THE CHARLIE CHRONICLES VOLUME 1
Correspondence between Charles Dillingham and Ken Cashion.
(Ken's comments in italics.)
It begins when Ken had found Charlie after Katrina.
Date: February 18, 2008
From: Ken Cashion
To: Charles Dillingham
Subject: First Off...
...I am glad I have found you alive and well after Kathrina.
After a couple of months here without power and phone, as soon as I could get back online,
I started "looking" for you in the virtual world...and I looked for Jane. I was
concerned for you in the real world.
You were the first people I thought of during the
horrors of N.O.and I continue to be sad for you because of so much damaged to your beloved
N.O.
You are also the only person I have paid to try to find
online...you know, "we can find anyone."
Well, they can't.
I hope you are doing well.
Ken
http://www.sounds.windmillpro.com
http://www.windmillpro.com
Date: 2/20/2008
From: Charles Dillingham
To: Ken Cashion
Subject: First
Off...
I'm glad to hear (or to
be able to infer?) that you and Bettie are alive and well.
Lots of stuff has happened to me since I last knew you, but I
don't care to talk about all that. I'm outward-directed.
What's important is that I am trying to finish my novel, and I am in
the process (because of my research for the novel) of becoming something of an armchair
expert on the Maya civilization and (believe it or not) the history, culture, and
religions (pagan and Holy Roman), and day-to-day lives of the 9th- to 11th-century Celts
(Ireland & England), Scots, Picts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes -- and, most of all, the
Scandinavian Norse and the Sagas of Icelanders.
I never had any idea what a profound impact the Vikings had on
civilization -- they founded the major Irish cities, they founded the Russian empire, they
founded the Duchy of Normandy (and you and I know what the Normans did in the 11th
century).
My novel now spans over a millennium in time and occupies three
continents, and has thirteen main characters. Most of the novel takes place in A.D. 2061,
when the world has gone utterly to hell and insanity (much more so than now). The subtitle
is "A tale of life after the end of time" (the end of time being the winter
solstice of A.D. 2012: Consult your Mayan calendar).
My body no longer lives in New Orleans, but my heart and my mind do.
I am currently a refugee in central Georgia.
I'll look at your other web stuff later today. For now, back to my
research ...
Charlie
Date: 21 Feb 2008
From: Charles Dillingham
To: Ken Cashion
Subject: viking wmen etc.
Hi,
< I am taking a break from Queen Asa, and Unn the Deep-Minded, and Oddny
Island-castle, and all the others (lord, how I love those Norse women).
I met two girls/women once, at Maribelle's (sp?) Tavern in
Seabrook, TX, high on stilts above the water. To my right was an attorney, a professor of
law at Rice University, and to his right was a shrimp fisherman who had just docked
outside the bar. To my left were the two blond girls, who were both from Norway and who
had come all the way down to see Maribelle's which they had heard from locals was a Texas
legend. I had them speak phrases to me all evening long in Norwegian. Their words sounded
like gently melting snow-water babbling over stones, trickling off the side of a cliff
above a fjord.
Little did I know that there was much more I could have talked
to them about than just how lovely their language sounded. Unlike graduates of the
American educational system, they probably knew a bit about history.
> I was wondering about the other lady. I couldn't find her either. I hope she is OK
and happy, just as I hope you are.
Well, I can't say I share your hope for her happiness. I
haven't the remotest idea where in the Wide Blue World she is at. All I know is she walked
away with a quarter of a million dollars (literally) and I limped away, using a walker
(literally), with about twenty-five thousand. Go figure. All I know is that she is married
to someone and has left the state of Mississippi (the last place she lived that I know
of). I don't care to know any more about the woman, except that I would like to send her
bi-annual letters asking, like a mantra, where is the $120,000 you owe me? Some may call
it stalking. But, hey, I used to own a gun before the New Orleans cops took it away from
me. But enough of that. I'm still swimming up the stream of life, and she can go fly a
kite. As my song producer used to sing (at least he was gonna be my song producer and
director before Katrina visited ...) -- he used to sing this song, and he would say
"this here song" (he spoke hillbilly even though he was from Australia)
"was written by a I-talian I knew, and it's the scariest redneck murder-love ballad I
ever heard"):
I pawned the gun
To buy the bullets
I pawned the bullets
To get back the gun
If I ever git the two of them together
Every body! Better run!
