This is the writing blog of Alex Jackson. Fragmental is a geological term for pieces of rock found where they shouldn't usually be found. They are incomplete and do not blend in with the typical formations. These writing fragments are just that.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Sunday Morning (A Waffle Recipe)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup water
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons apple sauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Using a large spoon mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the milk and water. Stir until the mixture has a creamy consistency. Separate the egg whites. Add the yolks and the apple sauce to the mixture. Mix well. Whisk the egg yolks until they are stiff. Fold them into the rest of the mixture.
Heat the waffle iron until it sizzles as you coat it with a small amount of butter. This will prevent the waffle from sticking. Pour the waffle mix into the waffle iron until it is about 3/4 full. Cook until golden brown. This mix should produce 4-5 waffles 8" in diameter.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Fortune Hunter
Why won't my fortune ever be found?
I've looked up high and low,
I've looked around and round.
So where's my million dollars?
Why can't it ever be found?
It's not on top of mountains,
or deep beneath the ground.
Don't think the shadow's empty,
that it's just an empty shell.
It is a clever decoy,
To pull us into hell.
Hey where's my million dollars?
I've looked for years and years.
I've sacrificed and given,
up all that I hold dear.
I want my million dollars.
I want my fortune to be found.
To prove my faith's not empty,
As empty as my fears.
Don't think the shadow's empty,
or that it's just a shell.
It is a lovely decoy,
luring us beautifully to hell.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
A Trick of the Light
He chewed the frost as it formed in his itchy hand-knit wool scarf then blew long puffs of steaming breath into the winter and pretended to be a dragon in a red pom-pom toque. Eventually, inevitably the relentless cold insinuated itself into his thick and clumsy mitts and boots. One inch of space age foam and rubberized plastic could never stop the primitive elements. Melvin couldn't tell if the tingling he felt was frostbite or the feeling he always got from being perfectly alone in the winter stillness. When finger and toe wiggling no longer held back the creeping chill he scooped a handful of clean snow into his mouth and charged like an awkwardly armored knight for the trailer's warmly lit windows. By the time he reached the door he'd put the entire incident out of his mind.
He remembered five years later, sitting on the edge of his bed in the midnight depths of winter. The furnace, an old fuel-oil burning model, chuffed and roared in the hallway breathing comfort and warmth into the small home. Despite familiar sounds and surroundings Melvin could not help but feel confused and more than a little concerned. The orange light had returned.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Lyndsay Markham
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Legends of Little and Big Indian Lake
Every spring snow-melt and rain water would overwhelm the landscape and threaten rail lines and nearby mining claims. So one year the provincial government sent a man in a canoe to find the cause of the flooding. Beavers were suspected. He found the ancient dam and with government issued explosives blew a wide gap in the line which prevented miners and railway men from coming to detonate the entire structure. The annual flood drained like a punctured abscess into Big Indian Lake, then further into the watershed and eventually north to Hudson's Bay. An extra bounty was placed on the beavers and they too quickly disappeared .
The government man was curious about what lay beyond the dam and returned with his canoe the next spring. Guiding it through the gap he made in the dam the year before he found himself in a different land. Behind him lay swamps and bogs full of stink, sucking mud and insects, black spruce and jack pine. Here beyond the dam the air was suddenly clean. Noble white and red pine trees stood sentinel on sheer granite and basalt cliffs etched and decorated by time and hardy colourful lichens. The gloomy grey sky parted and sunlight fell like a benediction to kiss the cool water dripping from his pale birch paddle, and sparkle like gold on the pure clear lake.
He paddled slowly that first day, hugging the shore as it ran in a straight line gradually north-east, then due south, before turning sharply back to the west. With no single outlet to the triangular body of water, drainage occurred through a myriad of cracks in the stone that at some points towered 100 feet over his head. The lowest point he observed was still ten feet above the waterline. With the sun sinking toward the western horizon he found a stone shelf large enough to land on, hidden behind a cracked basaltic outcropping. He pulled his canoe out of the water and discovered the shelf led deeper into a fissure formed centuries ago when the rock face spalled away from the ancient, eroded mountain.
