THE FREE FLOATING MECHANICAL MAN

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, by Raymond Spence.

2012-09-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

Having a lot of fun uploading daily posts on this blog despite being baby buggy bound.

And virtually meeting a lot of interesting and intelligent people from all over the world.

(Thanks for all the kind comments and likes)

(And thanks for letting me visit your blog sites)

(Happy posting to all!)

But now my summer 'hands across the firewall' fun is over and I have to get back to work.

I have to reformat an already published print novel into Ebook form.

(Hey, you can teach an old dog new tricks. He just growls and snaps a lot!)

Finish a polish/rewrite of a film script that's been optioned in Ireland.

(Saint Patrick, guide my pen but leave my Guinness alone, you spiritual, perennially soused, sneaky snake in the grass!)

And format and upload an alternative reality novella onto Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

(Let them fight over who can sell the most.)

Sooo....

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to rescue my cat...

INTO THE CONE OF TIME

2012-09-05T01:54:00.001-07:00

1987 R. Spence CONE OF TIME

VERSE 1

In this imperfect world, my friend,

nothing echoes like tomorrow's answers

Into the Cone of Time, still scheming,

we drop all of our yesterday's dreams.

CHORUS: Into the Cone of Time. Into the Cone.

VERSE 2

In this unfeeling world, my friend,

we're searching for a loving touch.

Into the Cone of Time, still hoping,

we say it doesn't matter--very much.

INSTRUMENTAL BRIDGE

1ST VOCAL BRIDGE

And the hours, they slip away!

And our lives, they fall away!

And love, oh, it melts away

Like ice cream on a hot summer's day.

2CND VOCAL BRIDGE

Let me hold you! Let me hold you!

Let me fall inside your perfect memories!

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK

3RD VOCAL BRIDGE

Where does love go when you want it to grow so right?

And the ice cream days that melt away into lonely night?

Where does love go when our lovers all seem so wrong?

Like the ice cream days that melt away into my song.

Into the Cone of Time. Into the Cone.

VERSE 3

In this enchanted world, my friend,

all our hopes are mixed with our fears.

Yet into the Cone of Time--like fireflies—

We flicker past our years and years of tears.

1ST BRIDGE and two CHORUSES repeated. CODA

Into the Cone of Time. Into the Cone of Time

ADDENDUM

"Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream" -- Wallace Stevens

THE DA VINCI CODE DECODED!

2012-09-04T02:38:00.001-07:00

FINALLY!

The Da Vinci Code has been decoded, reformulated and is now being used in a computer program that will help surgeons rectify nature!

Only da Vinci overcomes the limitations of both traditional open surgery and conventional minimally invasive surgery. The da Vinci System is a sophisticated robotic platform designed to expand the surgeon’s capabilities and offer a minimally invasive option for major surgery.

With da Vinci, small incisions are used to introduce miniaturized wristed instruments and a high-definition 3D camera. Seated comfortably at the da Vinci console, your surgeon views a magnified, high-resolution 3D image of the surgical site.

At the same time, state-of-the-art robotic and computer technologies scale, filter and seamlessly translate your surgeon's hand movements into precise micro-movements of the da Vinci instruments.

and the result?

VOILA!!!

MONA LISA, MEN HAVE MADE YOU...

Leonardo would have been green with envy but, knowing him, he would have only used it to probe dead guys....i.e. Nature As Is....

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/spence_raymond

Raymond Spence literary works on Lulu

THE WINDS OF TIME

2012-09-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

THE WINDS OF TIME c. Raymond Spence

The Winds of Time
Have come to find me once again
Scattering all my thoughts
Blowing through my brain

The Winds of Time ain’t cruel
The Winds of Time ain’t kind
They shake you. Take you
Where they’ve a mind to.

Nothing you can do.
Nothing you can say.
They’ll take you there anyway.

The Winds of Time are carrying you away
You try to hang on for another day
The Winds of Time are swirling at your feet
They push you down a different street.
The Winds of Time are blowing.
Wild across the plain.
They’ve come to change you once again.
And all the seeds you're sowing.
Nothing you can do.
Nothing you can say.
They’re here to take you anyway.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/spence_raymond

SPENCERIAN STANZA SUMMERTIME SPACE STATION

2012-09-02T05:08:00.003-07:00

Two years ago I landed the SSSSS on a secluded meadow close to a friendly farmhouse whose inhabitants have been awarded the Inter Galactic Hermetic Handshake Time Tablet.

Here in my tiny space vehicle, I send coded messages from a Yamaha Electric Keyboard and an HP Powerbook 4320s to the Home Planet, while waiting for flight permission to Southern climes from the Mother Ship that continues to roam the local elliptical galaxy, looking for the Interstitial String Key. Activating it will allow the Transmogrification Team to turn what the locals term the Milky Way (these sentients are so mammary fixated) into a syntactical helixical configuration that will impel its innumerable inhabitants to finally bathe in the Elysian Elan Vital and become truly alive instead of semi experiencing their present basal status as sensory reactive homunculi.

Night time here on this planet seems to offer the best Communication Corridor, free from Drone observation and human interaction, which, tho I welcome it for observational purposes, does distract me from my mission.

