Tales from The Children of The Sea, Volume 1, The Last Wooden House
By Jann Burner
()
About this ebook
This book is a story told to the Children of The Sea, about 18 dolphins who are able to shape/shift in order to take a two hour tour of the last wooden house. For the duration of the tour they will get to see and feel what it was like to be a "human" and they will get to choose their sex and age.
The story takes place a couple of thousand years in the future and humanity has become extinct. In the course of the "house tour", one of the human "looking" entities gets a surprise. He discovers a small bowl of one of the rarest things in the Universe: a bowl of human dreams.
He quickly drinks the exotic cocktail and immediately forgets who he is or what he was thinking. The remainder of the book details "Harry's" search for his true identity. This book is sort of a mythic, but modern, fairy tale for anyone between 13 and 90.
Jann Burner
BIO Jann Burner has sold pieces to markets as varied as The San Francisco Chronicle, California Living, Sea Kayaker Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine, Spirit Seeker, Path Finder, The Healing Path and Dag Od Tid (a leading newspaper in Oslo, Norway). He has three books available through the usual sources: Metaphor Bridge, Motor Zen and Tales from The Children of The Sea, Vol. One, The Last Wooden House, about a shape shifting dolphin who dreams he is human. Jann has led an extremely eclectic life. He was born in the Haight-Ashbury and raised in Silicon Valley. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a B. A. in Radio-Television & Film. He has played drums in a rock and roll band. He's been an FAA certified Air Traffic Controller (Control Tower specialty). He's had his own radio show (Personalities in Jazz). He's been a film editor at a major network TV station (CBS, KPIX San Francisco), and he's been a taxi driver as well as an independent film-maker, photographer, silver-smith, hypnotherapist and stock day-trader. He has been a committed ocean kayaker, sailor and backpacker. He’s back-packed extensively in California and Alaska, he has sailed from SF to Mexico and he’s cruised the entire Caribbean. He has lived in a Mansion in San Francisco as well as a sailboat in Sausalito. Jann is currently living in a log house within twenty acres of forest by a private 4-acre lake in a park like setting in rural Southwest Missouri's Ozark Mountains. Jann can be contacted by emailing, [email protected] Or, at the following websites: www.Spirit-Tracker.com www.Mycybercompanion.com www.Centerpointmanagement.com Or, 417-252-1849
Related to Tales from The Children of The Sea, Volume 1, The Last Wooden House
Related ebooks
The World of the Salt Marsh: Appreciating and Protecting the Tidal Marshes of the Southeastern Atlantic Coast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpirits of the Coast: Orcas in Science, Art and History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAround the World on the Laconia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Life of Clams: The Mysteries and Magic of Our Favorite Shellfish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoing Fishing: Travel and Adventure with a Fishing Rod Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Out of the Fog: A Story of the Sea Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Worlds in Shadow: Submerged Lands in Science, Memory and Myth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef: the Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to climate change Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pirates and Buccaneers of the Atlantic Coast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariners Unlocked the Secrets of the Oceans Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Yaard and Abroad - from a Jamaican Perspective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWellfleet:: A Cape Cod Village Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrentice Mulford: Autobiographical Works (Life by Land and Sea, The Californian's Return & More) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead Men's Silver: The Story of Australia's Greatest Shipwreck Hunter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waterborne: A Slow Trip Around a Small Planet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Legend of SeaWalker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Nature: Unexpected Ramblings on the British Countryside Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5PIRATES: SPIRITS OF CAPE HTTERAS ISLAND Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShadows on the Sea: The Maritime Mysteries of Britain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFolklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlackbeard's Cup and Stories of the Outer Banks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breakers: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStealing the Wave: The Epic Struggle Between Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beachcomber's Companion: An Illustrated Guide to Collecting and Identifying Beach Treasures Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Year on the Wild Side: A West Coast Naturalist's Almanac Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFishing with My Father Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gravesend Connection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNehalem (Place People Live) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Fantasy For You
The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1890 Uncensored Edition + The Expanded and Revised 1891 Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tress of the Emerald Sea: Secret Projects, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Desert: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Pirate Lord: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Measure: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Immortal Longings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Empire: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eyes of the Dragon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Underworld: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wizard's First Rule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Tollbooth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: [Complete & Illustrated] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Talisman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Sun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Tales from The Children of The Sea, Volume 1, The Last Wooden House
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Tales from The Children of The Sea, Volume 1, The Last Wooden House - Jann Burner
Tales from The Children of The Sea
Volume I
The Last Wooden House
By
Jann Burner
Published by Jann Burner at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Jann Burner
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given
away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase
an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it
was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your
own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Tales from the Children of the Sea
Book One
The Last Wooden House
by
Jann Burner
"Remember who you are. Remember who you were.
