Better quality version over here: The Art and Science Of Fiction

Plato’s Atlantis

Plato first began to write of a mythical continent called Atlantis around 355 BC. He believed that the land, which he described as being made of alternating rings of land and sea, lay near the Straits of Gibraltar in the Atlantic Ocean until it was destroyed 10,000 years earlier. Plato addresses Atlantis specifically in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.

Edgar Cayce on Atlantis

Edgar Cayce described Atlantis as a vast continent, approximately equal in size to Europe. According to the seer’s florid vision, the Atlanteans were gifted with many advanced psychic abilities and technologies, and gave rise to the peculiarly similar civilizations of the ancient Egyptians and the pre-Columbian Americans. More books by & about Edgar Cayce

The ancient Egyptians, according to Critias, described Atlantis as an island stretching approximately 700 km across, made mostly of mountains along the shore and in the northern regions, and “extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 600 km], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 400 km].”

Atlantis – A World Beyond Words

Speculations on the location of Atlantis range from the Eastern Indian Ocean to the Americas, though the most intriguing candidates, naturally, are islands, most notably Crete and Sri Lanka. The prevalence of Flood mythology in the annals of the all the world’s earliest literature suggests that cultures as diverse as the Maya and Incas of the New World and the legendary builders of the Nile and the Fertile Crescent, all were seeded from a thriving antediluvian people with powers we can only guess at today. Naturally, the speculation runs rampant: some popular ideas associate the Ancient Atlanteans with psychokinetic “technology” utilizing the power potential of crystals, an elemental theology of solar/lunar mythology and astrological genius, and a mastery of reincarnation.

We may never know which next stunning archeological find can be identified with Plato’s tale, but one thing appears likely: human kind has achieved high levels of advancement, possibly many times, long before what we commonly think of as “history” even began.

Learn more about Atlantis

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In a phrase, it means whatever the hell you want it to.

Blues4Kali is written with deliberate disregard for certain conventions and trends that dominate the current vogues and marketing demands of the publishing industry, and for this reason, some readers may react with confusion, distress and outrage.

This is perfectly natural. Do not be alarmed.

In a way, all groundbreaking literature qualifies as “experimental metafiction,” until these techniques are adopted by a school of mainstream wordsmiths and enter the libraries en masse. Breaking the rules pushes the envelope, and makes the letter-stuffers of the literary world understandably nervous, for all the write reasons.

Satire, graphic language and symbolism, the irreverent treatment of taboos, and nonlinear story structure have an ancient and eternal place in the scriptures of all enduring cultural canons.

Nothing new about that.

With the ebbs and tides of fickle fate and fashion, the public rarely appreciates the avant-garde, being offended at the indecipherability and discontinuity of the text. Publishing companies, focusing on that bottom line, tend to favor mediocrity over innovation, formula over creativity, and production-line prefab plots to tales of exploration within the forbidden recesses of the mind and soul.

So this novel relies as heavily on “obsolete” techniques culled from the thorny side of social protest literature, as on questionable choices regarding structure and voice which venture beyond the traditional confines of modern Mcfiction.

The flexible first-person, present-tense stream-of-consciousness treatment of the narrative strikes me as the distinctive style feature which is likeliest to bother classicists, both professional and amateur.

Oh, well. Strict rules governing the creation and distribution of serious soulspeak annoys and bothers my Muses, and stern judgment has already been passed on the cowardly cretins running publishing companies into the ground and the reading public with them.

Hel awaits those who are relegating the fate of fiction to the mercies of a marketplace that made stupidity the number-one overseas export of the Murican economy. The parasites will pay. The question is: who? Certainly not the adventurous authors who go out on a limb to make the work of a lifetime mean more than next week’s Oprah segment.

To buy or not to buy. That is the driving meditation of these mind-deadening times. Shakespeare would shit bricks to see what they have turned his penny theater into. My mother, while beating me for role-playing as Shylock to my much wealthier goyicshe friends, once misquoted Polonius at me, as if the dark pronouncement were drawn from the Bible instead of the Bard.

What I mean to say is, she literally thought that, “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” was actually attributable to a commandment issued by God to Moses at Mt. Sinai, instead of a droning pile of unwanted advice issued by a pompous bore everyone mocks. Look it up. And this from someone who theoretically held a Master’s degree in education.

There is a legitimate push, among writers and audiences alike, for more comprehensible prose. The “reader response” school of literary criticism derives from common sense: what good is a book, if only the well-educated can grok it?

