STATION IDENT 052712 - Three Months In

by Matthew DiVito



Well, that's like a quarter of a year, isn't it?

So if I do that three more times, that'll be goal met -- one year of continuous weekday writing.

When I began Ehaema, it was intended to be microfiction - just bursts of imagery, whatever was in my head at the time, with no necessary or explicit connection between one day's work and the next.  The brevity of each piece was meant to make it so that I had no excuse NOT to do it - I can always write a paragraph, anyone can.

However, just organically, it evolved into serial fiction.  Because sometimes I need to write more than a paragraph or two to fully express a thought - and that thought remains in my head the next day, with more to say.  So I use the momentum from one piece to carry me forward - and thus they connect thematically.  And shortly after that, their narratives begin to overlap.  And then they're all part of the same story.

So it is to be one-from-many, then.  It's a bunch of stories, covering the same events but told differently from everyone's different point of view, and they overlap.  That's how awareness evolves - first you know events, then you understand that they connect, and the connective tissue forms the story of your life.  And then, if you're brave, you begin to understand that yours is only one story in a world of other people's stories that look different, have different characters and senses of humor and recurring themes.  No two are alike.  None is intrinsically better or worse, though you might prefer to see more of some, and less of others - and you work to make more of the stories you like better, and that is what it is to operate in this world.  Your world.  Our world.  So remember to be a good character in whomever's story you're in today.

I already have ideas for what the next project will be - so many!  There is the story of the Snow Queen and her handservant Sorrow, and the boy who guides them through the Aftercity.  There is the story of an anarchist group of warriors and low mages struggling to stay alive in a post-fantasy kingdom ruled by angelic virtual entities.  There are the thousand ghost tales of Chueh'yin the Moth Prince.  There is the one that takes place in one short episode a day in real-time, also told over the course of a year.  There is Transit, there is ThirdCity, and more where that came from.

But that is definitely me getting ahead of myself.  One day at a time.  Thanks for dropping by.

STATION IDENT 052012

via Marcelo Almeida.




When you hold something in your hands that has to happen.  When an ocean of need and dreaming embeds itself within an instant.  When you take aim.  When you have time to say just one thing, what is it?  What is your shortest prayer?  What is your curse, your blessing, your name-of-God, all of those things?  What is the last thing you would say before it all came crashing down?

You won't have time to think about it then, so think about it now.  If you can't think of it, or don't like the one you've got, pick a new one today.  Make one up.  Make it yours.  The words you say have many effects, on everyone around you and on you yourself, every time you say them.

Be conscious of this.

Now, wake up.

STATION IDENT

Image:  The Gyro Globe, Coney Island, New York 1949, Andreas Feininger







A reminder, from your Transit Authority:  We recommend that all passengers please remember the past in order to access the future.  Now approaching Ehaema.  Doors are opening, please stand clear.

STATION IDENT

The Holy Mountain, 1926, via Streets Ahead


Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
-Friedrich Nietzsche



 

Adjust Visual.
Adjust Mental.
Adjust Aural.

All levels check out.  You are cleared for takeoff.

STATION IDENT

via design you trust

Hey, you.  This is Ehaema.  Listen, your understanding of how the world functions is not going to edit itself - at least, not until we're finished with it.  Can we get you to face this way?  Lights.  And 3, 2, 1, rolling...

STATION IDENT

Source:  Esteban Cortazar


Welcome to Ehaema.   Everything you knew previously was merely a prelude to the new Now.  Do not be alarmed.  We are here to make your transition as smooth as possible.

Just relax.  This will only take a moment.

STATION IDENT

Source:  Information Fiction Publicité (IFP)

This is Ehaema.  We have reached cruising altitude, and the captain has turned off the Fasten Identity sign overhead.  You are now free to be the person you wish to be, so make yourselves comfortable.

STATION IDENT

Source:  Noah Kalina

This is Ehaema, broadcasting live from beyond the Now.  Are you there?

To Attempt Great Things

Sample from Ehaema. For more information, please contact the author

---

The path changes often.  In one direction is the known, and in the other direction a shifting tide of smells and possibilities.

Our scouts are the best at sifting those possibilities.  They turn impressions into directions, discern sweetness from the unknown, leave messages for the hunters who solidify the path.  Scouts are our dreaming mind, heading into the unmarked void on the most gossamer of promises and hopes.  When they succeed, the path grows and the colony thrives, all of us.

When they die, they die alone and unknown.  Sometimes they simply disappear; other times we catch the faint scent of their dreaming innards scraped across the summer pavement, and we know that the path cannot go where they have gone.

