That’s the title of my contribution to The Sync Book (see pic in the right column), so it was very cool to find this image at Bill in Exile on Aug 9, the day after the Sync meet up on the Holy Mountain on 8/8/11.
The Sync Book is a collection of stories by 26 synchromystic bloggers, artists and authors, edited by Alan Abbadessa-Green, who blogs from New Jerusalem (NYC) at Look at All the Happy Creatures. It includes contributions from some heavy hitters in the genre and I feel really honored to have been invited to contribute.
The gospel of erotic salvation certainly comes from out of left field, so pretty perfect that I played left field in Little League. Actually, a baseball broke my nose out there... should learn to stop day dreaming.
Due to a series of fortunate events, Alan and Melissa were in Seattle for a wedding this summer, and they brought the first proof of the book with them. Their visit was the catalyst for a meet up at a rustic cabin on the Skagit River, in the foothills of Mt. Baker, or the Holy Mountain. The gathering drew from Boise, Seattle, Olympia, San Francisco, and it was my first chance to “hobnob with my fellow wizards” so to speak.
All I can say is that it was mind blowing. I dunno, I’m still processing, but it felt like family.
The Skagit (Egyptians) are either of two tribes of the Lushootseed Native American people living in the state of Washington, the Upper Skagit (Upper Nile) and the Lower Skagit (Lower Nile). They speak a subdialect of the Northern dialect of Lushootseed (Alexandria), which is part of the Salishan family. The Skagit River, Skagit Bay, and Skagit County all derive their names from the Skagit people (The People).The People. 1972. Starring William Shatner.
I have something brewing about who and what 'The People' really are that may evolve into a blog post, but until then, refresh yourselves with Mr. Knowles' Astrognostic: Trapped Here on this Alien World and The Martian Chronicles, which really just gives it all away.
5 comments:
"All I can say is that it was mind blowing. I dunno, I’m still processing, but it felt like family."
"Family" was the word I kept coming back to as well. Over the few days I heard that word used by many other attendees. It was very special and I am so glad that I got to meet all of you off line. I am honored to be counted among this fine family of ours.
Way cool! Congrats to you, and I'll have to check out the book.
"The People" was a made-for-television movie based on a set of short science fiction stories that Zenna Henderson (a schoolteacher, science fiction writer, and a Mormon, like her contemporary science fiction writer, Ted Sturgeon) wrote in the 1960s and 1970s, about alien humans with divinely-granted psionic powers, who were refugees on Earth when their own planet was destroyed; their ship came apart in a Columbia-like disaster over the American southwest, scattering the survivors in life-pods across the area. Henderson was inspired by descriptions from that time of a meteorite that was seen to shoot across southwest skies, breaking up and shooting off distinctive smaller balls of flame in all directions.
Some of the tropes that you find in the works of Orson Scott Card and Stephanie Meyer are reflected in gentler, much less toxic form in Henderson's work; she was a truly gentle soul and I credit the positive influence of her stories for keeping me from committing suicide as a teenager.
Specifically, the framing sequence in one of her books collecting her shorter stories, where a character who is suicidal is stopped by one of the People, who blandly describes the misery of dying, broken and in pain, at the bottom of a too-short jump into a canyon, with possibly an impalement or two from the scrub trees below, and then a sharp rebuke when the person tries to run into traffic: "Don't you DARE draft someone else into being your executioner."
That made enough of an impression on me that I realized that I could not hurt the handful of people I knew DID care for me deeply, by such a selfish action.
Hi Steve, thanks for the comment. A curious sync with the recent meteor and asteroid signs in the sky.
Oh yea, I had a dream a few nights ago about meeting a guy named Stephen at a club or bar or something.
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