(And, BTW, I don't use the walker any more.)
Excuse my absence just now ... I just let out the enormous dogs
that own the house I live in.
>For my three college courses that I wrote and taught I
had to research a bunch of religions and I sort of liked the Odin and Thor worship.
> They had no evangelists, no outreach programs, were not proactive, never boiled
anyone in oil over religion and I liked them because the worst thing you could do was lie.
> Their obvious point was that a fellow can have some use for a murderer, but who can
use a liar?
I always liked the pagans. Christians are feckless
martyr-fools. They have always been just as murderous as (almost as murderous as?) the
pagans. Christianity brought "the redeeming love of Christ's shed blood" into
the picture, but it is manifest to me that they didn't in actual fact live by that (silly)
creed.
> Isn't it strange how many cultures thought the Norse
were ignorant and disorganized, yet those cultures were the ones who were ignorant and
provincial.
> When they thought lowly of the Norse, the Norse were world-travelers, knew everyone's
language and markets, they were at home in many diverse cultures, and were more world-wise
that the wisest among some of the societies who thought they were superior.
Yep, the picture of the Vikings has changed in the last couple
of decades. Everybody was killing everybody, and their women and children and cows and
sheep and slaves, too. The Vikings were just joining in the fun! And they were very
sophisticated, from technics to art to socio-political organization. And they were the
finest ship-builders of many centuries.
I looked up one nautical word, and got, in one definition (or
maybe a couple or three), the words: jib boom, spike bowsprit, forestaysail, foretopmast
staysail, flying jib, inner jib, garboard strake, ... keelless flat-bottomed pattern of
later cogs, with steeply angled end posts, rudder with tiller handle, topped like a spade
so it could be worked vertically, at the ship's side or trailed back from the side at an
angle: flat-bottomed boats 2 m wide or more at bottom. Cogs: twice-bent nails that held
the clinker-build overlapping planks together ... Uh, I have more research to do.
> There was a couple of groups of Norse in Moscow one time and they came around a
street corner and ran right into each other and on first sighting, the swords came out and
the axes started swinging. This was a big feud that had been going on a while. The feud
had started in Dublin.
> They got around, didn't they?
That's a very funny story. It happened over and over and
over and over. They are fascinating. Read the Sagas of Icelanders, many of which are
published by Penguin Classics. Those-That-Rank-Things rank the Sagas with the Iliad and
the Odyssey, and Shakespeare.
> Man, that sounds interesting. Are you going to publish it yourself?
> I give them a CD with two files on it. One is the cover as a TIF, and the
> other is the rest of the book as a PDF...with photos and captions embedded in the
text. The Ball Turret book is good but not the sort of book you'd want to curl up
with in bed.
I shall indeed self-publish. Lulu Publishing seems to be the
way to go (lulu.com), and I have Prancing Pony Press to do the "publisher" stuff
for me (PPP is owned by a long-time close friend of mine). I will (with the money I will
obtain for the fire-sale of my land in Jackson) publish a few hundred copies, and send one
finished, glossy covered book (with artwork of my choice) to every publisher and agent and
assistant-to-a-publisher--or-agent, and to every magazine and quarterly and newspaper and
... you know: to everybody ... and I will write: If you would like to see a double-spaced
manuscript of this thing, please notify me and I will have one in your possession within
the week.
Good luck with your "Hitler Youth for Women" thing
... remember when you tried to order "Mein Kampf" from the Picayune library?
I've just given up and concentrate on Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin and Oliver Cromwell and
Pope Leo X (born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, who said to his brother Giuliano,
"Since God has given us the papalcy, let us enjoy it!").