In the fading light he made his camp near the water's edge. He had no wood for a fire so made do with dry rations and warm blankets. He slept there while the lake lay in a perfect calm reflecting every star. As the full moon rose it lit the scene like a silvery noon day sun. Eerie, haunting loon calls penetrated the government man's sleep and gave him strange twisting dreams. When the sun finally climbed out of the east the white man was fully awake and breaking camp.
Before leaving he couldn't resist the temptation to further investigate the giant crack in the stone. Curiousity turned his feet up the smooth slightly sloping pathway framed by sheer rock walls to his right and left. Open to the sky above the natural alcove suddenly widened then ended abruptly. Images were carved and drawn on the rockface in front of him. Turning in a slow circle he realized complicated designs and signs, animal shapes, human and supernatural figures and surrounded him. The rising sun's light slowly revealed more and more images until he could see the rock faces were covered in pigment and scratches almost the entire length and height.
Excited now the government man took a notebook from his pack and began to sketch the sacred drawings. Long hours passed. He forgot to eat. The pages of his notebook filled with the pictures on the hidden cliffs. He copied everything he could find.
At the end of the day, in the dying light he saw a final image near where he'd slept the night before. It was ugly and crudely drawn. A large triangle with a smaller circle occluding the westernmost corner was surrounded by different figures. Representations of trees and what looked like beavers with human legs were drawn around the circle. Behind them were small crouching human figures circled in red.
He felt a shiver across his shoulders and dismissed it as the rising evening breeze. Ravens swooped and croaked above his head. He was distracted by their flight and looked away for a moment, watching them play. The wind became decidedly stronger. It carried a smell like the carcass of a bear or skunk long in the sun.
Something, a movement, or a sound made him turn back to the last drawing. A new and disturbing figure filled the odd triangle shape. The government man could have sworn it was not there at first, but now that he saw it, it seemed to move and grow and reach out for him. It was a large and grotesque man covered in long red hair, with red eyes, and a red dripping mouth. The red outline of its form was filled in with blue. It lay on its back with outstretched arms like a drowning victim but it seemed to shimmer and rise from the rock face.
Blaming hunger and poor light for this vision he drank water from his canteen and had a snack of deer jerky before turning to the last blank page in his journal. As he copied the final rock painting, the insistent breeze became an angry wind and soon water was spraying up against his legs while waves worried and pounded his canoe.
Three days later an Abitibi survey crew set up camp at the north-east corner of the lake and made a gruesome discovery at the cliff base. A man's body lay face down in a canoe, dead from an apparent bear attack. The foreman surmised the man had escaped back to the canoe only to die of his injuries, then drifted away with the current. Holding their noses against the corpse's pungent sticky smell and brushing away horseflies they found a blood-soaked notebook locked in the man's hands but when they tried to open it the blood had glued the pages together. The pages tore and cracked and the book was unreadable.
With much effort and cursing the survey crew packed the body and the canoe back to the nearest rail stop. The local RCMP detachment collected the body, had it identified, and shipped it back east to his widow. A month later all development south of the rail-line and the new highway running parallel to it ceased. The area, including Little and Big Indian Lake was to be the newest provincial park, natural in perpetuity. In fact the only ways in or out are still on foot through bog or swamp, or a single lane of ministry maintained, washout prone, gravel road.
Friday, August 26, 2011
We Was Mountains
Monday, August 1, 2011
Robert and Dick
Dick: "Robert! Design me a house!"
Robert: "Hello, Dick. How are you today."
Dick: "Fine Robert, just fine...And yourself?"
Robert: "I am doing quite well as a matter of fact. I even started working on..."
Dick: Interrupting, "Good, good. I've got something else for you to do."
Robert: "A house yes, I got the memo. Listen Dick, you've hired a number of skilled interns who are drooling for a chance to design anything."
Dick: "I want you to do it."
Robert: "Dick, old man, you know very well I don't do houses anymore. I've moved on to bigger and better."
Dick: "Oh, is this beneath you?"
Robert: "Yes, quite frankly."
Dick: "I'm your boss!"
Robert: "Partner."
Dick: "Senior partner Robert and I want you on this project."
Robert: "Why?"
Dick: "It's a contest."
Robert: "Oh really. A design competition? For a house? Dick, seriously. You brought a number of new interns that us senior partners, some more senior than others, are tripping over because they haven't enough to do."
