Among the Tusks: Part 1

The sun cast a fleeting glow along the horizon, washing the M-caster in bruise colored light as it sliced out of the clouds. Its Verge powered engines flared, trailing purple effect. From inside the M-caster’s wood melded cockpit, a man wiped away the remaining condensation from his goggles and looked over the side and down towards the jungle below. There, he saw his prey: three Vinsari dirigibles being pulled by air mantas, the large beasts struggling in their frames, their wings slapping the air. From his altitude, the dirigibles themselves appeared as greenish slugs, things ponderously crawling along the canopy of the jungle. Thus far, they hadn’t noticed him or he knew the air would be alive with death lances and Verge bolts. He leveled the wings on the horizon, letting lift build beneath the caster’s frame and setting himself in a position just ahead and above of the dirigibles. The wood purred, sheets of water sluicing off, clearing the remnants of the flight through the clouds. The wings buffeted and he settled it with the controls, then used the other hand to pull a copper lever, listening to the M-bolts charge. They let loose a low hum from within their canisters, vibrating against their couplings. He then adjusted his targeting sites for a plummeting dive and brought the caster over on itself. He hung this way for several more seconds, feeling the blood rush into his head and taking in the scene below a final time before pulling back on the controls. He sucked his gut up towards his spine, fighting the forces of gravity. For its part, the M-caster whistled as air sped past its frame, a comet, a warbird streaking towards the bloated bags of its enemy. He made slight adjustments in the descent, keeping the sites just ahead of the lead dirigible. When the time was right, he slapped the trigger in a rapid staccato and listened to the rotating bolts and their chuk chuk noise. Like electrified vipers, the bolts struck the lead ship as things kin to his rage. Where they touched, they let loose the gases of the bag, which rapidly turned into superheated energy as the entire spine of the thing shook, then exploded before pitching over and into the jungle. The manta, harnessed to the frame, screeched in terror as it too was sucked into the fiery doom. The ensuing blast tore the surrounding jungle outwards in concentric circles, ripping trees from their roots and exposing lower layers of canopy and the ground itself. The remaining dirigibles returned the carnage, targeting the caster now that it was within view. They raked the air around the craft and split, their mantas pulling in opposite directions in an attempt to evade any more of his attack. The fire went wide and above him, the gunners unable to adjust to his plummeting speed. The jungle below lay awash in the purples and greens of destructive weaponry, the canopy shaking in the cacophony. The caster broke the plane of the other ships and he pulled back hard on the controls, the frame screaming in protest. He gritted his teeth, grunting, trying to keep from passing out. He swung through the air like a pendulum, death following him in a wake, the gunners now adjusting to his reduced speed. Their glow showed his wings, bent in the struggle to clear the jungle, which he barely did. Climbing again, he pulled the controls hard to the right and then to the left, clearing the enemy fire. He then brought his sites back around and onto the second dirigible. Depressing the trigger again, he walked more bolts over its bag and then down across the suspended frame, watched in fascinated horror as it broke from its rigging, the rear half hanging. Men, some afire, plummeted into the open air, their bodies and limbs akimbo. The accompanying manta lurched to the side, its depleted cargo pulling against its body. It brought the doomed dirigible around and into the path of the remaining ship, which desperately began its own turn. The manta, twisted back on itself, ripped in half, the lead part of the body trailing a waterfall of gore as it too fell, shattered wings still slapping the air. The third ship kept to its turn without success, the burning mass of the other slamming into it. He watched this in a stunned awe, watched as both ships clung to each other in death’s embrace, their rigging twisted, splayed. They both vented swells of green gas into the air. As he watched, another blast ripped out of the wreckage, aimed for his M-caster. A doomed gunner taking a last shot. Timed seemed to stop as pellets exploded down the length of his port side, tearing the wing into pieces. He winced as hot metal tore his forehead open. The caster yawed to the left and he slammed his hands over the cockpit, reaching for any control that would give the caster lift.

One thing is, when one attempts to be a writer or a filmmaker, an artist or poet (what defines this?) is that one begins to dissect the pieces that have come in advance. I liken this to the movie, The Matrix, when Neo begins to see the 1's and 0's in the program itself. He has embraced the art, the programming...he now sees the beyond. He is powerful. And so how is this in art, in philosophy? One begins to dissect every piece. Each frame, each sentence. The enjoyment is lost at some point and it all becomes 1's and 0's. For the filmmaker, the deciduous becomes the play of light on the boundaries and the interstitial. For the writer, the sentence, the paragraph, becomes the block of narrative. And, can we divorce ourselves from this? Should we? So, I was watching Seven Samurai today. One of my favorite films. One of the greatest films. One not only embraces the narrative but also becomes imbued with Kurosawa...the true test of a master. And so, I immediately fell into the matrix, the play of 1's and 0's. But in the watching, 20 minutes in, I forced myself to watch it for its purpose alone: emotion, entertainment. Difficult beyond measure at this point, but necessary. Because, it seemed, I had lost the joy in the story. Each of the things I mentioned is truly about the story: about humankind, about emotion, about what connects us. To lose this, to divorce from this, forces us to lose contact with humanity itself. We lose the purpose for why we, as artists, do what we do. So, embrace that leaf, the ocean, the play of light. Examine its purpose. But never lose touch of the very human that we find in that...the distinction between instinct and human.