On the other hand, this play-to-the-Philistines attitude has created a twenty-first century that has already forgotten the dynamic twentieth. Cultural prejudice, social control, and censorship are back in high style, and many readers entertain the delusion that there is something more honest about reading “non-fiction,” (an account of an author’s opinions and impressions of verifiable events or ideas) than “fiction”(which is popularly identified with “lying”).

Metafiction theory transcends these artificial distinctions, emphasizing that truth, being subjective, can never be absolute. Observers can never truly comprehend the inner motives of others, no matter how skillful the analysis. So only through metaphor and example can the experience be justly portrayed, with no pretensions to truth or falsehood, but a steady diet alternating between them.

Just like life.

“Non-fiction” is itself an arrogant myth of frightening proportions, since the bulk of essayists and how-to technicians are expressing a private world view that is not only biased, but unabashedly so. Selecting a subject is the first decision that reveals an underlying motive, and if this motive is not merely money, then social or political change is generally the reason most of these works are ordered and delivered.

All art is essentially propagandistic, promoting the primacy of the author’s worldview, and this is true regardless of any ethic of objectivity that may delude the principals. We slant our perspective to accommodate our prejudices, unconsciously if not otherwise, and nothing could be more dishonest than denying this universal truism.

The modernist movement of realism is premised on this dogmatic and unsupportable theory, as put forth by Irish novelist James Joyce and his alter ego Stephen Daedalus: that art is and ought to be static, not kinetic. “Static” seems to me to be synonymous with “boring”. Witness the state of modern “literature”. Readers are obviously groping after something, and Left Behind ain’t it.

With all due respect to the original quantum surfer of literature, James Joyce’s Aquinas-loving ass can kiss my tuchus. What could be more useless than art which refuses to face the transformative nature of communicated experience? The world is never justly portrayed as eternal. Even genius, when drunk, proclaims self-deluded circular culture crap as the foundation of a New Age. Always has it been thus.

I boldly say, “bullshit.” All art is and ought to be dynamic, not static. Take that, you besotted whoremonger!

Time to revise the standards. Realism has played out, and the postrational revolution is Here. We’re just waiting for the public to notice. Quantum physics have made certainty a non sequitur. And Joyce himself would probably be right here saying so.

Every expression is opinion. No perception is verifiable to the satisfaction of a skeptic. And who cares? Proof is for those who lack faith. We can only agree to the truth of a proposition, we can never escape the taint of doubt.

So we must get on with the business of knowing, without being sure, just as we always have. Once again, we are called upon to take that Foolish leap off the cliff, in hopes that this time we will fly.

Verify this:

Poetry has already been widely dismissed in favor of song lyrics, and novels are steadily being reduced to cinema at a breakneck speed. The Faulkners and Plaths of this century are competing with the Aaron Spellings and Avril Levignes for the hearts and minds of a hypnotized public that places a priority on escape over enlightenment, and the effect of this narrowness is harrowing indeed for those who still attempt to think for ourselves.

Freedom of thought itself is on the line. Winston Smith is huddling over his diaries even now, penning sacred swords, bastard contemplations, defiant memories and declaring the primacy of Love. Big Brother is a fraternity prankster with a cruel sense of callous humor, who gets a big dick bigger watching us squirm under the gaze of his malicious voyeurism. Ha ha.

Twenty-two years later, what is most shocking is how well the Republicans followed Orwell’s script. He is not the only one violently tossing and turning in his grave.

Market economics has overtaken everything in our Kulture, so it ought come as no surprise that commercialism is dumbing down books as well. Plenty of fine writers are emerging in the recesses of underground poetry slams and all over the damn internet, but, as in music, the distribution network is terrorizing unknown talents, while corrupting the creative juices of those authors both talented and fortunate enough to have a package of stories able to attract the diminishing audience for truly original writing.

Even the greatest of these talents are suffering a steady decline, laboring under conditions that corrupt any artist. Second and third novels are being pumped out to satisfy contractual requirements, rather than artistic ones.

And fame is the game: to play we must subject ourselves to agents, slaving under the grueling itinerary formulated to exploit the fame and personality of an artistic community that traditionally values privacy and liberty from paparazzi nonsense more than our Hollywood opposite numbers can afford. Film, for all the virtues that medium contains, has been a devastating influence on budding novelists and readers alike.

Somehow, screenplay adaptability has become a literary virtue. Book club sales are more important than erudite reviews. And short stories, once again, amount to little more than promotional pap intended more to build a mighty name that will hopefully fill bookstores everywhere with Starbucks franchises and fan club meetings, than to provide a way for struggling writers to finance unprofitable artistic endeavors.

