* * *

The works on exhibit at local galleries for the holidays are worth noting due to the wide range of photo art styles represented. For anyone curious about photo art and its potential, these works are a good primer. From the very simple to the abstract, a wide range of what may be achieved is on display. All of them are framed and available for purchase.

January
Columbia Art League

This is as close to straight photography as I normally stray. It was a perfect day to shoot; it had snowed overnight, and the temperature was hovering just above freezing, so the air was filled with moisture. What little light came through the overcast sky was refracting magnificently; the world seemed to glow. No wind at all to disturb the stillness. This work began as a color photographic capture. I could certainly shoot in black and white, but I prefer to use a black and white filter when creating photo art because it lets me control the intensity of primary colors, and thus achieve more contrasting, dramatic work. Only the slightest additional filtering was applied; just enough to give the branches a smooth, flowing feel. It received a first place in class at this year’s Jefferson City Art Club competition. A number of works from this series will likely go on exhibit soon.

Color of the Day
Capital Arts

Still fairly close to straight photography, and yet noticeably enhanced. Instead of removing color, in this case I increased the saturation. I used edging techniques to bring out the stitching of the fabric and rendered contrasting lighting to increase the drama of the sunlight coming through the window off to the left.

From The Labors Of Starving Artists
Capital Arts

Now clearly moving away from photography into more overt artistic expression. At this point, I’m using the photographic capture more like a background sketch. I’m also breaking the image into different pieces, pulling each onto separate canvases, applying effects appropriate to each, then blending them back together into a comprehensive whole. Among the effects applied is enhanced edging (probably the effect I use most often), smoothing, and color saturation. The most extreme effect I’ve applied is streaming light in bands across the work using colors from the capture itself as a base. Known as an extrusion, in order to stream the bands from the direction I want I separate a particular piece of the capture onto a larger canvas, then crop the effect back to recenter the bands as I envisioned them. Any filter or effect takes a relatively powerful computer, but extrusion is the bully – it can require a monster, especially at higher resolution. This is perhaps where photo art mirrors photography in its requirement for the best, most expensive equipment to achieve the best results. Effects like this cannot be achieved with a tablet or a cheap laptop. An equivalent comparison for artists would be those expensive, hard to get papers or paints necessary to create a certain look. Or far enough back when artists made their own paints, access to the raw materials to make those paints, or even the knowledge of how to do it. Like the scene from ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’ in which a bone club tossed into the air and morphs into a spaceship, a powerful computer is simply a modern paint brush.

Pickin’ Veggies
Foraging through a Land of Plenty
Capital Arts

Both works reflect a fascination of mine with the lines, colors and repetitions found in grocery aisles. Both are highly abstract using the same effects to create a wall of saturated color and lines that assault the senses. As described above, the original photographic capture behind each work was broken into pieces, then blended back together. Pickin’ Veggies was broken into eight different works, included three extrusions, then blended back as one – probably the most meticulous work I’ve done. If the impact of the abstracts suggest to you that the grocery scene itself an abstraction of reality, you win a cigar. Contact me to collect. These are fairly large works - 18x24 on metal plates, finished in sheer glossy, and framed in light pewter – that complement each other and work perfectly together on a wall, if you happen to be looking for art that makes a room pop. Contact Capital Arts to purchase.
 
* * *

CH

* * *

And with that, it’s time for a sabbatical.

I’d originally planned to post a long, boring soliloquy on the evolution of my photo art and prose over the past half dozen years, but then I thought, you dumb ass, that’s the same sort of self-absorbed horse manure that created the need for a sabbatical in the first place. So, just no.

But a few words about today’s work, the last of Project Firebird and a work that, if I may gloat, I’m very pleased with. Project Firebird should not have succeeded. It fell serendipitously into my lap, so I wasn’t prepared for it, I didn’t have the right camera or lenses, the lighting was uncontrolled and the subject unfamiliar to me. It should have failed miserably. But not only didn’t it fail, at least a half dozen works will go into my permanent portfolio. By now, it seems I’ve spent enough time with the camera and with the computer that I must innately know how to capture an image and what to do with it when I have it. I’m happy to have reached the point in which I can feel that level of confidence. Automotive art is something I’ve wanted to establish as its own genre, and, frankly, by happening the way it did, Project Firebird allowed me to reach conclusions about lighting and framing that I’d been struggling to figure out. And now, I know.

Now about that sabbatical … wait … no, see there, after promising not to write a boring soliloquy I did anyway. There – I’ve deleted it. Suffice it to say that keeping to a regular, self-imposed blogging schedule has created a situation in which my first motivation for sitting down to create is not the for the joy of it, but because ‘got to crank out stuff for tomorrow’s blog’. So I really need to back off for a bit.  I’m not going to stop writing, not going to stop creating art. Just going to stop posting and blogging about it so much. Besides, I need to look at how I’m promoting my work in general because I’m pretty sure it’s not working. Am I using social media properly to drive people to this website? Should I use social media at all? Should I be putting both art and prose in the same blog, or should I split them up? Should I be posting prose at all, given that it can be plagiarized so easily? This website; I haven’t even looked at some of the pages in months and months, let alone thought about if I’m using them correctly.

It will likely be deep into next year before much of me surfaces again – these things take time. In the meantime, I’ve six works on exhibit at local galleries for the holidays, so get out and buy some art!

Hopefully, not out of sight out of mind.

- CH

* * *
 
BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …
 
* * *

... previous verses ...

Chapter 1 - The Invention Of The Banana Daiquiri
Chapter 2 - A Fine Tune


 
Chapter Three (3)(III)
Island In The Clouds

Two days later Jefferson climbed part ways up the mainsail of his schooner as it cut through the St. Vincent straight and turned towards Barbados. He hadn’t needed to climb, had no reason, and maybe shouldn’t have as the ship’s captain and navigator, but he dearly wanted to. It was a perfect day to sail; clear blue sky from horizon to horizon and a fair wind coming fine on quarter propelling the Liberty to better than five knots. The bow of the sleek craft plowed only slightly as it cut through the greater swells of the deep straight, delivering a fine spray that dampened Jefferson’s face as he clung to the mainsail and peered into the expanse of the Caribbean sea. Several smaller vessels could be seen weighing anchor over his shoulder in Kingstown harbor, another one over his other shoulder out of Admiralty Bay, but nothing ahead. Liberty rode fairly high through the water, only a quarter load of Bequia sugar in his hold. He would trade that to a dealer in Bridgetown for hard goods that he would return with to sell in St. Vincent, as well as provisions for he and Lincoln, plus more goods for merchants and friends in Bequia. He would also visit Barclays to secure finances and to transmit the code that would, how he had no idea, make its way to, who he had no idea, that all was well. ‘Well’ meaning Lincoln was still safe.

