Administrative Announcement

It made me switch to google blogger. That means we all gots to log on with the gmail account: this one: losfriar@gmail.com. The password is the same as before.

So, post away! What's everyone up to these fringe of spring days?

In the meantime, here is some short fiction:

Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain
sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about
feelings people really know nothing... Nobody knows
what suffering or sacrifice mean--except, perhaps
the victims of the mysterious purpose of these
illusions. Joseph Conrad, "An Outpost of Progress"


Sleeping in Sparta (or, dreaming on a shield)

Last night I had enough ammunition; bullets weren’t the problem that they have been in those dreams. This time they attacked, the Vietnamese. It has been all sorts before, creeping up I suppose, from under the bed. But this time they were Vietnamese in full frontal attack; but me, I was on the flank. If I’d learned anything I guess it was “one shot, one kill.” And I’d learned my sights are low, and so to compensate. But my A2, which could have been named by Caeser, wasn’t so good. And I had to rotate out of, and then back into single-shot each time I fired. I was positively gleeful when I saw the first head explode like a melon and the body crumple over into a heap on the ground. And because of the thick green foliage, and their going sideways past me, my muzzle flash had to be pretty well concealed.

Then I missed, and he was hardly moving, standing there like he had time to set-up his shot. Were things about to take their turn? As I had to rotate the selector lever out of and back into single-shot, because the A2 was sort of jacked, I left it in three round burst. The first made pepper of the ground before his feet. He turned looking across the jungle floor—as if he'd see me. There was something sort of familiar about him. Being on burst the barrel had naturally crept up, and the next group thumped him soundly in the chest. His expression didn't change, but his eyes both went lazy. Full auto opened-up on my friendly left—the 60—every fifth round a red streak. And as quick as that, they were all toppled over and I was trying to hide under water. It was that kind of dream.

Usually, I run out of ammo and they keep coming, or my shots have no effect, even with my 1911; I remember once, magazine after magazine, putting it into his chest. Just some him who looked so bored he might yawn. He didn’t look so different than me, as I sometimes look. I asked if, since I couldn’t kill him, if he wouldn’t mind coming with me, just to see where I wanted to take him—as if he had anything else to do. While we walked, I told him a story to keep him from asking me why I wanted to kill him; it was about a man who was trapped in a war, and how since he couldn’t die, kept fighting, until he got to a man trapped in a war who couldn't die and how he kept fighting until he had gotten to a man... He all the time looked at me the same as before. And when we got to the place I was taking him, we were separated. But we were both there somewhere, forever in that same place.

l'a-ro