Remember why you came"
Chapter Titles
1. And So It Is
2. Harry’s Dream
3. Desire, Fascination & The Proposition
4. The Woodchopper of Happy Valley
5. The Wall, The Monday War & General Havoc
6. Random Cause I
7. Random Cause II
8. The Imagination & The White Knight
9. And
10. And Part II
11. The Cave of Nth Degree
12. Asher & the City of Light
13. A Pretender in Paradise
14. Faith, Speculation & the Bridge
15. The Time Traveler, the Standing Dead & the White Dolphin
Prologue
By 2007 hundreds of men and women were observed cruising the coastal waters between Alaska and the Sea of Cortez. In the summer of the year 2010 U.S. Coast Guard spotters in Northern California observed seven hundred kayaks pass Point Reyes headed South. The emergence of these Sea Gypsies, as described by the media of the day, can be explained in part by the Crash of '09' which drove a failing economy over the edge and sent untold millions to the streets and to the woods in search of work, food and personal freedom. For a lot of people on the coast at this time the initial step off onto the sea seemed most natural. For a minimal initial investment they found essentially unlimited freedom. With a well outfitted ocean kayak they were tied to neither gas station, welfare office or complex industrial technology.
At first the small boats were almost unnoticed upon the bays and inlets of Washington, British Columbia and California, mostly they belonged to day trippers out for a frolic in the sun. But, as their numbers grew, the more adventuresome began to take to the unprotected waters of the coasts, intent upon duplicating and expanding upon the adventures of those early, near legendary cruisers like Romer, Lindemann, Caffyn, Dyson, Gillet and many others too numerous to mention. Eventually some hearty souls began to actually live on the water, travelling the coastal shoals, obtaining their protein from the ocean as well as the coastal forests and the remainder of their nutritional needs from the new seaside gardens.
Suddenly there was a new breed of savage. Usually college educated, these kayakers equipped with fish line and snorkeling gear became the gypsies of the sea. With the introduction of cheap water makers in the early nineties and small solar-powered auxiliary motors by '08', many individuals began to complete the entire circuit between Glacier Bay and The Bay of Conception, on the East coast of the Baja peninsula, within a year and a half. This activity was called Coasting and these adventurers referred to themselves as The Children of The Sea.
By 2010 there would be observed isolated camp fires burning far into the night upon the more remote beaches of the Western coast of the Americas. And seated around these fires would be the most diverse group of individuals ever assembled outside of a war. Mountain trekkers, river runners, campers and back-country specialists of many kinds, gold miners from Alaska, taxi drivers and Dead Heads from San Francisco, poverty stricken musicians, aerobic instructors, hod carriers, college professors, NASA scientists and unemployed computer programmers, brought together by their love of the ocean, kayaking and the quest for personal freedom. Reminiscent of the mountain men of the previous century, these citizens wore suits of rubber instead of leather and had adopted ocean waves and swells instead of mountain ridges or desolate prairies as their roaming grounds. The original voyagers were usually loners and not terribly young, most having reached at least thirty years of age with many in their forties, and more than a few in their fifties as well. But within a few years entire families began to organize and travel, gathering each morning upon the beach beneath vibrantly colored flags denoting clan.
