It’s time again for Jason Evan’s Clarity of Night Flash Fiction contest.  This time, he is only posting those who scored 40 or higher in his secret scoring system that allows him to handle the gazillion entries that he is getting these days.  Once it was a tiny contest, now it is huge.  I don’t know how he does it!  This time, he is having author Stephen Parrish help him judge.  Stephen is the author of the newly released novel, The Tavernier Stones.  Hence, the theme of this contest as you can see from the picture.  I’ve posted my entry here for your enjoyment.  It’s full of secret codes, can you figure them out?

Uncovered Again

April 20, 2420 A.C.E.

“A little to the left. There it is. Now sweep away the sand,” Captain Bill Pritch ordered.

Two men stared at the monitor from the podcraft. A large robot arm pushed the sand away from the undersea platform. A letter M was visible. Other cameras showed mounds of rusted debris.

“Yeah baby, this is it!”

“Why are we searching here Captain?” Jim was anxious. He pushed the arm over the platform.

“The tanks are empty, Jim. We need the jewels to keep the moon station operating, oxygen is a necessity.”

The letters MAC were visible. The arm pushed further.

“Don’t think we’re gonna find jewels in there.”

“Jewels is what we call oil here in collections. You’re such a newb!”

“I think we should get out of this god-forsaken place. Something horrible happened here, I feel it.”

“Obviously! Dead planet? Get a clue!”

“No, something happened here, in this spot.”

“Nothin’ that happened here’s gonna stop us from getting the goods. Life on the moon station depends on it!”

Jim’s eyes enlarged as his jaw slacked.

MACONDO

“We’re not reopening that one!”

“That’s the one!” The captain aimed the laser at the platform.

“But, the methane!”

“I’m sure it’s all escaped. Hence, a dead planet. Commencing fire!”

****

From Rigel 5, it looked to Yaweh like a nova when Earth and its moon blew out of Solaris’s orbit.

“Spectacular ending!” He squealed to Michael. “You try the next experiment. But leave out the apples this time.”

©2010 Catherine Vibert

01 pbipexcerpt

Listen to the lilting voice of Sarah Hina as she reads from her soon to be released novel, Plum Blossoms in Paris.  Let’s help make her a best selling author right out of the box.  Order your copy  HERE

Or you can go to Aniket’s Flash Fiction blog and post a contest entry, and you might win a copy of the book!  Contest entries will be judged by Sarah Hina herself.  Have a go friends, enter HERE!

Veiled Woman and Cat by Cat Vibert

“She was saving all her love for the divine manifestation of Krishna, so imagine her relief when she found Him in the body of  a cat.”

Hello dear friends.  Enjoying a very rich summer here, with visits from family and friends.  My son Chris and I finally had a little break from all the outdoor fun to settle in for a lovely painting session.  My cat Marlow was happily resting from the visit with *the dog* and very glad to have his house back.  I wanted to practice draping technique and this image just popped into being..    Hope everyone is well.

Love to all!

Cat

PS, I’ve decided to start using watermarks on my images.  I’ll be going into my galleries and updating them all soon, I hate to do it actually, but have recently discovered that it is a wise idea in this internet world we play in.

For Scott Ennis – Ironman and Sonnet Writer

I heard last night that you had met a force

To test a strength beyond all means to know

It wasn’t in your plan, was not your course

To come across this sudden state of woe

I heard that you’d survived a ride through hell

When iron meeting iron shattered bone

And though the shadowed mists around you fell

Your solid will and strength will see you home

Through words I’ve seen the love that shines from you

A heart so large, though pained, your strength endures

Your words and sonnets bring the story through

Of tears you’ve shed alone no words could cure

As you take baby steps toward this new start

Let my words be a salve upon your heart

Friends, fellow blogger and sonnet writer Scott Ennis was hit by a car in late April while riding his bike in training for the Ironman Marathon.  I know many of you know him through his poetry and his enduring spirit.  Please hold him in your thoughts and prayers.  This is an excerpt from a letter to me by his sister Hakima, explaining of his circumstances:

“Scott was training for an Ironman race to qualify for the HUGE Kona race on his bicycle on April 30th when he was hit by a car. He was in a coma for about a week and along with punctured lungs (which are healing) and several broken bones (which are also healing) he has had quite a bit of brain trauma. He does remember the accident and he is communicative but not always cognitive. He is still on a feeding tube and re-learning to swallow more and more solids. He is able to sit upright in a wheelchair and working on walking.

He is currently at Mt. Vernon INOVA Rehabilitation hospital but will shortly be transferred to a skilled nursing facility. The prognosis is good that he will walk again. We don’t know how fast or far he will be able to recover from the brain trauma…interestingly, he remembers much of his writing and he told me in a telephone conversation “…let my poetry be my message…” I think that anyone who knows Scott through his writing understands that on an esoteric level.

The past months have taught me more and more that we are essentially more than these shells of our bodies and even our minds. Scott is still here, he’s just accessed in other ways.”

____

You are in our hearts and thoughts Scott.

