Wandermonkey Podcasting 1: Wilson Comes to Lu

Attempting to channel the dead souls of the warring states

I commence podcasting! Yay! This .mp3 records an original story I wrote for a class in creative literature I took with Allegra Lingo.

Text of story:

For several days, Wilson had awakened each morning to the sounds of the boatmen’s oars, slicing gently through the brackish river water, the gentle chirping of waterfowl nesting near the river bank, and, beyond, in the dark woods that surrounded both banks, the cries of monkeys which occasionally emerged.


This is good, Wilson thought to himself as he rode down river in the hired boat. No talking, no banquets, none of the fake smiles and banal errands that were his usual lot, back in the capitol city, Chang’an.


At peace, on his boat, the calm sounds of pure nature lodged, reflected and then helped to shape Wilson’s own inner calm. He could feel waves of calm – probably they looked like the waves made by the boatman’s oar, cutting gently past the dark wooden prow.


But this morning, that calm began to erode again. They had reached the town of Lu – an ancient capitol in its own right, birthplace of Confucius. Now long-conquered by the mighty Han, Lu was essentially just a market town, a large bazaar. On this morning, Wilson knew he was entering Lu because he could hear the talk of the town, at first distant murmurs, as well as the higher shouts of hawkers. He looked up to see the boat pass under the colorful Chang’an Arch Bridge, and abruptly the voices of the crowds of market-goers and merchants erupted from their former dull roar into a louder polyphony in which he could distinguish individual voices. “Gali! Gaaa-li!” cried one hawker, offering the pungent spice powders of Indu in large sacks displayed beneath a umbrella fashioned ingeniously out of straw, and straw twine.


As the boatman pushed on, the early sun began to burn away the morning mist, and Wilson could make out through the haze the outlines of large buildings at the center of town, their familiar dipped archways announcing their function as Confucian halls of ritual. His father had sent him to patronize these sacred places of learning, part of the grand tour of the empire Wilson was taking before he replaced his dying father as Grand Historian of the Han court.


Hmph. Wilson’s mind always made spurnful noises involuntariliy when he said the words “Grand Historian” to himself. For there was nothing “grand” about the job. Not anymore – not since the new Emperor had turned away from taking dusty star charts and boring annals of battles, marriages and speeches of the past as guides to formulate policy. No, the new guy, a truly fearsome man who now called himself Wudi, “God-king of Martial Strength,” was much more interested in men who built steel foundries, men who could handle horses – barbarous, fantastical creatures! – and in men who traveled on big boats – over oceans, not rivers – men with gold.


Hmph! Well, hadn’t Wilson heard it all before? After all, he knew history. South of the Yangze, a mere three hundred years before, Wilson’s predecessor in Chu had tried to convince his king that a deal with Qin was a deal with death and destruction. That a kingdom seeking after profit must always fail to find it , though death and destruction were always close by.


The old statesman had failed to persuade his king. Chu, the great kingdom of the south, was at once on the brink of destruction, though none of its inhabitants knew of this then, except the elder historian, who promptly threw himself into the river. Before he drowned, or so the legend goes, he recited one last poem, a mournful ballad proclaiming his own wisdom and deploring the greed of certain dark men, as well as the benightedness of certain others. The poem contained the lines,


The Way is long. So long, aiyah!

And I have gone so slow.

Near and far, above and below,

I search, and I search, soul in tow.


How often Wilson had recited these to himself on his own travels. On his way, young Wilson had sought his own Way. His heart was torn – history was the family business, a hereditary honor, one he was duty-bound to inherit. But Wilson was a born wanderer, with a fevered mind that ranged over the land, with its winding rivers and jagged mountains. Yet nature was not his own calling, clearly, for of late his concerns more often than not returned to a single image, that of Jessica.


Jessica, the newest addition to Wudi’s harem, first glimpsed by Wilson when she arrived in the retinue of General Fan Cai. The august General had just crushed her beloved kingdom of Yue in the name of world-uniting Han. General Fan’s hordes had shredded the ancient Yue defenses with their bronze-piercing steel crossbows, and then they rode down the pitiful Yue royal guard with a new kind of regiment mounted on horses and known as a “cavalry.” Jessica, daughter of the murdered Yue king, had been set up as the grand trophy of this adventure, delivered to the Han court on a horse herself. Though bound hand and foot, she looked glorious clothed in solid gold thread, astride a jet-black Arabian stallion saddled and armored in solid, brilliant-white jade, which was in turn carved on every square inch in the mottled and grotesque abstract forms of the ancient Han gods. So beautiful and striking was Jessica, with her head held high, auburn hair flowing unbound down her shoulders, and hazel eyes – a mystical rarity in Han women, though more common among the sea-faring Yue – that rumor quickly spread that she was some earthly incarnation of the famed Goddess of the Luo, who legend said once made love with King Hui of Chu, and so caused to the whole Yangzte river valley to be choked with clouds and rain.


Wilson had been attending on his aged father, who was in turn a member of the Emperor’s ceremonial retinue. Gathered on the Dragon Terrace to receive the returning armies of the south, all of the Emperor’s servants had gasped as this beauty emerged through the city gates. Wilson, though, had attempted to resist. Hmph! He forced himself to think. How ridiculous, all this hoopla for a single girl – how could she have been worth the cost? The loss of life? Didn’t the others see that Wudi was out of control, crushing the old order wherever he looked? Wilson intended to scrutinize the girl head to toe merely to provide fuel for his own private expressions of indignance and fear for the future of the Han race. But suddenly, those light brown eyes (or were they green? He must look closer) seemed to lock on to his, plow straight down his eye sockets and into his heart. His jaw first slackened, and then dropped.


Hmph! Suddenly Wilson in a boat entering Lu, the seat of all learning, realized that his jaw was slack again, all because of a wandering mind and the image of a beautiful woman. What was happening to him? His calm utterly destroyed, Wilson worked in vain to settle his mind once again to the business of learning, of history, and duty.