I Hear You

 

“I hear you”, I replied. It seemed like an inadequate response, but on the other hand, it was the truth, and the easiest of all my complicated reactions to express, one that I could send quickly instead of allowing the silence to stretch. I could send a longer reply in a moment. I thought it would be better to at least say, “I hear you” first. Painfully, I was reminded of the advice to “Get your first shot off fast, to rattle him. Aim carefully with the second.” Not at all an appropriate thought for this moment, and evidence of how badly my youthful reading had prepared me for this moment, but I would try my best.

As it happened, though, she immediately replied, “Thank you. That, more than anything, is what I need right now, to be heard. Not even to be believed, but to be heard.”

“I do believe you, conditionally at least. I wasn’t there, obviously, but I don’t have any reason to doubt you. I’m not going to play the game of ‘Are you sure you didn’t misinterpret his meaning?’ or ‘Wasn’t he really just being friendly?’. I’m really sorry that this happened to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You’ve already done it. Seriously. Let’s talk about Frankenstein’s Arboretum.”

So, we did. After that real-life nightmare she had just described to me, we talked about an elaborate, stylized, imaginary nightmare that we had both enjoyed, and speculated on how it might be adapted into a computer game, incorporating the various scenes which had been cut for the sake of running time. She even invented a new horror that I thought was quite ingenious, and which would have fit perfectly into the film (though it probably also would have been cut for running time).

We went on from there to discuss an old idea of hers, of a DVD which would consist entirely of deleted scenes form a film which didn’t exist at all, so people could speculate on what the film itself might be like.

I knew she would need counseling for what had happened to her, but I didn’t press her on it. In a couple of weeks, I would ask her if she was in therapy, but I’d be cautious about raising the subject.

 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tv1RJDhY3_zOE2Y48LmUhb6d1KxV2rGGMt_WAwSWFHE/edit?usp=sharing

The Magic Eight-Ball Says, "Sometimes, 'I hear you' is all you really need to say'."

Where Memories Are Kept

 I wish I had a place in my brain were memories were kept, secure and reliably stored, as in a digital recording.

Instead, I have a strange, unreliable holographic mechanism in which what is recorded degrades if it is not consulted...but is also degraded if it is consulted frequently, its details tending to become replaced by imaginary ones, its blanks filled in with fragments of unrelated memories.

Some people have trained their memories for greater rigor, and others are supposedly born with a natural ability to recall minute details with precision. All I know is that I don't have such a memory. I have a fairly typical memory, one which fades and fuzzes and only contains fragments and shards as I look backward.

If I had a convenient implant, though -- if I could replace one or two of my skull bones or vertebrae with substitutes made of cross-linked diamond so they were simultaneously data storage cores and also harder and more resilient than natural bone (I might as well go for top-of-the line unobtainium) -- I would be able to store my memories in a reliable form and not have to count on the tricky, dubious phenomenon or epiphenomenon of human memory. 

I would be something different from human in that case. Would I be better or worse? I do think I would be better. If I had possessed such a memory, I would have been able to avoid many of the confusions, doubts and torments that plagued my life, at work and in private. I could have avoided many traps and follies that resulted from distortions of memory, including some which I seem to have manufactured intentionally.

One day, people will have the option to improve their memories with this sort of technology. At first it will be used to help people with severe disabilities. Eventually, it will be available to everyone. Yes, I do wish it were available now. Oh, well.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42548/wasteful-gesture-only-not

What Songs Travel Toward Us

 

I sat on the roof with my guitar, plucking at it. I wondered what the people passing by thought of me: was I a lazy bum, idling away my evening? Was I a hard-working man unwinding after a long shift at the factory or the office? Was I a slightly overaged student, taking a break from studying some esoteric point of paramecium anatomy or Venetian law?

Probably none of them thought I looked like a hard-working man who didn’t especially like his job, sitting at the office engaged at his work. There it was, though. I had long since reconciled myself to the fact that as a singer I would never be more than a fairly decent amateur who would be tolerated at a coffee shop or a Saturday market. The only way I was going to make a living in music was as a songwriter, grinding out tunes for other people to perform, much better than I ever could.