At this time of year here in Saskatchewan, huge yawing machines roar across the land, beating and thrashing the golden wheat fields into submission in order to store up calories for the cold winter months ahead. But my small space station is sequestered beside two abandoned shacks and hidden behind a line of wind buffeted Dogwood trees and thus remains safe from the machinistic frenzy surrounding it.

At times, when I feel abandoned by my Heaven Pastured Hoi Polloi, I remember that I am not alone in my search. There have been antecedent voyages.

Three Millenia ago, (in Earth Time), on an abandoned asteroid in Andromeda, the Mother Ship discovered the following hieroglyphic inscription and pictorial matter seared into the hurtling, bare obsidian slag and it made we HP s realize that this diminutive Galaxy might be worth investigating for eugenic purposes.

So far, I am not convinced. Perhaps another journey south might make me change my holographically created neuronic material but there better be senoritas and cerveza involved, which in my much traveled opinion, is the best this planet has to offer.

THE VOYAGE

We left behind Sun and Stars and Immortality

As we set out the Sea with these Phoenicians

Under the Pyramids, through the Sphere,

Far beyond the Nile.

Led here with a smile

By these Phoenicians.

We are sailing off the Edge of the World!

Help us! Help us!

Off the Edge of the World!

Love and Splendor all are gone

And Immortality,

Lost in a Starry Sea with these Phoenicians.

We are sailing off the Edge of the World!

Help us! Help us!

Off the Edge of the World!

And now around us Space and Dark,

seep through our Icy Ship.

As we begin the Trip

With these Phoenicians.

We are sailing off the Edge of the World!

Help us! Help us!

Off the Edge of the World!

Beyond the Sun. Beyond the Stars.

Towards our Fate Unknown

Through Space Time We're thrown

With these Phoenicians!

Help us! Help us!

Off the Edge of the World!

Help us! Help us!

We are...

TRANSLATOR’S ADDENDUM – only a few tattered remnants of purple cloth were found beside some brown stained pieces of fragile fabric. The DNA was incompatible with any life forms yet discovered so the asteroid, after a quick Droneon search, was colligated for tachyon fuel.

And that is when all our on board troubles began...

Raymond Spence's works on Lulu dot com

DO!N'T FENCE ME IN!

2012-09-01T01:37:00.001-07:00

FOR PC LIFERS EVERYWHERE, WAITING TO REBOOT...

ENMESHED IN THE STICKY FILAMENTS OF SPACE TIME

2012-08-31T01:45:00.004-07:00

we poise on the dangerous brink of revelation,

heartened by goals already set,

and watch the tide roll away...

While in our tyrannical palms, time curls into a tiny ball

and begs to be left alone.

Raymond Spence on Lulu

My dog RICKETS

2012-08-30T02:11:00.000-07:00

Rickets was the best dog I ever had, bar none. And I miss him.

More potent than Dangle, the dallying Dachshund,

More fastidious than Spot, the Dalmatian, who was rubbed out by my angry neighbor, Mr. Clean

And even quicker than Wicked Willie, the Weimaraner.

who could snafu a pork chop right off your fork

and leave you snapping at empty air.

With Rickets on the job, I never had to worry about burglars or break-ins.

And I never ever had to put any of my cats through this living hell!

LULU SPOTLIGHT ON RAYMOND SPENCE

ETHO MAN

2012-08-29T03:07:00.002-07:00

C. Raymond Spence

Gargoyled by inhibition, jittery with fear,

we peek bug eyed over the edge

at the soaring attempts of granite

to lift us higher.

Our arms are broken for we are

terrified Venuses of the unknown, contorted

by our ancient attempts to come to grips

with the yearning air and the sun

and the cold pitting of stars.

Pigeons chortle at our immortal discomfort,

spatter us with their busy lives.

We humbly smell their feathers and meat oils

and make anxious faces, learning

to be content with the terrifying

pleasure of giddy and god glorifying heights.

WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION, poems, by Raymond Spence

SENIOR'S MEDICINE CABINET - ALL NATURAL

2012-08-28T08:43:00.001-07:00

It has taken me many, many months of my retirement time, but I have just finished building my new Medicine Cabinet.

I don't know about you, but I think it was well worth the time and expense.

"Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy." Benjamin Franklin

"I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food." W. C. Fields

"Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine."

Joan Collins

"Wine is bottled poetry." Robert Louis Stevenson

"I'm like old wine. They don't bring me out very often, but I'm well preserved."Rose Kennedy

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

"Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die."William Butler Yeats

EXERPT FROM MY NOVEL, 'MY BROTHER'S ELASTIC WINKLE'

2012-08-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT OVER YOUR COFFEE, RAYMOND.

MY BROTHER'S ELASTIC WINKLE ON BARNES & NOBLE
WINKLE ON ITunes

CHAPTER FIVE

When I got to the base of the water tower itself a couple more kids had arrived and were impatiently waiting for me to fall off. Even my brother had scrooched up his nerve and had come outside to where he could see me. Maybe he wanted to be able to tell Mum all the gory details or maybe he thought that once I got up on the ramp that encircled the tower and started stomping around up there I might knock the bottom out and he'd get every bath he'd never wanted.

