Rebel_Sun

In honor of the impending new year, the word count will be limited to between 365 and 671 words (671 being one third of 2013). Word list is as follows:

audacity
blitz
code
doctrine
hunt
investigator
master
return
robotic
treas ure

Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year's as well...contest runs until the end of January the 7th. Good writing!

Rebel_Sun

Editing failure...please read that as "treasure".

chelydra

Story on the way.

chelydra

Few lovers had the audicity to spend the blitz in Finsbury Park, but Miranda and Merwyn were sure they'd discovered the safest, most peaceful and private spot in London. That wasn’t all they discovered. Lying together on the dewy lawn, they fancied that the streaks written across the sky, combined with the pounding percussive vibrations in their vetebrae, must be some sort of code only they could decipher. Night after night their speculations grew deeper, more elaborate and convoluted.

They were sure their previous lives had been preparing them for this mission.

Miranda used to hunt rats and squirrels during the lean times of the 'thirties. Her family never starved; she had a sixth sense anticipating the little creatures' every move and even felt their jittery hearts and frazzled nerves inside her own skin. So she was sure she could enter into the minds behind the blitz-messages, feeling their thoughts, sensing their purposes.

Merwyn came at it from another angle. He’d been an investigator for an astrological firm in the City, specializing in detecting false birth dates on loan applications and other business papers. If a given date didn't fit the known facts about someone, Merwyn would go through the whole ephemeris if necessary to find a date that did. He became a master at quickly and accurately evaluating massive quantities of seemingly random symbols, finding meaning where others saw none.

Together they made quite a team. Night after night they'd return to their special place on the edge of the dense woods alongside the New River. Night after night they'd take in thuds and shreiks, flashes and streaks, find clues in the sequences and patterns, coming always closer to the core. They were pretty sure they’d been chosen by fate to receive, translate and transmit the sacred verses of some occult docrtine, sent out by a clandestine cell within the Luftwaffe.


They'd met there in the park by chance in early September, both lying on the grass, abandoning Saturday crosswords to daydream in the gentle sun.
Merwyn was studying the cloud-forms above for portents of the future.
"Looks like rain, maybe."
"Sorry?" Miranda still had her habitual alertness for any faint grassy whisper of scrurrying meat, and wasn't much attuned to the sound of human voices.
"Rain. What do you say we take in a picture show at the Astoria?"
They were already too aware of each other to notice what was playing as they bought their tickets and admired the famous fountain in the foyer; Miranda felt a furtive urge to snatch a couple of fat goldfish to go with their popcorn, but Merwyn gently pulled her on. They snuggled down into the shadows and went exploring. Aah, groaned Merwyn softly. Oooh, cooed Miranda musically. Newsreel, cartoon, short, feature flickered away unnoticed. After, around five, they moseyed back over to the park. Miranda felt Merwyn's walk was a tad robotic, and wondered if she should worry. What to expect when a bloke pushing fifty is with a real live woman for the very first time? Steamed-up spectacles seemed to suggest the suspense and suppressed excitement might kill him before they’d even got fully acquainted. No, no, that would be too sad; she gave him a calming, comforting little kiss with a crooked smile. Merwyn was awed by Miranda, just seventeen, whose own walk was a sort of Gypsy dance. She had the air of a girl who'd snogged all ages. Well, true enough, seven to seventy to be exact, but this one wasn’t lke the others. With this one she wanted more, wanted to possess his soul, wanted him to want her too, and not just for tonight. Something special, very special, was happening—a new smell in the air, thundering heartbeats coming from all directions.
“Over yonder, further off the path. Cushier grass. Cozier shadows.”
“By the treas ure” She sniffed. “Sorry, thought I had to sneeze. By the trees, sure.”
And there they opened their treasure, slowly, gently, carefully at first, then ravenously.

