Intermission
Seven chapters in and 30,000 words diffused, it's time to pull the curtains shut and give Casimir a moment to breathe.
I won't go into details, but this week was essentially the yawning of multiple hells with each portal spawning a multitude of demons, all of each well equipped with the necessary means and abilities to devour me, regurgitate me, and then eat me again. They are quite good at salting their dishes.
When I began this project, I told myself that I would allow for three intermissions in credence to life's tragedies and misfortune. Both misfortune and tragedy struck this week, so here we are, coincidentally marking the first third of the novel. We are given scars when we fall, but we truly earn them when we get back up.
So for this week, instead, we'll have a conversation about art and the conception of The Culling of Casimir. I suppose every performance needs a break from the suspense. So, if you'd still like to join me, you can brew some coffee, tea, or pour the liquor, and we'll talk philosophy and writing for a spell.
Excerpt from Prologue
An ethereal film of the surreal passed over my eyes. I needed that feeling—that nothing truly mattered, not if I was alone, not if the world was staring at me.
Art comes from odd places: a desire to express, to be heard, understood, and even sometimes, to push our understanding or insights onto others. When I write, I try not to think of who will read it. I try, above all else, to entertain and fulfill myself. I feel that imagining the audience muddles the process and encourages crafting prose we otherwise would never have made. Furthermore, although we sometimes say the most horrific things to ourselves (about ourselves, sadly), our most profound thoughts are usually kept within, too. This is a pity. I feel that, if I am writing from a mental place of solitude, insights might feel more comfortable crawling from their hiding places. If I imagine dozens of people watching, I risk adopting the stitch-lipped persona many of us use when we go out into the world.
Perhaps most important, we are the most silly and care-free when we're alone. Especially with writing, it's easy to come across as taking oneself too seriously. If I can offer a soulful story sprinkled with nonsensical dialogue and humor, I'd much prefer that over the pretentious rambling of someone who thinks they're smarter than they really are.
When I began writing this story, the novel had a completely different protagonist, set of characters, setting, and tone. I wrote the book as a way to escape the 'seriousness' of literature, not desiring to accomplish much of anything beyond practice. I wanted only to entertain while I waited for another concept to spawn for a big piece following The Lupine Curse, my first published book.
Surprisingly, I found that I was far more passionate about the philosophical, historical, and spiritual concepts of the Trickster, the Jester, and The Fool, to belittle the project as an action/adventure piece with spell-slinging badasses. So I trashed all of that work, realizing I needed more time to develop myself before I could give this piece everything I felt it needed. Three years later, I find myself with a jester hat tattooed on my arm, a different pen name, and a deep attachment to the motifs that, for a long while, seemed only like footnotes to entertain briefly before beginning other works. Whoops ...
Excerpts from Chapter 3: The Cascading Tower
As an entertainer, I search for that sacred place where intuition and imagination meet, where the body ceases struggling and becomes a conduit for an unperturbed mind. So few times have I reached that state, where nothing matters besides the task at hand, and art becomes a seamless, continuous rhythm, of stillness interrupted by bursts of expression. And here, in ecstatic mayhem, amidst the screams and struggling, I had found it. The castle had become my stage, the men seeking vengeance for the King, the scores to my daggers’ melodies, and I, their instrument. They struck their notes with scarlet, swelled the air in rapturous music, biding for another gruesome crescendo.
Casimir is, like all of us, confused.
So much of living is maneuvering around stress, pressure, and the deep insecurities that have developed in us since our childhoods. With some luck and determination, we may find a calling, art, craft, or profession that allows us to diffuse imperfection, frustration, and personal development into gratifying achievement. We may even be ... erhm, what's the word? Content.