With love,

Cat

PS: Scott’s sonnets can be found at http://scottennis.sonnetwriters.com/

“Please sir, may I have some more?” asked Oliver.

More

A simple thing, we’ll take a drill

And bore it through the earth, we will

Five miles ‘neath the ocean floor

Because in there, we heard there’s more

More of what we want in life

A kind of ease that’s free from strife

To help with chores we hate to do

And ease of flight for me and you

We’ll take the ease and make it such

That in our lives, we’ll find it much

Indeed we’ll see that when we look

It’s even in the things we cook

It’s on our hair and in our clothes

It wraps the water in the hose

And all around the house we see

The benefits that make us free

The bags we bring home from the store

The stuff in closets, more and more

Until we can not see the sky

For all the stuff we’ve piled so high

And when it breaks, it matters not

That it will never come to rot

Because that’s just the way things are

Just throw it out, away and far

Because it seems we can get more

By drilling through the ocean floor

But know this now and know it well

We’ve opened up the gates to hell

©2010 Catherine Vibert

Hello humans, yes, it’s me, Cat of Arc, and I’m back in Cat’s body possessing her fully and completely at this point.  Normally she doesn’t like it when I do that, but at this point she’s with me completely and has decided to integrate my forces for the sake of humanity.

I bet you know why I’m here don’t you?  Of course you do.  You know it like you know that pit in your stomach whenever you see an oil covered bird.  You know it when you avert your eyes from the screen when the news goes on and on and on and on and… it will not end.

Even when (if) they plug this hole, it will not end.  Apparently this Corexit dispersant can get into the air and rain down on the Eastern half of the US, completely destroying the food chain.  That’s right folks.  Read this: http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/toxic-oil-spill-rains-warned-could-destroy-north-america/

Oh, you think I’m over reacting?  I’m not.  I know that it is possible for humans to screw things up that badly.  And if that happens, I’m afraid my telling you to go into battle to make a change isn’t going to do diddily squat folks.  If it happens, it is a consequence of what has already happened because your governments and greedy corporations think they can do all of this in your name.  In their minds, you sanction it whenever you buy an oil product.  All you can do, at this point, is pray that a magic miracle will make it all go away.  You can pray that this report is wrong and that nothing that severe will happen.  But if it does, do you have a plan B?  You might want to think about that.

What we CAN do however, is demand that this never happens again.  Friends, since I am from another dimension, I have the privilege of telling you what my associates in that other dimension are saying.  They are saying GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE OCEAN YOU STUPID STUPID HUMANS.  Normally they feel compassion and love and have recommendations to help, but right now they are really super pissed off and don’t feel so loving.  The love and compassion they feel is for THE OTHER ANIMALS.  The ones you humans are intent upon destroying in the name of your greedy fingers and stupid choices.

But I know, and you know, that MOST of the humans didn’t actually choose this.  In fact, most alive were born into this. Most of them didn’t even know, they were just blindly being led into this without even having a clue what goes on behind the scenes to get them the gas they need to drive.  Or the plastic needed to coat their games, toys, bags, houses, and just about everything made in the modern world.  Plastic.  Oil.  It is insidious.   Even this computer is full of it.

Are you prepared for a life without oil?  If the land isn’t destroyed by these potential toxic rains, let me tell you now, you better know how to survive without leaving your neighborhood.  You better know how to connect without your computer, your telephone.  Do you know how to make fabric to clothe you?  How to grow food to feed you?  Do you know how to preserve food without heat?  Do you know how to get salt?  And the most banal but serious question, can you entertain yourself without a device?

These thoughts should keep you awake because the future depends on it folks.  Yes, we do need alternative forms of energy, mass transportation, all of that.  But seriously, take a minute to think of every oil related thing you have in your life, and think of a sustainable alternative. Stop it with the turning it off thing you do in your mind.  What you don’t know, what you choose to ignore CAN hurt you.

You need a plan B.

Cat of Arc signing out.

Image: Contemplation of the Divine Turtle by Cat Vibert

Perhaps we are slow to get the message, but I think the animals on this earth would like to tell us something.  Especially now with this bleeding oil wound.  I wonder what they would like to tell us?

In the comment section, please feel free to leave a channeled message from the animal kingdom to the humans.

Three Graces in a Ray of Sun prints available here.

Dear friends, forgive me for not getting to blogs and generally being sparse in communication. With Spring comes much outside labor, and I am the only one doing the work!  The computer, art,  writing, reading and blogging have all taken a back seat to  planting, hauling, digging.   The result is that I am getting strong, physically and mentally!  It is good to work the land.  And to do all of this in the view of my three favorite trees is a blessing.  I have many reasons to be grateful.  Like getting to see rays of sun peeking through the afternoon thunderstorms and shining on the Graces. 

I send you a ray of sun to illuminate your day.

Photo of a peony by candlelight, massively photoshopped.

Not gardening, nor reading, nor singing, nor yoga, nor anything that usually lifts our spirits, nothing can assuage the pain of the bleeding oil spill in the gulf.  This post is a memorial for the precious sea and bird life that are suffering a horrible death right now.