“Did the earth move?”
“Mmm. And the heavens too.”
“Exploding with celestial fire?”
“You could say that.”
Merwyn’s anarchist nephew told him how the Spanish earth was always moving, what with all those Stukas and senoritas about. Merwyn never dreamed he’d experience it for himself. Certainly not more than once, but now Miranda hummed a little Cockney melody as her feathery touch brought her man back to life. And so it was all night, seismic waves rippling through the ground, sky luminous with mysterious meaning, and the next night, and the next, until at last, around half past seven on the evening of the ninth of October, the truth came to them. Smoking quietly, looking down from a little footbridge into the old canal, they pondered their reflected silhouettes as skywriting streaked and sparkled through the still water.
“You know, we’ve been looking in the wrong direction,” said he.
“I know.”
“This thing isn’t exactly coming to us from the sky.”
“No. From beyond the sky.”
“We couldn’t read it until it was reflected.”
“Like Leonardo's codex at the library. Coming at us backwards. From the future. And the reflection includes us. It's British as we are, this thing we're looking for.”
“Funny, I really thought it had to be a few diehard leftovers from the Luftwaffe's Walther Wever-Wilhelm Wimmer period. Trying to keep alive the original Blitz spirit. Liddle-Hart’s crafty British pragmatism haunted by the ghosts of Mongol hordes.”
“So you said.”
“But if that's the who, what's the why? Germans think strategy and tactics are a branch of philosophy. The Blitz is a gesamtkunstwerk expressing a weltanschauung. They’re using their art to make a statement. Like Wagner's Ring, only with hotter fire. Saying what, though?”
“Now we know."
“We thought we had a code to crack.”
“But we didn’t think it through, did we? If they’re trying to tell us something, why not just come out with it? The first thing we figured out, a month ago, was that the one way to get a message from Germany to millions of British —“
“—without Herr Hitler ever seeing or suspecting—“
“— is to write it in the sky over London. So why bother with a code at all, or why not just use the Morse code or something any Brit could figure out?”
“At first I was afraid we'd just end up with the usual Rosicrucian-Illuminati rubbish. But Hitler likes that kind of thing, and we were both ever more sure it had to be exactly the opposite of Hitler's own message. So I wandered off into my musings about Haeckelite monism, the forgotten moderate faction of the Young Hegelians, Goethe’s nature writings.”
“It sounded impressive.”
“And because that way of looking at things has its roots in Spinoza —“
“—the Jewish guy—“
“—'tain’t kosher in the Third Reich.”
“I should think not.”
“The Spinoza problem isn’t just Jewsihness. The Jews wouldn’t have him either. He figured if God’s real he must be substantial. If’s he’s God he has to be infinite. So he’s infinite substance. But if a substance is infinite and infinity is everywhere, then it has to include all substance. What exists is God. We’re all God. Everyone and everything is holy.”
“That is what this is about, isn’t it? I’m sure of it. Who cares if it's coming from the Weverwimmers, or the weltanschauungs, or the whatevers. It could be coming from Liverpool for all we know. Maybe no one will even notice for another twenty or thirty years.”
“I knew the code all along. Tonight's tables in the emphemeris. Hidden in plain sight.”
“Coming from everywhere. Whole solar system singing it.”
“Music of the spheres.”
“Imagine.”
"Above us only sky."




1306 words —an absent-minded and dyslexic variant on 1036, which would have been total of 365+671. 1306 words seems to fit the spirit if not the letter of your law, being, after all, exactly 64.878291107799% of 2013, but also connection with 2013, 013 staying the same but 6 being thrice 2, in keeping with the spirit of your 2013 x 1/3)?

chelydra

"has another deep connection with" that last sentence was supposed to say. Keyboard has been eating words of late. No telling how got eaten in the story. Not enough obviously.

chelydra

how many

chelydra

Hmmm...

Got most of the way through an editing-down to 671 words, then accidentally lost it all. I may have been imagining how much better it was getting without all the extraneous words and whims.
So the very generous deadline came and went with one (automatically-disqualified) entry — where are all those baying mobs swarming around to demand more respect for, and participation in, thinkdraw challenges??

marg

Hmm.. happy new year and stunning entry, chel..

.. and great word list, Rebel..

.. but, alas, I really don't like these extended word count challenges, so although the words weren't bad, I'll sit out until there's something I have the time to have a go at

Rebel_Sun

This doesn't bode well for my playing host to these challenges...Twice I have donned that mantle and twice has the time period come to a close with a single entry given. It is therefore prudent that I pass the torch on to chelydra who, despite going well over the limit in word count, provided the sole entry from which to choose a winner. Word count notwithstanding, I enjoyed the story...thank you very much...I look forward to the next challenge.

chelydra

ok... I really liked YOUR word list and I'd be tempted to just recycle it, but then iif I was the only one who actually moved to write something, I suppose the same thing could keep happening... Thanks, by the way, marg & rebel... I guess I'd better think on this a little while... maybe figure out how to drum up some business here...

chelydra

Just in case anyone ever looks at the story here and wonders what it's supposed to be saying... 5 PM on the first Saturday in September 1940 was when the Luftwaffe started bombing London - that's when Miranda and Merwyn came out of the theater during their first date. (That theater is still there, right by the Finsbury Park underground station, but now it's a Pentacostal church that's been accused accused of dabbling in money laundering and witchcraft. I think I read that there's still a fountain with goldfish in the lobby.) Then the climax of the story, when they finally realize what the sky is telling them about the future, happens at 7:30 PM on October 9th 1940. That's when John Lennon was born — whose politcal message was the exact opposite of Hitler's. I think that was the same day the Germans decided the RAF was too effective and they backed down, called off the idea of a cross-channel invasion. I think this was the first time the advancing Axis forces were stopped by anyone, anywhere the world. The alignment of the planets that gave birth to "Imagine" was the same one than gave the Nazis their first setback. That alignment was what Merwyn was seeing in the ephemeris, and what Miranda was feeling in the her bones.

