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My previous post spoke to three figures that demonstrated tough love. The character of Lord Jim in “The 2nd Raid on Harpers Ferry” represents this archetype. He leads The Kindred with a stern hand. Operational security is a necessary evil in order for the mission of the group to succeed. A lot of responsibility rests on his shoulders.  Even though most readers despise him right behind Urizen, I think he is the real hero of the book. He doesn’t care what people think of him as long as they follow his orders. Naturally, free thinking people (with egos) resist this in the real world, whether it is a son disregarding the advice of his father, a parishioner following the teachings of a Sunday sermon or an acned faced 14 year old trying to cut corners in a metal shop. Lord Jim has the big plan, he knows the consequences of its failure and he sacrifices his own soldiers to conduct the raid. I am not saying the ends justify the means but that someone has to be the adult. Life is full of things we don’t want to do. Freedom is not free but has to be earned. In the pre-history of Europe, the clan chief lived for the good of his people. He was the embodiment of his people. Pagan societies are notorious for human sacrifice rituals. In reality, many of these people volunteered (as they do today) to serve their community in the most selfless of acts. Chieftains were expected to die if their people and land did not prosper. Imagine if we had that level of leadership today from our politicians. Much later in history, political leaders became parasites upon the people. The revolution of 1776 attempted to set things right with a government that limited power and once again put the people at the forefront. Occasionally, someone like John Brown pokes the hornets nest and causes an uproar. He was duly sacrificed. He was not listened to by the people of the village. His blood, in turn, was not enough to cleanse the soil.

 

Wrathful Empathies is my dose of tough love.   Three men in my life were very tough on me.  My father, my local priest and my metal shop instructor.  Even though I only had his class for one semester of one year, I will never forget that guy.   He was a brief encounter in my life compared to my priest and dad.   That  made him different.  My time with him was both very limited, and indifferent.  I was just another faceless boy amongst hundreds to pass through his shop that semester.   Apparently, my temporal nature was meaningless to him.  He treated me as sternly as both my dad and priest.   I feared all of them equally.  I never understood why my shop class teacher was so mean until years later.   He was an angry old man quick to yell, cuss and shame.   Of course, I had no interest in metal working so the class was a complete waste to me.   However, I will always remember one thing:  rules were iron clad in this shop and not following them had serious consequences, mostly by yelling at me.  I was fortunate in that way.  When I grew into a man, I realized the metal shop was a dangerous place.  Machinery could mangle fingers, sharp sheets of metal could slice them off entirely.    He didn’t know me personally but he took his responsibility seriously nonetheless.  The fear he instilled in me made me follow the rules even though I didn’t know why they were important.  Wrathful Empathies is my effort to offer the same level of instruction and oversight.  God knows what may befall us.  His scriptures should be heeded.  He watches us dutifully.  We should love that attention and caring.

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A night spent alone on a windswept ridge deep in the Great Eastern forest  starts peaceful enough.  As the setting sun turns the forest colors  into shades of gray, things become a little more interesting.  Not sure why but the darkening forest causes me a bit of anxiety.  Actually, I know why.

I am a solitary hiker spending a couple days hiking circuits out and back to my car.   Some days and nights are along the Appalachian Trail.  One night was very different.  I hiked past the shelter another couple miles to a spot just below a jumble of rocks that provided a great vista.  The next shelter or general campsite was about 3-4 miles up the trail.  So, I was between the two locations were people tend to camp.  I set up my tent hammock, climbed the rocks to watch the sun set, cook my meal and settled in for the night.  I changed into my sleeping clothes, quickly snuggled into my sleeping bag and let the strong breeze sway my hammock.  I thought for sure I would sleep well.  Instead, with an hour,  I heard distinct voices, even laughter.   I sat up and looked out the mesh wall of my tent.  I saw flashlight beams coming up the trail.  Odd, who would be night hiking?  They still had several miles to reach the trail shelter.  If that was their destination.   Realizing I was only a few feet off the trail, I knew they would come by my camping spot soon.  Therefore, I got up, changed out of my long johns and into some decent clothes.   Not knowing if they would decide to camp at my spot, I thought it best to be ready for companionship.  I waited and watched.  The lights stopped, never coming closer.  The voices trailed off.  I guessed they stopped to camp just down the trail.  I changed back into my sleep gear and went back to bed.  The next morning, I rose, cooked breakfast and packed up.  The whole time, I expected the noisy group to hike past.  They never did.  I took to the trail and headed toward what I assumed was their location.   Ten yards, 20, 30, 40 yards I hiked without seeing anyone.  In fact, I continued hiking for 3-4 miles without seeing any trace of these people.  Only then did it dawn on me that maybe I had not seen anyone at all.  The voices were just the wind.  The lights were just reflections of the moon off leaves or maybe lights of far town below in the valley.  No, I distinctly heard laughter and saw flashlights.  It was then I remembered reading about something similar months before.  It was a popular a tale/myth of long ago Europe called The Wild Hunt.  Sketchy historical accounts of villagers seeing ghostly apparitions under a full moon.   Knights, lords, soldiers, dogs, horses and other entourage  parading through the wilderness on an eternal hunt.