I'll respond to your other e-mail in time ... but for now, here
is an excerpt (it's verse -- most of the Sagas is prose) from the Icelandic Sagas:
The woman was born to bring war
between men -- the tree of the valkyrie
started it all; I wanted her
sorely, that log of rare silver.
Henceforward, my black eyes
are scarcely of use to glance
at the ring-land's light-goddess,
splended as a swan.
The moon of her eyelash -- that valkyrie
adorned with linen, server of herb-surf,
shone hawk-sharp upon me
beneath her brow's bright sky;
but that beam from the eyelid-moon
of the goddess of the golden torquewill later bring troubles to me
and to the ring-goddess herself.
Translation note:
(ring-land: hand; its light: ring; goddess of the ring: woman)
Cheers, and whatever ...
From: Charles Dillingham
To: Ken Cashion
Subject: Which Axe?
Hi.
Man! My novel is rolling like a Viking longboat under full sail. I think I see
Vinland in the distance through the fog -- or is that just another mirage of upside-down
cliffs on the shores of Greenland? Whatever ... EVERYTHING is magically coming together --
the major themes, the events, the symbolism -- all of it is falling into place without my
even doing anything
except doing a braindump through my fingers to the keyboard.
I must go do tedious clerical tasks and take a shower, but first I thought I would tell
you, since you asked something about whether I still play and, if so, what ax I am playing
... I do still play, but I have only one ax. I went into the hospital a week before
Katrina visited, and then Katrina hit while I was still in a coma, and the cocaine addict
who was staying with me and who had I wanted badly to kick out of my place but I felt bad
about throwing her out onto the street -- she during my near- death absence, after Katrina
had hit, hocked my $1500 guitar and my $2000 guitar for $15 each (she wanted me to be able
to get them out of hock cheap, so she was doing me a favor) and she either hocked or sold
my $800 banjo and my $500 mandolin
and my Strata ... Stratoca ... how do you spell Strataoascaszter??? she hocked or sold my
Ibanez Strat imitation electric guitar, and my twelve-string, and about a third of my CDs.
Much of what she did not hock or sell was burned up -- including some of my electronic
equipment and books -- by the fire she set by dropping a cigarette ash onto my bed which
resulted in my
apartment being totally gutted by a huge fire. Then she, being a good Christian girl,
later took $1000 out of her accumulated SSI checks that arrived during her six months in
the CowetaCounty jail, and gave the $1000 to me to buy myself a guitar.
So I went shopping and I bought, used, a "beautiful" Gibson acoustic with
factory-installed pickup (the wood-vibrating internal pickup kind) for $1700. So I now
have only one guitar, but she sure sounds beautiful. What more do I need?
Lest you scoff, I assure you all of the above is a true story.
And that's only part of the shit that has happened. ;o) Oh, the pawn shop owner left
Louisiana after Katrina came, and he took everything with him. No one, including the cops
and the
courts, knows where he went.
Cheers... Charlie
From: Charles Dillingham
To: Ken Cashion <kcashion@charter.net>
Subject: And so on... |
William F. Buckley died. I loved that man. I always used
him as an example of how (in my own narcissistic opinion) I am not quite the braying
dumbass that so many other presumably educated and knowledgable people are.
I would tell the people that, for example, he called Hillary Clinton a
"cunt." I respect W.F. Buckley a great deal. I don't have to agree with him. I
respect him for what he is. And I do not respect Rush Limbaugh. Go figure.
It's becaue they are two different people, and I appraise them on the basis of what
they say and how they say it.
Even today, I learned something from Buckley, bless his heart. I learned the
meaning of a word he used: "sclerotic".
Last night I saw Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto". Wow and
darn! I shall purchase it asap. Not only is it wonderful cinematography, it is valuable
research for the part of my novel that takes place in 11th-century Yucatan.
Gibson probably spent millions on the research alone. Check
out the bonus commentary on the DVD about the making of the movie. And all the actors were
Mayans. Beautiful.