As Casimir copes with the trauma of having to kill one of the few people who ever understood him, he realizes that bloodshed is the quintessence of life's happenstance misfortune. He feels oddly wonderful wielding chaos, which often comes in the form of his daggers. He finds, both to his delight and horror, that murdering those who stand in his opposition, gives him both an illusion of control and a sense of purpose as another major cog in the wheels of mayhem. After committing his regicide, he persists in a near permanent state of kill-or-be-killed. Almost conveniently, he now feels that many actions are justifiable as long as they are crucial for his survival, actions that were previously unthinkable, but now are simply another means for his self-actualization.
Amidst the calamity of bloodshed, chaos rose in my veins, and sighed at this release. I realized then that ecstazia was no fighting style. It was a state of mind, a philosophy, an art of being wholly present yet detached enough to relinquish fear. Death beckoned a performance befitting its absence from my close future, and perform I would, grateful for its pernicious presence that inspired so much beauty.
Mortality must certainly be the epitome of the expression 'a double-edged sword'. It is an inescapable end, and simultaneously, one of the best reasons to craft ourselves into masterpieces. As Casimir and all of us cope with the unpredictability of life, and as we attempt to carve out our paths through the storms, we have the freedom to see death as one of our greatest inspirations, instead of our biggest fears.
Excerpt from Chapter 6: The Signet
“It seems there are two realms in this world,” I said. “The first, where all is simply living, tasks, duties, ambitions, wealth, and so on. And the second, where living seems to exist beyond mere touch, beyond actions. A transcendence of thought into motion, a play of will against chance, a game, you might say, and nothing more than what we make of it. One that has only one end, but countless possibilities before it. I prefer to live in the second realm, Shamus.”
“A place that even ghosts and many others don’t see.”
“But a place for those that do, as one they will never forget.”
If we are not happy with ourselves and our lives, what's the point of continuing through each day in the same manner? Beyond productivity, achievement, living is an art in it of itself. We can choose to take everything seriously and suffer at the hands of disappointment or distress, or we can, with a wry smile, make what we will of it and take reality with a grain of salt.
Casimir and Shamus both deal in professions of illusion. Casimir, with his more physical mechanisms and Shamus with shadow spells, both seek to perplex whoever is at the hands of their trickery. While playing puppeteers of perception, they themselves begin to about the ephemeral nature of reality; what truth lay hidden beneath the everyday bustle of living, surviving, and aging. Behind it all, there are some reverberating refrains, words that ripple throughout each of our individual, brief, human experiences. We can focus on the sleight of life's hands, the surface reality, the stress, the obligations, the fears and doubts. Or ... we can be more cunning than that. We can grace ourselves with observing what more is woven subtly behind reality: the myriad meanings, symbols, and greater importances found while embracing the mortal infinite.
Advice for Deciphering the Timeline
The Culling of Casimir isn't written linearly on purpose. I won't plot it all out, as it is meant to become clear as a finished piece, but in case any readers are confused with the staggered settings between the chapters, there are four main focus points to discern where each chapter is taking place.
1. Wait what ... just happened?
Some chapters simply continue from the previous scene, such as Chapters 5 and 6.
2. Casimir's Nightmare
Casimir had a haunting nightmare of masks that occurred in Chapter 2, the central motif of his suffering. In the prologue, he is seen with a physical mask that he created for a performance, using that nightmare as inspiration. Casimir's capabilities as a performer mark both his dexterity with weaponry and acrobatics as well as the high points of his life with the Foxfeathers.
3. The Death of the Northern King William III
Does everybody seem more or less OK with a murderer waltzing around? Is Lady Elise alive or is King William spotted in the scene? Chances are it's in the early years of Casimir's life in the Foxfeather Castle.
4. Scars
Both emotional and physical, Casimir refers to things that have happened previously that affect his current decisions, mannerisms, and behavior. Especially in later chapters that haven't been posted yet, this will become vital in observing his journey.
I owe everyone a gigantic Thank You! for supporting me along this journey and following the story. I do apologize for not giving any warnings in advance for intermissions like this, but I do hope you understand. I would rather work longer to perfect a chapter than offer you all something that I cannot admit is finished or even worthy of reading. I'll see you all next week, after my own scars have healed.
Hexes and charms,
Harlequin