It was hard to tell what was going on in my brother's head. It was so fat that during the hottest part of the summer it bubbled.

Anyway, I did stomp around a bit, waving at the world and spitting on my admirers below in the age old tradition of winners and losers. They cheered and threw a few unsuccessful rocks up at me. They could do anything they wanted to as long as it didn't work. They knew the rules. I kind of wished I had a few boulders on hand because being a nearly a hundred feet in the air gives you a sense of power and a quiet feeling of thoughtless cruelty.

From where I was standing I could see the whole town laid out like a toy electric train ad. A few other kids had either spotted me or had whiffed the excitement in the air and were hotfooting it like upright ants towards the water tower. The sky was blue. The upturned faces of my admirers were little brown blobs of interest. My home town looked like I could push it around with a forefinger and up this high there was a slight cooling breeze to blow the sweat off my busy little head that was crowned with a widow's peak.

I felt great.

I was the first nine year old who'd ever climbed the tower and when I got my growth who knew what I might do? Everybody sensed this and the accomplishments of the two or three big kids who'd come up here were shoved off the edge by my audience who cheered or nervously dodged the mist of my spit as it softly fell on them.

To get better aim as well as to give them a little extra thrill, I leaned further over the rail and a couple of times my feet came off the rough unworn planks of the ramp. The kids below couldn^’t actually see my feet waving behind me in the air, but they knew what must be going on to let me do that and they gave an extra cheer when my body stretched over the two by four rail further than it should.

My brother sat and waited with fearful expectation. I don't blame him. I wouldn't want to have to do all our chores alone. Especially if I was as weak and as lazy as he was. But then there were the toys and another Christmas coming up and the increase in allowance and even Dad would have to treat him nice since he had nobody else but one fat stepson and an equally fat wife. Dad was no fool.

But, on the other hand, we had the biggest garden in town and it specialized in growing dandelions and chicken weed. Even from where I was, I could see he didn't look happy. He picked at the scar on his knee. A sure sign he was mixed up about something. I waved with one hand at my gathering audience while I hung on with the other and smiled. I knew that if he kept picking at his knee like that he was going to get cancer.

Finally, I got my nerve up and drew back from the railing. The kids couldn^’t see me very well and they milled about uncertainly. They wanted more of a show. Maybe have me sit on the railing and pretend to fall off. Despite the fact that it was late afternoon on a very hot day they were excited and game for anything including instant worship of the dead.

I gave them a last wave and tried spitting a gob on my brother. Even if I got lucky and hit him at that distance and he ran home to tell, nobody would believe him. It was too good a chance to pass up.

Besides, I thought dramatically, by that time I might actually be dead.

I hacked up a good goop and flobbed it out and away in his direction. Then, without waiting to see if I'd draped it on his fat frying head, I turned and started up the ladder that ran up the side of the water tower.

The kids stopped cheering.

Nobody'd ever tried that before.

The tower was a big fat wooden tub twenty feet high, topped by an angled cone roof and so far the only thing that had ever fallen off it was rain water. The few big kids that had struggled up as high as the ramp had been quite willing to leave it at that.

But, according to my Dad, I had a swelled head as big as the whole outdoors and so, with my arm, leg and backside muscles tightening as I got higher, I carefully clawed my way up the ladder leading to the tower's steep roof. This time I didn't look down. I figured that nearly a hundred feet was my personal courage limit. Especially since, even though the ladder was dry, the curved wall it was set against was leaking smooth, round drops of slippery green water.

I got to the top of the ladder leading up the side and breathed with relief. I'd made it higher than anybody. I waited for a feeling of triumph but nothing happened.

I was not only higher than my bravery, I'd also left most of my ambition somewhere beneath my feet.

From where I crouched, bent over the top of the tower, pushing my quaking stomach against the last rung, I could see that the ladder kept going and led off across the steep roof to the bottom of the flag pole. My heart froze even as my little rubber soled running shoes melted onto the dry wooden rung underneath them.

Why they'd ever put the flagpole up there was something I'd wondered about when I was on the ground and backed up enough blocks to see it but, now that I was looking it square in the base, I had a pretty good idea. It was there so they could lower it to half mast after I'd fallen off. I hung onto the edge, my muscular little bum sticking its blind face out at a very bare world, and fought the shakes.

The wind, now that I was sweating so much, felt cold.

There'd been a flag on the pole but now there was only an inch or so of ragged faded cloth flapping off the side of some rotting cotton rope. And now that the Second World War was over, nobody was patriotic enough to climb up and replace it. I didn't blame them. The Japs could have it. And yet inside my insane peanut brain came a rush of desire, despair, hope, and a lack of plain good sense. A chance like this only came around once. It was now or never.

I took two deep breaths of thin air and scrambled over the edge of the tower onto a suddenly creaking ladder that, now that I was on it, I could see was bending into a very old, weak cedar roof.

With my terror-stricken ears, I could hear the slow laps of the dark water beneath my knees, the burble of my own liquid in my shivering belly, the splintering creaks of the ladder and the roof and the walls of the tower and the horrible groans of the already overstrained creosoted beams that crossed themselves again and again until they reached the safety of the ground.