And with the advent of the personal computer, the field has gone from crowded to overrun. Mediocre half-assers are everywhere, and the occupation of “aspiring novelist” has a social approval rating somewhere between “porno actor” and “radical political revolutionary.”

As I say, for all the right reasons.

What a mess! My mother was right. I ought to have become an English teacher like she wanted. Too late now.

Blues4Kali was written to specifically avoid any compromises at all that address the unpalatability of printing books, like mine, which are ignored and suppressed solely due to unusual styles and subjects that represent radical departures from the mainstream. Deviance is the aesthetic premise of my work. Popularity is beside the point.

Therefore, to a critic who objects to inconsistent grammar, sentence fragments, unfleshed characters, and other crimes against convention, or decries the harshness of satirical pronouncements, or bemoans the use of “gimmicky” techniques, I can say only this: if you do not like these features, you do not understand them.

Feel free to disagree. I look forward to publicly burning your review and hanging you in effigy at my next black magic convention. My coven will haunt you. And you will eternally get what you deserve.

All seriousness aside,

Goddess go between you and harm in all the twisted caverns which lay ahead.

Indi Riverflow

Read at your own risk. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Blues4Kali- by Indi Riverflow

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What will Winter Solstice bring in 2012?
…an instant of Karma? …an ethereal spiral dance of the collective soul? … cosmic judgment leveled against civilization’s expanse? …destruction of the world as we know it? …a chance for a new start? …the rise and the revenge of the Goddess? or simply another day in the life of paranoia?
These are the false prophesies that your pastor warned you about!

Reality Exchange Program
“the South side of time…”

Crazy Bear said there’d be days like this. As usual, no one believed him. Now, all I want to know is: where IS that lifeboat, and how DO I ditch this ship of fools, without any of these bliss ninnies noticing that I’m already gone?
Captain, my ass. We are equal in this sea of madness.
That iceberg is looking awfully big.
Amana Mission is on a quest to save the world, and the only problem is, she can’t remember why she got involved with such an obvious scam in the first place. Jesus saves. Christ. What a loser.
Kali kills first, and recycles later.
Hitchhikers, load up for a ride to the Other Side. You may wish you had gone Greyhound.

“What the…?”

• A cranky band of prankster peace warriors who absolutely cannot resist messing with each other’s minds, no matter the cost.
• Cocky alchemy-dabbling quantum surfers, navigating the Ethersphere with
  hand-held computers, seamlessly switching timelines to find a better party vibe
  and swap tips about the best temporary toilets for use as interdimensional
  portals.
• A burnt-out visionary hippie millionaire on a mission from Gaia to build a
  better “communitopia” by underwriting a convoy carrying busloads of telepathic
  priestesses.
• A wheelchair-bound mindpilot propelling a crystal-powered Seed Bank toward
  the post-Apocalyptic Garden, with psychic precision…and a predilection for
  high-velocity extreme driving.
• Hermaphrodite time-jumper fleeing a fate worse than death.
• Anarchist ghettoes where anything goes-except escape.
• Ancient Principals vying like sweatsoaked carpetbaggers for our loyalty as
  the Final Vote is tallied.
• Long-haired security patrols collecting a cannabis tribute tax from all
  pilgrims to the Valley of Fun.
• And an underground meat mafia bringing a black magic revival to a
  bloodless dreamworld gone bland.

All brought together by a secret psychedelic superdrug that tunes users in to reality through the eyes of another archetypal avatar inhabiting a different state of space and time. Mahayana made easy. Budding Buddha natures are running amuck on a virtual superhighway where all roads lead to the Bo tree and singularity.
Twenty-first century Tantra is about more than sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Confronting the Karma of every wasted breath is only the first step.
Welcome to the End Times. Kali awaits. She already knows who you are.
Do you?
The 21st century counterculture is even weirder than it appears on the surface. This is not your mommy’s MTV Road Rules.

Ride along on this mesmerizing, metaphor-packed bus trip toward ecstasy and enlightenment, as three real-time
guides-Amana, Sissy, and Deva, let you in on what they learned when they asked what It was really all about, after all.
Become them for a multilevel metafictional tour of infinity, and awaken yourself to the miracle-a-minute magic of mighty Mother Kali!

Pre-print preview at www.blues4kali.com

Experience the entire eBook! Download NOW at www.blues4kali.com

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