I could write music at a pretty fast pace, fast enough to bring in enough to live on. I did better when I allowed myself time to let the music come to me, though, instead of chasing after it. If I just sat here like this, comfortable on an afternoon in late May, and plucked at my old acoustic Sitting Bull (because if I ever got into a fight, he was sturdy enough to use as “a coup stick”), there was no telling what songs might travel toward me.

Besides that, it felt better to just leave myself open for creation. It was the best feeling in the world when a song came and sat in my lap and said, “Play me”, or tapped me on the shoulder and said, “It’s time I was played.”

So here I sat, plucking and listening and waiting. I’d give it another ten minutes, and then I’d begin grinding out unrequited teen love for Chicken Clock 

 

https://onbeing.org/poetry/cross-that-line/

The Magic Eight Ball says, "Cross that line."

Unborn

 “It’s strange. For the most part, she had a very good memory, but she remembered quite vividly something which couldn’t possibly have happened: going out on the playing field of her high school with her science class with a radio to listen to the beeping of Sputnik I as it passed over Portland, Oregon. The reason it couldn’t have happened as she remembered it is that she was graduated from high school in 1955, and when the first satellite in history was launched in October of 1957, she was married and living in California. Very odd.”

“Okay, that’s an odd thing to misremember. And her memory had enough details that it couldn’t have been something different?”

“Right. She remembered her science teacher and her classmates, the playing field, and so on, and she remembered the excitement of hearing about the launch, how none of her classmates were frightened or angry that ‘they’, the Soviets, had done it first, only delight that ‘we’, humanity, had done it. And it was definitely a satellite passing overhead, it really couldn’t be anything else, the way she described setting up the radio. Puzzling.”

“It really does sound as though she went to high school in some other universe.”

“There was one other memory which really disturbed me, because we remembered it differently, except this one was so personal and private that I had no way of demonstrating it to her the way I could show her documents that proved the first satellite was launched in 1957. I remember vividly how, early in our relationship, she began bleeding vaginally, and her doctor told her she was suffering a failed pregnancy and needed to have a D&C immediately or she would eventually bleed to death. He asked me to leave the room and she emerged about half an hour later telling me that it had been a rather unpleasant procedure, and rather messy, and that she had gotten through it all right and was glad to have spared me having to watch it.

“I mentioned it years later, and she said nothing of the sort had ever happened to her, and she couldn’t possibly have been mistaken, since she would of course remember it. I made the mistake of arguing the point with her, and it put a strain on our relationship for some time.

“Unfortunately, since we never talked about it with anyone else, and the doctor himself retired and left town, there was no-one I could talk with about it, even to satisfy myself that it had really happened. A mutual friend mentioned the incident recently, but it turned out that it had been something I had said about it, so I can’t even count that. Frustrating.”

“So even in a relationship as close as the one the two of you had, you still lived in different worlds.”

“Apparently.”

https://wordsfortheyear.com/2014/03/13/the-name-of-a-fish-by-faith-shearin/

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Happy 84th birthday, Kathe."

Duckies

 It was a running gag in the household for some time, the portentous voiceover from a satire of those "mysteries of pseudoscience" TV shows: "Ducks. What are they? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What do they want?"

Today, while vainly searching for straws in the compartment between seats in the car, Gideon pulled up a tiny Ziploc bag containing miniature rubber duckies.

Immediately, I pondered the question: why did the car not have the stash of straws it ought to have, and why did it instead have an emergency supply of duckies?

Gideon made the careful observation that they were both hippie ducks, a boy and a girl hippie duck, as we bantered back and forth on the subject.

Suddenly, as we waited for the Wendy's servers to produce our drinks, I realized what they were: a pair of cake toppers which Kathe had bought and tucked away for me to find and coo over. Exactly the sort of sweet, sappy thing she would do. Or that I would do, but I'm pretty sure I didn't, so it must have been Kathe.

