christopherbollinger
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Sci-Fi Society
We were young crowded around those tables knocking elbows cockeyed looking at the ladies trying to be suave trying to be Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart with Cagney faces but we played fire with words hitting keys hard typewriters splintering that wide future seductive, erotic in the way virgin boys dreamed about it while the…
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Age as Gift
“Ever you desire to appear lordly and gracious as a king of old.” – Denethor to his son Faramir (great line for men who like to look nice) There is something fascinating about aging, about the long, slow decay of your flesh. The less rejuvenated, the more interesting we become. Gray hair, saggy skin,…
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Sedimentary Layers
His name was Orville born in 1932 when his father’s hero still flew But this Orville saw the ground as pleasant enough. The layers of sediment caught his boyhood interest, finding ancient Indian arrowheads in the loaming earth. He ached for the feel of a spade as it entered the soft and easily forgiving soil…
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Enigma VI {part 1}
The icepack cracked suddenly, reminder of the megatons of frozen nitrogen doing its inexorable slow march across Tombaugh Regio. The lander from Pluto Expedition VI stood safely on the granite-hard shelf of water ice overlooking the glaciers, its ultra-bright spotlights shining on a lone figure making its way over tumbled chunks of ice painted pink…
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Imperial Hotel
Slow drizzle of rain the streets saturated Meiji era ending the new emperor ascending. Porcelain waiting under paper umbrellas, rustling. Tokyo midway from medieval flashfire wooden, newborn modern. Encapsulated, brick and tile with angles borrowed from here not imprisoned palaces brought by Europeans to mar the landscape. Here Ōya stones become glyphs, this seasoned lava…
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Grasping for Significance
My new book is finally available – “Grasping for Significance” is a collection of poetry about all of my interests: history, art, science and science fiction, war, peace, and everything else. Its from Inlustrem Press and costs a measly $10.00 Order the book here
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El Nino
Its Southern California and there is a raging river by my home – rain a miracle in the worst of times so much of it that the bleached-white teeth of the weathermen shimmer when the “Stormwatch ‘97” graphics flash on the TV screen. No one could’ve anticipated the deluge, running rapid down the channels of…
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Pink Granite
I always found her there, sitting in the dark quietly sweating in front of her ancient, browning air conditioner. The slowly brightening tip of her lit cigarette belied her breathing. Somehow she kept doing it no matter the medical condition: Arthritis, emphysema, heart failure, laryngeal cancer – those filtered sticks would be burning in her…
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Idols of the World
There are idols in the world. The dark, churlish lurkers, the bright and shiny golden calves, the multi-headed monstrosities of ancient times; unambiguously different yet they all share the same origin: made by the hands of humans. It is almost impossible to express the reason for this type of work. Why do people create gods…
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Some Pen and Ink Drawings
I love pen and ink. Its my preferred style. I have recently started using Prismacolor markers for filling in spaces that I don’t feel like crosshatching. This drawing is called “California Noir” “Good Ol’ Ed” in honor of Edward Gorey: …
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Carl Sagan Portrait
I enjoy portraiture, though often they end up being more caricatures than perfect likenesses. This is a multi-format painting done with Japanese ink, watercolor, color pencil, pastel, and acrylic paints. The subject is Carl Sagan in the middle of speaking to someone(s). Here is our pale blue dot the Earth and in the foreground, Mars.…
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Aldrin Waits
The sheets were purity white, blameless. Two hands lying atop the crisp linen folds; gnarled, purple veins, arthritic, with brown spots as numberless as a Dalmatians riding a Fourth of July firetruck. Under eyelids jittering, sunken eyes move in REM motions; emotions, vibrations, oxygen levels, fuel warning indicators, alarms. It’s a tight fit with…
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What is the Numinous?
What is the numinous? Why do I use this word as a byline for my personality and view of the world? The classical definition from Webster’s Dictionary is “having a mysterious, holy, or spiritual quality.” I certainly do not believe in the holy or the divine, but I do feel that there are elements of…
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“Helluva View”
This is a progression view of a recent illustration of mine, showing the process from the under drawing to the completed piece.
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Player Piano
There was a tinkling in the parlor, the cat had run across the keys of the old player piano. It had stood there against the wall for so many decades that you could still see the yellow daisies on the wallpaper hidden behind it. It smelled like ancient timber and rust and great-grandma’s Pall Malls.…
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Generation Now
How are your check bones under the layers of flesh on your face? Does it hurt when you smile? My generation last vestige of the Cold War, bomb drill and the Red Menace, right watching live via satellite the utter collapse of what on paper was Soviet might. I was promised a world without war…
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Welcome to the Machine
It was a red-letter day in the history of science. They had come to the Artificial Intelligence laboratory by the dozens; each of them one of the greatest minds from nearly every field of human intellectual endeavor. Here they congregated to participate in the penultimate Turing test of the Google Omni-Device™, the world’s most advanced…
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Old Editions Live
While walking through a bookstore, new or used, I always stop and look for my favorite authors. I idle by their alphabetical presence and run my eyes hungrily over the spines of their books. I am always looking for first editions, or copies of works I do not possess. But sometimes I find a unique…
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Movie Review: Love & Mercy
Brian Wilson. California’s closest thing to a patron saint of music. Troubled, sorrowful, misunderstood, and revered. His story is one easily understood as though it were written in broad strokes: The young man growing up with an abusive father, his brothers as co-sufferers. The rental of instruments and the writing of Surfin’ while his parents were…
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Some Recent Drawings
I’ve been working on several writing projects lately…poetry, short stories, and a big essay on the lyrics of Van Dyke Parks. In the interim I have also completed some new artwork. There are not enough hours in the month to work on everything equally, as my brain jumps from one thing to another so my…
The Numinous Cosmos 