The Phoenix

The little boy had gone to the old story teller on the hill again. He loved the stories the old man had to say. Sometimes he would tell of wars fought, sometimes he would speak of the adventures of the Greeks.

But, the boy’s favourite story was the one about the Phoenix

The Phoenix was a bird of splendid beauty, and it was also magical. It had the power to heal people with its tears. It could transport you easily across time and space. The phoenix was the bird of the nobles and the aristocrats. People were in awe of the bird. It’s most important trait was that it was immortal and would burn in a bright flame when the time for it’s death came; and be reborn from the ashes.

Thus, spoke the old man of the Phoenix.

Here below, I have constructed a diorama of what the boy thought the story actually meant. It is the boy’s opinion that the Phoenix teaches us something. It burns up in flame, but always rises from it’s ashes. Maybe the burning is synonymous with the hardships life has thrown at us and the rising from the ashes in nothing but our strength egging us on to master the difficulties. Perhaps what the phoenix means is “never give up, no matter what happens”.

I liked what the boy said. And you, dear reader?  

The Bilge Master

On the Edge of a Rainbow

There was once a girl. She was in her teens. She liked to draw. She also liked graffiti a lot. She always had doodles in her mind and in her notebook. She’d draw Disney characters or comic book characters. Sometimes she would draw herself, either standing or sitting, surrounded by graffiti lettering.

The girl lived in a small town on the outskirts of New Jersey. The town boasted a library, a medicine shop, a small cafe and a bookstore. The girl used to go to the local community school there. Whenever she got a chance, she would graffiti in her school. She used felt tip markers to doodle, so they were removable. The entire building was her canvas, and bit by bit, her art got better and better.

She started to move out of the school building and paint on the walls of the bookstore. She would draw Hemingway, or a scene from a Batman comic or she would use bright colors to initial the walls.

Our artist had soon painted the entire town with some graffiti or the other. Her drawings ranged from lettering, to pictures of the President and scenes from movies were also thrown in for good measure.

In this way, the teenaged girl passed out of high school and went on to study art in Chicago. Seven years passed. Four years of college and three years at an art gallery. She didn’t think of going back. Until one day, her father sent her an email saying that her mother had fallen sick. She took the first train out.

Upon seeing her, her mother was overwhelmed and insisted on talking with her about her new life and how college was. Slowly bit by bit and brick by brick, her mother got better.

Meanwhile, the girl carried on doodling in an exercise book. One day she went out. She went to the bookstore. On her way out, she saw the graffiti she had painted still on the wall she had painted it on. It seemed to have been cared for. It had not faded or been blemished. It had lasted seven years.

The girl felt immensely happy that the town had kept these graffiti decoration she had drawn so well. She also felt at home again in her little town. It was like a trip down memory lane. She was the girl standing on the edge of the rainbow once again; just as she had drawn herself seven years ago.

The Bilge Master

Sandstorm

It was huge. Well over ninety feet in height and spinning around it’s own axis like a vehement top. The noise it made could be heard across two cities. In the center of this wind was a man.

The man had been swept up, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and was now at the exact center of the sandstorm. He was being lashed about left and right. He had slowly made his way, spiralling with the wind to the center. Now that he was here, where the circles originated from, it was agony.

His muscles screamed in pain and it was quite obvious that his left arm was broken.  He looked up, at the light at the top of the wind and he prayed he would get out of this alive.

They had been going for miles now. He could see a few trees and sometimes a building or two through the swirling sand. The strange thing was that this sandstorm was travelling on the asphalt of a highway and yet was made of sand.

The man closed his eyes and he went on praying. He could not open his mouth in prayer because the sand would get into it and suffocate him. So he had to resort to praying with his mind. He recited the verses of the Koran he had been taught as a child. He remembered what his guru had told him. He could change any situation for the worse or for the good. He had not understood the words of the guru at the time.

As he prayed, he asked for power. He asked for the ability to regain control or the strength to get out of the sandstorm. He saw a white light in his mind’s eye. He concentrated on it. He invited it in and he let it fill him.

The man woke up. His mother had just opened the curtains and his room was flooded with white light. The man shook his head to clear the sleep away.

“Everything okay son?” asked his mother.

“Just a bad dream mother”, he replied.

The man walked out into the rising sun. It was a brand new day. A day that demanded to be enjoyed.

The man began to laugh. He had not laughed in a long time. It felt amazing.

The Bilge Master

Along Came a Spider

Inspired from Neil Gaiman’s novel “Anansi Boys”

In the era of animals, before the homo sapiens had come to exist; there existed a spider. This spider was large and black, and used to make the most geometrically accurate webs. Legend has it that the webs he spun could even capture mammoths and dinosaurs. But, nobody knew when the spider spun his webs. Nobody saw the spider in person. All they did see was the effect; viz. the webs he spun.

The animals realised they could do nothing about the spider and so they began to tell stories of the spider around their dens and their lakes and trees. The legend of the spider grew, almost like a web. 

Time passed. Nobody saw the spider, yet the webs showed up.

Then came the era of man. The discovery of fire. The wheel’s construction. The webs that the spider had spun seemed to have vanished. The men did not fear the spider. They were not even aware of its existence because they did not understand the language of the birds and the beasts. To them, the animals were food. It was not necessary to talk to them. Had they listened, perhaps they would also be able to appreciate the legend of the spider.

The humans evolved. They started to compile histories. In those histories, webs were mentioned. Fossils of animals that had been trapped in the webs surfaced. A group of humans calling themselves archaeologists and chemists studied these webs. The webs were strong, spun like gossamer and able to withstand pressure.

And, just like that our spider was back. People wrote poems about spiders. They wrote about a young group of boys going into a forest and meeting spiders. People also introduced giant spiders, who cocooned their enemies and hung them up as bait. Stories of mutations from spider bites surfaced.

In the coming era, the archaeologists and chemists were called programmers. They connected and interconnected large devices called computers. They created something called the World Wide Web.

And so, at night when the children want to hear a story, often their parents look it up on this World Wide Web.

At the centre of this web, sits a large spider

The Bilge Master

Haunted

The little boy walked towards the figure he saw in the distance. The five foot ten man inside whom he resided seemed afraid of the figure and kept glancing over his shoulder at more of these strange figures which had suddenly appeared all around him.

The man closed his eyes. He saw a large figure, waggling a finger at him and shouting something. He cringed. The figure wouldn’t stop shouting. He tried to attack the figure. But he was overpowered and pinned to a bed.

The little boy was confused. His host wasn’t listening to him. They could not communicate. He felt the host’s pain. He wanted to help but he could not.

Behind the curtain of his eyes, the five foot ten man shuddered and cowered. Now there was another figure in the room, also indiscernible; but shorter than the figure that had pinned him down. 

The man screamed “Don’t shout at me”.

Over and over, he screamed the same thing.

Suddenly, the figure pinning him down was whispering. A few seconds later he was made to lie down and told to close his eyes. 

The large figure spoke to him softly, but once again the words were indiscernible.

The little boy wished his host would listen. He felt chained. Wanting to help, but not being allowed to.

Meanwhile in the real world, the one of wakefulness; the man walks on towards the horizon. He sees indiscernible shapes to his left, his right and his front and rear. They form a sort of wall and cordon him in.

Internally, the boy screams. The man merely opens his mouth. No words come out.

The Bilge Master