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EnduranceWriter
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  • Cowachunga - Ch. 1
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ENDURANCEWRITER

AKA Damon Arvid. Under-the-radar writer, musician. Let's keep it that way. The cloud novels and other highlights are being collected at DamonArvid.com. To access all the music and Avocado Sun, click the big black box below.

Fabric - Summon These Days (Music)

Cowachunga - 1.1 - "Bone Dry Grasp"

10/16/2019

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Dread growing by the minute, Kyle made his way through an inky landscape that gradually lightened to reveal brutal, ancient scars. Volcanic remnants of water-scoured rock, upraised  ribs, dead branches arrayed in pulverized defiance of sun and wind.

The jagged, impossibly narrow nighttime spaces and the risk of sudden drop that made every  step forward an act of faith had given way to more modulated valleys and protruding ribs. To his right a vast, empty landscape stretched out forever ahead. 

Nursing bone-jarred ankles, Kyle slowed and took careful stock of each contour he passed, of every valley and rise revealed by imminent dawn. As he approached a ridge line he crouched carefully amid the tallest cluster of boulders, all too aware that his silhouette would now be visible for miles, should anyone be watching.

Kyle knew better than to enter the empty void that spread temptingly ahead, though the jumbled matrix of geology behind him held danger of a human kind. He must skirt the line between impassibility and shade-free existence, hope he was not simply going round in circles.

There was no comfort in what was, when all was said and done, his only option.Assuming he was moving in a direction away from his pursuers, would he not also be moving away from the only known source of water in this intentionally desolate place?
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Or were their multiple sources––there must be roads criss-crossing the area, as in any place with a historic mining provenance. Yet a road would not necessarily lead to anything more than caved-in tunnels. lime-streaked tailings. Mines were located with sole regard to mineral wealth, not creature comfort. Water could be shipped in on mule backs, rail, for hundreds of miles if necessary.
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Maybe the lack of pursuers was no accident, they were prepared to lose him, set a perimeter, so long as he had no chance of stumbling onto a highway, flagging down a ride. With each minute passing, as his throat tickled in preemption of the sun’s emergence, he grew more convinced that his blind scramble that put distance between him and his pursuers had taken him further than was safe from source of life giving––yet forward movement was something, he could not refute that in-the-bones logic


Kyle stopped and looked out for a long moment at an unbroken landscape––a sense of deja vu entering that for a time masked gnawing thirst. Vivid memories of visits to aunts, uncles, and cousins on the Outback, a small mining town far removed from life-giving rains. A place that would not have existed but for the cold imperatives of commerce. And yet which harbored ways of sustaining life, if you knew.
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He had almost forgotten the rule of dry bone and dust. On the Gold Coast Kyle’s primary fears had related to watery predation. Shark attacks on the upswing in recent months as sources of food were depleted offshore––the year-in, year-out reality of scorched earth trawling having its effect. The sense of danger that hit him paddling out, a feeling of elemental heave within heavy surf, of the bottom dropping off the coast. Odd that the bone dry landscape Kyle had found so comforting in his youth, eloquent in its emptiness, would turn out to be the most hungry. 


The sun crept now into easy embrace with the horizon, giving as yet faint hint of its role as cruel enforcer. Brushing the rocks with just a kiss of warmth, its rays would only intensify and lengthen, transforming myriad shades of red and orange into washed out desert. The hard surfaces becoming radiant forces of their own, trapping the sun's heat––earth turned into ovenware. 


Kyle gazed out onto the flat, the sun now steady above the horizon, unblinking. The few clouds that passed just wisps and fragments. What he needed was distance from the ridge, enough to gain daytime perspective of its contours––pick out Cowachunga, or a sun-protected traverse.

​Read the entire Cowachunga, a cloud novel, and others like it at DamonArvid.com. Below, the perfect fabric song for sunny daze.
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A BeautifUl Case of the Blues - PROLOGUE- ARISUGAWA PARK

10/15/2019

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Hiro-o 9:53 am — March 2007
Dressed in khakis, light sweater, the man walked along the deserted, rain flecked street at the edge of Arisugawa Park, turning in through old, iron-wrought gates. Pale light turned the oppressively compact city into a tableau worthy of Edward Gorey — pond, brook, and trees emanating the secretive presence of a childless branch of the royal family. If you did not look up, beyond the spidery crest of branches, you would not know you were in city.

The man gazed for a moment at a pond encircled by old men on benches, fishing along its banks, nestled into the contours of the hill, fixated on barely perceptible ripples. Picking his way along worn stone steps, attempts at the sun to break free from persistent clouds veered into a tangle of shafts, pale light flickering through the branches. This could be anywhere. The patch of sky widened as he emerged from trees into a clearing at the top of the hill.

Breathing with a slight labor, he found a bench and settled in. Beneath the call and response of watchful crows there was a faint chirp that registered as a first sign of spring. Eyes coming to focus, he took in two children playing in a still barren flowerbed at the center of the circle. They had shed their jackets and were digging around in the dirt with sticks. Above, a statue of a Meiji-era hero on a horse, stiff in 19th-century Western fittings. 

The man’s gaze trailed past the statue. Two women sat on a bench on the far side talking. He caught a few words — a malfunctioning refrigerator, the cost of daycare…before tuning them out. His eyes flickered back to the children. The boy was still digging, the girl brushing off flower bulbs, arranging them carefully along the low brick border. One of the mothers glanced over in the kids’ direction and let loose a torrent. “Get out of the dirt! Put on your coats — you’ll catch cold.” The two exchanged glances and brushed their hands off on their pants. They picked up their jackets and trudged over to their mothers, stern voices still chiming in edgy syncopation.
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​As the voices trailed off down the path toward the pond, something buzzed in the man’s jacket. He took out his cell phone and leaned forward, elbow on knee, listening intently. There was nothing to say. Hai. Wakarimashita. As he ended the conversation, he lowered his head with a slight, reflexive bow. It was over, it had been done, he was free. Wiping the sweat from his brow. This could be anywhere. It could have been anyone.

The man’s gaze drifted to the bulbs left exposed on the low brick wall. He stood up and walked unsteadily to the flower bed, letting one knee sink in upturned earth. Picking each bulb and placing it firmly into winter hardened ground, he brushed soil over and patted lightly down. As if to replace life in something barren. He sat there for too long, the other early morning walkers gave him wide berth. When he finally stood up his hands and khakis were creased with dirt. This could be anywhere. It could have been anyone. The sky through the branches constricted and he felt a hint of rain. I did it. It was me.
Read the entire ABCoB cloud novel, and others like it at DamonArvid.com. Below the namesake music suite on Utooob.
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    Damon Arvid

    Author of Arisugawa Park. Fabric. Life.

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