At first it was thought that the voyagers were merely following the weather patterns on their journey south, but some documents recently discovered in an old magazine point to the fact that they were following or traveling with dolphins on their path south. It is unknown who made contact first, the kayakers or the dolphins, but this early journalist states that specific dolphins and whales traveled with specific groups of kayakers, in order, it was thought, to show The Children of The Sea where the birthing grounds were located. In any case, the lesson bore fruit, and the first documented human birth in the sea took place in 2004, near the entrance to Scammon's Lagoon on the Pacific side of the Baja peninsula. The child was the now legendary Mary Tree. As near as can be determined, her mother became pregnant somewhere along the coast of Oregon. Later, many more salt water birth occurrences were reported and it became a matter of great pride to give birth to one's son or daughter in warm salt water while in the presence of dolphins and whales.
When this writer was a boy I remember my great-grandfather taking me aside one day to confide in me that he had been born in the Bay of Conception, in the shadow of a gray whale. My mother told me later that he had lied. Nonetheless, when he died he left me a strange artifact, which he referred to as his Spirit Caller. It was a piece of rippled tube about three feet long, said to be made from the intestine of a sea mammal and which, when swung about the head emitted an eerie sound. It was used (or so I was told) to signal to whales that a human birth was about to take place. The father would swing the spirit caller throughout the birthing process so that this might be the first sound heard by the newborn. The instrument would then be presented to the child as his or her very first earthly object. The child would carry it with him throughout his life to signal the birth of his own children and if all went well, eventually it's sound would be heard one last time to signal to the whales that a brother was leaving this earthly frame and he would be buried with his original Spirit Caller. Because my great-grandfather realized that he no longer lived among free
men, he designated me as heir to his Spirit Caller. My parents smiled indulgently as he placed it in my young hand upon his death bed. But I have kept it all these years and it hangs now on the wall above my desk as I write. Someday perhaps I shall have the opportunity to summon a whale using my great-grandfather's instrument.
With a relatively small amount of money, a neophyte adventurer could purchase a perfectly fine seventeen foot ocean cruising kayak with separate bulkheads and a surface composed of fourth-generation solar cells with which to power his stereo, GPS unit or VHF transceiver. Many options were available. Later, of course, when the new child of the sea became more proficient, he or she would devise the means to obtain one of the new-generation clear glass kayaks. These were called Crystal Ships. Totally clear and essentially invisible in the water, they were made of a high strength but very light glass developed by NASA. These boats were utterly indestructible; one could land them on rocks without the risk of a scratch and they had a secondary quality which endeared them to their owners; they emitted a tone when struck with a solid object. Because each boat's sound was entirely unique, one lone kayaker could hail another over a long distance by merely striking the side of his boat with the handle of his paddle. Even in a dense fog a lone voyager could keep track of his fellow travelers by merely striking the side of his cockpit with his paddle while completing a stroke. In this way, one always knew where everyone was. Often a family or clan would order their boats tuned to specific tones and on long cruises, groups would click their cockpit combings in unison and send out a clear musical chord far across the water. Later on, the ritual of thumping the hull
became very complex and individual clans would actually create their own music. One of my most prized possessions is an extremely rare CD of a kayaking clan celebrating a sunrise over Isla Espirtu Santo in the Sea of Cortez.
The Crystal Ships were very beautiful. They were utterly transparent. Empty on the water, they were invisible. At night, snap one cyalume light stick and lay it within the kayak and the boat would give off a soft colored glow as it slid through the water until dawn. The colored glow from the individual boats mixed with the crystal bell tone of a tuned hull could be awesome. Couple this with chanting and the whole gathering began to take on the look and sound of a Tantric chorus from God's own music hall moving on down multi-colored energy waves...across the great surround.
Since many of these Children of the Sea possessed gifts of spirituality and imagination, it was no surprise when hyperbolic tales began to emerge from around the glowing fires of these hi-tech aborigines. Through the process of speech they would share their ideas, concepts, mind pictures and fears as well as the random musings which come and go in the mind of the lone cruiser. The more interesting anecdotes were saved, reconsidered from time to time and embroidered upon, or edited and tightened much like fine short stories to be shared later with new friends on even more isolated beaches.
