Dark Sentiments Season 10 — Day 18: Silent Moon
Posted By Randy on October 18, 2019
© Stephen F. Kaufman
In a blur of fevered weeks in the year 2019, a Man obeyed an otherworldly compulsion to closet himself in his New York apartment, and grind his fingers to bloody nubs giving birth to his Magnum Opus.
OK, not exactly how it went, but close enough.
“Prostrated on the ground in front of his shrine, the old man offered the gods his nusa, a string of paper pendants symbolic of his earnest desire to construct a blade of excellence. Though he was in his late sixties and a recognized master swordsmith, Fujisama Atabe still felt obliged to offer his soul to the gods, in the fervent hope that they would bless his hands and mind. He prayed with humility and earnestness, and, finally, after long meditation, he was ready to begin.
“His mind was occupied with crafting a blade filled with every conceivable aspect of perfection and auspiciousness. In a flash of personal awakening, Fujisama Atabe knew this coming blade would be treasured as sacred and meritorious. In his heart, he knew the work would be governed by the ideals of loyalty and self-sacrifice to his craft, reverence to the gods, and benevolence of the sword’s virtue. It would also be a splendid fighting weapon for the warrior who had commissioned it.
“It had to be practical and functional, well balanced and sharp. Sharp! It had to be flexible so it would not break in battle and rigid so it could keep its profound sharpness. If it met all of his incredibly demanding requirements, he would chisel his signature into the tang. This, too, had to be an example of perfection, but only if it passed the cutting tests to the ultimate degree. Only then! It would have to be a sanpogiri, a blade capable of cutting through three men in accordance with the instructions of the samurai who had ordered it. To cut through one man would make it ordinary. Two men would mean that exceptional craftsmanship went into its creation. But, a three man blade? Heaven could only grant that, and if it passed the final cutting tests, the emperor would have to know about it, and the reward would be recognition of Atabe’s skill and devotion to the gods more than it would mean an increase in the prices he could charge.
So begins Chapter 3 of the Esteemed Stephen F. Kaufman‘s Silent Moon — The Story of a Sword. By then, the reader has already been exposed to the singular weapon that is the central figure of the story. The people ephemeral, Silent Moon eternal.
The chapter goes on to chronicle the travails of creation, and concludes with the return of the finished sword to the hands of Fujisama Atabe where we bear witness to its final birthing into the perfect instrument of absolute destruction. For my own part, I felt less reader than voyeur, and read the last sentence of the final vignette with a nod that it could end no other way.
“The apprentice looked with stunned disbelief at the pattern. The blade’s curvature was perfect from the back to the point. The master’s work was done, and the decorative grooves of the horimono could be burnished and prepared for the rough polishing that would take two days to finish. The blade would then be sent for polishing, and then to the suimonogiri, blade tester, by the otameshi, body cutter, whose specialty was dismembering prisoners.
“When the sword came back, it was gorgeous. The apprentice was astounded at an exquisiteness that could not be described. As the old man chiseled his name into the tang, he called it “Silent Moon.” On a night with a full moon in August, Fujisama Atabe sat looking at his work, and, thanking all of the gods for his most splendid masterpiece, died.”
Blood soaked, darkly human, and delightfully unapologetic, Silent Moon is a gripping read, at the end of each tightly woven chapter leaving the reader with a need to stay just a little longer to see what the hell will happen next.
This is no reworking of the Excalibur legend. Silent Moon isn’t looking for a King, only a wielder and some working room in a target rich environment.
While on the surface, the story has elements reminiscent of the “witch gun” of crime fiction wherein an ordinary, not all that impressive Saturday night special finds its way seemingly serendipitously into the hands of some weak petty criminal who then goes on to use it to murder out of a compulsion that inevitably ends his own life in the process. The possessed weapon is inevitably picked up by another host, and so on, every time with worsening body count and always fatal results for its wielder. Silent Moon is no such thing.
The witch gun is just a mundane inanimate object that has been possessed post-creation by some supernatural destructive force, and thereby imbued with the power to influence the weak willed into manifesting some demonic dark agenda. Silent Moon is no mundane object that would lower itself to be inhabited by any mere “demon”, but created, fully formed, a living thing to be the perfect embodiment of godly intent, bestowed upon the world through a singularly worthy vessel, and even those who only come to look upon it feel its power.
Likewise, this is no fanboi celebration of the Japanese Sword as the ultimate expression of the swordmaker’s art, touting its supremacy over all other swords springing from other cultures. Knowing its Esteemed author personally, I believe the sword’s origin to be the seamlessly obvious choice considering his background and decades of study into the Soul of the Samurai. Also, and unlike sword types characteristic of other nations, the art of crafting the Japanese Sword — notwithstanding the secret personal magicks of specific Smiths — is a codified process that has not been rendered a matter of conjecture by any perception of obsolescence. As such, Silent Moon is infused with an air of authenticity, from its Japanese origins through good old New York hustle, into the shadow world of forged antiquities.
As I once wrote on a different subject —
“In truth, not all in life, nor in art, need be explained – for what is wrong with accepting that a situation just is and telling the story from there?”
I would offer that advice in concert with my unreserved recommendation that you grab a copy of Silent Moon — The Story of a Sword to join whatever “bump in the night” implement lies upon your bedside table.
Until tomorrow Goode Reader.
When I first read this article, I had difficulty in responding to it and merely stated and I quote myself, “Never at a loss for words, I am at a loss for words.” (Please keep in mind, it is not an easy task to review a review especially when the review is of the original reviewer’s work regardless of the fact that a friendship, professional and personal, exists between both people.)
Accolades are something that, over the years, I have come to recognize as either respectful or in many instances patronizing, but rarely with genuosity, (sic) intensity and sincerity. And then of course there are the derisional and/or delusional remarks not based on anything substantial that I immediately ignore and do not respond to except in certain instances, with extreme retribution in mind.
Not so, obviously, in this case and prior to reading it, Randy had queried me on a few matters artistique, as to, specifically, when, where, how, what, etc., brought Silent Moon to life.
I began Silent Moon some time back after my wife at that time passed and I had gotten to a point where I simply had no desire to write anything. I put it down after the first few chapters and let it lay on my hard drive, fairly forgotten, though I did have an idea about what I was attempting to do with it as a ‘next work in progress.’ What transpired in my life from that point on to the time when I started to write the particular work again is moot.
My editor and good friend Peggy Thompson kept insisting that I get back into it because she felt the premise was extraordinary. At her continuous ‘nagging,’ I took another look and made the decision to knock it out. Such are the vagaries of artistic inspiration. Even those that are presumptuously assumed to be egotistical works when in reality, in my view, they are specifically a directive from a higher source of intelligence and it is necessary to release oneself to the powers that be as is exactly what Fujisama Atabe did when he began to forge the sword, Silent Moon.
From that point forward until completion, including 18 passes and tweaking runs, I totally immersed myself in my own private insanity and had nothing else on my mind but to accept and appreciate my ‘gift.’
Okay! A lot of it was done during the wee hours and of course during various time slots when the spirit of the thing itself reached out or in and told me to type. It was a very visual experience as I wrote, in many instances visualizing myself as particular characters and in other instances of actually standing on the sidelines watching events roll by as my fingers furiously hammered the keyboard amazing me as I read what was coming out and at the same time wondering to myself “where the fuck was this coming from.”
I have no problem with meaningless humbleness. Many people who had pre-release copies and a group of my pre-pre-release readers were flipping out over it and giving me some serious food for thought about what had been created through me. In that respect, at least, I bow my head to the Creative Power of the Universe. To me, ‘that’s’ humbleness.
Brilliance is its own reward.