Dick: "It is a very important competition. From the government. for a house, that can generate its own power and surplus, that can be resold. At a profit, potentially of, well a lot of money. And the winning firm gets a share."
Robert: "Dick, I knew you were greedy but I never figured you for an environmental patriot too!"
Dick: "Robert! I need you to be in charge of this thing, do you understand?"
Robert: "Loud and clear sir!" Salutes, "What about this?" Holding up his current project.
Dick: "Give that one to the interns." Takes a deep breath, "I'll announce this at our meeting today. And you will be there this time."
Robert: Saluting again. "No-one else knows?"
Dick: "Not even the other firms. Not yet. Robert..." Exits.
Robert: Mimicking Dick "Robert..." Pushes current project aside, pulls out a tennis ball and begins to bounce it off the floor.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Interactional Space and Learnibility
Psychological Environment
The Biefeld-Brown Effect
"Would you be able to describe the Biefold-Brown effect if somebody asked you? Have ever heard of it? Not many people know about it, and those that do dismiss it as science fiction, or worse. They call it a curiousity and a waste of time. Did you know that archaeologists found an ancient battery in a pharoah's tomb? Someone figured out how to generate an electric current with metal plates in an acidic medium in a clay jar. Batteries have existed for thousands of years but they were a curiousity, of no practical value, back then, a dust collector, a secret toy for the most powerful man in the world, a rich man's private distraction...
Biefeld-Brown could be just that today, but I'll tell you in a thousand years Biefeld-Brown will be as common as batteries. Maybe sooner.
How long do you think people have been generating electricity? A very long time. Before Ben Franklin, even before that pharoah's battery. The Biefeld-Brown effect is just as old, and soon everybody will get to see it."
A shrill female voice interrupts the monologue. "Jimmy!"
Jimmy: "What!"
Melissa: "Get upstairs now! Food is ready!"
Jimmy: "In a minute!"
Melissa: "Now, or I will come down there and beat your ass on every step on the way up!"
Jimmy: "But" He is interrupted by the sound of footsteps over his head. He looks up. A door bursts open at the top of the stairs behind him. He jumps off of the box and runs to the stairs shouting, "I'm coming! Dammit!"
Exit
A spotlight shines on a dark curtain. A bespectacled figure with tousled hair enters the light. He is wearing a coat one side of which looks like a professor's lab coat, the other side looks like a circus ringmaster's. As Jimmy delivers his monologue he turns so the corresponding side of his jacket faces the audience.
Professor: "The Biefeld-Brown effect is, in fact, the principle behind levitation!"
Ringmaster: "Heyya, heyya, heyya!!! Come one, come all and see the amazing talents of Biefeld Brown!!! This young man will astound you, he will amaze you, he will make you question the laws of the Universe!!!
Professor: "It was first described by two researchers, Dr. P.A Biefeld, and Thomas Townsend Brown, who observed capacitors, when highly charged, move, in relation to gravity. They could make things float and they used simple experiments to demonstrate this."
Ringmaster: "You won't believe what your eyes are seeing but I personally vouch for the veracity of what you are about to witness...When I pull back this curtain you will receive a full demonstration of this young man's ability...The power to defy gravity... Watch and be amazed."
Professor: "The researchers used a balance, with a capacitor on one side, and charged the capacitor, and as the capacitor charged the balance moved on the capacitor's side...in the direction of the positive..."
Melissa: Shrill, almost screaming, calling from upstairs. "Jimmy!!!" The light widens and show Jimmy is once again in his basement workshop.
Jimmy: Impatient. "What?!!"
Melissa: "Don't even think of talking to me like that or I will come down there and smash whatever toy you think you're playing with!"
Jimmy stays silent as the upstairs door opens.
Melissa: Suspicious and taunting. "Who're you talking to?"
Jimmy: Cautious. "No-one."
Melissa: Warning. "Jimmy."
Jimmy: "No-one! Myself, I was talking to myself."
Melissa: "You're a little freak Jimmy. You know that? Why don't you get a friend? Or a life?"
Jimmy: "I have friends, Melissa."
Melissa: "You have problems you little pissant...Billy's here."
Jimmy: "Bullshit."
Billy walks-in and pushes past Melissa on the stairs.
Billy: "Fuck off Melissa."
