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Joshua Alan Doetsch

~ Author & Scrivnomancer

Joshua Alan Doetsch

Tag Archives: underworld

The Smell of Coffee Attracts the Dead

16 Wednesday Dec 2009

Posted by scrivnomancer in Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

coffee, coffee grounds, death, dreamlands, dreams, far away, ghosts, haunting, isolation, living abroad, shades, the dead, underworld

Being away from everything is like being dead.

Not in a morbid or melodramatic light…just in the sense of being inaccessible and not accessing.

I had this vivid dream, years ago—I was dead. The afterlife was just my parents home. Only for the dead, like me, the ceilings were exceptionally high—small cathedral high, with a sort of inner balcony running a square around the house. And I (and occasional other wayward spirits), existed solely (souly?) in that square.

I walked around the square.

And again.

And existence was looking down—gigantically down—at my family and friends, doing day to day stuff. I am close. But I cannot interact. Cannot quite see it at their level or angle either, just looked down through my square.

And every stupid, little thing has the kind nostalgia that makes it hard to remain standing. They’d brew some coffee, and I’d be like, “Ye Gods! They’re brewing coffee. I used to brew coffee with them like that. I used to drink it out on the deck, with them, like that.”

And this went on. I occasionally took a break to comment on something with a random, wandering spirit, share a few jokes, make a few new Plutonian acquaintances—because I can be a funny-self-depreciating-charming bastard when I’m not stuck in my head—and it’s a few laughs between spooks. But they move on and by the time I turn my head again, for another comment, it’s a different face, or none at all and just me on my little inner balcony.

It was an emotionally engaging dream, that stretched through quite a bit of dreamtime, and was, oddly, very realistic. I really thought I was dead.

But I woke up.

Breakfast probably tasted very good that morning.

Well. Let’s be honest. It was lunch.

It wasn’t a horrifying dream. It was just funny, sad, and nostalgic at turns. There are some BNL songs that feel like that dream.

Anyway, where was I…

Oh yeah…Norway.

I’m away from everything and everyone. And I find myself getting little glimpses of what all my family and friends are doing…but not from the ground angle, and not really interacting. Emails and posts and Skype video—I’m looking down through my little square and saying, “Ye Gods! I used to have coffee with them like that.” Occasionally, at work, I turn away and make a comment or a joke with one of the new faces. And I wave the severed hand I keep at my desk. And I explain that, no, not all Americans have severed hands lying around (just us patriotic ones).

I’m gone. But I haven’t been forgotten (always flattering). And occasionally, my loved ones perform these odd seance rituals involving click-clacking on lettered keys, and they conjure a little, ethereal image of me or sometimes just my disembodied voice or just cryptic textual messages manifesting on the Ouija board computer screens.

The inverse perspective is a sort of post-apocalyptic plotline where I’m the only one left alive, contacting the dead with my own rituals (only in my inner movie, I don’t fuck up Richard Matheson’s book).

And then… My God! Are you having coffee?

So I thought of that dream (on the off chance that I wasn’t laying the parallels on thick). Again, I’m not invoking a death comparison for a sense of macabre angst…but more for the Weirdness of the experience. It’s been Weird.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this.

D’em Coffins What Float On d’e Ocean

14 Monday Sep 2009

Posted by scrivnomancer in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

afterlife, crows, dr. jekyll's pub, gargoyle urinals, odin, oslo, ravens, tombs, underworld, viking ships, vikings

“Oslo is a city without a city culture. Nobody here comes from a city. Everyone comes from somewhere small.”

This was told to me while we were ordering drinks at the bar at Dr. Jekyll’s Pub. I found the idea intriguing, but also, I really had to pee.

Eventually, we got our drinks and made it back to the table with the others. When I finally got to the bathroom, I was greeted by wide-mouthed gargoyle-headed urinals, and I thought, “I’m home—jiggity-jig.”

These are the palpitating jubilations one feels before paying a bar tab in Oslo, not after.

*Absence Makes the Grinch’s Heart Grow Three Sizes Fonder*
So I haven’t updated the exploits in a while. The excuses shall be presented in alphabetical order:

-”A” is for apathy.
-I was sick with what may or may not have been the swine flu.
-Funcom quarantined me in my old apartment for a week.
-My old apartment lost it’s internet connection.
-Was then busy moving into new apartment.
-Zebras ate my homework.

We’ll get back to all those points…but I wasn’t really suffering from apathy. But then I only said that “A” is for apathy, so the statement remains correct.

*The All-Father Has a Bus Pass*
When I met the god, Odin, I was waiting for the bus and in between tracks on my iPod.

He was the only other person at the bus stop. He was dressed in a ragged, colorless coat of oily textures. Maybe homeless looking…maybe not. Greasy, tendrils of gray-white hair hung off his head and a beard to match.

One eye was alright.

One eye—the left eye—was dead.

Something awful happened to that eye. Either that, or he lost his original eye and H.R. Giger is on the Norwegian health plan for fabricating prosthetics.

I say dead eye, but not dead like a shark’s—this eye could still focus, or more accurately, point. I was looking him over because he looked like an interesting character (and you have to keep a hidden Rolodex for things like that) and he looked up with his good eye and pointed the dead eye at me.

Eyes are a favorite descriptive point for storytellers, used and overused (kind of the “Stairway to Heaven” of character description), so I hate to use a cliche involving eyes piercing me…but dammit that dead eye was very stabby—like rusty-coffin-nails-jabbing-your-skull sort of stabby.

He stared at me and I tried, but I couldn’t maintain the gaze and had to look away. Something was inexplicably disturbing about him, beyond a messed up eye. And he kept staring at me, more and more rusty coffin nails puncturing my periphery.

Then I got on the bus.

There were ravens cawing. I don’t know if they were his. Or maybe they were crows—I’ll have to look that up—corvids anyway. Here they have black heads, tails, and wings, but bodies the color of ash.

*Viking Ships Down the River Styx*
Funcom has stacks and stacks of a handy little pocket book to hand out: Oslo – A Poor Man’s Connoisseur Guide to Happy Living in One of the Most Expensive Cities in the World. The book is only slightly shorter than the title. There are a lot of nifty locations listed. I’m kind of making it a mission to visit all of them.

A few weeks back, I visited the peninsula of Bygdøy which juts into the water south of where I work. There are beaches there and other attractions. First stop…a viking ship museum!

There are three ships there, all wood, all well over a thousand years old each, all incredibly well made, and all more or less preserved because when a ship was retired, a some person of importance was buried inside of it, beneath protective layers of clay. And so the ships become interesting to both history buffs and sepulchral enthusiasts. To prepare a soul for the Afterlife journey, they are buried in a fine ship, with treasure, weapons, food, supplies, and even dogs. That’s going to the Underworld in STYLE. Some cultures only give you two coins in the eyes for the public metro.

I saw various interesting artifacts including a pieces of wood with nordic ruins meaning “unwise person” and a glass cup that was already an antique when it was buried over a thousand years ago.

*No Tan Lines?*
After the viking ships, I took the bus to the end of the line to explore some of the beaches of Bygdøy. Rolling topography and trees make it so that you really can’t see the beaches or ocean from where the bus drops you off so I just picked a random path and walked. Trees gave way, salt filled the air, and I walked right out onto…a nude beach!

What happened to puritans?

The vikings ate them, you say?

*TO BE CONTINUED…*
Stay tuned for the rest of my misadventures during my blogging hiatus—they involve swine flu, drama, boat trips, islands, a 12th century monastery, cemeteries by night, and an attack by a plastic bag…honest.

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