Thanks, Sweetie.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Kathe lives you. That won't change."

A Letter From Kathe

 The other day, I received a call from the Reynolds Law Firm, which has handled our legal business in various matters over the years, telling me that they had a letter which they needed to either return to me or shred in order to protect my confidentiality. I was fairly certain that it wasn't anything with current relevance, but was still curious, so I went by and picked it up.

I was glad that I did. It was good to have a little reminder of Kathe's quietly fierce intellect in my hand for a moment. In the midst of our (valiant and energetic, though ultimately failed) effort to save our home from the hostile attentions of the City of Corvallis, Kathe gave a member of the city's bureaucracy a piece of her mind, and it was a pleasure to have it back.

Mr. W****:

Since we talked with you, I have continued to try to find a way to work on our decrepit outbuildings in a way that would satisfy the city. However, it doesn't seem that there is any such thing. I have continued to call and where possible interview people who might assist us with the work that (in my opinion) needs to be done. I was keeping a running account of my efforts but have decided to simply summarize them. At this time I have spoken with a small family business which will undertake to clear the debris from the yard and with a fencing contractor that I feel sure would do a good job. I have not yet found someone who would be willing to drop plans that would be acceptable to the city, but I have made some progress toward that end.

Over the past weekend, I looked at my notes and decided that since I had gotten no callbacks from any structural engineer, my next effort would be to call on them unannounced and see if anyone would talk to me. Yesterday, I spoke with Mr. David Flemings of Clair, who said he would look into the situation and see what advice he could give us. We happily accepted.

This morning, a couple of city representatives appeared on our porch and asked me to sign a paper that they mischaracterized as a vitally necessary permission for them to start hiring contractors to demolish our property on our behalf. They referred to the paper as permission to "abate or demolish" but as my husband pointed out to them, it really said "abate by demolition". They again referred to "your dangerous house" (I am so getting tired of that phrase). I signed, but I checked " Do Not (agree)" and they went away.

This is what we want:

First, agreement to our plan for remediation. We want to remove the part of the auxiliary structure that rests on decaying timbers, to retain the garage and later to put a foundation under the garage walls and to and to restore the back stairway and porch to a usable condition.

Second, permission to do some work ourselves now, or as soon as conditions permit. This would include clearance of some, if not all, of the debris in the yard. It would also include restoring the steps to the stairway (the one that is so very attractive to "small children"), rebuilding the porch, and replacing the door, if we can find one that will fit the space.

Third, to be allowed to enter the garage, both to clear debris and to work on the roof, and later, to use it to store yard equipment, tools, and materials, while the rest of the work proceeds.

Fourth, to be addressed as people with a problem (and one which arguably the city ought to have helped us with from the start), not people who are a problem. In short, we want the city's people to speak with us politely and honestly, and without bullying.

5th, if they know of contractors who would be willing to work with us, as opposed to contractors who are willing to work with the city, that they give us their names.

Kathleen and John Burt

If the city had dealt with us in a reasonable and decent fashion, that lovely old house would still be standing and I might well still be living in it. The house at the corner of 10^th and Jefferson could be a showpiece of the community instead of an empty socket in the city's jaw.

And couples would still be getting their pictures taken under the branches of the cedar tree arching over the sidewalk.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Look and see."

I'm Here To Tell You

 

“I’m here to tell you…” his voice echoed from the amplifiers, distorted by the walls of the buildings on the plaza and the gathered bodies and by the weird electronics they used on this timeline, “that people don’t have to live this way. I have seen alternatives, other ways of living, and I know they are possible. We don’t have to live under this regime that oppresses us, we don’t have to fear one another, we don’t have to hide away and only dare to speak our minds once a month for five minutes. There is another way to live, and I have seen it!”

I doubted he had, but he still had my attention. After all, if he had actually jumped timelines or even viewed, he would be worth recruiting.

