Calypso, Day One

   I awoke with a splitting headache laying face down in the sand.  That struck me as a tad bit odd... the last thing I could remember was driving along a two-lane winding mountain road in the San Gabriel Mountains.  The sun was warming my back and a cool breeze was ruffling my hair.  In the background I could hear the cry of seagulls and the crash of the ocean waves.  Slow.  Methodical.  Peaceful.

   Wearily I tried to push myself upright so I could try to get my bearings.  My right arm valiantly tried to comply with my brain's orders, although by doing so it set off a miniature firestorm in my muscles.  My left arm was not such a team player.  It refused to move "for love or money," to quote George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.  Without its support my right arm's effort was reduced to rolling myself onto my left side.  Moving only that much made my head feel like someone standing behind me decided to strike me in the back of the head with a golf club that had first been doused in gasoline and lit on fire.

   Like anyone who feels that kind of sharp I instinctively rose my working arm to the back of my head.  This, in turn, merited another crack with the flaming club from the invisible golfer behind me.  My hand reported back that my hair was matted.  And sticky wet in a familiar sort of way.  I winced as I opened my eyes.

   Somehow I had washed up on a deserted stretch of beach, which explained the sound of the ocean.  The waters did not look like the familiar deep navy blues of the Pacific Ocean.  Rather it looked like the waters from the travel brochures you see for Hawaii, St. Thomas or other areas in the Caribbean.  It was a cacophony of sky blues, cerulean greens, topaz and emerald.  The sands sparkled in the sun, untouched by campers, surfers, sunbathers or other tourists.  The sky was surprisingly clear, and it allowed the sun to glow a friendly shade of bright golden yellow.  All of this was breathtakingly beautiful to behold, but my impression was marred by the pain that was oozing into my consciousness from my left side and my head.

   The pain successfully disrupted my internal nature appreciation course.  I slowly pulled my hand away from my head to get a look at it.  Moving slowly hurt slightly less than my prior rapid motions.  My friend the golfer switched to an ordinary club instead of the flaming variety he had been using up until now.  I was having trouble bringing my hand into focus once I moved it, but one thing was clear even blurry: the spots that felt sticky still had a blackish/crimson hue to them.  Blood?  The sickly sweet smell of iron seemed to confirm my fears.  I was bleeding from the back of my head.

  Wonderful.  Just wonderful.  It's just my luck to wind up wounded on a deserted beach.  
How on earth did I get here anyway?  Well, at least my last view is scenic.  When they bury me they can write "Here lies..." ... um... well... what is my name, anyway?


  I struggled again to prop myself up with my left arm.  Again, I didn't even get a response from my rebellious appendage.  This time, however, I could at least see the cause of the unrest: my arm had grown its own tree limb right from where my shoulder met the arm.  It was protruding five inches out and was at least two inches in diameter.  The rest of my arm did not look that great either.  I had various forms of bricka-brack in it, from pine needles to broken glass, small twigs and rocks... even a gash three inches long and one deep running from my wrist toward my elbow.  It looked wet with blood, but strangely enough was not bleeding.  It did not worry me.  I don't know why.


  As I lay on the beach, dying, I began to hear a sound over the rhythm of the ocean's pulse.  It felt familiar on some instinctual level, but I could not for the life of me place what it was at first.  I listened for a few minutes as the sound grew louder.  Finally I identified it as the sound of a woman singing.  It struck me on an intellectual level as being foreign to my environment, but somehow it seemed natural on a deeper level... as if the sands and waves themselves were the source of the sound.


  The singer was a powerful soprano, and her voice was clear as it cut through the air as a catamaran cuts through the waves.  There were no lyrics to her song, at least in any language I understood or had heard before.  Rather, the singer was singing pure notes, playing her vocal cords like a violinist plays his instrument.  The melody was hauntingly beautiful, full of life and vibrancy, yet somehow sorrowful at the same time.  I was caught up in the beautiful typhoon of music and it was only getting louder and closer as time passed.


  As the melody grew louder it began to take my strength away from me.  It was becoming harder for me to stay partially upright or even to keep my eyes open.  By the same token, my wounds started to cease aching as much as well.  Sleep was overtaking me like it does small children who defiantly attempt to stay up past their bedtimes.  Even my will to fight it off was being swept away on a current of musical notes.


  The last thing I saw before sleep took me away was the singer's face as she finally reached me.  She looked down upon my broken form with sparkling grey eyes that radiated light, but also sorrow.  Despite the fact that she was still singing she managed to maintain a slight smile upon her lips that brought out small dimples in her cheeks.  Her golden hair cascaded down around her face and it looked like a river of warm light flowing towards me.  I felt safe for the first time since I awoke on this strange island, and embraced sleep with a smile.

Format for Calypso

Sorry for the delay in posting so far.  I have had a lot on my plate, which has prevented even my writing the original "rough" copy out on my notepads.  That said, I have been transcribing and polishing what I have so far into a post that should be up soon.

I decided that I was going to split each "chapter" or "day" into two parts.  It will make sense when you see it I think.  If I was writing this in book format I might have kept the two parts together and placed some kind of dividing scribble line in between the halves.  That said, there are practical limitations to doing that in blog format, and while I know no one is really beating down my e-door to get the next part of the story it should make posts come a bit faster, if only just slightly.