BTW, I will be incummunicado Thursday through Sunday.
I gotta take a train and then a bus to Newnan GA, then go to N. Arkansas in a
28-foot truck and load it when I get there, then ride to Jackson, Misserysippi to load all
of my Earthly belongings into the truck, then back to Newnan to get more of my stuff and
then unload it in Clarkston. Yes, it's a long story. I would hate to bore you.
I'll be in touch when I get back to Clarkston Sunday or Monday.
Charlie
From: Charles Dillingham
To: Ken Cashion
Subject: Making Vegetarian Salads and Cutting Out Human Hearts
OK, I'm tired of alternating between, on the one hand, chopping
carrots and eggs and red peppers and cheese and all that and, on the other hand,
transcribing the frigging Popol Vuh for the first chapter of my novel. So I thought I'd
take a break and e-mail you.
Of course, I have nothing to say. I'm just taking a break.
The Experts say that the Mayas were probably the blood-thirstiest people in ancient
history. Where do you reckon they got that idea from? I quote from the Popol Vuh, the
Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings:
And these are the Lords over Everything, each Lord with a commission and a domain assigned
by One and Seven Death: There are the lords named Scab Stripper and Blood Gatherer. And
this is their commission: to draw blood from people. Next are the lordships of Demon of
Pus and Demon of Jaundice. And this is their domain: To make people swell up, to
make pus come out of their legs, to make their faces yellow ...
And so on.
And then there are also the lords named Demon of Filth and Demon of Woe (they're punctured
till they crawl on the ground, and die ...) and so on.
It's a good thing my Kozepalkuli (my main Maya character) is more noble and learned than
the average Mayan. This is my Kozepalkuli, one of my creations, as I writ of him in the
first chapter of my novel:
... had he been asleep or awake when the vision came? No matter, what he had seen was so
real, so vivid, that he still shuddered at the memory of its terrifying intensity. What he
had seen in his dream-vision was this:
The sky before him became black, as though with an eclipse of the sun. Then he opened his
eyes and he was no longer atop the Pyramid of the Sun. He was on the Caribbean, standing
in his vision just where and Itzkul were now lying -- he was standing between the
traders' path of sand and broken beach-stone on his left and the stone-walled boat basin
to his right, gazing up into the jet-black sky.
The sky was, inexplicably, brilliantly black. So blindingly brilliant was the blackness
that he had to squint and hold his hand out before his eyes to see. There were crimson
clouds against the black, and they seemed to glow with their own light, for there was no
sun to ignite them. The boat basin lay beside him, below him to his right: depthless black
water, a basin filled with deep, slow water, lapping almost unheard beneath the gusts of
wind and reflecting the crimson clouds against the blank sky's brilliance.
And it reflected his own body. He looked down into the rippled reflection of his own face
in the crimson-black basin. The reflected face possessed a a sheen of phosphorescent
blue-white like the face of a moon, or of torchlight reflected against chalk ...
... And then Kozepalkuli hears a withered old man shouting into the sky apocalyptic lines
from the Popol Vuh.
... and then in his vision he sees the Viking boat, and the beautiful goddess woman ...
Then, there on the beach, IN REAL-LIFE, just west of Isla Cerritos, he sees the real-life
manifestation of his vision, which includes the most beautiful woman he has ever see, and
a viking ship -- not a Viking longboat, but a Viking cargo boat ... bigger and wider, with
a deeper draft -- the boat was approaching the shore on the first winds of an approaching
hurricane.
So much left out ... so much left out ...