This pattern of speech, referred to as Speak
or more usually Intuitalk
, was a technique whereby these sea gypsy's attempted to bypass the labyrinth of the intellect and speak directly and extemporaneously from the richness of what they called the mind ground. They even had a curious custom where they would interview their children as soon as the child began to speak.
They would ask the young human such things as--Where did you live before you came here?
What caused you to pass over in your last life?
, What did you do in your other life?
and How do you know me?
Apparently the parents were trying to establish a sense of serial continuity in the mind of the child so as to reduce the sense of alienation so common in their city brothers and sisters. These little intuitalk
dialogues were of course recorded on a CD and given to the child to become part of his or her Earth Kit along with other important items like the previously mentioned Spirit Caller. This CD was intended eventually to be played beside the person's death-bed in the hope that listening to his or her own child voice describing the other side and another life would ease the transition for the now aged entity about to cross over. This entire recording process was referred to around their fires as the Return to Earth Ceremony. It would seem that we are all immortal Light Beings and everyone on Earth is an imperfect model striving towards perfection. This is a secret which we all hold in common.
These Children of The Sea had the custom of meditating while paddling. Asked why he meditated, one kayaker said he believed life was one connective matrix of meaningful coincidence--synchronistic patterns that we have somehow isolated ourselves from. Meditation allowed him to fall back into that synchronistic web. He laughed and said that he felt he belonged to the Church of Synchronicity.
Within the extended cruising family clan citizen anthropologists have been able to isolate six specific levels of archetypal entities. First we have what we might call the simple Thirty-Day-Adventurer or tourist. These people usually traveled in a group under the watchful eye of a professional guide and the mere prospect of sleeping on the ground was viewed as an exotic event.
Second in this hierarchy was the Writer-of-Words, the individual who went on extended trips with the group and then sold his words and images to the societal herd through articles in books and magazines in order to finance his next adventure. It is this second level voyager that has proven to be our prime source of information. This particular type of vagabond was, often as not, a wolf of the steppes; too wild to ever be completely domesticated, somewhat alienated and unable to fit into normal society and yet too fearful to ever break completely free. This person was far too much of an addict to the fringe attractions of the urban scene like clean sheets, television, single's bars and good restaurants.
The third level of this anthropological stratification was typified by the Cruising Jeweler. This, our scientists now believe, was the first individual to totally break with the land and the mainland culture of the day. These individuals took a lesson from the Hopi and the Navajo of the 19th Century and turned bits and pieces of silver and ivory and bone into items of personal adornment. They carried a minimum of supplies but still managed to turn out attractive as well as valuable works of art that we have all seen in museums. They traded their creations to the writer-of-words and sometimes to the thirty day adventurer and thus obtained the small funds they needed to survive.
The fourth level constituted the beginning of the shaman class. Here we find the famous Scrimshaw Artists who recorded legends and other magically significant images upon bone, ivory and tusk. The scrimshaw man (or woman) usually traveled alone for a good portion of the year and could be described as a co-creator and certainly a prime designer of the Life Fable, which is how the Children of The Sea viewed their earthly sojourn.
The fifth level of Coaster was the Teller-of-Tales, the Catcher of Words, the Shape-Shift; the true guru of the water. Sometimes this type of individual was referred to in legend as Orca Man because it is said that he was able to transform himself into Ornicus Orca--the killer whale, or as some people thought, he was an Orca who was able to transform himself into a man. The teller-of-tales or Stalker of Words
, or Word-Catcher
always lived alone but sometimes came to the fires of traveling clan groups late at night to tell them stories and weave his magic. Some would accompany their stories with music or song but often as not they would simply rely upon the power and the magic of the spoken word. A Teller-of-Tales would recount strange and wonderful things to those gathered around the edge of the fire's glow.
The sixth and most obscure level of coastal cruiser was occupied by the entity known as the Selkie. This was reported to be a female presence only viewed dimly at sunrise or sunset. Never seen directly but only spotted from time to time in the fog or in the distance gliding away. To have encountered a Selkie was to have one's life transformed! The Selkie was a truly magical creature spending part of it's life as a seal (which ironically was food for the Orca) and part as