Jefferson was born to the sea. Conceived in Connecticut to a Freeman, himself a partner to a shipping concern and a sailor and trader, he made his first voyage as a cabin boy on his father’s ship when he was barely six years old. By the time he was ten he had already climbed to the top of the fore mast, past the crosstrees and swung himself backwards up to the fore topgallant instead of using the lubbers’ hole, and finally up standing upon the fore royal, the men on deck far below cheering his accomplishment. He was a quick study with his math and his geometry and map reading, skilled at the sextant before he was fifteen and functioning as ship’s navigator before he was twenty. He crewed trading ships to Britain and to Europe and to the ports of the Mediterranean but to especially, especially to the Caribbean. No one in the employ of the shipping company could read the currents, the winds, the quickly changing weather as well as he. No one could recognize at first glance the scores upon scores of landings across the sea as he. No one could read the dangers and the opportunities, avoid the pitfalls, or seize the potentials. He rose to ship’s navigator, then to both navigator and first officer, then to captain. He sailed and traded with speed and efficiency, rarely setting a course that might unnecessarily extend a voyage, and almost never losing money on a transaction. Seemingly at every port, every landing, he knew what to buy or trade and where to sail on an efficient loop to sell at a profit. One year he accounted for nearly one-third of the company’s profits despite being just one of its ten ships, and not even the largest one at that. He was renowned, too, for captaining a ‘happy’ ship, one in which the best sailors desired to serve. He had only rarely and in the most extreme circumstances had a man flogged and had only once placed one in irons. When a job absolutely had to be done, the company knew he was the man to accomplish it.

So he was not surprised, upon arriving in New York with a cargo of Jamaican rum, to receive a note from the company officers instructing him to sail immediately, without taking on new cargo. What was surprising was that the note instructed him to sail to Baltimore.

Heretofore the company had kept him far away from any port that might be deemed part of ‘The South’. Freeman or not, captain or not, he would not be safe in The South.

More than once, crew had been removed from company craft in Southern ports and committed to slavery. Company officers had successfully traded for the return of most of them, sometimes after years, but only mostly. What ships went South – and the cotton trade required they send some there – kept their Freemen crew below and well-hidden at all times. But they would not risk Captain Moses Jefferson. Not once as captain had he landed at a Southern port, and Baltimore, with its ugly undercurrent of repressed succession, was just far enough South to constitute a risk.

So he sent word of when to expect him, and he hung off the mouth of Chesapeake to time his arrival for night. As he floated to his mooring in the dark, his collar high and a hat pulled down to conceal himself, a launch appeared carrying Mr. Quimby, the company’s chief officer and his father’s old friend, holding a satchel.

“Moses,” Quimby said. “We must speak privately this night.” Quimby was a portly, jolly soul, who seemed to never stop smiling, who had spent many an evening in joyous jocularity with his father, was ‘this night’ grim as a customs agent, his frown pulling his greying mutton chops further down towards his neck, his tone dark. As they moved towards the captain’s quarters Quimby told what crew was near, “More launches will be arriving after I signal and will need to be unloaded, some very carefully.” Then, in full knowledge that ship crews tended to eavesdrop, “Please allow Captain Jefferson and I privacy to talk.”

Sequestered in his quarters, Quimby placed a hand on Jefferson’s arm, looked him squarely in the eye, a pleading expression. “I must ask something of great importance of you. I would trust no one else with what I am asking. Moses, I dare say I am begging this of you, but I will not order you – I could not do such a thing to you.”

The cramped cabin was dimly lit by a small lantern. As they sat at the small wooden desk, the light cast eerie shadows across their faces that exasperated the anxiety between them. Jefferson couldn’t fathom what might be coming. His father had passed half-dozen years prior, and his mother years before that, so it couldn’t be family. He said, “Mr. Quimby, you know you can always count on me.”

“No, Moses,” Quimby held his hand tightly, “You must not say that. Not this time. Not yet. I implore you to listen carefully to what I am asking, and to consider what I am asking with heavy gravitas.”

He released Jefferson’s hand, then opened and reached into his satchel, withdrawing paper. “This is title to and complete ownership of the Liberty schooner which you now captain.”

Jefferson’s eyes went wide, an electric shock surging through his mind. Ownership! The Liberty, his!

Quimby withdrew more paper. “This is a bank draft. We’ve … that is, some friends and I … we’ve set up an account through Barclays because it is a world-wide financial institution. Almost anywhere on Earth you might sail, Barclays can be accessed at least indirectly. It is an open-ended account from which you may freely draw for whatever you need.”

“Benjamin,” the very serious Jefferson called Quimby by his first name, “This is astonishing! Who are these friends of yours?”

Quimby hesitated. “Let us just say … well, these are not so much friends as very influential people. Very wealthy and powerful. What they need done … what they have come to us to do … is very … delicate. And must be done in complete secrecy.”

“Why did they come to us?” Jefferson asked.

Quimby said, “The company has … certain connections with them. We already had a relationship.”

“And they are paying us?”

“They are paying the company a flat fee roughly equal to three times the value of the Liberty,” Quimby said, “And backing entirely this open-ended account to both accomplish the task and compensate you by whatever price you want. No questions asked.”

“Extraordinary,” Jefferson fairly gasp. A pause between the two men, then, “What is this ‘task’?”

Quimby leaned very close to him and spoke only slightly above a whisper. “Lincoln is not completely dead.”

“Wait … what?!”

“Please, Moses, quietly!”

Whispering, “What are you telling me?”

“Lincoln is still partly alive.”