“I have walked the streets of this city and seen people walking proudly and free, speaking their minds freely on every corner, not just in this one plaza in this one hour a month. I have seen people greet one another with the handclasp of equal to equal, unafraid, not with the servile salute of lesser to better. I have seen children playing in parks, dressed in bright colors, like the flowers of Springtime, not marching like soldiers in the drab colors of school uniforms. I have seen it, and I know we can live that way, too!”

He was almost in tears. He had clearly seen something that had affected him deeply. I definitely needed to speak with him and get some details out of him.

“We can remake our society to make that kind of life possible! We can be free! W can-“ His microphone cut off with a flatulent squawk which I had always suspected was intentionally irritating, as a way of punishing people who ran out their allotted time.

The next speaker stepped up to the microphone. I was already pushing through the crowd, trying to reach the man before he slipped away.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Speak up."

 

https://improvisedlife.com/2020/10/26/how-to-redeem-lifes-spoilers-andy-goldsworthy-and-hala-alyan/

Imperfections

 

“It’s surprising just how chilling it can be to see a small area of fresh grass and trees.”

“Knowing that there were dozens of tents pitched there a week ago?”

“Yes. All those people, swept away in that police sweep that was so widely touted and so widely celebrated, everybody rejoicing in the big police sweep that was going to sweep the nasty unhoused population away, sweep, sweep, sweep.”

“Yes. It gives you a taste of what it feels like to see the results of genocide.”

“There. That’s exactly what I was thinking. This tidy, ever-so-appealing space, rendered clean and neat, with no trace left of what was there before to trouble the minds of people visiting. Someone arriving from out of town, who didn’t know the camp had been there, would have no idea that the unhoused people had even existed.”

“Even knowing that the people who lived here aren’t dead, that they were just kicked out and hustled off down the road, doesn’t make that much difference. They’ve been erased from where they were, from where they were living.”

“It’s not as though they wanted to live in squalor, shivering in filthy tents in the middle of Winter in Oregon. But they were here.”

“And now they’re gone, and there’s no trace of their existence.”

“An imperfection, down the memory hole.”

“There are plaques all over town, commemorating historic events. There should be more of them, marking even things that people don’t want to remember.”

“I remember hearing about a group in California putting up markers in honor of bordellos and speakeasies, but a group recording the former locations of encampments, yes. I like it.”

Today’s prompt, “imperfections, comes from the poem, “Palimpsest”, by Thomas R. Moore: https://tmoore419.wixsite.com/poet

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Nothing to see here."

"When The Wind And Light Are Working Off Each Other"

 

 “Oh, I love it when the wind shakes the trees this way.”

I paused to look at the row of trees as they shook in the wind. Each of them three or four storeys tall, their branches were shaking wildly, leaves flailing. If they’d been that new kind of piezoelectric windmill, they’d have been generating an immense amount of electricity.

“Oh, come on,” Beppe groaned (almost whined, really). “Enough with your ‘Children of the night, what music they make’ routine. Let’s get going.”

“Dude, you have no appreciation for nature. I’ll bet if we did hear wolves howling outside the cabin when we were up there, you’d complain about that.”

I did continue walking, though.

“There aren’t any wolves in the Coast Range, are there?”

“Not yet. Maybe soon.”

“Man, that’s nuts. Why would we allow them to come back, when there are so many of us living in Oregon now?”

As we got closer to the house, we approached a place where a row of tall hedges were being tossed by the wind, and the top of their shadows fluttered around our feet like dry surf.

I pointed down.

“Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah, okay, don’t stop, wouldya?”

“For cryin’ out sake, why be like that? The world around us is beautiful, and all you can do is grumble and kvetch.”

“I just want to get home, is all.”

“Okay, okay. Man, I’m coming.”

I sighed. If he needed to pee, he should just say so.

 

 

http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-wind-and-light-are-working-off.html

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Corvallis really is lucky to have so much beautiful weather."

In Season

 

“…in season or out of season

“Stand up and back him in all men’s sight, with that for his only reason.

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide

“The shame or the mocking or laughter

“But the thousandth man will stand by your side

“To the gallows-foot…and after!”

