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Fur & Gold - John Pearson
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 289
A fine selection of stories about early B.C.
Most, a page or two long, about the early fur trade and the Gold Rushes, interesting notes on the old (200+ years) forts set up by the Fur Trade and early explorers, as well as Buddhist artifacts found along the Skeena & Telegraph Creek, Chinese bronze coins found at Cassier, the suggestion that Kublai Khan made it to the Naas River area, rumours of the Spanish, other out-of-situ artifacts that have been not been adequately explained, all this requires a little further research...
Otherwise history, folk tales, legends of the Lost Lemon Mine and Slumach's Gold, a slender read that leads the mind off in all directions...
For Sale: 1 Ritual Libation Cup
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: For Sale
- Hits: 229
I have scant memories of my beginning, time out of mind. Mind, you see, is shaped by culture, and before culture there is nothing. My earliest memory, that of sitting about a fire and listening to a tale I would later know as that of Orion and the Pleiades. Then there were Eight. From there I drifted, always the hot climes where none would suspect, there are so many inexplicable deaths that one or a dozen will raise no questions. And when the questions are raised I move on.
You are what you eat, and Protean I was, becoming each of the races I hunted, a month and I might change my shape enough to pass for half-blooded, 2 months and the people would think that I had been thereabouts born and bred.
I learned to fly ahead of the plagues; I was not cheating death, merely hastening it; those young pale virgins, their quality of innocence, this is what sustained me. I was Mercy itself, for the pestilences that followed me were never as kind, and every one of their lives prolonged my own, and I lived first hundreds, then thousands of years. And when I was particularly moved by some tender prey I might visit her a few nights, allow her the slow lingering sleeping sickness or aching consumption, before resurrecting her with a few drops of my own. What privilege to be able to choose your children!
Where only I dined, the pale morning death like the petals of a flower laid out upon the clay, the faintest smile upon their lips; if life is suffering then let their deaths be made sweet; always I have been the considerate guest; and the anguished keening carried to me on the morning breeze foretold the plagues to follow.
Travelling routes that took me from: Ur, Bagdad, Cairo, Tangiers, Athens, Rome, Venice, Carthage; a tour of centuries, a hundred other cities where there lies now only sand and sea, then later with ships, and steam ships and then aeroplanes and the American South, Savannah to New Orleans, time and again running into my little proteges, our tastes now the same, with families and roosts of their own, twirling ringlet curls: “And how do you like this gift?…”,
I have wondered at the fear our race have provoked in you, the Sumerians and their Pazuzu, the Greeks with their Gorgons, your priests with their crosses, yet the cattle don’t fear the farmer, nor is the shepherd feared by his flock. And while my race has been feared because of a few degenerate examples I have never been one.
First of all manners. What manner of beast laps up the blood of his victims? Only the most depraved, I have always stood upon ritual, table manners, while I’ve needed no fork and knife, and have shortened a great many lives I have given others the chance of immortality. In my estimation this balances out.
Which brings us to the cup. So much talk of progress, first the automobile, then the aeroplane, now it’s all rocket-ships and cell-phones. Mankind, once so noble and filled with aspirations and dreams has become a degenerate race, the world in general infected with a curious depravity, and where with Gilgamesh I could have filled it a hundred times with Poetry, Innocence, Grace and Kindness now I could travel the world and never fill it once. This immortality, well, it’s been a good run, but while reddit offers a ready and willing diet of virgins such is the quality that I would prefer to go hungry. Recall that you are what you eat and never would I deign to become one of those fiends, those withered and gibbering horrors that hang in derelict mansions, or those underground lairs they claw beneath tombs and graveyards, devoided of all language, custom and manners, that have outlived time itself, insatiable, insensible imbeciles, ears filled with crickets and blind eye sockets with star jelly, and yet still, still refusing to die…
Remember the fastidious Count of St. Germain, with his “Who would suspect ME, a vegetarian”?; I ran into him again in New Orleans, not even a hundred years ago, the American diet had taken it’s toll and if he were still alive today I have no doubt he’d be in Congress or Secretary of Health and Human Services.