“When did he die?”

“Do you not know?”

“Know what,” Jefferson began sounding exasperated, “I’ve been at sea.”

“I might have thought another passing ship …”

“I avoid other ships, especially since this war started.”

“Just so,” Quimby nodded. He had forgotten that company strategy for avoiding potential blockade runners. “An assassin shot President Lincoln in the head.”

“My God! When did this happen?”

“Ten days ago.”

“But not killed? By a shot in the head?”

Quimby said, “The assassin was a Southern sympathizer looking for vengeance, and he stepped out of the shadows while Lincoln and his wife sat in a box at a theater in Washington and pulled the trigger at the back of his head at point blank range.”

Jefferson gasp.

“It was a small caliber weapon, and the assassin was nervous, so the bullet simply creased the skull and tore the scalp. It bled like a river and hurt like hell, and it looked like Lincoln had been mortally wounded. Looked that way to the entire theatre. Lincoln was screaming his head off in pain. Even looked that way to the physicians at first when they got him to a room in a hotel across the street. Looked that way to his wailing, hysterical wife. But once they got her out of there and Lincoln passed out and they could have a look, just three men there at that moment, they realized what they were dealing with. And then Seward arrived. An assassin had come for him as well, with a knife, but had missed. And it was Seward who knew what to do.”

Jefferson shook his head, dazed by the news, asked, “And what did Seward know to do?”

“Switch bodies.”

“Wait … what?!”

“Please, Moses, quiet yourself!”

“Okay, okay. Switch what bodies?”

“Lincoln with a double. A corpse that could pass for a dead Lincoln.”

“Why, on earth?”

Quimby shook his head, “I don’t have all the particulars, know all the motivations. Apparently Seward felt he was acting in Lincoln’s best interest. Lincoln wanted to get away from his shew of a wife and out from under the burden of being president and this was the chance to do it.”

“So the President is really alright?”

“He is no longer the President. He has been declared dead and the Vice-President has been sworn in. So far as the public knows, his body is on its way to Illinois.”

“Where is it, really?”

“Coming on board this ship.”

“Wait … what?”

“He is presently unconscious – has been in and out of consciousness. He’s been carefully wrapped in a gurney and is heavily sedated and men are waiting for my signal to bring him here. If you will have him. If you will accept this task. We want you to take him somewhere he might go unnoticed to live the rest of his life, and for you to stay near to keep him safe.”

Jefferson slumped back in his chair, totally overwhelmed. His own ship; whatever salary he wanted. But at what cost? He couldn’t begin to fathom the responsibilities ahead of him. “He’s alive?” he asked for confirmation.

Quimby nodded.

“Does he know what’s going on?”

Quimby said, “Some. We’re sure he understands some.”

The two men studied each other.

“We want you to carry the wounded Abraham Lincoln, once president of the United States, beyond these shores, to a location only you will know. And once there, we want you to keep him safe and his identity secret that he may live what life God will yet grant him in peace. And anonymity.”

Jefferson gaped at his friend, thoughts racing. Every ship’s creak and grown as it rocked in its moorings amplified in the silence.

“What say you, Moses?”

*   *   *

Provisions for a three-month cruise were loaded on board, the Liberty’s crew cursing as they stubbed toes and jammed fingers by dim lantern light. Just before dawn, when the night was at its darkest, a lone figure in a gurney was brought up, the crew told reverently that it was a wounded Civil War veteran to be transported, and that they were all to be paid handsomely if they kept it to themselves, which, drawing on his open-ended account, Jefferson would see that they were. He was stowed in the captains’ quarters, a man posted outside to assure he remained undisturbed; that no one would enter. Quimby provided additional papers. First, a series of message codes to be left at whatever Barclays he might use, which would make its way to Quimby’s friends and communicate status. Second, copy of the contract he had signed that, Jefferson would discover, limited what he could do for that open-ended account to remain accessible to him, but he wouldn’t realize that until later.

Jefferson hunched over the body in the dark cabin and watched him sleep. Lincoln took deep, long breaths, peacefully, in and out. The bandage around his head would need to be changed, he knew. Jefferson resolved to provide all care for the man himself. Inside a bag placed behind the bed was a quantity of morphine for when Lincoln’s pain returned – Jefferson knew he would have to ween the great man from that at the earliest opportunity.

He’d already given orders to weigh anchor and move quickly out of the Chesapeake. But where then? He pondered, where to sail after that? Where could he hide this man that would not be a prison in and of itself. And then he remembered a place he’d been only once, a place out of the way and off the major trade routes, a perfect island in the clouds.

- CH

Another from Project Firebird; especially happy with the blending of shadow and light in this one.

​-CH

* * *
 
Digital Saturday – Still mostly experimenting in this medium, and likely will be for some time. Mainly, it seems to draw my attention in the evenings when I don’t feel like reading, don’t feel like engaging in a weighty photo art project or in writing prose, but still feel like doing something creative.
 
I think they call that play.
 
- CH

* * *

For the record, these next four photo art posts from Project Firebird I REALLY like! There’s always a period of experimentation in trying to determine just exactly how to work with captures from a particular subject in a particular setting (let alone how to shoot it in the first place). Same goes for determining just how far to go with that subject. Could be a contributing reason it’s taken me so long to establish automotive art as a component of my portfolio, regardless of how much I enjoy it, is that the settings in which automobiles are captured are so vastly different, with infinite uncontrollable lighting conditions and vast amounts of ‘noise’ surrounding them. Of course, as I’ve written before, one of the elements that make photo art ‘art’ is how far the artist decides to take a particular capture into the abstract.

But when I figure that part out, oh the joy!

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

... previous verse ... click to follow the link ...
Chapter One - The Invention Of The Banana Daiquiri


​
Chapter Two
A Fine Tune

So the two friends staggered off the beach, drunk. They’d exhausted the bananas and chipped the ice block away to nothing and were back the quarter mile or so to the house to clean up before dinner. Lincoln loved these moments when Jefferson would drop the ‘sir’ nonsense and call him by his first name – had to be mostly drunk before he’d do it. Some people perceived Jefferson as his servant; Lincoln knew he was more accurately assigned his protector. It was Jefferson who had identified the island and Jefferson who had gotten him there and kept him supplied and solvent and Jefferson who maintained his incognito. They were friends, and he had told Jefferson that, and Jefferson had winked at him, whispered ‘I know’, then said with greater volume for the benefit of any who might overhear, “Yes, sir, that we are.”

