The Baker Hotel

On July 4th, Taylor, Ryan and Ali broke into the condemned

Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas.

The following was inspired.

Mistress

taylor

Fingertips placed gingerly on the rim of his glass he looked up at the bartender who appeared as formal as his freshly pressed tuxedo. He imagined that his head would topple off were he to loosen the bow tie for him. He took a final, deep swallow of the whiskey sour. Nodding once when the bartender glanced his way he stood, turned with an over pronounced elegance, and made for the ballroom. He spotted her across the vastness of the room. She felt his eyes on her but would not meet what she knew all to well to be his solemn gaze; a gaze lacking invitation, deep wells of regret hidden behind a stern grey assurance. Regaining his composure, slackening the tightness he felt at the temples, he crossed the luxurious Oriental rug with an air of royalty. He brushed past her without a word or side glance and approached the lobby's front counter.


"I'll have a room for the night," he said in a rich, careless monotone to the clerk who promptly presented him with the correct key in a correct manner of submissiveness.

She was waiting in the elevator when he stepped into the compartment, languidly dangling a cigarette from her thin fingers.

The operator, in a cracked voice, asked, "Which floor sir?"

Her limpid eyes locked on the key in his hand for a moment and then onto the elevator attendant.

"Seven," she answered for him.

Her voice contained a hint of laughter, was so smooth and sweet that the operator almost overlooked the mocking sneer that played on her lips briefly. Theodore looked at the key in his hand and back to the numbers changing above the sliding doors as they slid quietly past the five floors that separated the lobby from the room. As the lavish compartment shuddered to a halt the young man announced the seventh floor and prompted the shining doors to open with a few well rehearsed flicks of his wrist. Theodore exited first, tucking a crisp, rather large bill in the pale-faced operator's front shirt pocket. She snickered softly under her breath at the tip as she crossed the threshold onto the rich carpet of the hallway. Theodore trembled with an anger absent in his face's unshakable demeanor and marched with military formality towards the room at the far South East wing of the building, his building. At the door he turned to face her for the first time. She smiled and took her own key from her handbag. With apparent fatigue he followed her into the room, modest in size but exquisite in its decor. He sank into a rocking chair of glossy oak and plush brown upholstery. From the side table he lifted his reading glasses and a newspaper.

She cleared her throat and lit one of the cigarettes she kept in the drawer of the nightstand. Refocusing strained attention from the column he had been pretending to read, his gaze fell on her leaning back on her palms, her fingertips pointing away from her, the cigarette dangling from the permanent smirk she wore when they were alone. She crossed her legs and assumed a sloppy pose made enticing only by the cut of the black dress she wore with absolute confidence.

"Why do you keep this up Teddy?"

"I couldn't tell you really. I've been made a fool and I've been controlled. Truth be told I loathe you. You make my skin crawl. The air is thick with some sort of evil when you're around and though I cannot for the life of me reconcile the wrong done when I'm with you there's some latent terror of what would happen if I broke it off and sent you packing."

The corners of her mouth turned sharply upward into a smile that revealed both her overly white teeth and her malicious intent.

"I've broken you. One day everyone will know that you gave to my every whim. They'll know that I owned you."

She rose quietly with unmatched grace from the bed and seemed to glide to him.

"Mr. Kennedy is even lovelier in person than on the television. Don't you think so?," she asked returning to her innocent tone, and settled into his lap.

He cringed as she kissed his temple, her lips brushing against the frames of his glasses. She removed the spectacles, taking note of the lipstick smudged on the arm, and proceeded to set them softly onto the side table as she leaned forward to lie her head on his shoulder. She felt him quiver with unease and smiled inwardly at her ability to make him do so.

"Get out," he said suddenly, "it's done."

He pushed her off his lap and stood straight with newfound courage. The part of him she believed to be broken stood snarling before her and she knew that very moment that she loved him this way. When he stood for something he was a god. When he approached life like he approached business, with a raw masculine ferocity that swallowed up any pretense of calm and the storm began in his eyes, he was the image of Ares before trembling masses. He was rigid with decision and his eyes were merciless. She tried once to meet his contemptuous gaze with a submissive glance but found that she was in fact broken despite her best efforts. Rising to her feet with all the dignity she could muster she said goodbye and leaned in to kiss him. Theodore side-stepped her attempt and strode to the door, swinging it open.