There is naught left in this world that would quench my thirst, and when the time comes I will wait patiently on the balcony for the morning sun. But pardon my digressions.
For sale: 1 ritual libation cup. Pewter.
I’d prefer to meet at night as the sun irritates my skin, “Solar Urticaria” my physician tells me (and that I need to eat more vegetables)…
For Sale: 1 Magical Glass Trumpet Mouthpiece
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: For Sale
- Hits: 193
What I can only imagine to be the mouthpiece to a Magical glass trumpet. From its condition I’m guessing the prior owner was a real “Bleeding Gums Murphy” type. Perfect for summoning angels, unicorns or heralding the Apocalypse. Found left as a gift in my car the same evening a variety of things suspiciously went missing. Don’t know where the rest of the trumpet is but I’m pretty sure if you wander the alleys around Baker at sunset somebody will be able to point you in the right direction…
The COPD Club & Other
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 283
The COPD club, they meet outside at the electrical box in the parking lot for the hotel. The building actually built a shelter for the smokers, but nobody likes to use it. Nowhere to sit.
They're all the same age, my age, but to look at them you get a widely varying picture of biological ages. 2 of them, barely able to walk, coughing up lungs. The other, my upstairs neighbour.
It's the water cooler of community housing.
Upstairs neighbour is on the outs with her boyfriend, she can't support him, he's not pulling his weight, he's bought groceries but he gets them at Dollarama, buys the cheap Neopolitan Ice Cream, she's had enough. He has to get a job.
This is rich, given it's been 30 years since she worked, on disability but she's never offered to explain just how or why...
And running into him, now inspired to get work, hilariously he's been working on the truck at the thrift shop, he's got to have a talk with her, they get along well enough, only - well, she's a handful and wants it all...
Since he's been out of the picture she's made me a "Friendship Bracelet", the kind with all sorts of various beads, colourful, the beads, plastic, wood, glass, some rocks, like what you might exchange at a Taylor Swift concert...
If the pink shirts didn't make me suspicious looking enough the bracelet will cement things.
I pop by to check in on the Other Neighbour, she's been on the down low, broke and in one of her self-pitying humours, her place slowly drifting into a messy oblivion, coffee table littered with empty canned cocktails and mini-liquors, she's stopped asking to borrow money as she has no way to repay it and so I just e-transfer her some cash, community housing means your pay cheque is community as well, which I don't mind in trifling sums but I have bills as well...
She let herself in this morning only to demand that I carry her table, outside on the landing for 2 weeks now, downstairs to donate to the thrift shop. Management must have sent her an email. I could see all this being "the helpful neighbour" growing old real quick...
***
The restaurant, busy ever night except (oddly enough) on Friday and Saturday. Last night, passing through, a refugee from Shambala, the streets are filled with these lost souls, loving the vibe, sleeping in the alleys and doorways, this one, clearly not yet come to his senses, dancing, looking at the menu, dancing some more, I’m too busy for this. I leave him alone, attend the paying customers, it’s a hectic night. When finally I get around to asking him if he’d like to order he tells me the …. looks good, and I ask - just to confirm - if he’s able to pay. He digs through his bag, and after a few minutes shows me a couple of rocks. Just rocks, not crystals, not polished, just river-worn rocks that somehow caught his fancy. Now he must know his audience, because I’m intrigued, but too busy for this at the moment, in the afternoon we could have talked but now I’m hopping, not the time, and so I send him packing and he takes it in good nature…
***
And, out for coffee, the town has a new superhero, the "Unicyclist", tall and made taller by the Unicycle, in full on leather biker gear, reflective motorcycle helmet with full visor, speeding down Ward on his electric unicycle, he makes it look easy, all you have to do is keep your balance...he'd make a great community safety officer, speeding around and administering Naloxone to all the sleeping beauties...
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