As the sun dropped to just a finger’s width above the Caribbean Sea they made their way up the hill to Eddie’s big house that was surrounded and shaded by flamboyant trees with their red leaves. Its wrap-around porch overlooked Admiralty Bay, dotted with its many small boats as well as Eddie’s large yacht and Jefferson’s much smaller schooner. Port Elizabeth itself was also in view, then eleven miles past Rocky Bay and Northwest Point the looming dark green of St. Vincent itself. Eddie was there on the porch with glass in hand and waved, “Moses!”, calling Jefferson by his first name, “And Link!” calling Lincoln by his fake first name, “My very good friends! Already been happily imbibing, I see!”

They immediately called for the necessary ingredients and introduced Eddie to their new rum with chipped ice and bananas trick. They went quickly through two rounds of the beverage before Jefferson remembered to ask, “Have you strawberries this trip?” As it happened, Eddie did, and called for a small bowl of them. It arrived cradled in the soft hands of a young woman whose appearance caused Lincoln to gasp. Her dark, riveting eyes framed by her deep brunette hair put Lincoln in mind of a panther studying its prey. She wore a light, cream colored dress that slightly tousled as a breeze passed through the doorway where she’d paused, just a hint of a smile on her deeply red lips as though she wanted the guests to have a good look at her before she joined them. All three men, having ceased conversation, looked at her appreciatively, but it was Lincoln who felt a jolt.

“Gentlemen,” Eddie announced proudly, “May I present to you to Miss Jennie Jerome, late of the Isle of Wight. Miss Jerome, I give you Captain Moses Jefferson of the schooner Liberty and Colonel Link Douglas, retired.”

Miss Jerome allowed her smile to broaden slightly at the men, then stepped onto the porch and placed the bowl of strawberries on the table. “There are precious few of these,” she said of the strawberries, her voice strong and assertive, “But they will wither quickly in this heat, so I suggest we eat them up. I’ve asked the staff to prepare strawberry shortcake with much of the remainder.” She examined the other ingredients on the table, noting the little pool of water forming around the small block of ice. “What sort of a concoction have you going here?” she asked.

Eddie chuckled and picked up the ice chipper. “Allow me to demonstrate,” he said.

Jefferson, who always seemed more loquacious in the company of women, said, “We’ll use the strawberries instead of the bananas this round, see how that does.”

Miss Jerome nodded and watched Eddie chip at the block, scrapping up bits of ice to dump into glasses as he went, but her eyes seemed to fall on Lincoln or at least Lincoln perceived that they had. He was immediately concerned that his appearance was too unkempt. He’d allowed his beard to fill in completely and his hair to grow long, both to cover the scars of his his head wound and conceal his identity. Each had greyed considerably; mostly, in fact. But were he not unkept enough, had his appearance not sufficiently departed from his former appearance, might she recognize him? On this entire island only Jefferson and Eddie and probably a couple of Jefferson’s crew (though he also had concerns about his housekeeper) knew who he was, and Jefferson thought that might be too much. The way her dark eyes seemed to pierce him he feared she might have known right off.

“A colonel,” she asked, “What are you retired from?”

Lincoln’s mouth began what would have come out as little more than a stammer, but Jefferson quickly interjected, “This here is a veteran of our civil war, wounded at Gettysburg,” he said.

Finding a very slight voice, Lincoln said, “My long and scruffy hair is my attempt to hide the scars. I hope it does not offend you.”

Her expression changed, Lincoln thought to one of empathy. “Of course not,” she seemed to protest. “It was a fearsome war, that battle especially. I saw lines of men wounded much worse as they were brought to New York.”

“As you can tell by her accent,” Eddie explained, “Miss Jerome is not British, but an American. Born to a financier in Brooklyn.”

“My father, though quite a successful speculator, was something of a cad,” Miss Jerome said. “My mother evacuated my sisters and I, first to Paris and then to Britain.”

“Where there is no shortage of aristocrats seeking excitement through marriage to a spirited American woman,” Eddie intoned.

“Yes,” she said and looked at Eddie. “But they must run from their mamas first.”

Eddie seemed flustered by that; even seemed to blush. Jefferson caught it immediately and knew exactly the implication. Lincoln, Jefferson knew, could not see past his infatuation with the woman. But Jefferson knew much, much more about Eddie and his family issues than Lincoln did. Eddie collected himself. “It will be beef tonight, gentlemen, still reasonably fresh.”

Several more rounds of the rum concoction were drained before dinner was called, though Miss Jerome nursed just a single glass. The strawberries quickly disappeared. None could decide if they preferred it with strawberries or bananas, but it was Miss Jerome, recognizing the strawberries would not be replenished for some time, who declared, “Clearly the bananas make the better drink, you sods”. She, of course, had not tried it with bananas.

They moved to the interior around a large, heavy table crowded with beef Wellington, asparagus in hollandaise sauce, roasted beets and parsnips, sweet potatoes, Brussel sprouts with chestnuts and bacon, a red wine jus, and Yorkshire pudding. A staff of four, who seemed to transition between cooks and servers and butlers, traveled with Eddie served the fare and struggled to keep everyone’s glass filled with a strong red wine. They conversed long into the night about events in Britain and the Continent, about Jamaica and the British dominions of the Caribbean that Eddie had visited on his most recent circuit, about the happenings on Bequia and St. Vincent that had occurred in his absence. “My presence was noted, just as I’d intended,” Eddie said. “Then I touched Canada, made a show, and on a misty night disappeared once more. Slipped from the gaze of the British Empire to our little gem here in the warm blue sea, our island in the clouds, Where Blackbeard once ruled. Where Sir Francis Drake planned his attacks upon the Spanish. Where Henry Morgan dodged hurricanes ‘twixt pirating himself a fortune. And now where we poor loners conceal ourselves from, no, dare I say from where we reject what reality would be forced upon us!”