The Norwegian woman, (her name is Dylla -- she was educated in Ireland, by the Christian
monks), has also seen a vision, a vision of Kozepalkuli, which is why she wants to travel
to Vinland and beyond. She is a Norwegian princess and a priestess, and she is believed to
be part goddess. She, the daughter of a Norwegian king, had to flee Iceland for her life,
with her brother who refused to allow her to go alone. Kozepalkuli has to flee for his
life, too, after meeting Dylla. He is believed by his people to be a god. He leaves with
her and her Vikings. Kozalpulki and Dylla fall in love (the are astounded that they share
the same knowledge of the stars and sun and moon!) ... the fall in love on the ship, upon
which sails her freakishly genius brother and the other Vikings ... they brave Diamond
Shoals and the hurricane winds of The Grand Banks and then Georges Banks, and Dylla's
brother and Kozalpulki speak of their navigational inventions which track due North and
the position of the sun (thorough polarization in sunstones) and the altitude of the North
Star (to the Maya there was not North Star, for the World circled around a space of
Blackness, the Void, the Black Hole: Polaris was at that time about five degrees from the
center of rotation, but the Vikings referred to Polaris even though it was off-center --
I've forgotten the weird name they gave the star -- just something else I have to fucking
look up).
So Dylla and Kozalpalkuli spawn the first of the Sacred Seeds, which pass down for a
thousand years and end up being passed on inside the passage tomb of Newgrange, on the
winter solstice of 2012 -- the lovers (Aimee was a whore and Jonsen was an artist, both
descendants of the Sacred Seed) got in because Aimee (she was a pagan witch) "cast a
glamor" which made them both invisible, and there, at the winter-solstice sunrise,
they conceived, and Aimee later gave birth, to the very author of my novel, Suzanna
Bechard.
Suzanna tells all the rest. The novel jumps to New York City in A.D. 2046, Greenwich
Village, in a twenty-below-zero horrific storm with wild, rabid, mutant dogs roaming the
streets (victims of The War, refugee dogs from New Jersey) and everyone now carries a
semi-automatic, and all the people at the nightclub Club Hell are watching a sermon given
by their Holy Icon, the Holy Cow ... and then the FEDIS attack (the Federal Echelon of
Defense and Internal Security) with their robots and their electronic
artificial-intelligence equipment and quantum electron-spin hand-held devices and phones
folded into pieces of thin pizoelectric paper ... there's so very much more ...
Bradley Brandencloven and Rat and Howard and Victoria and Anna Marina Regina Magdeline
Ponte (a.k.a. Cythera) and Kelley the witch, and Animal, the beloved weirdo from Brooklyn,
the heartthrob of both Rat and Kelly -- they then pull of the greatest terrorist attack
(against the FEDIS) for many years, and they all flee into the blackness of the
mole-people's tunnels beneath New York City, beneath the subways and commuter-train
stations -- and then they flee to New Orleans on a hydrogen magneto-elevated train -- to
New Orleans which is mostly under water except for the French Quarter (one of the highest
spots) ... but it is still magically beautiful in its way ...
Well, I've left a whole whole whole lot out. Almost all of it. I'll send you a copy of the
novel when it is finished. Anyway, I'll go back to writing and chopping now. And
transcribing the Popol Vuh.
And so on.
Later ...
Charlie
Date: 6 Mar 2008
From: Charles Dillingham
To: Ken Cashion
Subject: Re: whatever
> P.S. Do you know that a German
man is serving prison time for being a "Denier"?
Shit! Is he serving time for being a French coin, or for exceeding
the
one-gram-per-each-9000-meters in indicating the fineness of women's
hosiery, or was he just somebody who denied something?
>I have to go to Wal-Mart. I think there was a point to the above but
I might have forgotten it so never mind. Don't read all that king/pope-civil/canon bit I
just wrote.
The hell you say. I've already read it twice. And I'll read it again, if I wanna.
> Sensory Archaeology?
Never heard of it.
You wrote:
"Henry wrote a beautiful, logical letter that no one could disagree with and sent
his Cardinal winging west to Popeville. It was denied. How could it be denied? The guy had
just cancelled a long marriage on simple political grounds and now King VIII needed a
woman who would produce a viable, virile male child...Anne B. had PROMISED him one. (As
you know, they can turn it off or turn it on...like sex...and deliver what the guy wants.)
Why would the Pope not do this?
