Occasionally, I have issues with sleeping. Tonight is one of those nights.
I typed some notes I made recently into Shadows and Stars... earlier this evening, watched a little TV, and then tried to get to sleep around 2:00 with no success. So I played a video game until just now and I will try to sleep.
Shadows and Stars… is gradually taking shape. I had a couple of ideas for it while watching TV earlier. Some ideas about society and life as a whole seem to be taking shape as the novel progresses. I suppose it’s because I am thinking along different lines, because Shadows and Stars… involves an alien world (not like the “grays” though; more like Earth people with a few differences) and I have to think about what an alien society would be like. I want to make it different enough to be intriguing, but yet similar enough that readers can easily see the comparisons and contrasts with our world. The aliens also have to have an alien perspective on the universe and on life in general, so I am trying to develop some radical breaks with the way our society views things. I am starting to come to some realizations about our own world, things that we take for granted, but which might seem bizarre to an alien. As part of this approach, I am developing characters with radically different thinking and viewpoints than we have or admit to having on Earth. As an example, one of the alien characters is a reclusive monk named Sato, who lives alone in the deep forest. When two of the main characters come across his cabin in the forest, the main character, the protagonist, Daryn, notices several parchment scrolls of Sato’s meditations lying around. Sato allows Daryn to read part of one. Following are Sato’s observations. I may add more later. Note that Sato calls himself “mad”. He uses this sarcastically and ironically, because it is what the supposedly civilized people of his world call him, because he doesn’t fit in to their society. In reality, he is very astute, but no one recognizes this.
I came up with these in a variety of ways. Some are my own observations and conclusions. Some are derivative of philosophical principles, quotes, or statements or other stuff (for lack of a better term). I tried to make them mystical sounding and somewhat confusing, like something you would expect an alien recluse/philosopher to say when he is penning his thoughts in his primitive, remote cabin in the woods in the dark of night. Remember: I tried to write these from an alien perspective and these are only a few of his “musings”.
Let me know what you think.
The Musings of Sato the Mad
- Lies are truths wrapped in shadows; truths are lies drenched in sunlight.
- The beast that eats me is evil, but I am evil to the beast I eat.
- A man believes not what he needs to believe, but what he desires to be true.
- More gods dance in the night than roam in the daylight.
- As with man, there are fewer gods on mountaintops than in valleys.
- Just as corpses are nectar to maggots, so are lies to despots.
- All hearts are red.
- Does a lizard need to remember yesterday?
- The gods I trust loiter beyond the trees pelting me with flies and hornets.
- Perhaps there was a day when the sun did not rise, but I do not remember it.
- Spirits of the dead and candleflames of the past loiter with the gods beyond the trees.
- Mud gives us something from which to raise ourselves.
- The spiritual man is a warrior, and, in the city, like a warrior, he is too engaged in battling his enemies to engage in thought.
- Unlike man, insects do not kill those of their own species for pleasure.
- Healthy animals kill only out of need.
- To a dying man, diamonds are only pretty stones.
- Some insects live twenty years underground as grubworms, before emerging into the daylight as flies only to live just long enough to spawn then die. Men think of this as the mature stage in the life of the fly, but to the fly is it not death? His life has been underground. Perhaps a man’s life is only the death stage of his existence and his actual life, much longer, sadly forgotten, was before birth. Many would like to believe this is the grub stage of our existence and we will be flies in the next.
- If I am reborn into another life, will that life be in the future? Could it be in the past? Could I be my own ancestor? If I am reborn into the future, I could be my own descendant. Could I be reborn as someone in the present on the other side of this world whom I will never meet? Perhaps I have already been reborn as someone I met yesterday or whom I will meet tomorrow. Perhaps I will be reborn as a brother sperm who never made it to my mother’s egg.
- Wicked, wicked Sato, whose thoughts flow like a raging river through the kingdoms of past, present, and future to swirl through the ocean’s depths to envelop the monsters of the soul!
- To rule nations, ply the leaders’ minds with the wine of lies they desire.
Logan Rickover, owner of a hardware store in a small town in Kentucky, has lucid dreams of life as an astronaut that intrude upon his life at any moment. Which of his lives is real? The quiet paradise of Danville or the terrifying jungle world of Stheno D?
I did some writing at Olive Garden tonight after having supper. I just now finished typing it into Shadows and Stars Lying down. It was only about five hundred words, but the idea for it has been bugging me for the past several days.
I didn’t make any substantial progress with the novel last night. I did manage to type up about a thousand words. I have found that once I get into my creative zone (which wasn’t last night), I really don’t want to stop writing down new ideas and plot lines.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 