Neither George Orwell’s “1984” nor Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” imagined the scene we are living at this moment. Their tomes are mild compared the current unprecedented and unforeseen scenario.
This morning, on the walking trail, I saw two ladies approaching. They were obviously together, I assume friends, and were walking one on either side of the path, keeping as from one another as they could. As I got closer, the one on my side hurried ahead of her friend, glancing back to make sure she was maintaining proper distance protocol. My, “Good morning,” nor my presence was acknowledged as I passed them.
A while later, as I walked across the parking lot at Kroger’s, a lady stumbled and went to her knees. I reflexively hurried to her and said, “Are you okay? Can I help you up?” She literally screamed at me. “Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” I was shocked, but complied with her wishes, and walked away.
Is this where we’ve come to? Is this the world we live in? It makes me terribly sad.
It seems, like lemmings, people have been led to the edge of a sea of fear. Some of them will walk into it, never to return, while others will stand at the edge, trembling in fear, yet content in the belief they are doing as they should. At times, some will begin to wander back toward the world they knew before, hoping it will be as it was when they left it. Those remaining at the edge will scream for them to come back to safety; begging them to do as they’ve been told. It’s too soon to go back!
And those who refused to follow and worship with the multitudes who tremble and pray to the alter of fear? They are cursed and accused of bringing danger—even death—upon those who choose to do the “right thing”.
Archive for Dark Side
When We Were Boys
When we were little boys , my cousin Eddy Madden and I would imitate our TV heroes. Sadly, my fellow hero passed away five years ago after a long battle with cancer. Ed loved God, his country and his friends, but most of all he loved his family. This country is now missing another hero and this old gunslinger misses him dearly. I republish the following in his honor, because I know he felt the same.
We Used to Have Heroes
We used to have heroes; they rode horses, wore white hats, fought for what they believed was right, looked out for their neighbors, and ran the bad guys out of town. I wanted to be like them.
When I was six, I was the Lone Ranger, and at the same time Superman; ever ready to stand against anyone or anything that dared to come against truth, justice, and the American way. When I was eight, I was Paladin–Have Gun Will Travel; a black hat this time, and more rugged, but a hero still, who righted wrongs and would go anywhere to correct injustice and defend the defenseless. When I was ten, I was John Wayne. I learned to walk like him, tried to make my voice deep like his, and hoped I’d grow to be tall, broad shouldered and brave like “The Duke”. But mostly, I wanted to be a good man, a superb man, a combination of all of those heroes who cared little for themselves, but lived for what they could do for others.
Yes, it was just television and all our heroes were make-believe, but they made us believe and they taught us about right and wrong, and so many other things. But… where have all the heroes gone? Who do we turn to now? What is truth, or justice? And, what is the American way? Our heroes stood proud and tall, hands on their hips, ready to fight for a way of life and a country they loved, even though that country was flawed, even then, in so many ways.
I love my country. But it is a love like one has for a dying loved one, and I watch her now, slumbering in drugged apathy, immorality, indecency, and corruption. I hear the blustering of our confused and corrupted government, the noises they make sounding much like the death rattle of cancer-ridden lungs, and my heart aches, as I realize even should she survive, a mere shadowy skeleton of what she once was is all that will remain.
And so, I think back on those days of yesteryear–days when this country stood strong and proud–and watch as she slowly succumbs to darkness with no heroes to ride to her rescue, and I silently weep.
Copyright © 2012 C. Mashburn
Blood On The Moon ~ the story
This is a short story and poem I wrote when I first started writing. It’s one of my personal favorites. Read it if you have time. I think you’ll find it very interesting.
Blood On the Moon was the first short story I wrote when I decided I wanted to try and write. This is the 2015 rewritten version (I hope it’s better than the original). It’s 2170 words long (5 single spaced pages), so print it and read it later if you want. I’ll even email it to you, if you can’t print it off the blog. Click the picture to enlarge and read the poem by the same title.
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Beautiful Exiles
Beautiful Exiles
I’m currently reading Meg Waite Clayton’s, Beautiful Exiles, a novel about Ernest Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn, also an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career.
I’m paraphrasing the following from a passage in the book, simply because it rings so true to me. Especially regarding my autobiography, Just A Boy: When a writer, more so if he’s an amateur like me, lets go of a book, he does so, knowing all the wrong in it will forever be wrong. And even the bits—and it truly seems it’s only bits—that are good and right leave your soul ripped out of your chest and placed on the page to be examined by anyone who cares to read them.
This—to me anyway—rings even more true today than it did in the days of Hemingway and Gellhorn. Thanks mostly to the Internet, which has given license to “perform” to anyone—me included—who dares take their shot at writing, singing, comedy, art, et al. It’s a good thing but also a very bad thing. Good, in the sense we can take our shot, but bad in the sense that so can millions of others, and the odds of being “shot down” are high.