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My experience did not scare me.  Instead, believed I had encountered the  psychic plasma of countless thru hikers.  So many hiking seasons, countless groups of hikers passing along the long trail.  Their emotional imprint on the trail arises each night, visible to those who are quiet enough to see and hear them.

Telling a story should be like following a path. You walk across a wide expanse towards a dense line of trees on the horizon. Entering the forest, you see unusual features. Your tired legs threatened to give out as the narrative exhausts your energy. You desire closure. Finally, a shelter appears through the trees. The story is over. You can rest for the night. The moonlight, wind and sounds of the forest fill your head with new ideas as you sleep. Tomorrow’s story will strain your tired muscles with the dawn.

Just like these ancient scrawls onto the walls of New Mexico cliff face, my writings attempt to convey important information. Not sure what the author of these images intended to impart to us. Hopefully, my book is a bit more decipherable. Continue reading my blogs to better understand the riddles I am trying to unlock.

Tom O’Bedlam reading Dylan Thomas. Doesn’t get much better than this.

The full moon woke me up.  My bedroom was illuminated from the white light streaming through the window.  I stumbled outside.  It was like day but overcast.  I walked down the drive and along the lane.  I turned off onto a jeep trail and followed it deep into the woods.  The moon shone on my shoulder.  I was not alone.  Fear and excitement gripped my heart.  I heard movement in the trees before a shadow crossed my sight.  Stopping to understand what emerged from behind a large tree, my mind reeled in confusion.  I wanted to run but couldn’t.  Before I could scream, it spoke.

I will never be the same after that chance encounter (or, was it destiny).

Let this be a warning to those who walk late a night in the woods alone.

Click this link if you dare.

Wood of Cernunnos

This place is crazy beautiful.  I can’t wait to go back.  Something about the contrast between broad open meadows and thick evergreen forest intrigues me.  I feel equally lost in both.  Doesn’t make any sense but it might have something to do with the massive fire that burned half the mountain plateau decades ago.  It permanently destroyed the soil not allowing the forest to grow back.  I swear I sense the old forest in those open balds.  The ghost of those trees and their roots can be felt.  The remaining trees stand in mourning at the loss of their kin.

 

Winchester Book Gallery, Winchester, VA 3/10/18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my book Wrathful Empathies, The 2nd Raid on Harpers Ferry, I invented The Kindred to carry on John Brown’s battle for freedom.  They are fighters for God that fight evil in all dimensions; physical as well as spiritual.  The bible is their inspiration and the US Constitution is their mandate.  I thought the battle would be more interesting if there was another group of fighters.  These needed to be of another sort.  They are loyal to the homeland and have roots that run deep.  A sense of place and kin is paramount.  Again, the area of Virginia where my story takes place provided the perfect warriors.  I kept seeing historical markers informing me that I was in Mosby’s territory.  If you don’t know him, Wikipedia provides the following description:

Exactly how to describe the Confederate 43rd Battalion was a matter of contention during the war, with the terms soldiers, partisans, and rangers being suggested. The Union viewed them as unsoldierly guerrillas hiding among civilians; a simple loose band of roving thieves. However, according to the memoirs of one of Mosby’s men, John Munson, Mosby himself avoided using overtly militaristic words like “troops” or “soldiers” or “battalion” in favor of the more familial “Mosby’s Men” or “Mosby’s command”. Northern newspapers and Unionists referred to them as guerrillas, a term of opprobrium at the time. Munson stated that “the term [guerilla] was not applied to us in the South in any general way until after the war, when we had made the name glorious, and in time we became as indifferent to it as the whole South to the word Rebel.”^[2]

I resurrected Mosby and his men as “unsoldierly guerrillas hiding among civilians” as defenders of the Blue Ridge.  I chose them because Mosby actually roamed the area by night and struck the enemy when they least expected it.  After a lightening fast raid, they would evaporate back into the land.  I just imagined what these men would look like today.  They are the forgotten workers of an economy that was sent outside our nation without the least thought of their welfare.  They are bitter, angry and hostile to authority.  They survive outside the law.  These modern day “Deplorables” had one last attribute that made my decision to incorporate them into my story:  Mosby and his raiders never surrendered but simply disbanded.  In effect, they melted back into the hills and across the valley.  Even though I had not researched their ancestry to present, I assumed their descendants are still in the area.  It takes little imagination to think their fighting spirit never dimmed, their love of their homeland still burns bright and their defense of kin is as strong as ever.