Melissa doesn't confront Billy. Instead she stomps through the door and slams it shut.
Billy: "Your sister there's a real piece of work, you know that champ? Hey, you still working on that flying thing? I'd love to see it."
Jimmy: "Yeah, it's not ready. I had to sneak a generator in here. I was going to patch into the house current but...That was problematic. As it is I had to build a muffled housing for the generator and run an exhaust vent out the window."
Billy: Surprised. "No-one's noticed?"
Jimmy: "They don't care. I brought the generator in in pieces...reassembled it down here."
Billy: "Where is it?"
Jimmy: "See that box?" He points at the soapbox he was standing on earlier.
Billy: "Yeah?"
Jimmy: "That's it. The exhaust ducting's behind it. It can be broken down and stored when I'm not using it. It hooks up to the exhaust port and runs up to there. Those heads carry the current."
Billy: "Can you start it up?"
Jimmy: "Just pull that cord, but wait! Here I'll show you the unit. The generator is just to charge the condensor."
Billy: "Cool."
Jimmy reaches behind the curtain and pull out a complex pyramid of tinfoil wrapped around a lightweight frame.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Monday
Friday, July 22, 2011
Walter and Mary
Monday, July 18, 2011
Travel Journal: Visiting India - October 2005
Friday, July 1, 2011
How to deal with Monsters!!!
...
Friday, June 24, 2011
Edward Baldstreet
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
After
I get the feeling I might be too cynical. There are times in the cool darkness, when the lights are off and my eyes are closed and I’m listening to the far off sounds of the universe in motion, and people’s thoughts, that I hate everyone and everything God ever made. Even myself. This just makes me normal. At least I’m feeling something. I’m not like those crazy locked up hardcases, so numb they don’t even feel their own bodies anymore. We all need to be better than somebody. Whatever.
I’m in this zone, feeling sound as it vibrates on my ear drums and the door opens. I crack an eye like an alligator.
“Sleeping?”
“Yeah Murphy.”
“Another headache?” Murphy knows me from a long time back. He doesn’t care, like me, and we have a connection, some brotherhood based on common pain and emptiness. We both have spiritual toothaches. I guess we’re each others’ spiritual dentists.
“Yeah.” I can smell him. Cigarettes. He’s the only guy I know who still smokes. I used to. Now when I need a fix I stand downwind from him. Filter-free at no cost. He’s full of questions today. Something is wrong.
“Take a pill?”
“I took several.” I don’t ask him what’s going on. I don’t want to know. I think about the sound of electronic feedback and avoid reading his mind.
The silence in the room bleeds into my open eye and pries open the other one. Two grey men in a grey room.
“I was worried about you.”
“You should be. I’m still not right, but I’m better.”
“Understand, we were only trying to help you.”
“I know. I was far gone when you found me. Thanks.” This again. Okay, I went mad, but long before we ever met. “I’m feeling now. Things are better.”
“It’s not what you think it is.”
What!? I don’t show a reaction, although Murphy knows he’s surprised me. This is new.
“Johnson’s back in the city. He’s got the same thing you had.”
“Alcoholism?” Glib response, defenses up, fits my pattern, this seems to be me.
“A symptom, but something is feeding on him.”
We’re thinking of our scars. We’ve all walked through hell, but for some reason Murphy made it through. And back. Without falling apart, without the mad fractures Johnson and I suffered. Sometimes I think he’s part demon and he enjoys this mess. I know he and Johnson are closer than I am, twin minds, but Johnson and I…we broke down.
“You seen it?” I ask a real question.
“It was at his place, yeah.”
I don’t want to see anything ever again, Johnson or those things. I escaped. Murphy left me there. I saved myself in the end.
“I don’t want to see him.”
“He doesn’t want to see you. Just think about it okay?”
I don’t care, I can’t care. It’s a trick. “I’ll think about it.” I say. There’s no option, he’ll just keep coming back if I say anything else. I wouldn’t trust me either. Damn us both.
Murphy sighs and stands up. He opens the window blind, lets the light in, shines it on my empty room. Before the door clicks shut he shouts “I’ll call later! Take care of yourself buddy!”
He’s gone, and left the sun behind.
I believe in monsters.
RACE
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
WUS-KWI