AHOY!!

Now then me hearties.

 

Are ye in th’ way o’ knowin’ what a Pirate’s favourite music is?

 

*Ahem*

 

What else could it be but…

 

Aaaaarrrrrrrrr-d rock.

 

*slowly polishing my battered halo*

Brainwash – Captain’s Knowing

Orlando was fiddling around with a quill, dipping it in ink to write some journey notes, as the sun set, at a small table on the deck of the Calabar.  There was much sorting and planning going on around us, and Max had started up a conversation with the bigger birds, which he found to be broad speaking, but very amusing, indeed!  I watched the gentle motion of the ship, straining from its mooring, as if it were eager to get away.  The travellers were all talking in anticipation, some longing to set off.  Captain Wilder approached, a swagger to her step, doling out orders here and there, and said “You there,” to Orlando, and he looked up from his writings.  “Write something with your non-dominant hand, will you?  Maybe then you’ll get somewhere.  That page looks far too orderly for my liking, Sir!”

Orlando had set out lists of things he wanted to see and do, along the way.  “I’ll tip ink all over it, and then it might look like something!” said Captain Wilder, with a huge grin.  So he did, while Captain Wilder passed me an empty glass bottle with a cork, to throw it overboard.  “Pardon, Captain, but wouldn’t it be a waste just to create something just to throw it overboard?”  I received a shrewd look in return.  “Let him write something great, of interest to someone, someone miles away, and shed that pall of orderliness about him.  No doubt society would be to blame…as it usually is…where a particular kind of knowing is lacking…”  Before I could answer, the Captain was away down the deck, ordering the others to do the same.   

It was almost dark, and Orlando’s scrawl with his non-dominant hand was like a child’s as if he were five years old.  He made a face and then shrugged, oddly satisfied at what he had written, an important message for someone far away.  “Outlaw Brainwashing” it said, and he rolled it up into a scroll and I handed him the bottle which he corked with resolution.  Raising his arm high, he tossed it to sea, where it bounced, and bobbed in the waves, already being carried off to its destination. 

On doing this, new pictures began to form in Orlando’s head as well as mine.  Curiosity arose, and we wondered who would receive this message, would we ever see them, and would they heed it?  We started to feel more space in our minds, to think of other things, and the things we were going to collect on the journey, things that had never before been seen.  Specimens of plants, rocks, and small creatures — only living things that we would capture, then set free again.  Captain Wilder was right, the list began to take a more interesting shape, once Orlando returned to it anew.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.) 

Message in a bottle

Whoever you are…this message was written in a dark moment… 

I’m such a recluse, increasingly so

That people don’t ask to call down anymore

I’m choking and drowning in this charred despair

Grotesque hooded demons are pulling up chairs

They’re setting up camp, planning to stay

How long this time before they go away

Loathe going out to be snared up in crowds 

People screaming and screeching unsightly and loud

Shopping’s a nightmare, can’t get through the door

Not going back there, don’t like it no more

Bright autumn sunlight leaves drift all which ways

Gets harder and harder to keep the good days

Trapped in this hell when the storm clouds appear

Black keeps coming back and I shiver with fear.

I’ll stay quiet in this corner like any other head case

And you won’t see the tears as they course down my face

Mixed up sick brain cells drag me off to this place 

Wish they’d let me alone and give me some space.

Look on without feeling when my life goes astray

Have to hang on like hell now,  joy’s had its day. 

Jan

A New Dawn, A New Day

Dawn crept across the sky early that morning, as if foretelling that today would be a new day, the beginning of a new time, an exquisite era of new beginnings. Pale golds blended into brighter oranges, with tints of rose gradually spreading across the heavens. Just to stand by the bedroom window and simply look was enough to take one’s breath away. But turning around to look back into the bed chamber that had held me in its sway for many a long year now, was all it took to instantly banish all portents of something as wispish and fragile as the notion of freedom. What is it to be free? Huh, just a word, semantic games played out by male philosophers sipping tea and whiskey as they grapple with the meanings of moral terms, even while they themselves have no idea whatsoever of the huge import of the concepts they play with. These words of theirs are male words, having being coined and caged eons ago by likeminded men with little else to do except entertain themselves even while their physical and emotional needs were met by the women who stood behind them.But this morning — this beautiful, beautiful morning which was a gift from the Goddesses that Be, a gift to all the women who stood at their windows and looked and yearned for something more, something richer and fuller and more meaningful than this small life that was spent and dispersed in bits and pieces in serving all those who somehow felt that they had a claim on the female spirit — this day would be different. Why, I couldn’t say, except perhaps it had something to do with the news circulating around the town that a certain Captain Ebony Wilder was back!! And this time she was calling to anyone who chose to listen, calling them to come, follow her and find the elixir of life and love and creativity somewhere in the midst of a forgotten and lost civilization. Something stirred deep within when the call reached my ears, causing ripples of vibrations to resonate with my heart blood as it ran though my veins. The very air seemed to tingle with possibilities of something more.

And so it was that on this day I chose not to put on my corset, or any of the clothes that had bound me for as long as I could remember. Instead I took hold of the boned contraption and began to pull and tear at it, ripping it apart from seam to seam. And then a most wondrous thing started to happen. From the hidden depths of the tiny invisible seamed stitches fell out the most amazing symbols and images. What they were, and what they were meant to signify was beyond my understanding, yet somehow I felt that Capt Ebony Wilder herself would be able to enlighten me when the time came. Gathering all the myriad pieces up I pushed them through the tiny opening at the top of a perfume bottle, rather appropriate I thought. Next I pulled on a plain shift under which I wore a pair of old trousers, all well hidden by a red handspun woollen cloak. The last image anyone had of me on that fateful day, in that town that had holed me in all my life, was of a red shape disappearing down the wharf and running and jumping on to the ship called the Calabar, dropping something that looked like a tiny bottle into the sea as she leapt into her new and unknown future.

Soul Sister