"Get out. Now."

She, without gathering her belongings, walked, crestfallen, through the door and faced him for the last time as he slammed the heavy oak panel in her face. Shame and fear washed over her as she stepped back onto the elevator.

"To the roof please Jim," she nearly whispered to the operator.

"Here you are ma'am."

She quickly and quietly removed her earrings, a gift from Theodore, and slipped them into Jim's front pocket with Teddy's tip. As she stepped off the elevator crisp air hit her face, streaming with tears, and she wept openly. She stared out over Mineral Wells perched on the edge of the cupola bathed in midnight moonlight.

World Enough, And Time

ryan

Viscerally

ali

Sixteen stories of stately brick call us back to an abandoned alley for a couple quick glances tossed across the shoulder before a deft scramble over the wall with its mute NO TRESPASSING frown, running low through weed-eaten courtyards and graffiti-streaked tunnels to lie bellies flattened against the cement spine of its bridge as a siren wails its presence by. Light foot dash forward to shimmy up a column and - pause, dangerously poised, before - jumping over the teeth of a locked iron gate, to squeeze through the slip of the top of a doorway, finally boots-first through a broken window, the kaleidoscope of dismembered glass and full-length mirrors and heavily sagging ceiling shifting underneath tenderly-placed steps into the unknown dusk of what we later learn was the once-swank Brazos Club.

Layers of unbelieving understanding starting to unfold as we creep reverently on past a forest of strangely sobered arches, through dense carved doors in a segue to the soar of the lobby, its chandeliers still swinging like a first loose tooth by one frail nerve, drapes still swooned across windows slicing light into mote-thickened arcs, rugs still smooth as a lick of pomade against the span of its echoing stretch - we fling our voices out in glee and pull them back in whispered awe.

Outstretched hands and feet now feeling out the staircase, pocket knife first, up by one swirl to the lobby's upper ledge, emptied out beside the blinded eyes of iron-lidded elevator shafts dropping silently to stomach-felt depths.

Rooms petal off by function only dimly hinted at, here by a densely rust encrusted typewriter in a jumble of otherwise unidentifiable machinery, there by glass doors folding inward for all the eye like phone booths, us gingerly pushing with our toes at a pile of chairs, running our fingers through the dust icing fitted marble counter tops, casting our questions up at the globed dome of what must have been another ballroom.

With our hints we gather artifacts, typewriter keys tucked in pockets and ashtray bowls carried under arms, the crowning find a lone rocking chair of scrolled arms rolling into curled legs holding straight the perfect line of a brown upholstered back - letting ourselves out the window, histories clutched tight to the chest in a shifty gait past the pit of the pool across the naked stretch of the lawn, our car and triumph a short leap over the chainlink fence beyond. Dangling precariously along the edge of discovery when a car turns the corner, slows, windows rolling down and heads popping out flinging questions - parried to find them harmless observers, envying our bravado and eying our treasures, parting with a word of warning.

Five minutes later sliding into a dinner booth, still dusted with asbestos and exultation -

"Do you know anything about that abandoned hotel around the corner?" we ask the waitress with barely veiling innocence.

"Oh yeah. It's famous around here... people are always trying to break in, but they have someone watching it all the time. It's automatic jail time, if you get caught."

We smile, and order our drinks. In the parking lot, in the dark, a chair rocks slightly.

History

There is but one science

There is but one art

There are a multitude of muses, but there are no other mediums

Form and function by our ability to remember

Meaning by our predilection to forget

True Stories I Just Made Up #1

I find that it is a lot easier for me to write vignettes, moments stolen from a bigger picture, but that I rarely sit down and attempt to tell a story. This series, therefore, will be about telling stories with beginnings, middles, and ends; even if, as is the case today, the story is told in a "vignette setting".

My goal here with the first story was to be at least 50% comprehensible, for that is, after all, the very first among a writer's goals: being understood. Nothing really intensely inspired this story, I just got a visual and ran with it as an exercise.