England needed a male son for the King...because with all the crazy
intermarrying of different Princes and Princesses and various parts of the peerage, it is
only a matter of time that there will be 15 guys sitting all over Western Europe with
equal legal claims to a throne. NOT a good idea.
Henry couldn't afford a war in England because now black powder was being used
in canons operated by contractors. They were repeatable and accurate and no medieval
castle/fort could stand up to shot after shot in the same spot.
Mobile artillery created a totally new stimulus in civil disagreements. Also, England
could beat any single country, but not a group at one time.
So why didn't the Pope OK the dumping of Catherine?
Because the Pope was under house arrest by Charles! Indeed...he had the
College of Cardinals under house arrest! The Pope was bloody-well going to do do what
Charles wanted.
So how did this Charlie get so much power?
Way back, Charles (Spaniard-ish) was having a war with southern France.
Normally, England would have gone to France's rescue...people have done that too many
times...balance of power and all that. Good o'Woolsy said, "No problem. Lets stay out
of it." Woolsy was building lots of neat things for himself and didn't want the
budget upsot.
Charles beat France...SURPRISE! Who doesn't? Then Charles made a 90° turn south and
took Italy and Popeville. And now he had Italian boat knowledge, his own Spanish armada,
and now he was looking to England.
He could take England, but he really didn't have to.
He had the Pope. Catherine was not going to produce a son. And Charles was
next in line to become King of England!
'How?' (I hear you think.)
Because Henry's long-in-the-tooth wife, Catherine, was Spanish and was
Charles' auntie.
Well, a really PO'd Henry had the support of the man in the lane and they
collectively didn't like the Pope being the serf of Charles... so..."
OK, Ken. Damn it! I think you are one of the funniest and most knowledgeable and smartest
men I know or have known. You are a true experience. (No kidding.)
Having said that, to prime your historian genius, may I tap into your vast vat of
veritably veraciously valuable venue of knowledge? Really, this is just pure fun. I think
you'll love it. It is the following question:
I have (wrapped softly inside my mind) this Norwegian priestess and princess, who is
half-goddess and a pagan witch and the daughter of a Norwegian king who (the king) is in
serious trouble with some neighbor (Sweden? Denmark? Scotland? Normandy? whomever?)
and she (the chick) was educated by the monks in Ireland's monestaries -- this stunningly
beautiful princess, whose name is Dylla, has to flee for her life. Her brother, who is a
genius and an inventor, refuses to allow her to leave alone, so he leaves with her (yes,
she calls all
the shots, no questions asked) on the Viking cargo ship owned by her father's throne, with
sixty Norwegian and Danish and Celtic freemen -- the ship is not a drakkar, the longship
-- rather, it is a knarr, the cargo ship, which had a deeper draught but was more
seaworthy on the open ocean (the North Sea has waves upwards of a hundred feet, and
hurricane-force winds, as you know) ... So anyhow, this witch priestess princess blond
regal beauty has
to flee for her life, and MY QUESTION IS:
What moment of time to I drop her into?
The Norwegians and Jutes and Swedes and Germans and Franks and Celts and Goths and
Picts and Angles and god knows who were always killing each other in little groups
attacking little groups (until the Romans came rolling in occasionally with their legions)
... so all I need is to drop my beautiful Dylla into a troubled time. What would be
absolutely the most absolutely mostest coolest time to drop her into? I am, personally,
kinda biased toward 1066 because, first, it had the legendary Harold-versus-Harold thing,
not to mention William the Bastard --
but also (did you know this?) Haley's comet appeared in March or April of 1066 -- a very
bright occurrence of it -- and all of Europe thought it to betoken something of great
portent. I like that. But if I have to move to another decade (or century?) I'll do so. I
just want to put Dylla into serious trouble. (I'm so mean.)
Any input?
Thanks, my historical genius friend. If you need any advice regarding early-20th-century
East-German cosmopolitan decadence, just ask. I can even spell "Bertolt Brecht".
Yours, as always,
Charlie |