chelydra

And just in case it STILL isn't clear what I was trying to say... Imagine a world map showing the state of the world in the early autumn of 1940. China was occupied and crushed by imperial Japan. France had been ignominiously defeated in about a month, Norway was occupied, Italy was enjoying its African conquests, the USSR had gone from the staunchest opponent of fascism to its partner in crime in Poland, America was not interested in getting involved, Spain and Hungary were fascist — and the only nation anywhere standing up to the Axis was Britain. Approximately a thousand RAF fighter pilots (including some volunteers from Poland, New Zealand, Canada, etc.), dying faster than they could be replaced, somehow managed to hold off the Luftwaffe — and there was barely enough fuel left for another week of resistance when the Germans decided they the RAF was unbeatable.

NOW try to imagine you're in London while this is actually going on, and try to imagine that you're trying to imagine what the world is going to look like in another quarter-century or so, circa 1964-66... Would you imagine that a British Invasion was going to conquer the world with a message of peace and love, carrying flowers and guitars instead of skulls and machine guns? Would you imagine that Germany and Japan would have become the most peace-loving and prosperous societies on earth? And looking ahead to 1971 or so, the song Imagine seemed to sum up very nicely how almost everyone felt about almost everything... Who'd-a thunk it? Well, I guess Merwyn and Miranda would-a thunk it, because no one with their heads screwed on straight, looking at the evidence and being realistic, would have seen such a vision of the world that would be made possible by the fireworks in the skies over London... I'm not claiming that John Lennon or the hippies or the Sixties really accomplished anything... I'm just saying I think it's pretty cool that Lennon was being born just at the moment the Axis had its first moment of hesitation and self-doubt. And maybe one day the Chelydropedia will add a chapter on exactly what Merwyn would have seen in his ephemeris (the reference book that shows moon phases, planetary positions, etc) during that time.

bayofquinte

wow...this is so very interesting. My mom was a teen in Warsaw when the bombing started there. She & her friends ran into a huge warehouse for refuge. She told me that as they sat huddled in a hall, a couple of the girls wanted to move to another area of the building. My mom stayed put where she was, but never saw her friends again. My father was in the army (my parents didn't know one another until they met in London) but was caught by the Russian army & was sent to a Siberian labor camp. He was released when Russia allied with Great Britain. Then shipped to Monte Casino to fight that battle. .... My mom volunteered for the Underground. She was a tiny thing and looked like a child, so when she carried underground newspapers under her coat, the Nazis didn't think twice about her. But her friend (they were not permitted to walk together just in case one got caught) was not so lucky. My mom had to keep walking without emotion as her friend, 20 paces behind her, was shot when her bundle discovered. When I was a child, my mom took me to what was once the concentration camp at Auswitch. My recollection is that t was just a massive field & I didn't fully understand more than that. My mom stood silently for some time, staring into that space, tears rolling down her cheeks. It seemed as if she could see something that I couldn't. I knew that it must have been a very sad place.

chelydra

Can't respond to this except with respectful silence...


° ° °


While Britain was the only NATION facing the Axis in the fall of 1940, the British were of course not the only PEOPLE - there were tens of millions, hundreds of millions, in dozens of countries... your mother walking on like that without reacting was every bit as brave as any Spitfire pilot flying into enemy fire...

chelydra

...but of course you knew that already...

Qsilv

.................... I've read and re-read your vignette, bayofquinte.... perhaps 20+ times now... as if each time, one gossamer layer at a time, it could shift from "merely" shocking to something so real that it's part of my own experience...

Impossible, of course. But I believe it's so worth trying to empathize with... and respect even more deeply... others who've had to live like that (many, many still have to), bravely, honorably, the very best they can.

Thank you for the gift you're giving by helping us catch such glimpses.

Qsilv

And Chel, thank YOU for the Chelydropedia. If it had been available when I was in school, no doubt I'd have stayed awake AND felt a whole lot less insulted! ;>

mum23

yes… thank you…

to chelydra for your story, which in itself was moving and thought-provoking, and also for the insights that you gave afterwards

and to bayofquinte, for sharing your story. Like qsilv, I read and reread it many, many times, each time feeling it more and more deeply.