Celestial navigation

The truck, the old man and the boy would have seemed sorely out of place to anyone driving by the lonely cotton-field that night. The witness might have squinted her eyes and stepped off the gas in an effort to answer the question inherent: "Why so late, on this june night, would two persons be traipsing around in the dark?"

But as it happens, not a soul passed by and the "question inherent" was left to the contemplation of a lone raccoon crossing the county road.

The field had been in the old man's family for four generations. The Hendons used to own half the town, but now the field and the farmhouse was all that was left. The old man had been explaining this to the boy on the short ride over to the bumpy stretch of land he had referred to as "Sendow's Point".

The boy, 16, but tall for his age, was, of course, the old man's grandson. He was not, however, a Hendon; in fact it had only been that summer that he had met his maternal grandfather, or even passed through his mother's hometown. Throughout the duration of the ride from the two story farmhouse he had nodded along with each detail the old man had pridefully put forth, the big overzealous nods people use to express acknowledgment without words.

The truck, a seen-better-days Ford with a "made in america" sticker carefully applied to the bumper, was a sort of faded teal color, save for a white hood that had been recently, relatively recently, replaced. There was barely room for both of them in the cabin; if the boy was tall, it was very possible he was tall because of his grandfather's genes.

Eventually the truck quit the fight, the jostling in the cabin subsided and the two figures stepped out into the night. June nights in Oklahoma are the temperate result of two extremes. Without shade, the field had been baking in the furious summer sun all day, so come nightfall the cold North wind whipping through the cotton stalks was met with the release of the ambient heat stored in the tight-packed sod. So it was that night when they ventured out. It was several hours after sunset when at last the old man laid out the blanket and retrieved the thermos from the dashboard.

"Grandad, you said we were out here to see the stars right?"

"That's right Simon."

"I don't see any stars."

"No, I don't suppose I do either." He paused, exerting the effort necessary to lay out his old bones across the blanket. "But let's wait a while. Sometimes I come out here and can still see a few, scattered about."

They waited in a silence broken only by the occasional slurp of coffee from the over-sized thermos. What is only 15 minutes can seem to a youth like time upon time, and to a man closer to the grave like a precious fleeting breath, as fragile as a childhood memory.

Again the boy broke the silence.

"So why did you call this place Sendow's Point? Is that someone in your family, like that I'd be related to?"

"No, no." The old man almost smiled. "We weren't related to Sendow. Not in any sense of the word." He looked at the boy again, and his half-smile faded into the quietest, but most complete expression of disappointment. "I proposed to your Grandmother on a night like this one. Many years ago. Before the highway came through town, you could actually see a thousand different constellations. I was hoping we could see a bit of what I saw that night." He scanned the sky from zenith to horizon. "Even a tenth", he said with a sigh.

Instead, what he was seeing was the yellow artificial glow, incommensurable to anything in nature, that swallows up skies observed by all who came before; street lights every ten feet, and empty parking lots illuminated continually, who, without the slightest pause or reservation, undo epochs of wonder, purpose and beauty. It can only be surmised that throughout his life the old man had seen the town grow, and the sky shrink, and that now he held onto a fool's hope of sharing what this place, what his life, had been.

The warmth that the ground had stored for them was quickly being carried away and a more persistant chill filled the air. Perhaps he knew that this was his last summer, or that the boy would understand, or that some stories aren't stories until they are told, but on that night the old man spoke of what he considered the axis, the days upon which the rest of his life was secured.

"They saved my life once, you know", he started, tentatively.

"Saved your life? What, the stars?"

"Saved my life, I'd be dead. You'd 'ave never been born. I would've never married your grandmother, you'd 'ave never been born." He was gaining a bit more confidence now, as details rushed back to him across the sweeping wind-torn fields, across oceans dark and deep, halfway around the world they sped and told his tale:

" After December 7th, a bunch of us, my friends and I, started feeling real strong-like. We joined the army, every single one of us. We were patriots, and we were shipping out to basic within the month. Left your grandmother and I with no time to plan a wedding, no time to do it right. I wanted to do right by her, so I told her we'd be married the day I got home, but that we would plan it all out really nicely in letters and that everything would be perfect. I still have all those letters, in the attic.