I’m not complaining, or excusing my lack of success, I’m merely trying to convey how this feels—this writing thing. I’ve often said that to write, one must be either very intelligent or somewhat insane. I’ve decided I’m just smart enough… to be fool enough… to write.
Here’s a list of links to my published works:
I Can’t Stop the Bleeding
At that moment I was twelve going on twenty. I’d jumped so far forward in life my head was spinning but, in a strange way, it was all starting to make sense. But it was making sense in a way that made no sense at all. As I looked across the table at my mom, her tears dripping onto the Formica-topped kitchen table, I wondered about love, I wondered about God, I wondered what life was all about. And as all these things raced around in my mind, they began to form the new me—the soon-to-be-a-man me. I suddenly realized, and I admit a tinge of fear accompanied the thought, that I had to—somehow—protect my mom, my brothers, and my sister. From my dad.
~~~~~
The above is an excerpt from a book I began writing last November. I abruptly stopped writing the book, due to a very unexpected circumstance. Most of you are aware of what happened but if not, you can read my post, The World Stopped Turning, for the details. But there’s more to it than that. I simply didn’t, and still don’t, know if I can write the rest of this story.
But, a few days ago, I began reading a book, not by but about, Ernest Hemingway. As I read it, I was inspired, not by his talent, or his person, but by his pain. He was a tormented man, and he was not afraid to display his frailty to the world. He said this about writing:
I’m certainly no Hemingway, but I bleed, and I cannot stop the bleeding. I’ll let you know when the book is finished.
Where No One Lives
If you’ve ever driven the small highways of Texas, you’ve seen a house like this; some of them near to falling down. I wrote this poem quite a few years ago after such a drive, and on this cold and wet East Texas day, it seems fitting to post it again. It’s kind of a sad poem, and I think you all know I’m not sad. In fact, I have much to be thankful for. I just wanted to share one of my favorite writings with you.
Where No One Lives
Wind shrieks through broken windows
A house where no one lives
Rusted wheel cries out an answer
From a well that no water gives
The painting is “Forever Yesterday” by Evelyn Peters, and the painting and poem hang side by side on our living room wall. It almost seems the poem was written about the painting, but it wasn’t.
Leafless tree that once bore fruit
Alone in a weed filled yard
Long since dead and barren
Lifeless limbs are grey and hard
Splintered door on rusted hinge
Sings a mournful song then closes
By the porch a broken trellis
Once filled with yellow roses
Porch swing sits against the wall
No chains to make it swing
No lovers or children to hold
When April brings the spring
Broken boards, once a home
Shelter, it no longer gives
Tis but a pile of broken memories
This house where no one lives
Copyright © 1998 C. Mashburn
Don’t Go There
It’s happened several times in the past, but it seems to be happening more frequently as I get on in years. I’ll be sound asleep in the early morning hours when a voice—clear and audible—awakens me with but one word; my name. “Charlie?” Yes, it comes in the form of a question; an almost searching but perhaps curious lilt to it. Sometimes I feel as though the voice is asking for my help, other times it seems to be reaching out to help me; as in, What are you doing, Charlie? Don’t go there.
I’m never quite sure who the voice belongs to, but after I’m fully awake for a few moments I discern the voice to be my mom’s. Always though, I’m never certain.
Afterward, I feel no fear or dread, but it does make me wonder. First, I wonder if there’s something wrong with mom—she lives 400 miles away—and then, sometimes, I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. This morning, for the first time since this began happening, I wondered if this happens when I come to close to “the veil”, as in dying.
I know, it’s a morbid thought, and maybe nonsensical too, but it came to me this morning, so I’m writing it down. What if—for reasons unexplainable—I approach death in my sleep and God uses Mom’s voice to call me back from the edge because, quite simply, it’s not my time to go.
I wonder.
A Soft Knocking
“A Soft Knocking” was originally a rather long short story, which I whittled down to just under 500 words for a contest a few years back. Every time I come across it, I can’t resist toying with it, and on one of those occasions I re-wrote it in poem form. It’s rather long for a poem but give it a read if you’ve got the time. I think you will find it quite entertaining.
