Solar Tales

By Andie Kirkdale

A collection of short fiction and poetry featuring travels to planets and landscapes illuminated by colorful suns. Theater students put on a play for tourists, kings and queens invite guests to a solar tea party, and explorers experience adventure and transformation on a dark sun planet.

Solar Tales is the ebook edition of the author’s paperback titles Under the Alchemical Sun, Land of the White Sun, Purple Pop Party, and Sparks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359029204

Book preview

Solar Tales

Andie Kirkdale

Copyright

Solar Tales

Copyright © 2018 by Andie Kirkdale

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-0-359-02920-4

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, scanning, recording, printing, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, products, organizations, and incidents are creations of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, products, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Andie Kirkdale

Under the Alchemical Sun

Many Suns, Many Worlds

Throughout the universe, across the galaxies, there are many suns and around them, many worlds.

Each sun illuminates in a different way. Each light holds a different teaching. Each world lives the teaching in its own way.

If we can awaken, we can travel from planet to planet and experience each sun, each light, each teaching.

Little rocket ships of the mind, spacecraft of the spirit, can fly to the far worlds, the antipodes of outer space that have always been the furnishings of inner space.

The residents of each planet have ambassadors, teachers, and greeters to instruct visitors about their ways. Already they’re sweeping the sidewalks, cooking dinner, and tuning their instruments for our arrival.

There is more to the universe than one sun. There is more to the universe than one world. Look beyond ourselves and we’ll see how vast life is.

From end to beginning, from death to life, from old age to youth, the richness of life is everywhere: on a leaf on a rainforest planet, on a crystal of sand on an ocean planet, on a ray of ice dripping from the frozen roof of a snow planet.

The universe is filled with wonders. The universe is wonder. Every sun is for every one of us.

It’s time to travel.

White Sun

We live under a white sun. Our eyes are diamonds, our complexions crystalline, our nerves platinum-plated.

Our thoughts radiate like ice-stars that rise from the ground in rays of yes.

There is no sleeping under a white sun. We spend our nights as we do our days: alert, watching, ready.

We don’t have that many tourists to our world of the white sun. When they leave the spaceship, they blink, and they can’t see. Too bright, too hot, too much light.

The light gets into the visitors’ eyes and runs through their minds. Those looking for a good time get an illumined mind. That surprises them. They don’t want that experience. Their disavowal disappoints us.

Because having an illumined mind is the goal of life under a white sun, no matter our background or occupation.

I work as a clerk at a convenience store. I sell nitrogen nutrition bars, solar panels, and psychedelic air fresheners. The fresheners fill cars and homes with the scent of an orthogonal dimension.

Because of the clarity of our air, these other dimensions are nearby and visible. We can see them as crystal cities in the sky, rotating around our sun. Sometimes I can see people like me, going to their work or rowing boats down rivers of thought.

After my shift at the store is done, I skateboard home, wheels squeaking sparks of albedo across the concrete. A rain of fluffy white cats and dogs falls from the white sky. They follow me back home.

In my room, I put out adoption signs for the cats and dogs, then do my homework on long bolts of white paper. My typewriter runs a backwards clackety-clack as I type pale gray ink on white, undoing the story of my life.

In this process, we start with death and work back to birth, taking out what is unnecessary, what is false, and what simply isn’t cool to our sustained soul projects.

As I type, it occurs to me that I don’t need fifty pairs of sneakers and the accumulated thought baggage that’s better recycled elsewhere. There are people in other dimensions who need shoes. I will donate them.

Downstairs my parents watch white snow on the television. But it only looks like white snow. Underneath we can discern the patterns, the images, the visions. It’s a way we practice seeing. Much of seeing comes from within and is then placed on the external. We make our own patterns.

Because discernment is what living under the white sun is about. Fine-tuning your perception until you see first patterns, then how to break those patterns, and then infinity. Or at least watch a forgotten episode, you know, the one where they did that one thing.

I practice my process because when I finish university, I hope to join the Academy of Albedo Poets. I’ll major in dreams, drama, and dipsomania.

Sometimes the poets at the academy call themselves the Real Romantics or the Romantic Realists. Either way they devote themselves to seeing our world as it is, finding beauty, and then celebrating it.

Our calendar is filled with celebrations. My mother says it’s almost her full-time work to prepare for the celebrations: the food, the dances, the clothing. Over the years, I’ve helped her. Probably where my fifty pairs of sneakers come from and the box of half-eaten candies.

If I’m admitted to the poets academy, celebration will be the theme of my thesis. I’ll choose my best pair of sneakers, eat the rest of the candy, and write epics praising the joy of discernment.

Meanwhile I’ll work at the store and perfect my skateboarding skills. This weekend is the Skater Stars Competition. We’ll skate and fly under the sun, back and forth and all around. The older folks will shake their heads and get on with preparing for the next celebration, Diamond Harvest.

But as Stars who roll under a star, we know what we’re celebrating is the infinite.

O White Sun shine bright,

You carry the universe light.

Help us to see things clear,

Help us to keep truth near.

Red Sun

The rays of the red sun ignite our planet in a burst of fire. We’re not worried because we’re fire beings too.

Ours is the way of the flame. Flame-dancers, flame-keepers, flame-throwers. Ours is the art of flame. Flame-seekers, flame-lovers, flame-runners.

The red sun means love and battle. The love of battle, the battle of love. Sunrise, we fight. Sundown, we fight. Ours is the art of fighting, love, and survival. We are the free-range warriors of love on the volcanic plane.

People say we’re noisy.

We say they’re too quiet.

Under a red sun life is short. The vegetation grows maroon and sharp. We make thorn casseroles and flame pies. We lie on beds of fire and bathe in lava.

Under a red sun, blood becomes fire. Dreams burn under a scorched red sky. Even at night the sky edges remain red. That suits us because then we can see the other planets. Like us, they share a red sun. Like us they share a love of fire. We make a chain of sparks across the ocean of the universe.

Even in sleep, the edges of our mind remain red. In our hearts murmur the cries of revolution. Because here is the secret of the red sun—we fight for freedom, for revolution to become evolution, for chaos to become unity. Under a red sun are the contradictions melted down, worked on, then refined to become a gem of wholeness.

I am one of the warriors for love. Because there is not enough love on the other planets. They live in fear or in intellect and forget about their desire for life.

That’s where we come in.

My fire sword cuts through lies, barriers, darkness. I fight the oppression of hate and ignorance with the fire of red sun passion.

My sister is one of the warriors for freedom. Because there is not enough freedom in people’s minds. They live in the self-made prisons of fear and ignorance and forget about their birthright.

That’s where she comes in.

Her flame sword cuts through the chains and prison bars created by societies that fear the freedom that only love can bring.

If you come to visit us, be prepared to do battle—with your own self. Because victory over your contradictions is the sweetest of all. Because love of the volcanic self within is the first step to all other love.

O Red Sun shine fire,

To help us