War is a confusing thing, and a lot of what happened in that year of my life I don't understand. I ended up on a boat in the Pacific, a communications officer, when my unit was disbanded. I was only supposed to be on that boat for a week at the most, but, like I said, war is a confusing animal; I was on that boat for 3 months and 12 days. For 3 months and 12 days I wrote letters that I had no way of sending, I was miserable and alone, save for the one tolerable man on the whole crew. Private Sendow was our gunner, a mountain of a man, and a hell of a poker player. We worked a lot of nights together, floating around in the middle of nowhere. Jon was a college man before the war, he was going to be an astronomer, taught me all about how the seasons change the constellations around, and how I could always tell where we were going. We never really talked a lot about home, or about our families, our girls, but we spent a week's worth of hours staring at the Pleiades, at orion."

The boy was watching, listening carefully, to the old man. It seemed to him as if his grandfather's entire physiognomy had been bathed in the yellow artificial light and dissolved, leaving a face bare of wrinkles and a mind free of the weight of the years.

"Three months and eleven days into my time on the "saber", that was the name of our cutter, we passed by an archipelago to the south that was supposedly in hostile territory. Our Captain thought us unprepared for conflict and we headed out into open waters.

I woke up the next morning to sirens blarin' and fires blazin'. The Saber had been attacked, and our Captain was right, we weren't ready for conflict. I was almost overboard before I knew what had happened and after a few more wet, confusing minutes it was over. The Saber lie at the bottom of the pacific, the japs had made off, and I was left alone, a soldier dying a sailor's death."

The old man stopped for a while. A particularly cool breeze had rustled through his whispy gray hair and brought him back for a moment. He closed his eyes and described what he saw.

"I had a life-vest. I had a life-vest and that was it. I never have felt as small as I did then, tossed around, alone. For a while it was more than I could take, I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I was a coward, I wouldn't let go of that vest. I was waiting for fate and force to finish me.

For 16 hours I was lifeless, worthless chaff in the sea. The daylight burned out in a fire that consumed the horizon and then I was alone in the dark. I yelled for a bit, maybe a half an hour. I sloshed about and gnashed my teeth and was left with the fact that this vastness was going to swallow me one way or another. So I decided to let it.

I let go of the vest, and laid out, floating on my back. Then I looked up.

Then I opened my eyes and looked up.

I saw across stretches of space that make the whole of the ocean look like a step through a doorway. It was the exhaustion surely, or the onset of shock or the hopelessness I felt, but my eyes were lit. Every star, the whole sphere of the heavens, was visible. When I closed my eyes, they followed. I couldn't help but recognize the constellations Sendow had taught me to look for. Andromeda, the big dipper, Aries, I knew a sky that had order, that I had made have order, if you can possible follow my meaning... Well, it got me to thinking about your grandmother, about that night I asked her to marry me, beneath the same stars which were then nameless to me. I thought about all the things that had led me to that boat, of all the twists and turns of fate. I thought on all of this and felt something start burning in my chest."

The old timer opened his eyes and stared thoughtfully at the spellbound youth.

"Well I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to live. Not just that I wanted to survive, but that I wanted to get home, marry Celine and really live. I wanted a family to teach the names of the stars. I wanted them to guide me on a thousand journeys home.

I looked around for my vest, and found it to be, miraculously, a few yards away. Remembering that there had been a chain of island to the south, I used the techniques Sendow had taught me to divine which way I should be swimming. A queer thing, a thirst for life is; it'l fill you with a second wind. And thank God the current was with me that night.

I swam and paddled for hours, and the rest of the story must be no surprise for you. Here I am. I got to the islands and waited for a week and a half, but then I was on my way home. What a home it was. I married Celine, we had your mother and your uncle Stan. For a longer time than most, we were happy."

He stopped again, and again his smile melted into troubled reflection.

"One shouldn't complain when one has been blessed for so long, but after the car accident it was just me and your mom. I felt like those stars had lied to me, like I should have died that night, alone in the Pacific. I didn't see what I had left. I was so caught up in the unknowable dark, I lost sight of the bright points of light. I pushed your mother away from me, we lost touch, I lost touch. I gave up on finding my way home. I stopped looking up at night, and eventually they stopped coming out at all.

