So Spake Mo…
It is an ancient story, a heartbreakingly familiar one. Once upon a time in the high reaches of Tibet, a spare prince laid the foundations for a kingdom on the high cliffs north of the Indian Himalaya on the south bank of the Sutlej river. Tsaparang, the capitol city of the great Guge Kingdom, ruled largely unopposed from these highly defensible spires for nearly 700 years. As the Muslims swept through the surrounding lands, Guge grew with the influx of Buddhist refugees. Gifted artisans from the Far East, the Near East, and all the conquered lands between joined together in Guge to create a uniquely international mix of Buddhist art that can still be seen today on the walls Tsaparang’s great ruins.
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12/1/2013 Sharing a Story, Sharing a Life: Speech from the Launch of STEALING LUCIFER’S DREAMSRead NowSo Spake Mo…
On the evening of Friday the 15th of November nearly 50 people converged on Jacobsen’s Books & More in downtown Hillsboro, OR to help me celebrate two milestones: the launch of my first book in two years, STEALING LUCIFER’S DREAMS, and my cresting of “the hill,” my fortieth birthday. It was a chance for me to share what stories have meant on my journey thus far and how the people around me have helped to shape that story. For those of you who couldn’t be there that night, this is for you. So Spake Mo…
Albion. The name of the isle in the time of the Greeks gods, the isle populated by the sons of Albion, the giants. Britian. The name of the isle in the time Trojans, when Brutus of Troy conquered the giants and settled there after years of war and exile, bequeathing it his name. So Spake Mo…
Alright, go ahead, get it out. Breathe… Worst playground joke ever. Yes, this is probably the reason we never learned about the place in school. How exactly would the teacher introduce it? No one knows the origin of the name either, so translating it to English as “Rock Puma” (the lake being in the shape of a puma chasing a rabbit) or “Crag of Lead” is not academically sound. But that’s a shame, because this lake so high up in the Andes along the Peru/Bolivia border has a fascinating heritage. It is essentially the birthplace of humanity. So Spake Mo…
Through an expanse of years, shattering a divide of incredible distance, I listened to words of Michael Wood last night. He served as my guide we traced over the British and French landscape, as we traced back into the legend of Arthur, the Once and Future King. So Spake Mo...
Far away, on the island of Floreana on the outer edge of the Galapagos, two lovers came to settle, to build their hermitage and live out their philosophy. Everything in their grand experiment from the shape of their garden, to their meatless diet (carefully reinforced by the removal of their teeth before they departed Germany), to their nudist lifestyle followed Dr. Friedrich Ritter’s mystical re-interpretation of Nietzschean and Taoist philosophy. His mistress Dore Strauch-Koerwin cleaved to Dr. Ritter’s philosophy long before their departure, embracing a swinger lifestyle and ultimately leaving behind her husband (and Dr. Ritter’s wife) to cross two oceans. So Spake Mo…
I wasn’t sure what I would see on the shuttle ride from the airport to the conference hotel for the Lori Foster Reader & Author Get Together. Cincinnati, Ohio. A verdant landscape blurred past, punctuated with the occasional building: lovely historic brick, industrial painted cinderblock. Familiar. Too familiar to be awe-inspiring on its own. So I leaned forward and asked the driver, “So what’s interesting about your state?” So Spake Mo...Perhaps it has happened once to you. Perhaps you There is a place in the world where that is more true than any other, where the residue of ancient lives is thicker, richer in the dense, dry soil than anywhere else on earth.
Wonderwerk Cave. At the edge of the Kalahari Desert, this cave extends nearly a mile into the hillside with lives buried in the strata beneath your soles going down 20 feet into the earth. So Spake Mo…
Before an expanse of metal filament spanned the waters of the Columbia from her Oregon to her Washington shores, an ancient landslide served the First Peoples as a bridge from one side of the awesome gorge to the other. Decade after decade the Columbia strained against this entrapment, slowly wearing away at the underbelly of The Great Crossover. The tribes of the First People knew it was fragile. They had their rules for its use to protect the many against its inevitable fall. And many were the stories of its origins. In one story, it was the body of the defeated tyrant, Thunderbird, from the days of the animal people. In another, it was the gift of the Great Spirit for the people to ease their difficulty in crossing the great river. In yet another, it was offered as a peaceful point of connection between two quarreling brother chiefs and their tribes. So Spake Mo…
Read enough legends and motifs begin to emerge: the lakes, the rivers, and seas, dangerous mysteries lie beneath those glittering depths, sacred secrets that can reveal the true nature of your very soul. Take for example a young orphan boy taken in by the chief of a tribe of Blackfeet, a tribe that once roamed Alyse’s Montana home. This young orphan boy stood on the cusp of manhood, eager to take his place among the heroes of his people. He begged of his grandfather to tell him how make this crossing, how to bring greatness to his tribe. Grudgingly, the chief shared with him an ancient legend. At the bottom of a lake, he said there were powerful spirits which kept the ponokamita, the elk dogs. Any warrior who could find a way to win these elk dogs would surely be remembered among his people. How it would ease their burden to have these beautiful beasts to help carry their possessions, to aid them in the buffalo hunt! |
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The Story of Place
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