Isn’t it time we got beyond oil?

A great big thank you to all who entered the contest.  There were so many excellent poems, and so many poems that touched me deeply that I decided midway to enlist the help of an impartial judge who has nothing to do with my online world.  My father, C. Stuart Vibert.  Highly qualified both as a lifetime student of literature and the arts, and a talented writer in his own right. He has the distinction of having two stories published in the first edition of City Lights Magazine. 

My criteria was the poem that moved me the most.  For me, a poem needs to encapsulate an emotion, and so many of them did.  I had physical reactions upon reading many of them, feeling immediately moved.

An area of concern that made judging difficult for me:  I have long term relationships with many of the poets who submitted poems.  I didn’t want the relationships with the writers to interfere with my choices.  I printed out all of the poems but without the names attached.  Of course, I did remember some of the authors of each poem, but not all of them.  I then read each poem out loud.  I put aside poems that didn’t read well.  I put aside poems that were written in rhyme and meter but the meter tripped up in places.  It came down to about 10 poems which I starred as promising.  From those poems I had three potential winners in my mind.  I then gave the poems to my father and with no knowledge of any of the writers whatsoever, he picked the same three. The decision was so close I’ve decided the runners up will also receive a print!

My top three choices and how they moved me:

3rd Runner Up: Rachel Westfall of The Waxing Moon

The moon’s slow grace runs golden through
the apple fields as though it knows
those amber honey words she’d lapped
in slow and patient strokes from her
sweet lover’s tongue before they slipped
away so fleetingly, and now
each night she haunts the fields in search
of something lost that precious night
of belfire, bower, hair entwined
with ribbons bright, spring blossoms strewn–
her youth, perhaps, or maiden’s charm
spilled carelessly on meadow loam–
yet morning finds her, endlessly
still older, worn, creased paper-thin
feet moss-dew bathed, brow blessed by night,
kissed by the newborn sun

__

Exquisite imagery and wording, this poem moved me far back into the past, into the days of youth that are forever gone.  I admit that when I got to the end, I completely choked up.  A tear for past dreams.  Thank you Rachel.

2nd Runner Up:  Blake aka Tom Hirons of Coyopa

All Winter,
Three stark trees
Watched me.

In fire and snow;
In the grip of
Ice and longing;
I looked up from
Blood and stone
And saw them
Watching.

I thought that Spring
Would never come
And the trees would
Not green again.

I thought that Life
Would never start
And my heart would
Not beat again.

All Winter,
Three stark trees
Watched me.

I watched back
And waited,
Though it felt like
Dying to wait.

And Spring came.

Three green trees
Watch me.

I climb over the gate
And go towards them.

Three green trees
Watch me run.

___

This poem was  a reenactment of the recent events of Winter turning into Spring as seen from my painting window.  In the poem, Tom takes me from the stillness and the stark cold *in* of Winter: the sitting and staring, hoping, waiting, longing and lounging too much into the head and endless sense of cocooning,  to  running toward the joyous return of Spring and all that it brings.  Simple words, beautiful flow of grace, this poem makes me want to dance.

1st Place: Sarah Hina of Murmurs

I can hear
the nightingale
waltzing with indigo
when swaddled
within a gauze
of light

Yet the lark
will half me
a wafer of dawn
if I should
sink these knees
in some honeyed
blight

Wherever I pause,
life jumps across,
as I chase
and laugh
the waves
with a loon
as my albatross

____

This poem moved me in layers.  When I first read it I knew it was among my top choices, but then it began to haunt me.   It woke me up in the middle of the night in fact.  This poem moves me connection by connection.  Anyone who knows me well, knows that my mind works by connecting metaphors and codes, one to the other.  Sarah has done that here like a master.  I will try to decipher for you.  First, it brings into the field the sound of birds.  An image can’t capture the sound of birds, so only the imagination can bring that into the forefront, but I assure you, in reality, the birds are there.

But not just any birds.  As the image would suggest,  these are the birds of night and day, the nightingale and the lark.  The same nightingale and lark, I presume, that confused Romeo and Juliet, those star crossed lovers who were hoping for a little more darkness to be able to revel in their light (before they were separated forever by fate).

Star crossed lovers.  A mythology that can plague those who believe in it, and make them behave completely insane.  And so the nightingale dances with the indigo when even a little golden light might shine on him, getting more and more covered in blue.  And so the lark who may sing in the glorious rays of dawn will sink in the hidden darkness of the honeyed blight.  And these beliefs that any of that star crossed lover mythology is real, all the actions that we do to chase it, that is our insanity.  For those of us who experience this over and over again, even though we know better, the loon (the tendency toward fantasy), is the albatross.

In my opinion, the pure genius of this poem took it over the top on wings.

Sarah’s novel Plum Blossoms in Paris is being published in August. You can preorder her book here

The winner of the drawing was Sandie Rhodes!

Congratulations Sarah, ‘Blake’ aka Tom, Rachel and Sandie!

Thank you all for entering, it was an absolute joy to read your submissions.  I plan to make these contests a regular feature on my blog.  Stay tuned!