But that was many years ago; Time has a way of smoothing over bitterness, hearing he ain't got long left has a way of changing a man, and hearing he has a grandson has a way of softening the heart, making me remember why I am here. So here we are, trying to catch a glimpse."

He had never told his story before, never even written it out, so sharing all this was like letting the largest part of himself go. He was greatly disturbed. Turning away from the boy, he spent a moment collecting himself, banished the whole ordeal from his wiry frame with a heavy sigh, and announced: "We won't be seeing much of anything tonight. No I don't think we will".

***

The boat, the man and the urn would have seemed sorely out of place to anyone standing on the sandy shores of the lonely island chain that night. The witness might have squinted his eyes and stepped out into the water in an effort to answer the question inherent: "Why so late, on the night in july, would a sailboat be passing by this out-of-the-way archipelago?"

But as it happens, not a soul passed by and the "question inherent" was left to the contemplation of a lone hen, escaped from a nearby village, wandering the shoreline.

The boat, a 26 foot yacht, was a brilliant white form against the water. It had been painted recently, and though it was of an older build, thorough maintenance kept her sailing smoothly. Nothing was out of place inside the cabin, and a clear, uncluttered deck betrayed the orderly manner of her captain.

The man was, of course, Simon: the boy grown up. At 24 he stood even taller than he had that June night among the cotton. His features defined, his jaw set, he scanned the dark waters before him with the eyes of an experienced sailor. His three itinerant years on the water had taught him many lessons and so he employed his wits and strength with the vigor that the sea demands. His searching eyes met what they were looking for, and he dropped anchor.

The urn was a humble porcelain home for what remained of the old man. No etchings or painted patterns adorned the exterior. Simon liked to think that his grandfather would have appreciated the lack of what he might have called "frivolity". Simon liked to think that he knew what his grandfather would have thought about certain things. He often thought back to that summer in the fields, going out every night to Sendow's point to fruitlessly search for constellations. They had become close in those days. They had worked and lived together and Simon was there the day the old man died.

He had promised himself he would make this trip, and to him it was the most sacred and real commitment he had ever made. Here at the pivotal moment however, he felt no great stir in his heart, no sense of completeness, only a practical knowledge of what was left to do. Once the yacht was completely still he grabbed the urn and unceremoniously scattered the ashes into the water. It was done.

The man uncorked a bottle of wine and drank deeply straight from the bottle. With a pause to wipe his lips on his sleeve, he set about pulling up the anchor and rigging the sails. He was halfway through the process when he realized that he had not yet set a course.

"Where to now?" he asked aloud, half expecting a reply. He went through the motions of grabbing for the navigational unit in the cabin, but didn't have the heart to open it, for he knew in the deepest pit of his chest where he was bound. And he knew that there was only one way to find his way.

"Where to now?" he laughed as he put away the laptop.

The man hoisted the sail. Then he looked up.

A Backward Glance O'er Roads Travel'd

Friday. I promise something fresh, something recent, soon. Until then, here are two poems I wrote when I was 16, within a week of each other. They make me smile, not because they are particularly good, but because they bring me back in ways that only something you produced can. It's funny how that works. Revisiting a thought you had at a specific moment is almost as good as a time machine.

-----------------------------------------

First Impressions

Momentary beauty

in what may have been a dream

mysterious and lovely
quiet and serene

if in a dream it was we met
appropriation of
all beauty and truth beget
you; mysterious icon

Haunting my imagination
puzzling vapors and remnants
the you of my creation
thought of which leads to divinity

I had just encountered that quote from Auguste Rodin:

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and there defines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated

Completely enamored with this thought, I set about exploring. Could places, people, induce such contemplation? What are the limits of "art". As any good aspiring creative mind would attempt to do, I took this idea in the macro and tried to express it in the micro. My muse at the time, a 17 year old french-cherokee bombshell, provided all the "practical" inspiration needed to express the intangible curiosity I felt towards the label "art". It also has this magical kind of self awareness concerning the fleeting nature of beauty, which I should have picked up on as subconscious hints about the cherokee girl.