Miss Jerome placed a hand on Eddie’s and leaned affectionately against him, happily bemused, filled his wine glass with her other hand. “She’ll never find us here, will she, Rosebud?”

The dishes cleared away, the strawberry shortcake, prepared according to Miss Jerome’s recipe, consumed and its leftovers abandoned, the men adjourned back to the porch and lit fat cigars. A blue haze built around them as they ruminated into the quiet, sweet night. Lincoln remaining very subdued, or at least subdued for him, his mind apparently preoccupied. Jefferson too had quieted, something he especially did after sensing he’d been talking too much, which, affected by the presence of a lady, he often did. Eddie did most of the talking, vacillating between pontification and lamentation. Miss Jerome moved further into the house, to the parlor, where Eddie had imported an upright piano. She was classically trained in the instrument by a friend and student of Chopin, but to her family’s disappointed had rejected the level of work and commitment that would have been necessary to achieve the concert status they felt she was capable of. Such seriousness of intent interested her not at all. She enjoyed, at all things, playing well, so long as it was just play. She looked through the sheet music present, but finally decided to let memory and mood direct her fingers. Lincoln heard the first notes nonchalantly, but as they came together with grace and melody his attention sharpened. He looked to Eddie, wondering if he’d added a pianist to his staff. Eddie said, “It’s Miss Jerome. She’s a wonderful player.” Lincoln looked over his shoulder, back into the house. “She wouldn’t mind at all if you joined her; likely be flattered, in fact.” Then sensing that Lincoln was almost looking to him for permission, said, “Go on, my friend. She’s her own woman.” Lincoln nodded, laid his smoldering cigar on the porch railing, and moved inside. Now Jefferson was looking to Eddie as if to confirm that, indeed, Lincoln would be alright. Eddie said, “She’s a remarkable woman, truly, but I do not deceive you when I say she is her own woman and, aside from the obvious dalliance I’ve enjoyed, I have no claims, and she’s accepted the claims of no one, though there’s one gentleman in particular who’d like to believe she has.”

Then he added, “Can you imagine mother’s reactions if I did? An American? Bloody hell!”

Jefferson nodded. Lincoln had enjoyed the occasional dalliance himself but never more than a brief tryst; what he called ‘a sporting woman’. He also sensed how lonely Lincoln was and worried about that. Worried he’d go too far with someone, reveal too much of himself, just to feel close to someone.

Eddie was still on his own problems. “Jefferson, I talk of hiding and rejecting the world and its crushing responsibilities, but I only deceive myself. I want no more part of what the world will have of me than our friend does. I can’t hide forever from the entire British Navy. I suspect your friend can’t either.”

Jefferson looked at him suspiciously, warily. He’d intended to leave the island long enough to collect supplies and, most importantly, finances, as Eddie was there now. But Eddie shrugged and shook his head, flicked the ash off the edge of his cigar into the night, said, “I’m sorry. Truly,” and brought his eyes back to Jefferson’s. “We will watch over your friend. Our friend. There is a duty here. You have my word.”

Back inside, Lincoln took up a seat next to the piano; indeed, Miss Jerome seemed most pleased with the attention.

“This is so beautiful,” he told her.

She smiled at that, asked, “Do you have a favorite song?”

He said, “You know, I have always thought ‘Dixie’ a fine tune.”

She looked over to him from the top of her eye sockets, smirking. “Oh, really?”

He nodded and smiled and looked away to his hands in his lap, her gaze just so piecing he felt to look back into them was too intimate.

She turned back to her keyboard, did not take up ‘Dixie’, not yet. “I like your eyes. They’re very reassuring. I’d even describe them as soothing.”

He looked back to her, now that she had looked away, pleased.

She added without turning towards him, “I’d even call them familiar.”

He said nothing. Sat holding his breath.

“So, Mr. Douglas,” she said, “How is it you have come to be here?”

- CH

Back on Project Firebird ...

​... new prose is coming, I swear!

​-CH

​... continuing with the Firebird Project ...

* * *
 
BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …
 
* * *
 
Chapter One
The Invention Of The Banana Daiquiri

“Anesthetized”, Lincoln spoke to himself just above a whisper, hardly audible above the sound of the sea breeze rustling the leaves of the palm trees between which his hammock rocked. The sea breeze and the sound of a gentle surf caressing this smooth beach.

“Anesthetized” he repeated more softly as he rocked towards the nap he craved. Needed, really, because sleep so constantly eluded him. As drowsiness climbed like the rising tide his last conscious thoughts of his friend Eddie became the first strands of dream.

“Humans”, his new friend Eddie had pontificated, “Having been anesthetized by a morphine drip of peace, lurch spasmodic when drenched in withdrawals of war.” Lincoln knew the ‘war’ to which he referred was big war, total war, war unconcerned by a few measly extra thousand deaths here or there or some silly nonsense over ‘collateral damage’ which might involve, oh, maybe several thousand insignificant civilian deaths. Not a scuffle that brought a few dozen families to grief, a few thousand humans scarred physically and emotionally, a scuffle in which society for the most part danced blissfully unawares, numbly forgetful. No. Total war. Annihilation. Entire populations - soldiers, civilians, men, women, children, pets, and houseplants - wiped clean from existence with extreme prejudice. No dancing and no possibility anyone left alive would ever forget.

Lincoln dreamed and heard Sherman say, “War is Hell”, and “The more terrible it is the better because it reminds us why it is worth avoiding in the first place.” And Lincoln believed that. Had no doubts about that. Had grown fond of the scrappy little redhead that time him and Grant and he killed a couple bottles of whiskey up in the residence against Mary Todd’s shrieking objections. Lincoln knew from endless hospital visits, from trips to battlefields after the fact, from the ghastly photographs his son fixated over, he believed he knew how horrible total war was. But Lincoln was still not prepared for what he saw when he went through the fallen Petersburg defenses to Richmond in April 1865.