Now we journey through silent halls, stark and strange and filled with termites or spiders.  Mad gods live here, shaking the landscape with each footfall.  If we are lucky, they are oblivious to we silent soldiers foraging.  If we are unlucky, they descend with sharp bellowing cries, drowning us in foul stenches, crushing us or sweeping us away like storms made flesh.

But there is treasure here, nourishment that might make us rich and strong for generations.  

We grow old, walking the path, forth and back, forth and back.  Each day there are less of us, each day the weariness grows.  The cold is coming.  The dangers of the world have left their mark, and they grow no weaker while we grow no stronger.  Now, now is the only time.  The most important time.  Now is the time to attempt great things.  

Ehaema FAQ

FAQ


Who are you? 
I am Eidolon.  Or fulldamage, on Livejournal.  If you want to know more, go ahead and put your google-fu to the test.  I'm not hard to stalk, but I'm not really here to write up an autobiography.

What is this place?
This is Ehaema.  It is a blog which I have wedged into the intertubes at an odd angle.  It crossposts into Livejournal as well.

What does it mean?
Ehaema is an onomatopoeia for throat-clearing, as well as a name for Mother Twilight, a dusk spirit in Estonian mythology.  Not that I'm an Estonian scholar; mostly it is just a word I like.

What is it?
This is a microfiction project.  On each weekday, I will post a new short piece.  Weekends I will take a break, though there might be news or admin posts such as this one. For LJ-users, I'll try to keep things short or use lj-cuts so as not to blow up your stream.

Why skip weekends?
It's funny - you'd think that I would rather take it easy on workdays, and be creative on weekends?  But not so much.  I find that on weekdays, a shot of creativity and flexing my imagination muscle helps to keep me feel excited and engaged when I might otherwise be bored.  And on days off, I don't like making myself choose between well-earned relaxing time and creative time, because then it's like either choice is a loss.

Why are you doing this?  
It is practice.  Microfiction is a little bite-sized chunk of work - the effort is really minimal, allowing me to fit it anywhere into my schedule, and it gives me an excuse to write every single day, to improve every single day, and to have a motivating deadline to meet and beat every single day. As with any other skill, I can only improve through regular practice, and I want to improve.  I often find myself daunted or trapped in critique and self-doubt with other stories I've started.  Here, I want to remove my compulsion to analyze and reconstruct the plot ad infinitum.  This is just wordplay, exercise.  It might, in time, become a story of a sort - but my priority is just to keep up the effort.

Forever?
I want to keep this up for a year.  We'll see how that goes.  But if you're moved to do so, you can help me out by commenting, reacting, or otherwise giving me incentive to always hit that deadline.  And though I can't go so far as to promise you a story in the traditional sense, I will at the least try and keep things interesting.

Are you going to work on some of your older stories here?
No.  It will all be new work, written specifically for this project.  I may write ahead a little bit to create a buffer, because there are times when the day really is too busy or I'm traveling.

Are you a supernatural creature or a monster? 
Shhhh.  Hush.

Everything I've read here so far is terrible and I do not like you, as a person.
That's... not actually a question.

Can you write something for me?
It's the sort of thing I'm known to do.  Leave a comment or message, and we'll parley.

You are already supposed to be writing something for me!  Why are you wasting your time on these instead?
I got this.  Don't make it weird.

If you have more questions, go ahead and ask.

Continuous

What is this rhythm?

Not in the sky above, if it is really sky.

Below then.  Beneath our feet, in the bones of this world, supporting us, holding us up against the unreachable above.  

We stand upon the surface of a dark heart.  Each beat may take a second, an hour, a minute, a day, a year, a decade, a century, an aeon - we cannot know.  

But it beats. and with each beat, time gathers itself.  Coiled, sinuous, waiting.  

We must move.  

For with time, there always follows an ending.  




Image source:  National Geographic

Leap Day

Now.  

We begin.  

On a day that sometimes isn’t, in a place that we could never reach, at a time that we can not measure.  There are no clocks here, nor seconds, hours, minutes, days, years, decades, centuries, aeons - all of these things are so far away in the distance that they seem to be the same size; an army of indistinguishable motes on the horizon.  

But there is a horizon.  From where we stand, there is a plane that we can see and reach for but not grasp.  Not yet.

And there is rhythm.  Rhythm implies timing, and this is how we have come to notice that time is coming.  Not here yet - still drifting on the horizon, still indistinguishable in its many pieces, but we think that it is coming closer.   

Testing

Now firing up the crossposter.

Applying duct tape to intertubes...

Eliminating bugs, like so...

STATION ID

Soon.