The evil Authority agents don’t expect them to rise up out of the misty hollows and fight.    In fact, nobody really knows their unit still exist outside their tight group.  The Authority  mistakes them for The Kindred.  In reality, these two groups wage war separately against the Authority.  Of course, there is also the giant possessed Timber Rattlesnake that nobody controls attacking wildly out of the brush.  That is another blog post.  The new Mosby is the uncle of the teenage Orc and while his raiders seek to rescue the boy, they also seek blood revenge for the murder of kin.

As a writer, I really can’t take credit for my characters.  The people of the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley have done most of the work.

What is it?   Is it a destination?  I propose that just knowing you are a slave is as important as running away.  Freedom is a matter of steps.    Lots of people don’t even know they are enslaved.  They spend their lives on the plantation.    The woods are near enough.  If I can run away, so can you.  Sanctuary, however temporary, can be found along the way.   Look for the trail blaze for direction.  Be warned that all is not as it seems however.  The correct path is not always where you think it should be.  Case in point, study this picture carefully.   One way to freedom and another to the plantation, but where does the blue blaze lead?  Sometimes signs and blazes are meant to distract.  If in doubt, be your own guide.  If you are truly lost, look to the heavens.  They never failed our ancestors.  I have been where you are going.  Keep walking until you are free.  Slipping through the net is a life long endeavor.

 

Look familiar?  Not simply a stag.  Look closer.   Cernunnos maybe?  Why would I chose an ancient Celtic god to symbolize The Kindred.  Their vigilance in the forest is one reason.  Life giving ability.  How else do generations continue?  How else does good survive the onslaught of the cult of nilhism?  Kinship flows through the blood.  Freedom is stained red by the death of patriots.  Do you see Cernunnos yet?

 

 

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I read Solzhenitsyn as a twenty something.  He was a very curious figure to me.   What was this  gulag archipelago?  A prison system for thought criminals?  How frightening.  Cancer Ward scared me even more.  Just like a person suffering from cancer, its allegory of a nation struggling with tumors spread by communism was thought provoking.  How can a nation survive such a malignant disease?  One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich was an amazing testament to human barbarity but also the human spirit.  Even though I found all his books terribly depressing, I found his commitment to speaking truth to power heroic.   I know it is very odd practice, but I inserted one his speeches in its  into my book in its entirety.  This probably is bad form for a fictional novel and poorly executed but what the hell.  I believe his voice needs to broadcast again to ears eager for truth.   It seems like the West abandoned him when he said some uncomfortable things about us.  Today, there is so much propaganda spewing forth from all corners of our society.  It is time to call people out.   I am using Solzhenitsyn’s speech in a turn of the tables.  No longer is the target that of Soviet government and society but much closer to home.  Like John Brown, history doesn’t seem to know how to securely place him.  Certainly, in his life, speaking truth to power made him a hot potato by every country and political system that tried to appropriate his intellect for their own advantage.  I like historical figures whose  morality was so uncompromising in life that they make people uncomfortable years after they have passed on.   Live no by lies!

Wrathful Empathies was written in this house over a period of 12 months.   I broke it up into several books starting with the 2nd Raid on Harpers Ferry after moving out.

For those of you that are not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, this image of Yamantaka and consort Yami is how Los and Enith manifest as they scrambled out of the crater after the fiery explosion at the climax of the 2nd Raid on Harpers Ferry (which actually happens at Mt Storm down the ridgeline).   The one figure is actually binary entities.  No longer lovers separated by circumstance, they now exist as a single wrathful deity patrolling the In Between (AKA Bardo) for eternity.  They will guide any lost soul they come across towards reincarnation and self realization.   You will have to read Wrathful Empathies, The 14th Colony to find out if they cross paths with Wobbly.

The Kindred trace their ancestry back to the few survivors of John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry.   At his urging, they escaped into the night and fled up into the surrounding mountains before the final assault upon their location.  The Kindred keep the battle for freedom against tyranny going across time and space.  They hide in plain site amongst the mountain people and hikers of the Great Trail.

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