Worst of all, as I scuttled across the ladder up towards the flagpole, I suddenly remembered that a reliable source over twelve had told me that the water tower was really an aquarium where they kept a fifty foot octopus so it wouldn't drag down small boats out in the harbor.

I crashed into the flagpole, nearly knocking it over and wrapped myself around it.

I no longer cared about community approval or the admiration of my buddies who were somewhere out of sight below. I didn't want a commemorative plaque or any sort of fund set up in my name for aspiring, insane and underage climbers.

I didn't even want my Mum.

As I hung onto the flagpole, bending it this way and that, depending on what side I was now afraid of sliding over to a screeching, fingernail-ripping death, I looked about me at the town which I could clearly see--providing it was two blocks away from the bottom of the tower--and I only wanted one of two things.

Wings or off.

cC CHAPTER SIX

We left me waving the empty flagpole at a distant world which was far below the reach of my most important sense at that given moment. My sense of touch.

I had been there for about half an hour working my fingerprints into the bare wood while pretending in between long our moments of terror to be a breathless Vasco de Gamma. My unseen audience below had given up shouting for me to show myself or yell or fall off or something equally impressive and had probably fought themselves to a successful draw about who should climb up and rescue me.

They were most likely now sympathizing with my brother about the garden and his future as an only child until Mum and Dad could get some more. I wasn't being bitter for I was then, and am now, a firm believer that life should go on. But preferably with me along.

At first I tried to enjoy the scenery from my once-in-andmaybe-last-in-a-lifetime vantage point but since that quickly became too sentimental I gave up and closed my eyes tightly and wondered if octupuses' hearing was a strong as their eight arms.

I knew I should do something but I also knew I couldn't get back down the way I was feeling and I had no plans to go up any further even if the flagpole was the only friend I had at that moment. So I decided to stay put and wait for a miracle one way or the other. I was hoping my soul was worth saving.

The Minister of the United Church that I’d been made to go to had told me that this was not the case. A terrible thing to say to a small boy until you realized that half his Sunday School staff were still taking special retraining in proper Christian behavior after they'd gone apeshit one hot day when I was at my devilish best and put their Sunday boots to me in the aisle until they were exhausted from their sins.

I waited another half an hour then I opened my mouth, licked my thin little lips, freshened up my tongue, squeezed my bulging eyes together and uttered a hateful word for the very first time in my short career of fact, fancy and general fooling around.

"Help!" I shrieked. "Help! Help!"

"Help!" I screamed. "Help! Help! Help!"

Then finally in one shameful our moment of absolute terror from which I would never recover, I strained my jaws apart like a vomiting rattlesnake and belched out the still-unforgiven word.

"Mum!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

The fireman was fat, sweaty and scared. I could smell him on the wind that blew over his greasy, thin hair and his thick round shoulders. He grabbed hold of a couple of rungs on the ladder and bent over the corner of the roof. He was close and made everything else look so far away that it scared me even more.

"C'mon down here, kid," he ordered in a wheezy voice and then cleared his throat.

I got a better hold on the flagpole and drew my legs closer together. If he came up here and fell through the roof I wasn^’t going to go with him. I had an insane hope the flagpole went all the way down to the ground and that it was going to be my salvation.

The fireman moved his weight around on the ladder below and seemed to slip on it because his face went white through his sweat like the belly of a dead flat fish and his knuckles spread over the wooden rungs. Some wood creaked.

"For Christsake, kid! Get down here!" he yelled in a high, squeaky voice. Sweat dripped into his eyes but he only shook it away. "And hurry it up!"

I looked around the flagpole at the sky and the far off hills and at the toy town below. A seagull floated by us, giving us the eye for handouts, then fell downwards towards the ground.

"I don't wanna," I said.

"Look, kid! I'm not going to stay up here forever! So hurry it up if you're coming with me!"

That surprised me. I had it figured that we were both trapped now. And I was grateful for the doomed company.

"You're not going to leave me, are you?" I whined.

“You bet I am! In exactly ten seconds I'm going back down! So you'd better hurry up!" The fireman was trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about but his voice was shaking so I knew I had him. I knew how to tell about adults' voices. It was my secret weapon. I wrapped my legs around the pole for security.

"For God's sake, kid, quit going backwards!" the fireman started roaring but ended off in a sobbing squeak. Just like my brother when I had my hands around his throat. The sweat in his eyes was starting to blind him but he was so chicken all he could so was blink and squeeze it out then shake his head carefully. The veins in his arms were growing larger by the minute.

"So, c’mon! Let's get out of here!" he screeched.

"I can't."

"Then why did you come up here for in the first place? This is no place for a kid! You're going to get us both killed, you little bastard!"

"That's not nice to say," I said. "Can you send for my Mum?"

"What's she supposed to be? A mountain climber? What the hell you want her up here for?"

"To help us."

"I don't even know where she is, for Christ sake!"

"She's probably at home. Maybe in the store, helping Dad. It wouldn't take too long to get her." I let go with one hand and pointed a few blocks away to where our garden and capital L for love shaped building spelled out a familiar message to my popping eyeballs.