A friend who passed away a few years ago was one of the first men to enter one of the German concentration camps when they were ‘liberated’… the few times he spoke of it, his eyes would take on that faraway look as he stared back into his memories. Every other man that was in his unit succumbed to the horror of what they’d seen; most of them became alcoholics (the army plied them with alcohol so that they had a means of ‘escaping’ the scenes they’d witnessed) and none but Tom lived more than a few years after the event. Impossible to imagine living with those kinds of memories...

and thanks to Qsilv… as always your eloquence says everything just perfectly…

and to rebel sun… for providing the place for these gifts to emerge…

chelydra

These stories make me think those of us old enough to have known people who lived through those times have a responsibility to pass on their stories - i rather doubt either bayofquinte's mom or Mum's friend would have or could have shared them publicly for posterity. I realize now I never heard or read much of anything about the effect of liberating the death camps on those who had the honor and pain of doing it — except Ronald Reagan, of course, who somehow came to believe he'd really been involved, due to acting in a film about it and getting mixed up about where he'd actually been (and this was years before his brain issues were acknowledged.)
The one story I heard that really altered my rather standard view of the war came from Jay Jaffee, a very fine photographer who served in the infantry. Before that he'd been deeply involved in antifascist demonstrations in New York. As a Jewish leftist, he knew exactly what he was fighting for and against when he went into combat, but he said this was not true of the guys he served with, who were mostly just scared, confused, and resented risking their lives in what seemed to them someone else's fight. I would have expected that of the First World War, Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq, but not WW2, since I'd come to believe that everyone in the world must have absorbed and taken seriously those great Norman Rockwell "Four Freedoms" posters, Churchill's speeches, the evils of Nazism, etc. But actually, thinking back, I remember that my own view of WW2 was slowly evolving all through the fifties and sixties. It was acceptable, though slightly rebellious, to want to be a Nazi in our playground war-games. I prefered to fight for the Americans, but I had no problem with doodling swastikas here and there and thought my teachers' reprimands were uncalled for. The first pictures of the Holocaust I saw, in a paperback on a rack by the Uncle Scrooge comics at Speed's Drugstore and Soda Fountain, were riveting and astounding, but they didn't make any kind of sense I knew how to process — they just were what they were, like the turtles we'd see flattened in the road, or the crucifxes the Catholics displayed in their church, raw horror with no particular meaning I could grasp. We all knew the Germans were supposed to be the bad guys in the movies, but then so were the Redcoats and the Indians, and the Nazis seemed to be smarter, stronger and more stylish than the others. I guess what I'm saying is that the idea of a global confrontation with absolute evil, which was in Jay Jaffee's mind even in the late 'thirties, wasn't at all clear in my own mind until sometime in the mid 1960s — and even then it was really the Vietnam War that got me started thinking long and hard about good guys and bad guys, and the idea of taking moral responsibility when you choose sides. If not for my brother and girlfriend challenging my right-wing Republican politics in 1964, I might never have done anything at all. So I can hardly fault Jaffee's platoon-mates for failing to appreciate what they were doing. But it still seems strange to me that soldier in that war could have been just as alienated and reluctant and most soldiers in most wars.

Jaffee single-handedly captured a whole barn full of Nazi troops, dozens of them, and became an official war hero. The guys he was supposed to be fighting with didn't share his enthusiasm, so he went in alone — without knowing it until he was already inside, and then his only hope of survival was to demand their surrender . The enemy guys, who were pretty exhausted and ready to admit defeat, assumed Jay must be leading a large force into their barn, and figured resistence would be futile, so they threw down their weapons and came out with their hands up — and then were taken aback to see Jaffee, one (Jewsih) American with one rifle, leading them into captivity. He attributed his "heroism" to dumb luck, since even one enemy doubter would have ended his bluff.
Not as profoundly moving as the other war stories here, but it's nice to have known one Jew who could laugh about his encounter with the Nazis.

chelydra

This part had more than my usual density of distracting typos, so here it is corrected:

If not for my brother and girlfriend challenging my right-wing Republican politics in 1964, I might never have done any thinking at all. So I can hardly fault Jaffee's platoon-mates for failing to appreciate what they were doing. But it still seems strange to me that soldiers in that war could have been just as alienated and reluctant as most soldiers in most wars.

By the way, I still fondly remember Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech at the Cow Palace: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." And I've yet to find any reason to disown the thrill I felt when those words rang out of our fuzzy little B&W TV. On the other hand, I also never felt any shame or regret for realizing just half a year later (when my gentle sweet girlfriend quietly devastated my enthusiasm when LBJ first sent the B-52'st into North Vietnam) that the other side was where I belonged. If I'd had any lingering doubt about my nation's moral bankrupty in Indochina (which I didn't), it would have been erased by our government's cynical support for the violent remnants of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge after they were deposed by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978.