The Dark Gift

By Christopher Crow

Narrator Christopher Crow takes the reader on a dark odyssey into realms where he has been given The Dark Gift by a fallen angel; it is the ability to enter other's dreams and bring back their most private memories, filling the angel's being with other's memories, which she feeds on. Crow writes from a single room cell below ground; physically he goes nowhere, but by the viaducts of his imagination we journey with him into timeless, mythic landscapes, delving further and further until we come to that place which is the birthing place of imagination and creation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475994902

Christopher Crow

S.D. Carpenter is a writer, sculptor and musician. He holds a B.A. in English Literature and has taught all ages the joy of creative endeavors, from creative writing to drumming to voyages into the realms of classic literature. He has published three previous books of poetry: City On The Palm Of Silence, Exile And The Kingdom, and Echoes. He resides in Prague, Oklahoma, where his accomplice Christopher Crow can often be found as well.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Part One The Fallen Temple

Part Two Enter The Spiral

Part Three Thus Forges The Alchemist

Author Biography

Preface

It has been my station in this life to be cursed or blessed with an insatiable curiosity. My earliest memories of learning experiences, from public school to bible studies, are tempered by an inclination that made me less than satisfied with what others seemed to swallow and digest while I felt the need to go further- to know more. This desire has sent me tunneling through books and found me huddled in the alcoves of libraries, always in pursuit of the uncommon, the realms that often unsettle and cause others to turn back for the safety of explored territories. But what is Truth? Is it to be found in the agreement of the majority that makes knowledge into dogma or undeniable facts into an unassailable Memory of the Tribe, rigid, unbreakable, constant, agreed upon by the sound-minded in order to protect the tribe? To set boundaries to keep out all the dangers lurking in the darkness just beyond the reach of the light that emanates from our hearths, the lights that illuminate and keep every detail seeable and therefore manageable? This is the safety we innately want for our families, for our children: a kind of order that keeps at bay the chaos that threatens an agreed upon reality of creeds and rules. A closely guarded morality engendering quality of life. But, among us, there sometimes arise those who need to explore the darkness, the chaotic, who are pulled toward the Unknown by something in them that often they do not understand.

I am a reader. Books for me are as oxygen is for others. And I am an explorer. At least on the inside. But on the outside I think I look rather timid, easily frightened, sometimes baffled by a world I feel ill equipped to deal with. But that is not the only world there is; there are myriads of worlds for those who desire to discover them and it is my curiosity that caused me to stumble onto the world of Christopher Crow.

The manuscript that makes up the book you are holding I found in a library I will not name; it exists in a city that does not appear on any map, and it should not be made easy for others to find; it is a city that can only be found after diligent and tireless seeking. It is a carefully constructed inner world. It is poetic, personal, the work of a spirit so withdrawn that solitude has enlarged it to an extent that the poet sees all of the universe in it. In spite of the obvious intelligence found in the work and the painstaking defenses erected to protect this inner world there is inevitably a clash with the external world. Erecting the palaces and temples of the imagination the poet is creating himself from within. From this rarified position, the creator sings the memory of man, learning as the poem progresses that the weapon for combating life’s disillusionment and the terror and anguish of darkness is his capacity to sing and dream. Dreams and songs make the world bearable, they make the dark places bright. And this is the lesson the poet begins to learn as the poem progresses. The book itself is something like a mosaic of tiny mirrors; viewed from a distance- once it has been digested- it becomes clear that all the pieces outline a whole: a self-portrait of an entire life and body. When the uneven fragments are pieced together, attempting to bring order out of such mind-numbing chaos, a chaos that threatens to disintegrate the work again and again, what bleeds through the words is a solitude battled for, a privacy that is solitary, intelligent and uncommonly sensitive.

I was drawn into Mr. Crow’s world immediately. Time lost its meaning for me as I wandered alone in this young man’s world, in a timeless mythic reality, recognizing from the beginning something common to us both: a love of words; a love of ideas; a kind of magnetic pull toward a being I knew only in the flickering reality of dream, that haunted my nights and rode the periphery of my sight by day. It seemed I was not so alone in being alone.

There are points in the narrative of The Dark Gift when Crow addresses the reader. To me this indicates that the author writes not in a self-enclosed glass bubble but wishes all along that his lonely testament should reach and be read by others. It took a lot of reflection on my part to decide whether or not I had the right to publish the manuscript you hold in your hands. It was decided by those brief moments in the work when Crow pauses the narrative, to iterate that he needs to believe that someone will read his confession, that it will not simply become the dream dust that rolls over to join and be recreated by the Universe as Machine. By reading the Work, you, with whatever interest you have in this idiosyncratic creation, contribute to its recreation, its life as seed for further contemplation and, possibly, new artistic endeavor.

If it is true that at this moment I am in the middle of my life, it fills me with joy to think that there is time left to find other works by other obscure artists that I might uncover in my reading pursuits. I even feel hopeful that I might discover something else by the young writer of The Dark Gift. We share so many things; it is almost as though he has always been part of me, like a parallel sojourner: he the artist, and me the reader.