-------------------------

The wave

Inspiration

No truer form

A stir in the mist

On the edge of existing

The Movement of the water over the sand

Graceful in it’s quiet, calm, rhythmic, breath.

Pen to Page

Feasible, tangible

on the tip of your tongue

The feeling remains but words won’t come

Choppy and uncertain. Tensing, relaxing. Belief then unbelief

The vastness of the sea, building, taking shape.

Furious Transposing

The reason and the rhyme are one

The time has come to pass

He whispers as he walks the way, “No one wave is the last”

The Wave, white capped and fierce crashes against the cliffs

Dread fills my heart as the tide comes in, its song my spirits lift

Still

The calm must come to make complete, the cadence of the deeps

I find rest, and am challenged by the secrets that they keep

If truly this is the first of many enigmatic waves

I pray that I might be all caught up and in the torrent be found safe.

Overall, probably not as good of a poem, but I am a sucker for the personification in the third verse. The image I had in my head was of this white-bearded, ageless lighthouse keeper type materializing from the crags and escarpments of a new england beachfront and walking by me and into the water, into a Nor'Easter. An acknowledgment that creativity is cyclical and then returning to the chaotic waters, the ether beyond ourselves from which all our good ideas come.

Themes and Variations on Waking Up

Hello all. I am called ryan. I enjoy building fires on beaches and san serif fonts, so it really bothers me that Helvetica is not an option here at blogger. I used to blog at http://greatintheory.wordpress.com/ but I eventually deleted every post, as I have a particularly bad habit of doing (ask the torn bindings of my moleskine).

I am glad to be here at The Tortoise Initiative; I consider this domain a blank slate limited only by my fear of the blinking black line in the top left corner of the screen. The idealist in me always harbors that hope that all we (the editorial "we") need is one more fresh start, one more creative space to start over and reinvent. As naive as that may sound spoken aloud, we all have a tendency to inwardly believe something similar at certain times.

At the diner, the rising sun will send rays of light haphazardly leaping through the windows, cutting through the steam rising from your mug, and whatever you say during that moment is vigorous and youthful and awake. That is a redemptive feeling. There is a confidence and a forgiveness that comes with letting go, no not forgetting, letting go of failures, victories, preconceived notions of what you are capable of, labels and loss. Everyone has experienced the terror and beauty of waking up in an unfamiliar place. Everyone secretly wishes they could brush their teeth, walk outside and announce that "today, the rules are: there are no rules".

Alas, in the interest of intellectual honesty, we must consider the converse. We must do what is hard and weigh the benefits of the past against the freedom of the untethered life. For there are benefits, I must admit. Momentum can only be realized through an awareness of your own personal history, and truthfully the excitement of waking up at a stranger's place is the fuzzy pre-dawn question "am I home?".

Where do I fall on the issue? Is there wisdom in whole-heartedly embracing the new day, the spring, or are we losing something by forgetting the lessons we learned in winter? Here at the Tortoise I will attempt to do what I have never done previously: Create and not forget. I will not rip the pages out, even if looking back over the clumsy words and fuzzy logic, I see little worth saving. One can still feel the excitement of the pen on paper even if there are pages and pages of rough coffee-stained words to the left.

I like how one of my favorite navel-gazers Søren Kierkagaard puts it:

Nature, at its most basic level, is ahistorical, in that it can only be predicated of history in one way: it has come into being. A smaller subset of nature, potentiality, can be more fully predicated of history.

Potentiality is the thread that ties our past and our future together. There is only what has been, what could be and the vaporous sliver of time called the present where we sift through the latter and fall into the former. When I look at it this way, the sharp distinction between past and present blurs the slightest bit, and I see more clearly that decision is what lies behind them. Every new post could be a million things, and every old post could have been a million things. Accept, maybe even rejoice, in your history, live out your future. Do not delete, do not give up.

I love this song, and I think the video, in a way, expresses what we all value about spring, and new beginnings, but has a reflective ending that kind of blurs those type of distinctions.

*Must be watched in full screen mode

White Winter Hymnal from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

So there it is, my first post. Maybe you read it and liked it, maybe you read it and hated it. Maybe by morning I will think myself foolish, or preachy or any number of things, but regardless, this time I won't tear out the page.