The fireman turned and followed my directions then rolled up his eyeballs in brand new terror. He tightened his grip on the ladder rung. "No! Goddamned it! I'm not going to get her! I came up here for you, you little asshole! So, let's get going!"

"You got a rope or something?"

"You've got legs! Use them!"

I did and wrapped my legs even more tightly around the flagpole. "I'll come down in a little while. I promise."

"No! Now!"

"What about you?"

"I'll go down ahead of you."

"Will you catch me if I fall?"

The fireman hadn't thought about that and I could see him trying to guess my weight.

"You're not going to fall," he said,

"But if I do, will you catch me?"

The fireman carefully let go with one hand and wiped the sweat off his face. "Yeah. Sure, you little asshole, then we'll fly down together. Now get over here."

"What's your name?"

"What the hell's that got to do with anything?"

"My name's Ray."

"Okay. Mine's Bill. Now let go of that pole, Ray, and start climbing down the ladder. I'm getting tired."

That was a lie and we both knew it. He could hold on forever just like I could.

"I will in a minute," I said. I wiped my nose with my elbow and treasured the smell of grass and salt water on it.

"Now!"

"Okay," I said and got a grimmer hold on the flagpole.

The fireman ground his yellow uneven teeth and snarled through them. "Now, look, kid--"

"I don't wanna."

"That's just a figure of speech. Are you coming down here or am I going to have to come up and get you?"

"Would you?"

"Don't be such a chickenshit or I'll come up and give you a licking," the fireman threatened and carefully kept his eyes dead level. "Now, c'mon!Let's get outa here!"

"I don't wanna."

"You like it here?"

"It's better than the ladder."

"Ground's better than anything! So, c'mon!"

"Can you see it?"

"See what?"

"The ground."

"Of course! Look, it's down there! Straight beneath us!" To build up my nerve, he looked down. The ladder he was on went straight through the ramp below so he got more of a look at the ground than he really wanted.

"You see, it's right beneath us and--holy shit!" He jerked himself over onto the roof and clung onto the flatter part of the ladder with everything he had. He stared across at me, feeling like a total chickenshit. "Are you coming down or aren't you, you little prick?" he yelled.

"Maybe they could send a plane to pick us up,” I said, trying to help him. "I've seen it done in the movies."

"If this was a movie, they'da shot you right off of here with a gun, you little bastard!" the fireman shouted. He hung on for a second while we looked at each other then he grunted miserably. "I'm coming up to get you, you little shitass," he announced. He started up the ladder, his eyes getting bigger with every move. The closer he got to me, the faster his breathing got.

"Be careful!" I screamed.

He stopped. "What? What are you talking about?"

"You'd better watch it!"

"What? Watch what?"

I refolded myself around the pole. "I think the roof's going to cave in," I said.

The fireman stared at the dark and rotting shingles around him, listening for any creaks. "Who told you?" he asked.

"It nearly fell through when I came over and you're a lot bigger than I am."

The fireman's face looked like one of Randolph Scott's cowboy friends when he got shot in the back with an arrow. Like he was trying to say something. "Bullshit," he finally said.

"I heard it!"

"Heard what?"

"The roof. It was creaking."

"Where?"

"Right where you are."

The fireman tried levitating like those Hindu Swannees Rivers that I'd read about. "Kid, don't shit me!" he yelled. “This is no funny business! It's life and death! Don't shit me! We shouldn't be up here! Now, don't shit me!" He lay on the ladder very still and listened.

He wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know. "I heard it creak when I came over," I said. "I figure you'll go through for sure. I mean, look how big you are."

"That's what I told them! I told them I'm too big! But I used to be a logger before the War so I got picked!" He banged his fist carefully on a ladder rung. "This part time fireman crap is a buncha bullshit anyway! I only do it cause I don't make enough at the bakery!"

"You still want me to come down?"

"Stay where you are, you little horse's ass! This ladder ain't strong enough for both of us! Don't you dare move!"

"Where you going?" I called out fearfully.

"I'm not going nowhere!" the fireman yelled and remained halfway across the roof, fixed in one place like a lizard waiting for lunch.

"That's a double negative," I said.

"The only thing negative around here, kid, is your brain matter! So relax!"

"If I relax, I'll fall off!"

"You sure it creaked?"

"Sure I'm sure! I can hear it now. Listen!"

The fireman pulled his face forward like a sucker on a rock and put his ear onto the shingles. His ears got red then white. There was a creak.

"See what I mean?" I said smugly.

"It's probably the wind!" the fireman said uncertainly.

"The wind's stopped," I said. "It's the roof." I got a better grip on the flagpole. "If you have to swim for it down there, don't knock into the flagpole, okay?"

"Don't talk like that, you little shit!"

"Well, there's no sense in both of us dying!"

"Shut up! I'm trying to listen!" He inched carefully back down the ladder. The whole roof creaked.

"Don't leave me!" I shrieked. “I'll tell my Dad!"

"Shut up!" The fireman was sweating like crazy. “I’m going to get a rope."

"What good's a rope going to do? It's a hundred feet down!”

"Shuttup, you little bastard! I can^’t think!"