I would be interested in feedback from anyone who actually reads this once I start posting again (I have about half of the first day transcribed and polished so it should be up soon).  Be well!

Sorry for the delay

Sorry, y'all, about the delay in getting the next segment of the story posted.  I have been a tad busy of late, but rest assured that I will have the first real segment of my Calypso story up and posted no later than Thursday.

Things were a bit hectic lately, but now they are going a lot better.  I hope all of you out there are doing well.

Regards!

Calypso, Introduction

    The Fates, they say, have a cruel sense of humor when it comes to the punishments they distribute to gods and men alike.  Take as an example the sad destiny bestowed upon the demi-goddess Calypso.  The Calypso from Greek mythology, mind you, not the one played by Naomie Harris in the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  The poor woman's crime: fighting on the side of her parents, the Titans, against the usurpers who would become the Olympian Gods in the great war that would bring down the Titans' reign and end the so-called Golden Age.  Like the losers of most wars before and since, the Titans and all who fought on their side were punished for not having chosen the winning side.


   In all truthfulness, this entire saga of mythology is really quite tragic.  (It seems to be a theme with the Greeks of old.)  At its core, the war was an expanded and bloody family feud rather than a war between two entirely separate forces.  The Olympians were, whether they wanted to admit it or not, the children of the Titans themselves, specifically the offspring of the Titan Lord Kronos.  Calypso was their cousin, and had Kronos not feared a prophecy foretelling his rule being overthrown by his sons they might have grown up having family reunions in the park and backyard barbecues, just like any mortal family does now.  Kronos was afraid of losing his power, however, so instead of teaching his children how to ride a bike or the secrets of grilling that perfect steak like a good father, he instead decided it would be a good idea to devour his children as infants.


   It was not Calypso's fault that her cousin Zeus came from what can at best be described as a broken home.  It is hard, however, to stay neutral in wars involving family members.  Atlas, her father, was fighting on the side of Kronos.  Can any of us who have come from loving families say that we would not chose to fight for our parents in a war where lesser known cousins are trying to kill or overthrow them?  Most of us can identify with the desire to protect that which we love, and Calypso loved her family.  For that she would be punished.


   Perhaps the Olympians took all this into consideration when they handed down judgement to Calypso.  Compared to her father Atlas, who was forced to hold up the sky from the earth for all eternity, her punishment was rather light.  She was not even chained in the pit of Tartarus like so many of the others who fought on that side of the war.  (Dante transferred them from Tartarus to the lower circles of Hell in his Inferno, but I digress.)  The gods merely banished her to the island of Ogygia, where she would be forced to remain.  She was cared for by invisible servants, fed three meals a day, allowed to walk the beaches, stare at the ocean, sing, dance, tend a garden... so long as she did all those things there.  The Gods could come to visit her from time to time, but apart from that she was effectively alone.


   Enter the Fates and their cruelty.  It would have been too simple of a fate for her to be isolated for eternity, even with the occasional visits from her cousins.  While not just anyone would wash ashore on her island, from time to time a hero of old would wash up.  He would be beaten and bruised and broken from the long, strange trip that got him there.  Always it would be an unintended stop... no one ever had a quest to go find something on Ogygia, or attempted to reach it before they arrived there by accident.  She would find them lying on the sands and nurse them back to health.  She would care for their needs.  As time passed she would come to care for them, to love them even.  No one of them, however, could stay for long.  They all had destinies elsewhere: some quest to complete, a family to return to.


   Thus once they were better, they would eventually leave her.  The truly cruel part was that none of those heroes would ever find their way back to Ogygia once they left it.  It was part of the design of the island that it could not be reached by normal means without the aid of the Gods.  The Olympians did not seem to mind using her as a vacation spot/field hospital for their heros, especially since they knew the ones they sent there would always choose to go in time.  Thus poor Calypso's real punishment wasn't just to not be able to leave her island, but to not be able to ever have the illusion of a family become the real one that she so desperately wanted.

In the beginning....

Well, now, children... I figure I would start off a post for my blog by just saying a bit about why I am doing this.  Hope I don't bore you.


Basically, I am always having little mini dramas or ideas for them play out in my mind.  It is the price you pay for being imaginative I suppose.  Often times these things are rubbish, but on occasion there is a good idea or two in there.  So, I am finally deciding to share the good with you as I polish it.


If I post something with the tag "Story Idea" it will mean that its just a vague idea for a given tale.  Feel free to run with it on your own if you can or care to.  If it is an actual story (or part of one) it will have a tag that sums up the story, like a main character name, so that you can get the whole thing (or at least what I have so far) with one easy click.  If you get inspired by an element or character from one of my stories, feel free to go with it... but I would ask as a common courtesy not to simply repost what I write under your name.  Stealing is stealing even when money is not involved, kiddos.


The first story y'all will probably see on here is a (somewhat) short story I am in the process of working on about one man's run in with Calypso.  I will probably post it in fragments for now as I finish each, and then I might try to repost the entire thing as one entry if it is short enough.  I hope that you enjoy it... I certainly am having a fun time writing it.


Until then, be well and don't forget to read a good book!