I looked up at her to try to read her expression. Would she be utterly horrified at the thought of my reciting Kipling as part of our wedding vows? Complete with misgendering her?

There were tears in her eyes.

“Is that really how you see me?”

“Am I wrong?”

She bit her lip.

“I hope not, but it’s a lot to live up to.”

I wrapped my arms around her.

“I’m not wrong. I’m not. We’ve been through too much, apart and together, to be able to afford being wrong. You are much more than one in a thousand.”

She kissed me. It felt good to be kissed by that tear-wet face.

 

 

 

 

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stepping-westward/

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "I wouldn't know, I've never kippled."

I Wonder If I Will Miss

 

“I wonder if I will miss my headaches.”

“What?”

“Stranger things have happened. There’s a familiarity to the ritual of feeling the pain begin to gather, of taking my pills, of going through my routine, hoping they will work, feeling the pain recede, or else feeling it worsen and having to do more and treat it more aggressively, interrupt what I’m doing, lie down, cover my eyes, listen to soft music, touch my body gently, sometimes having to do that all day and still the pain doesn’t go away.”

“It doesn’t sound that appealing.”

“It’s not, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I’m getting the surgery. I’m just thinking, if it actually does stop the headaches, it’s going to be a significant change in my lifestyle. I really am going to be something of a different person.”

“You know what this reminds me of? That TV show, The Millionaire. You know it?  A mysterious rich guy gives you a check for a million dollars to see how it changes your life.”

“Oh, yeah. That would be a cool show: The Pain Taker removes one source of chronic pain from your life. All of a sudden you no longer have headaches, or carpal tunnel syndrome, or chronic fatigue.”

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Go for it, baby."

 

https://thedailyrenegade.com/i-wonder-if-ill-miss-the-moss-by-jane-mead/

How Will I Hide?

 

“It’s funny. Have you ever read the original story, Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?”

“The original? By Stevenson? No, I guess I haven’t.”

“It’s funny. The original story doesn’t have anything to do with seeking to separate a man’s good and evil sides or anything like that. It’s just a mystery story about the relationship between this respectable doctor and his ugly new friend. Who is this Hyde person, where did he come from, why does Jekyll insist that everyone be nice to him and let him have his money? People think Hyde must be blackmailing him, but Jekyll doesn’t act the least bit like a man being blackmailed, he just acts like a man who is enjoying indulging his new best friend.

“So, the drug Jekyll is taking isn’t revealed to the reader at first?”

“Right, not until the end. It isn’t until Jekyll is caught out and he has killed himself that he leaves a note explaining how he created a drug that can change his appearance. It was only because he didn’t worry about Hyde’s reputation that he acted so wild as Hyde – he’d always wanted to carouse that way, and had done some of it in secret over the years, and now he could do all he wanted.”

“Ah. And Hyde ran wild, and became more and more brazen, and violent.”

“Yes, eventually he did things as Hyde that could send him to prison, so he knew he had to stop using that identity, but by then, he was changing without taking the drug, at random times. He was trapped, so he killed himself. But again, none of this had anything to do with Hyde being a separate person, it was just a disguise.”

“Weird. Funny how the story has changed so much.”

“Yeah. Also, Hyde was shorter than Jekyll, not bigger, as he is often depicted.”

“Hah. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hyde is their Incredible Hulk. He even has a line, I guess Jekyll has a line, saying Hyde used to be shorter than him”

“Perfect example. I read that series, I loved it, but it’s got a Jekyll and Hyde who’re totally different from the original.”

“I do like the ways in which the story changes and slides around. It’s fun. But I didn’t know how different the origin was.”

“Neither did I. I read the original while because I’m working on a story in which Jekyll is an elderly man working on a rejuvenation formula that will take a few years off and extend his life a bit, but it winds up turning him into a young man who doesn’t look anything like himself, can’t pass himself off as Jekyll’s son or disguise himself as the aged Jekyll, so he is obliged to take on an entirely new identity. It’s different enough from the original that I could take away the Jekyll and Hyde element entirely, but I kind of like it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“I hope it will be. By the way, I found out from the foreword to the book that Stevenson intended the name to be pronounced ‘Jee-kull’, but even I’m not such a pedantic twit that I’d try to insist on it now.”