The fireman took another blind step back down the ladder and, as his foot went over the edge and waved in the air, his knee knocked off a shingle and it clunked all the way down.

"Jesus Christ!" he screamed as another shingle went skittering past him. "I can't swim! Jesus Christ!" He crashed up the roof ladder, knocking shingles aside.

"Stay away!" I howled as he scrambled up towards me. "It's my flagpole! It's only big enough for one guy! Stay away!"

The fireman almost took the flagpole with him as he thumped onto the top part of the roof, his boots knocking off more shingles. His fat chest and belly squeezed against me as he tried to curl around the thin wooden pole.

"Quit hogging it all!"he yelled in my ear and pushed me around to the other side. I hung on like grim life and managed to keep both my legs hooked onto the pole. It swayed towards me and creaked. The fireman was still leaning on it while he pulled his feet up after him. My back turned into a single goose pimple.

"Let go!" I yelled. "We're going to fall!"

"Stop hanging on with your feet!" the fireman yelled back. "You’re the one that's causing it!"

"I was here first!"

"No shit," the fireman grunted and tried unhooking my legs.

"Help! Help!" I shrieked. "Murder! Dad!"

"Shut up!" the fireman shouted. He pushed my legs underneath me. "Now hang on with your arms and stop heaving at the pole like that or you'll break the goddamned thing!"

I reclenched the pole and made myself as comfortable as I could by bracing my feet on a couple of loosening shingles. I made note that the fireman's bronzed belt buckle with an eagle embossed on it was only two inches away from my right hand. If I fell, he and that goddamned eagle were going to come with me.

I looked up at his sweaty, frightened face. "You going to get us out of here?" I demanded.

The fireman looked at the very far distances, the very near rotten shingles, then he looked past the end of his nose, unsuccessfully trying to find one good idea. He shifted his fat body closer to the pole, almost breaking my arms and leaned his perspiring forehead against the dark gray wood.

It was then that I understood what adulthood was all about. “Mum! Mum! Mu---um!" I shrieked kindly for the both of us.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The fireman heaved a sigh of relief and lowered himself onto the ground. One of his buddies gave him a cigarette. "Listen, you little prickassholebastard-pissassshithead!" he said. "Don't ever go up there again, you hear me?" He tried to hold the cigarette in his mouth but it shook out and he had to catch it with his hands and it burned him.

"Goddamned it! You hear me?" He managed to take a drag. He sounded ugly but I'd had to help him down over a couple of tough places so I wasn't scared of him.

I looked up the entire height of the dripping water tower

and started the old brain noggin in motion. Rusty sniffed at my

sneakers to see if there had been any dogs up there lately

while I worked on my idea.

"You hear me?" the fireman yelled and started coughing. "Don't go up there again! Ever!" One of the other firemen started burping him.

"I won't," I said and I meant it. Climbing was for kids.

Now that I'd seen what a bunch of crapouts firemen were, I had a

notion that in high altitude rescue operations, I could make a

fortune.

"You can do anything else you want and I personally don't care if it kills you! But just don't go up there again!"

I'd heard all this stuff before. All adults must've gone to the same school. "Okay," I said.

"Cause I won't get you!" A couple of other firemen with dust all over their shoes muttered agreement.

"Won't need you," I said and wondered how much they'd pay a kid to perform impossible rescues in a self made, helium filled dirigible.

The helium I could get from Maurice Hodgeson's brother who worked at the airport. The balloons I could get out of Dad's store. I'd need maybe a couple of hundred of them. I'd have to start filching them as soon as possible and stretch it over a period of a couple of weeks so he wouldn't notice. The netting maybe I could get from the old Chinaman's line when he was out crabbing. Trouble was it was old as he was and it wouldn't stand up if we got into a storm.

"What was that you said?" the fireman yelled, interrupting my planning.

"You know where I could get some new fishing net cheap?" I demanded.

"No, but I know where you can get lots of cement blocks, you little asshole!" the fireman shouted. He dropped his still burning cigarette in the dry grass where it started to smoke and swaggered away with his buddies to their old dirty red truck.

I slapped the side of my head with my hand. Of course! How could I forget? I'd need weights to control it from going up too fast or I'd be taking a trip to Oz. I was impressed.

That fat fireman wasn't as stupid as he looked.

LOVE & HATE

2012-08-26T07:44:00.001-07:00

THE ETERNAL DUALITY?

AGE OLD MANICHEAN OPPOSITES?

"AS ALIKE AS TWO PEAS IN A POD!" according to my Mom.

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN?

OPPOSITE EMOTIONAL AVALANCHES IN THE NEURAL NET?

ORRRR....(my guess...)

SIMPLY
THE MIRROR IMAGE OF ONE ANOTHER!

SAVING ETERNITY

2012-08-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

Lifeguarding held a lot for those of us working on Vancouver beaches - beauty, life, death, joy, youth, aging, an urgency in the passing of the seasons, and an ineffable sense of the eternal in recollection.
When I delivered the boats and equipment to the various guard shacks at nine beach locations in the weeks before the season started, it felt like a rebirth.
And, four months later, when I visited the same locations to retrieve them I could feel, as the autumn leaves wind skittered in the opened door, all the vitality of the summer months, the boisterous crowd noise, the laughter, the drama, the athletic activity, the pain of the injured, the very throb of life, flowing out and into the cooling air.
Despite this repeated sadness at each season's end, I wouldn't have changed it for anything.
It gave me life even as I saved lives.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE...

