William Brand

Every once in a while we all get to experience a kind of surreal accomplishment that we would have laughed about as children. For me, it's cat litter. Yes, after years of making art for several dozen small projects with meager circulations, I am now beginning to go national on a cat litter bag. Flattering...? Yes...but in a very surreal sort of way. I mean, my art is now advertising a product that felines the world over will be pissing on. It occurs to me that my art now leans towards performance art in that respect. Still, I am flattered to learn that the shelf tags that accompany the product are being stolen on a regular basis by an admiring public. Odd, but true.

Then it must be pecan of course. A personal favorite of mine.

^ Yes. I like home and I like to travel. I travel to California and Upstate New york quite often. I've been to quite a few countries. I'm adding the Netherlands in June. < I love lingering in foreign places and soaking it all in. V Do you try exotic dishes from other countries?

You have your first client. I'll take two.

^ I lived in Israel when I was eight. < Too many wonderful memories. V How many countries have you visited?

^ Babies are more tender. Like baby carrots and baby corn. < I am not a cannibal. V Are you a cannibal?

Why, why, why would you show my a quadruple barrel flintlock. Now I shall lie awake all night long coveting and coveting.

^ My son. < Damn little minion. He's too cute by half. V I'll pass that question too.

Aye. Still, white is fairly easy to "age", since it is impossible to keep clean. My two shirts have been to only the one event and already they have a touch of the "Lived in" look.

^ Not that I remember. < The word I was searching for was "Ambitious". V I'll pass the previous question.

^ pointillism. < I am attacking some very difficult art projects this year. Well, difficult might not be the right word. Challenging...? No. I can't think of the right word. V What is the right word?

And now...an empathetic curse for a fellow pirate... CUUUURSES!

July 29, 1704 - At Martinique Just before Seven bells of Mid Watch The Chandler's son walked from lamp to lamp in search of the doctor carrying the written note and the note of urgency given to him by his father. It was a cool night, but very comfortable, and despite the hour, he relished the imagined dangers and responsibility that went with the task given to him. He even imagined dodging his own assailants as he went, exaggerating his own valor in his young mind. Despite the lateness of the night, some taverns were still sending out drunken choruses and a few hearty laughs mixed with poor music. Pierre-Louis smiled and even peered in at a few greasy windows to watch the secret world of adults at play. A dog barked so suddenly on the boys heals that he jumped almost a full foot in the air before running off to the security of the next winking lamp. He was several minutes there catching his breath and laughing a little inside for his own surprise. He made a mental note to give the dog a small stone or a good kick come daylight. After moving on again, his wandering feet finally brought him under the sign which bore the name Laurent Tramois and the paired titles of chirurgien and anatomiste. He knocked once, a little too quietly, and then again much harder. He waited a comfortable span of time, before knocking again and stepping back into the street. Only on his third knock did a solitary candle grace the window overhead. A very tired, disheveled looking man in his twilight years peered down and then opened the hinged pane. "Qui est-il?" the tired surgeon asked, unable to see for age or sleep in the gloom. "Monsieur, it's Pierre-Louis." "Pierre-Louis...?" he returned, with no recognition whatsoever, then amended. "Ahhh, yes." There was a long pause. It proved long enough that the doctor had to start the conversation again. "Why are you here? What is the hour?" "You must pardon me, Monsieur, but it is very near four o'clock. We have an injured man at home." "Dying...?" the doctor fired back, unhappy at the hour. "I do not know, Monsieur. He has been struck upon the head." "Awake...?" he said, delving a little more. "Oui. And able to speak." "Wealthy...?" the doctor returned in quick succession. "Not poor, Monsieur. He is Captain of a ship." "That means nothing." Tramois returned again. The two of them stood in silence awhile as the doctor ruminated and the boy waited. It was a long wait, for the doctor was not in the habit of mending brawlers or the patrons of accidents as small as this. He weighed the idea of easy money against a good night's sleep and his own bones sang him the promise of slumber until his mind was made up. "There is a woman the next street over." He couldn't bring himself to add doctor, healer or any other title to the nameless title of woman. "She has some understanding of bandages. She needs coin more than me." "Monsieur, my father..." "Should be abed." the surgeon finished, using some terseness to keep himself from changing his own mind on the matter. "She accepts anyone." Pierre-Louis, never the best at pressing any point, could make no further utterance before Laurent Tramois closed the window and put out the candle. Pierre-Louis held his ground a moment, wondering to himself about visiting a stranger and a woman at this hour. He was not a clever boy with girls and women made him feel awkward. Still, his errand would not allow him to return with nothing, and waking the surgeon a second time to ask for medicine seemed worse than anything waiting for him a street over, so he made is way to the unknown woman and her bandages. ~Larboard Watches on Duty~

Asparugus cooked in minced olives and garlic with a side of herbed chicken. We had some leftover birthday cake earlier in the hour.

I really like the clean, white and blue of the French uniforms, but how do you keep that clean?

William did not note the hour when he retired, having been too heavily involved in one of several ledgers and the many notations within. He calculated until he couldn't do any math at all, for need of sleep. Then he retired to his small room off of the Ward Room only to lay awake in his hammock longer than expected. He was so involved in the accounting of the 'Dog that he lay in his swaying hammock doing arithmetic aloud to himself for almost half an hour. His mind finally drifted to other things, including memories of San Miguel de Salinas and he was asleep in moments. He wandered into comfortable old dreams of Almeria and Palma de Mallorca. He wandered streets he had walked a thousand times in a life before "The Fall", as he sometimes called it. His sleeping mind conjured up scenes of secret rendezvous and passions that seemed almost fabricated from pure fancy, though many of them were dreams based upon actual experience. They were beautiful dreams laced with a kind of unreality which dreamers only understand when they wake. Tahirah played the staring role of the dream at first, before passing the role to her understudy Christine. From here, the dream was all reminders and might-have-beens until the entire volume of William's waking unconsciousness was filled with the memories of once tasted delights turned into years of dust. When William awoke, he was alone in his room, and within a moment, the wine of sweet dreams turned to vinegar. William despised such dreams. They were a poisonous assault on an unsuspecting sleeper, and he hated his own memory for the assassin it played on his good mood. William Brand was not made up of regrets, nor would he have changed much of the course of his life, but he hated reminders which he could not control. It was times like this that he prayed for dreamless sleep or a pistol. "Damn." was all he said aloud to the dark. Then, "Damn and damn." He was another half an hour getting to sleep again, kept company by the frigate's murmurs and his own restless brain.

Is there enough for all of us?

^ Record. Aye. Subtitle. No. < I've been in one television commerical and a few small films. V Have you ever been in a movie as an extra or an actor?

Divine. The shrimp looks excellent.

A toast. To the living and the dead. May the dead find their reward and the living find the reward buried with the dead. Wait. That didn't come out right. Welcome.

My birthday is coming up.

...but I was born in December...

Wait...you're going too? Then yes, you do owe me pictures.

Some crepes here for Miss Ashcombe!

A very happy birthday to Flintlock Jack.