What Lincoln saw now, now half-dreaming, now half-awake in the hammock by the sea, was a series of bloated, mangled corpses floating in the mud like so much flotsam, bloated corpses with astonished faces if one remained at all, faces with huge, round open mouths and bloated lips, bloated cheeks, bloated eye sockets empty of human life but saturated with human pain, corpse after corpse after corpse in a soup of mud and garnished with pieces of flesh, appendages, arms, legs, bare feet, skulls, torsos. Then once past, the dessert that appeared out of the rubble of Richmond, the living skeletons so happy to see him, to touch the cuff of his pants, the hem of his coat, to let their calloused fingers reverently stroke the top of his mud speckled boots. So happy to see him and crying with gratefulness as though God herself had descended among them. Starving, emaciated creatures who credited him with their freedom.

No, Lincoln had not been ready for that. Not ready at all. “You had been anesthetized by peace”, Eddie had told him, “And now you lurch spasmodic”.

“Anesthetized”, Lincoln repeated, now fully awake once more, unable to sleep through the memories that engulfed him. “Yes, I need more of that”. And sure enough, there was his friend Jefferson holding a mug.

“British grog, sir”?

“I recon so”, Lincoln said, “And will you please stop ‘siring’ me”?

“Yessir,” Jefferson said.

Grog. The British Navy issue of four parts water to one part rum. Eddie had just returned in his yacht, anchored now in the Admiralty Bay, with fresh casks of Jamaican rum. Jefferson had sweetened it with sugar and lime juice. Lincoln took a gulp. “Why,” he commented, “It’s surprisingly cool, Jefferson!”

“Indeed, sir” Jefferson told him, “Prince Edward has returned through Canadian ports with a treasure in blocks of ice, a piece of which now rests in yonder hut.”

Lincoln smiled. Trust ol’ Eddie. Likely there were additional luxuries on board which would emerge later, not the least of which would be the whiskey he craved.

Jefferson leaned closer to him and whispered, “A lady accompanies him, sir.”

Lincoln smiled at that, too. “Anything to eat about?”

“All I have presently are a few bananas,” he said.

“Help me to one,” he asked and held his arm out. Jefferson helped him swing out of the hammock and they walked barefoot to the hut and the table in the shade outside, the sand squishing between their toes. The hut served only as convenience for Lincoln’s daily excursions to the beach. He had a much larger house a fair piece back in the Bequia hills, near an even larger one Eddie had secured for himself. Lincoln sat in a chair at the table, pulled a banana off its bunch and peeled the skin back. “Have you seen Eddie about?”

“The Prince and his lady passed by this way earlier,” he said, “And left rum and the ice I bespoke of. He sends his salutations and invites us to dinner at his abode this evening.”

“He hates it when you call him ‘Prince’, Lincoln reminded him.

“You hate it when I call you ‘sir’.”

“Yes, but he is, after all, a real prince,” Lincoln said, “And he actually gets what he wants.”

Jefferson said, “Yessir.”

Lincoln took a nibble from the banana, then another gulp of the grog. The flavors of both mingled over his tongue. He had a thought. He sipped the grog again; its coolness had already begun to wane in the warm Caribbean air. “How much ice did Eddie leave us?” he asked.

“Not a lot,” he said, “And it will melt quickly.”

“We shouldn’t let it go to waste then, should we?”

“No, sir, we should not.”

Lincoln drained the grog. “Tell you what – take this mug, get one for yourself, and chip off enough ice to fill each about three-quarters full, okay?”

Jefferson’s eyes twinkled. “Okay, sir.” He loved it when Lincoln got ideas. He disappeared into the hut, Lincoln heard the distinctive sounds of metal whacking against frozen water, then emerged again with both mugs and placed them before Lincoln. “Back with the rest,” he said and returned to the hut. Lincoln broke the rest of the banana in half, then crumpled each half into chunks and dropped them onto the ice in both mugs. Jefferson returned with limes, a bag of sugar, and a carafe of rum. He seemed to know what Lincoln had in mind. He halved, then quartered each lime. Lincoln shook out sugar over the banana in each mug, then squeezed the lime quarters into them. Finally he poured rum over it all and swiftly stirred both with a spoon.

They sipped and smiles broke out across both faces. “Oh, my!” Jefferson said as Lincoln allowed himself a sense of satisfaction, the deep lines of his face which emerged with each troubled dream, softening a piece.

“We’ll have to share this with Eddie before all the ice melts,” Lincoln said, thought a moment and added, “I wonder if he thought to bring Strawberries?”

“I shall certainly make inquires, sir.”

Both men happily drank again. Lincoln said, causing Jefferson to look away because he was always uncomfortable when Lincoln brought up past associations, “I should send this recipe to Seward.”

Contact in any way, shape, or form with his friend, and conspirator, Secretary of State William Seward, was forbidden.

​- CH

* * *
 
This past Spring I posted a series of photo art works derived from a Shelby car show, noting that automotive art, while being something that I truly enjoy and relate to, has not seemed terribly popular. But I wanted to do it anyway. More recently, I was approached by a good friend on something of a commission, and BTW commissions for artists are like mana from heaven. And guess what the request is for. Yep. Automotive art.

Funny how that goes.
 
So for the next couple weeks I’ll be posting some of the works produced for that commission. They will run the gamut between full on abstract and near faithful realism (note the ‘near’ qualification) and hopefully demonstrate the range of expression possible from what I believe is the most underestimated art form of all: The Automobile.
 
- CH

Full title of this work is actually ‘Woman In A Blue Dress Lounging On A Red Leather Couch’.
So it’s not that I’ve been lazy of late – it’s been more than 10 days since I posted and that one included no prose (neither does this one) – it’s more like a deep breath. An essential stretch of laziness. Between the photo art, the art projects, the prose and now the digital art, then add life onto it, that lovely creative mellow was turning into a knock down race from thing to thing to thing and curses to anyone or anything getting in the way.
 
That’s not the way I want things done, sir.
 
So I’ve spent the past few days deliberately NOT chasing self-imposed deadlines if something else needed my attention, or if I just didn’t feel like it. We lost one of our beloved puppies about a month ago – not sure how much that contributed to my mood. That one’s been a tough loss to take.
 
If it matters, during this stretch I finished a major photo art project, which I’ll get into shortly, and initiated a new prose initiative, also soon to meet the light of day. So stuff is coming. Coming as I get around to it. As it happens, laziness now and then is part of the process.
 