2012-08-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

THAT IS THE QUESTION. “What will I be when I grow up?”
Some alternatives…for you yung uns out there, looking to the future. (You're welcome!)

My brother became a professional race car driver.

The novel, MY BROTHER'S ELASTIC WINKLE for sale at Barnes & Noble

WINKLE at ITunes

ANGEL DESCENDING

2012-08-23T09:14:00.002-07:00

As a long time lifeguard in Vancouver, B.C., I thought I was pretty saturated with fireworks. Every summer the World Firework Championships were held in English Bay where I life guarded so I had a beach side seat.

But when I watched a fireworks display in Mazatlan from the roof of a nearby multi story mansion a couple of years ago, I was very impressed. The Latino flair for drama and narrative was clearly present.

This first picture I took, I called Angel Descending and I featured it on the front cover of one of my novels, THE NEGATIVE SEA ALTERCATION

The second: Hell Pursuing - destined for a novel yet to be written.

AFTERWORD - A SPENCE SENSE DICTUM:
"One synopsis is worth a thousand halting oral descriptions."

SYNOPSIS of THE NEGATIVE SEA ALTERCATION by Raymond Spence

Throughout one night until dawn, a young female clairvoyant does a precognitive 'run' on her ex-boyfriend, who she still loves, who is about to get married the next day. She telepathically watches the couple sail off on their honeymoon towards a fatal boat wreck. She also does a ‘run’ on an elderly spinster’s older brother who is an insane scientific genius about to spend his last two days on Earth cogitating on the Universe as he runs towards his ecstatic suicide. Throughout her precognitions, she talks with an old man who might be God--or somebody even more important--a mentor for her spiritual growth! And He turns extremely snarky when a pure New Ager like herself makes one tiny mistake with hyperspace, thus transforming his precious multi galactic light experiment, (known to us simply as the Universe), into something that seems like Hell but could be anywhere dark, painful and humiliating ...it's not as though she hasn't been around...

AND THE EARTH KEEPS TURNING ON A SHINY DIME

2012-08-22T09:56:00.002-07:00

These are the lyrics written by a younger me...

THE LOW GET HIGH c. R. Spence 1979

INTRO:

Oh, brother,

These high times that are going down,

They make the past seem like a sad and lonely clown.

The low get high and the high get off.

And the folks in the middle are finding it rough.

CHORUS 1

But the earth keeps turning on a shiny dime

While most of those fools just putting in time.

And the earth keeps spinning like a slowed down top

Ready to tumble. Ready to drop.

BRIDGE

But when my mind keeps telling me to give up trying.

When my heart gives me hell and leaves me crying.

Something inside says, "Keep on flying,

Help the earth give birth--replace the dying!"

CHORUS 2

And the earth keeps turning like a blue-green jewel,

Keeps looking pretty. She's nobody's fool.

And the earth keeps spinning on her sparkling heels,

Turns her face to the sun. How good she feels.

CHORUS 3

But the Earth keeps turning like a slowed down top,

Ready to tumble. Ready to drop.

And the Earth keeps knowing the most of us all

Shows us our future like a crystal ball.

And the Earth Keeps Turning

And the Earth Keeps Turning...

WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION

2012-08-21T05:37:00.002-07:00

". And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration, a book of poems by Raymond Spence

Like all of us, I live in two places at the same time.

Where my body happens to be and where my mind is taking me.

When I was a boy and my mind was a streaming cornucopia of half finished thoughts and wild and incomplete imaginings and my skinny little body was an effortless place to inhabit, I lived more in the life of the mind than in this “all too solid flesh” until a mother's call, a skinned knee, or the sudden grumblings of hunger brought me crashing back to the ground like a messy Flash Gordon landing rather than the subtle, swirling reassembling in Scottie’s Transporter.

And when my mother saw me coming in the kitchen door, obeying her third or fourth or “and this is final last time!” call, my clothes filthy, my knee bleeding, and my face smudged with cobwebs or dirt or something even more suspicious, she would always yell, “For God's sake, where have you been now?”

She didn't know half of it and my rambling explanations usually led both of us astray.

SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS...

2012-08-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

DEAR OLD OBEY THE RULE DAYS!

There, much to my surprise, was Miss Dingwall, looking just as I remembered her!

MY BROTHER'S ELASTIC WINKLE by Raymond Spence

MY BROTHER'S ELASTIC WINKLE at ITunes

When I was in Grade Six, Miss Dingwall reluctantly issued me the Maclean's Most Improved Writing Award.

Then, two months later she took it back.

Staring at my latest hieroglyphic attempt at written communication she declared, "Spence, you will either become a Doctor or remain a Dunce!"

Although feeling a little down at the time, I brightened. "There's a choice?" I said. "That's not so bad."

And to this day, Miss Dingwall's unerring prediction about my vocational direction has remained true as the day it was born.

