclaimer to protect the innocent and convict the guilty at this time. As with all my works they are a complete fabrication in a permanent state of disrepair, rewrite and construction till I hoist a beer and proclaim it done, or with an untimely death--  I do pray daily I am not just flagellating my ego after what for sure has been a weird trip indeed, but hope more to have arrived at a place of having lost enough through my life to finally lay bare the soul sufficiently to express a bit of truth in a way that grabs hold of the commonality of these strange days, and points even more to a common truth.Oh these damnable Civilized times give me the jitters, make me want to run for the high country and say fuck it, but here I am still hanging out, and not even hunkered down, smack-dab in the hot zone, working out a little more of my karma. A todo un viaje bueno, y viaja por favor con Dios. |
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| We See Eye To Eye--I Think? Wednesday, 06 April 2011 | W.J. Lynus O'Brien Wild Bill and I stood there in a scene looking as if it was straight out of a history book, two men, tired of the illusion civilization offers, appearing more Indian in our values than ever the white world could flavor. The older seasoned veteran of the mountain life and a young boy of twenty-two seeing where we stood, stating our views, palavering about the wilderness life, deeds we'd done, but I don't think the local ...+ Full Story |