- CH

... brainstorms. Yeah, yeah, I know!

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BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

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… previous verses …
Scheduled
Sleep Mode

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Lavender Heavens

Everybody – what everybody there was, anyhow – turned out for the fourth landing as it was likely to be interesting.

Corporal Max, now General Max due to the way it’d all shaken out, was right there at the front of the observation line. He was wearing his heavy, light blue environmental suit with recirculating oxygen and his visor was on the polarized telephoto setting as he scanned the lavender heavens for the oncoming spacecraft. The rest of the five-member council was right there with him, similarly attired. All of them had been on that first vidette. All of them had been non-coms. And all of them were now generals.

That first vidette had followed decades after probes identified the planet as a New Earth with a nearly identical atmosphere, mass, gravity, and magnetosphere. The planet was 28 light years from earth; each flight would take 63 years to arrive. The vidette contained 100 rangers in stasis, a few robots with the materials to construct robot printers and incubators, plus a small robot lander that would construct a proper landing field for the larger ship. It successfully entered orbit around the planet, then begin waking the rangers who would direct the initial operations, preparing the world for the huge colony vessels to follow at yearly intervals.

Eighty-two of those 100 rangers had died in stasis. Only two of the surviving 18 were officers, neither of them over the rank of captain. So far as they could tell, within each stasis tube various feeding and medical ports and conduits had become detached from their occupants during flight. A message was sent back to Earth to that effect, but it would take 30 years before it arrived, and as the vidette had been 63 years in flight, every one of the half dozen supply and colony ships to follow at yearly intervals had already launched with the same stasis tube design flaw.

A proper colony site was identified, the robot lander established a landing field, the vidette successfully landed. Infrastructure operations were mostly automated, so the few survivors were still able to direct the robots accordingly; 18 survivors at first, then 17, then 16, then 15 and so on, because the planet was covered by an unexpected new bacterial life humans had no immunity from. Plus, turned out this sun, a slightly different class from Earth’s, produced a heretofore unknown harmful radiation not filtered out by the planet’s magnetosphere. There were 12 survivors left by the time the supply ship arrived, by which point they’d learned to wear environmental suits and filter the atmosphere.

Each spacecraft was designed to be completely disassembled. The raw materials for the new colony, including housing, were taken from the ships themselves. The spidery robots, more and more of them, successfully accomplished the task, disassembling each before the next arrived, reassembling some of it as housing and stacking the rest of it as raw materials for the 3D factories and robot printers.

The first colony ship arrived with 1,000 settlers, mostly medical personnel and technicians. Eight-hundred-and-twelve of those settlers arrived as corpses.

The second colony ship arrived with another 1,000, mostly agronomists and engineers. Six-hundred-and-ninety-three were dead.

The third ship landed with 1,000 public specialists (i.e. politicians and civil servants), educators, and planetary surveyors. Nine-hundred-and-two dead bodies were systematically loaded into the newly built crematoriums.

After spying the fourth ship descending though the sky, General Max turned and looked back over his shoulder at the colony. The landing field was on a slight rise, so he could see the entirety of the colony stretched out across the teal plain; housing for the 4,000-plus humans the robots were programmed to provide for, factories, greenhouses, laboratories, a hospital, a civic center with classrooms and a theater. Also an outdoor amphitheater, parks and athletic fields that had never been used. In the two years since their arrival, the medical specialists had never figured a way to vaccinate against the planet’s harmful bacteria, so every structure had to be sealed tight and the air recycled with negative pressure. Nobody got to play outside without a heavy environmental suit. The agronomists had yet to grow a crop under the influence of the harmful radiation, which the researchers had not devised a method of blocking. All the livestock and poultry, meant as breeding stock, had died. Everybody lived on an algae-mush, which everyone hated but was the only viable food source they could come up with. Max looked over the factories populated mostly by robots, the 4,000-plus houses, less than 600 of which were occupied, and the empty parks and fields; a ghost town spread over a greenish-blue land under a lavender sky.

He watched the new spacecraft, it’s bright white thrusters, slow itself and float onto the landing field. He wondered how many of its 1,000 colonists were still alive. He felt a sense of hope, even expectation, not so much for the survival rate as he had no illusions about that. These were the artisans, the artists, and the writers; the tinkerers, the inventers, the dreamers, and the imaginers. And he knew, just knew, however many of them there actually were, what they would say about this world would ultimately be what created it.

- CH

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BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

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... previous verse ...
The Agendas

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Blessings Of The Circuit Rider
 
The worst part at first wasn’t that it made his ass hurt, it’s that it made him look like he was a mortician. Later on, of course, the ass hurting rose to prominence, especially at first. Though he knew, like the stableman told him, his ass would get used to the wider girth of the new horse and the mortician thing would again be the paramount complaint. His old horse was smaller in both width and height, and she was a pleasant light brown and white, and no one could see him upon her and mistake him for anything other than the circuit preacher he was. But this new one was jet black as a collapsed coal mine, tall and broad and looked all the part of a funeral horse. “I can’t ride this,” he told the stableman. “People will think I’m coming to town to bury them alive in the wrath of god.”

“It’ll be fine,” the weary stableman told him. “He’s a mature mount, been rode hard, and ain’t got much buck left in him. But he’s fit and strong and not so fragile as your last one. He’ll be a slow and gentle ride you can rely on. Besides,” he added, “Just ain’t got nothing else that’ll see you to the next town.”

Well, he actually had a little more buck in him than the stableman gave him credit for, and the preacher could see right off that he jerked a little more and carried himself with a bit more tension. He could see the effect the horse had not half-an-hour down the trail when he met two riders, looked like farm hands, coming the other way. When he rode the old horse, people would meet him and smile and take on a friendly air. But the farm hands took one look at him on his big black horse and he in his preacher-man’s suit and clammed right up, went ridged and stopped talking. He could almost hear them say, ‘Cheese it! It’s the Man!’ And as they passed one of them actually solemnly said, “Blessings to you, Father.” Father?! He’d never been called ‘Father’ on the trail. How, he thought, could he preach the gentle blessings of Jesus Christ when he looked like the Angel Of Death?