I get prescriptions and do not give them.

Now if I could only get that award back, framed, it would mean a lot to me, but, sitting imperturbably behind her desk in stoic and stuffed splendor, Miss Dingwall seemed deaf to my pleas.

THE FOLLICLE FOOLISH THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

2012-08-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a buddy and I drove for hours and hours past Millions and Millions of dollars worth of ripening Saskatchewan wheat fields, (now I sound like a bucolic version of Carl Sagan), to visit the small town of Eastend, which has a very interesting local museum that tracked back and recorded the habits of humans who lived there from a hundred and fifty years ago to the recent past while also recording the existences of various other critters of the dinosaur set who lived Millions and Millions of years ago as unnoficial members of the Eastend Hood!

Carl, get out of my brain...there's no room both of us.

This infernal machine caught my eye, but not my thinning locks, and led me to conclude that ladies of the past were either a lot braver than I or even crazier - although that's a stretch.

More of the museum visit in future posts.

A SCREEN ACROSS MY LUST

2012-08-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

A fan wavers

flowers unfold

float in enamel sections

on a permeable cream sea

vibrate

then crumple

like a bird's wing about to fall.

Tattered by a sudden wind

swept away

the fan was all there was.

WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION a book of poems by Raymond Spence

THE COSMOGENIC PULSE

2012-08-17T08:38:00.002-07:00

THE NEGATIVE SEA ALTERCATION a novel by Raymond Spence

Heraclitus put his finger into the River of Fire and felt its pulse match his own...

and the Battle was on between Chaos and Clarity...

ONE WORLD IS ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US

2012-08-16T08:42:00.001-07:00

One night during Carnival in Mazatlan, I saw this little girl standing on the sidewalk like a little statue as the celebrating Giants and Giantesses flowed around her. I was astounded by her steadfast silence and stance. I spoke to her mother and aunt who had come in from the countryside to sell their hand made wares during the festivities and they said she faced down bullies and stray dogs in the same way back in their small impoverished village. They allowed me to take her picture as she stood like a tiny obsidian rock while the raucous and drunken human current swirled past her.

Two days later I was taking pictures of surfers riding some unusually high waves at Olas Altos Beach and this second little girl approached timorously to see what I was doing. She was shy and awkward but curious as her mother hovered nearby. I showed her some of the pictures I had taken and she signified that she wanted her picture taken also. Her mother said it was okay so I did. And after that they climbed into their expensive BMW SUV and drove away.

Two very different girls. Two very different worlds. One has everything but so does the other.

Their different stations in life reminded me of Sting's song, 'One World Is Enough For All Of Us'.

I sincerely hope so.

ABOVE LOVE

2012-08-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not talking about the thousands of love songs that have been written. Heck, I've written a few myself and sing a few dozen of them every day.

I'm talking about the ineffable feeling we have about the meaning of existence even as we fight with other organisms every nano second to protect and continue our existence at the expense of theirs.

And that is the rub.

There must be another way.

We feel that there is another way.

Even though we know There Be Dragons:

It is not what we expect from the Universe.

It is what we expect OF the Universe that is the serious question.

And the fact that we have that expectation will be part of the ever evolving cosmological solution.

THE NEGATIVE SEA ALTERCATION a sci fi novel by Raymond Spence

THE OUTBACK

2012-08-14T11:40:00.001-07:00

THE OUT BACK C. Raymond Spence

Out here in the Outback, we’re always getting high.

Our minds are screaming through the sky

Like demented lizards

Skittering down the naked thighs

Of purple borie wizards

As they mumble magic in between the air

Out here in the Outback.

Out here in the Outback, we’re always laying low.

Not even grass can grow.

The mind’s the first to go.

You leave it baking in the sun.

The dingoes shake their ears,

Looking for some fun.

Out here in the Outback.

Out here in the Outback, paralyzed in the shade.

You’ve always got it made.

Greedy life and spurting death

Are fighting each other for your breath.

There is no give and take.

Something’s always on the make.

Out here in the Outback.

Bridge:

The strangest things are carved into the cliffs.

The Bories say they are the riffs

From the music of the spheres.

They sing of magic that suddenly appeared.

It left its sign. It left the people blind.

Stuck fingers into minds.

Then melted in between the air.

And left us wandering alone,

Fingered to the bone.

Out here in the Outback.

WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION a book of poems by Raymond Spence

APOCALYPSE NOW

2012-08-13T07:54:00.000-07:00

It looks like a beautiful but mottled sunset but one day later Manila was pummeled by a Force Five Typhoon that tore the metal roof off the twenty story high rise where I was staying and I spent a day helping the staff fight off the apartment flooding that ensued while others fought to replace the roof.

In the years I was there, sometimes the weather systems moving across Manila dwarfed a city of twenty million people and made me realize that anything we do that changes weather patterns cannot be a good thing.

Right now my Filipino friends in Pasig City, which is a low lying part of Metro Manila, are fighting off yet another flood that threatens their homes, their security and even their lives. And there is nowhere else for them to go.

THE NEGATIVE SEA ALTERCATION a sci fi novel by Raymond Spence