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pbeile/3142891992/

[I have a feeling that link may not be good indefinitely, so I’m putting the whole poem, Question by Mae Swenson, below.]

Question

 

Body my house

my horse my hound

what will I do

when you are fallen

 

Where will I sleep

How will I ride

What will I hunt

 

Where can I go

without my mount

all eager and quick

How will I know

in thicket ahead

is danger or treasure

when Body my good

bright dog is dead

 

How will it be

to lie in the sky

without roof or door

and wind for an eye

 

With cloud for shift

how will I hide?

 

From Another Animal

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."

Still Singing Through

 

“Some days, I really can feel her,” I said as I dug my hoe’s tines through the dirt, pulling morning glories from around the roots of the pea vines.

“Feel whom?” Glory asked, not looking up from her own hoeing.

“Gaea. Remember when Dad said that he could feel Gaea singing through the soil while he worked it?”

She exhaled loudly.

“No, I totally don’t remember that. But he said a lot of things, especially when he was stoned.”

I chuckled.

“Don’t be mean. That wasn’t anything like ‘Baximltr’.”

None of us were ever going to forget the time we’d found those letter written on the kitchen wall one morning, and Dad had come downstairs to find us looking at them, puzzled, and he had looked at it and sighed in disappointment, and said, “Last night, it was the secret of the Universe.”

None of us were ever going to forget it, and much as we loved him, none of us were ever going to let him forget it, either.

I gathered a large wad of morning glory on my hoe and carried it to the compost bin, shook it off and rolled the bin ahead of us to a new location.

“Really, though, sometimes, when I’m working in the garden, when I’m on a roll in the work, I can feel it. I can feel Gaea telling me how she wants it to go, and I work with her, and it goes better.”

“For real?

“Definitely. I used to feel as though our garden’s plants were Gaea’s stepchildren, and she was never going to love them as much as her darling weeds, but if I negotiate with her, she likes them better, and they live better.”

“Well, you do keep the gardens better than anyone else.”

“Maybe it’s just a metaphor, the way Mom says her tools aren’t really alive, but she’s still going to apologize to them when she drops them, because if she treats them as though they have feelings, she gets better performance out of them. I don’t suppose it matters.”

“No, it doesn’t. And it makes more of a difference if we treat Gaea as if she were alive and has feelings.”

I gave a little sob.

“It sure does. God, I wish everyone did.”

I gathered up another wad of morning glory.

“C.S. Lewis,” I muttered.

“What about him?”

“Saying, ‘How can there be too many babies? Like saying there are too many flowers.’ Yes, there can be too many flowers!”

 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/556318

The Various Faces of the Moon

"You used to only see one face of it."

"That idea is really difficult to grasp. I'm so used to seeing all sides of it night after night."

"Yes, well, you're used to seeing it with water and plants on it, too."

"Heh, there is that. Sometimes I do imagine it: looking up and seeing it white and dead, like a skull, a rebuke to us of what we could be if we didn't take good care of our planet."

"Heh, I don't get the impression that one person in a million thought of it that way. Evidently most people thought of it as a very romantic sight."

"I've heard that, and I found it completely baffling. The stars I can understand, and fireflies, certainly, since it's a mating display by the insects themselves, but the dreary light of a lifeless Moon? I would think that the light of our own terraformed Moon, even though it's duller, would be more romantic, since it shows how much humans love life, that we'd spread it to a new world."

 

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "The 20th of July is an auspicious date on which to discuss the Moon."

Choir of One

 

“He really does have a beautiful singing voice, doesn’t he?” my wife said as Fly Me to the Moon ended.

“Who is it?”

“Are you kidding? It’s Vic Makropolus. Haven’t you ever heard him before?”