But he admitted, the big black horse availed himself well, seemed to calm and smooth his gait when he saw the travelers coming, held his head up high. He patted the horse’s neck when the men had passed. Maybe they just had to get used to each other, he thought. Maybe he wasn’t giving the big horse a chance.

Early afternoon that first day he came around a bend and saw the wagon he’d been hearing the squeaking wheels of for a piece. It was being pulled by mule, he saw, and driven by a lone woman, the wagon itself covered by a tarp. The big black horse wasn’t moving fast, but it was moving faster than the wagon and he was overhauling it quickly. The woman turned when he heard the hoof beats behind her. Her face was mature and weathered, and her head was covered by a scarf. He waved to her in hello, but she scrunched her head around and seemed to pull it lower between her shoulders. Shoot, he thought, then took his hat off, thinking he might look a little more welcoming as he passed. “Hello, friend,” he called as he pulled even with her and slowed.

She looked up at him, guarded, and nodded. “Howdy.”

He smiled broadly, took on the most pleasant demeaner he could, hoping desperately not to seem so grim. “It’s a fine, lovely day the Lord has given us.”

She shrugged. “You say so.”

“Do you have far to go, ma’am? Do you have family waiting?”

She looked at him. “Hey, you’re that preacher.”

“That’s right,” he told her. “I just read services back in town. Probably same one you’re coming from.”

She looked straight ahead again. “How’d that work out for you?”

“Well,” he said, “I had to put my horse down whilst I was there, a sweet little thing I was much attached to. Me and this big fella here are just getting acquainted.”

She asked, “That mean more to you than the services you read?”

He hadn’t prioritized it before, but, yeah, it did. He said finally, “Well, you know ma’am, you read a lot more services than find horses that will carry you well.”

They rode in silence a bit. He asked her, “You do OK in town this trip.”

She chortled.

“Not so well, then. If you don’t mind me saying, I thought you seemed a little down.”

She reached back behind her, grabbed the corner of the tarp, and whipped it aside. The coffin it’d been covering gleamed in the sunlight.

He said, “Oh, my.”

She said, “You lost a horse. I lost my son.”

“My goodness, what happened?”

“They hung him.”

It hit him then; that’d be the hanging that had brought so many into town and provided him so many churchgoers to swell the collection plate.

She said, “I guess ain’t right to call him my son; I raised him after his mom died when he was just three. But he felt like a son to me.”

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, and he was.

She whipped the tarp back over. “Kid didn’t never have no chance. Dad ran off before he was born. Mom died, Me and Pa took him in, but shoot, we’d already raised five of our own and he got everything handed down. We’re getting’ on in years. We couldn’t give him much, can barely keep the farm goin’ anymore. We did what we could, but he was always angry. Angry, angry child. He started acting out early. Thiefin, lyin’, cheatin, didn’t want to work for nobody, felt he was owed.

“And, Preacher, he likely was. Lord’s got to be takin’ better care of people.”

She was making a statement, a judgement. More often as not, people would ask why the lord let bad things happen, asking questions; why? She wasn’t. She was drawing a firm line in the sand. He understood the attitude.

He said after a long pause, “I know it seems so.” Then, “May I ride with you a spell; perhaps say a little verse?”

She shook her head. “I believe I’d enjoy this quiet ride to myself, thanks anyway.”

He tipped his hat, “Peace be with you then,” and let the big black horse trot past her, even prance a little. Oh, here was something the old, little horse couldn’t do, he thought, and that was put a quick distance between himself and anything he’d rather be away from. The blessing of being a circuit rider; never being caught next to something he didn’t want to be.

But boy oh boy, his ass hurt.

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

... previous verses ...

Scheduled

​* * *

Sleep Mode

For that brief spurt of time she was not only awake, she was aware of being awake.

That she was awake was not at all a surprise. The computers woke each traveler in their pod on average a couple times a day. It was necessary to keep the brain functional; long-term stasis sleep could shut a brain down permanently, and the brain could begin to sustain damage after only a few days. So two to three times a day each traveler had their brain ‘tickled’ via computer feeds. Each ‘tickle’ had to be specific to each traveler, matching their particular EEG frequencies across all five (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) bands.

But the idea was to just tickle it – just nudge it enough to start the synopses firing and then dial it all back into stasis before the brain reached consciousness. If stasis was not restored in time (and it was assumed that might happen at some point during the decades in space, if not regularly) the computer would instantly recognize the condition and 1) initiate an accelerated stasis protocol if that protocol were not already engaged, and 2) inject the traveler with a powerful sedative intended to both induce unconsciousness and deaden the pain receptors (coming out of stasis without pain killers having been compared to the world’s worst hangover times ten). Each pod came with one more, passive failsafe: they were designed with total sensory deprivation. No sight, no sound, weightless and floating in body-temperature slime dulling the sense of touch. Theoretically it would be no different that emerging from REM sleep, coming out of a dream but not realizing it, and dropping right back into a deep slumber, stasis re-established, the voyage of over 1,000 space colonists silently continuing at half the speed of light.

Only she did realize it. She actually thought, ‘wait a minute, I’m awake.’ She was thinking about her dog, who needed a bath, and was actually creating a to-do list to that effect, which she realized she couldn’t do if she were in stasis. And then she actually tried to cry out, “Ouch! Holy crap!”

Two things had gotten past the designers.

First, the same drugs intended to deaden the pain receptors actually burned like hell when injected, thus spiking the brain’s awareness of consciousness.

Second, in part to keep the traveler weightless, the arms were not restrained. So what she did when the searing pain from the drugs began, and what the individuals in both pods on either side of her had already done, as dozens of others had already done, as hundreds more would do in the years ahead, was grope across her body, grab absentmindedly at what was hurting in her other arm, and succeed in yanking out a number of tubes, ports and catheters used by the pod to supply her with critical drugs and nutrients that would have sustained her during the voyage.

She fought to stay awake now, but of course the pod would drag her back to stasis, brain implants continuing to bind them together. In time it would notice as her EEG frequencies began to weaken. When they stopped altogether, it would flood itself with a gas designed to preserve the body within.

Then it would put itself into sleep mode.

- CH