A Soft Knocking
In my very bones I could feel the morning dampness
My dark and dreary world having steeped in slow rain
Throughout the long and silent night
The lamp flickering on my desk
cast a warm glow upon my work
But did nothing to ease the chill in the room
A faint ringing in the distance
A carriage bell
Not something I often heard
Rushed a chill through my veins
Then a woman’s scream sliced the cold morning air
I moved quickly to my window
And with trembling hand eased the curtain aside
A coffin-like visage approached
The light snap of a whip sounded
The steed… paying whip no mind
Continued at a slow trot then fought the bit with turn of head
When the driver pulled back on rein and brake sliding the coach to a stop
I turned away
Knowing with sick dread the carriage had come for me
Then… wishing not to see, yet knowing I must
I turned back to the window
The driver stared forward
Face hidden by shadow of brim
The stallion looked over its shoulder
Eyes wild and gleaming
Snorting steam from black nostrils
As…
The door swung slowly wide
And a slender leg clad in white silk stocking
Appeared at the coach door then fell to the muddy road
A river of blood flowed from the severed limb
Again, I turned away
An angry fist squeezing my heart
And I knew with instant dread
Never more…
Would my pen scratch the page
I heard the “Yaw” of the driver
A crack of the knotted whip
The scream of the beaten steed piercing the damp air
Like an ice pick
Through a warm beating heart
And then…
There came at my door…
A soft knocking
My aged eyes watered as one icy tear trickled
Slowly… down my rugged cheek
Then…
Not knowing how I’d arrived there
I stood looking at the great door
My mind fighting to stay my hands
As they moved toward the bolt
And … once again… there came…
A soft knocking
Of its own accord
The door swung slowly open
And from behind me
A small hand gently pushed
I tumbled into the deep blackness outside my castle door
Light had fled my world
Tumbling… tumbling…
I floated through the darkness
Lungs burning as I breathed
The vile substance in which I flew
Suddenly…
I knew with solemn certainty
It was the taste
The smell
The feel…
Of ink
I knew, too…
Who it was had come to fetch me
‘Twas all those of whom I had written
In my years at the desk
Those whose lives I had created
Then… taken
Oft in brutal fashion
In the dark stories I’d told
But the cruelest of my acts
Was the shunning of the one in white silk stockings
Who wanted naught from the world but my ungiven love
For this sin
I will forever hear
As I tumble through my madness
… a soft knocking
Copyright © 2012 C. Mashburn
Come Hell or High Water
I haven’t written a short story in ages, but for some reason I’m feeling a bit creative today. I used to write a lot of them, before my good friend, Kellie Elmore, decided she wanted to be a photographer. She used to do a “Free Write Friday” on her blog, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. So here ya go! Hope you enjoy it!
Come Hell or High Water
As I passed beneath the street lamp, out of the corner of my eye I saw my shadow quiver. Maybe the beer-tender had been right when she’d said, “You’ve had enough. Go home.” I grinned and thought, “Her bad”, as my shadow glanced my way then slid with me into the dark night where only a spattering of stars and a pale sliver of moon strained through thin clouds to light the black tar road.
She should’ve known it was the wrong thing to say. She knows me well enough to know if I’m told I can’t, or shouldn’t do something, or have something, then do, or have it, I will. Come hell or high water, as they say. Especially considering what had happened this morning. But then, she couldn’t know. No one knew. Yet. But they would. And when they knew, it would be too late for this backwater piece-of-crap town. Because by then, the proverbial water would be too deep, and literal hell would be at their doorstep.
First thing I had to do was get some guns. I didn’t own any, and being an over the hill, white conservative man, that fact had surprised more than one of my friends. I use the word friend loosely, because truth be known, I couldn’t put a hand on the shoulder of one man in this town—or any other town—who would claim me as a friend. Not that I’m a bad, or unlikeable guy, but… well… maybe I am, in a way. What I am, when you get right down to it, is a loner, and people can feel that. And feeling it is more than sensing it, if you get my drift. It makes their shadow quiver.
As for not having any guns, when they ask me I always answer the same way, “Don’t need any guns, and if I ever do, I know who has them.” I love the looks I get when I say that. You say something like that, you got to look at their eyes. You can read a person’s mind through their eyes. Especially when their afraid. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I don’t have any friends. I scare the hell out of people.
I guess you could say I’m the strong, silent type. One of those guys you can tell a joke to, if you can settle for a sideways grin in place of a laugh. A guy you can nudge, but you best be sure the nudge doesn’t have even a hint of a shove to it. One of those guys you can tell with one look—because that’s all he’ll tolerate—you don’t want to mess with him. A guy who can intimidate a bigger man with just a glance; something in the blue eyes—a mixture of cold steel and I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass—that say without saying, he won’t be taking no shit off nobody. A guy that knows he’s gonna die, but knows it ain’t gonna happen today, and you sure as hell ain’t gonna have anything to with it.
So… you want to be my friend?
Copyright © C MASHBURN 2017
Click here to read part two –> What I Meant to Say Was…
Then… There Be Silence
Our world can be dark, but there is light. Our world can be chaotic, but there is peace. I have found that the light and peace are always there, and all we have to do is turn toward them and focus on them. Too many souls quit the search and refuse to turn away from the chaotic darkness. I wish it wasn’t so. Read the rest of this entry »
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Marbles In My Pocket ~ The Official Blog of Charles L. Mashburn ~ Poems, Short Stories, and random thoughts from the author of "Be Still... and know that I am God" 