She picked up the CD case and handed it over to me. It was a fairly old-fashioned design, just a photo of a plain-looking man in an evening suit on an empty stage, under a spotlight. In white serifed letters above his head it said, IN CONCERT: VIC MAKROPOLUS.

The Impossible Dream began coming from the stereo. There was no denying he had a powerful, compelling voice. He had a strong, rich, baritone voice that was good to listen to.

“Yes. Yes, he’s good. Is he new?”

“He only started recording this year, as far as I know. I think this is his first album. He’s been popping up on my feeds, though.”

I read the text on the CD case. For some reason, the phrase “in concert” caught in my brain.

“Funny about that term, ‘in concert’. It implies more than one person singing, yet it’s normally applied to a single person singing.”

“You’re right. It’s like calling one person singing a chorus.”

“Although with pipes like his, this fellow is a choir of one.”

“You see why he impressed me.”

“Oh, indeed. He’s the kind who would have knocked ‘em dead in the old days, before amplification. Even now, a voice that strong stands out.”

He went into Nessun dorma. We fell silent. We had no choice.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Listen."

The Questions You Might Want To Ask

 

“Hello, Amy, can you hear me?”

“Um…yes?”

“That’s good. My name is George, and I’m here to help you. Are you comfortable right now? Is my voice too loud or too soft, for instance?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m . . . very comfortable. In fact, I feel better than I can ever remember being in my life.”

“That’s good. That’s always our intention, but we don’t always get it right on the first try.”

“’What you mean, “we”, white man?’ Sorry, I need to learn to stop making that joke. Fewer people get it every year, and some people take offense at it-especially people of color. Anyway, who is ‘we’, please? You don’t look like hospital staff.”

“I’m not, but I am here to help. I can show you how to make adjustments to be more comfortable, and try to answer the questions you might want to ask.

“Oh, and by the way, I did get the joke, and I didn’t take offense. Also: the King sits on gold. Who sits on silver?”

“The Lone Ranger, of course.”

“You have a nice laugh, Amy.”

“You have a nice smile, George. Oh, my, I’m flirting with you – I must be feeling better. But: please tell me exactly what is going on here. Is this a room for some new therapy I haven’t been getting before, or so I just not remember it?”

“From now on, you shouldn’t have any trouble with memory. For instance: what did you have to drink while you read the first chapter of Mission of Gravity?”

“Peppermint tea – it was the only tea left in the house. Wow, I was fourteen years old on June 5^th, 1967!”

“There, your memory is intact. Everything’s fine.”

“So I’m in Heaven?”

“We don’t use that name, because it comes with some associations that aren’t helpful. But it isn’t Hell, either, so don’t-“

“Grandma? Sorry to wake you, but I brought the kids, and we can only stay for a little while.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Meesha. I was having a nice dream, but it’s one I’ve had a couple of times already.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I feel fine, but they warned me about that. If I hadn’t read up on it, I wouldn’t know: when you get right to the end, you have a baseless feeling of well-being. A lot of people become convinced they’re getting better, which can be really hard on the people trying to help them at the end, when they start babbling about all the things they’re about to start doing.”

“Are you at the end, Gran Amy?”

“Yes, Hali, it’s almost over, but that’s okay. It’s the end for me, but I’ve lived longer than most, and I’ve had the good fortune and the good sense to enjoy more than most, and I have this lovely feeling of well-being to help me at the finish. Also, I get to see you. That’s good. You’re going to live long after I’m done.”

“Are you going to go to Heaven and meet the angels?”

“It’s a pretty thought. Probably not, but I’m okay with that.”

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46701/questions-about-angels

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée."

The World Needs You

 

Gaea was holding out both hands imploringly, rather than Uncle Sam’s commanding finger in the “I Want You” poster, but this poster’s meaning was just as emphatic, and just as manipulative. It was a plea for young people to join the UNESCO reclamation service, to labor to preserve human habitat and what remained of animal habitat in areas suffering the worst of global warming.

I’d hung it in my classroom at the beginning of the school year more because I thought I’d enjoy seeing Gaea’s sad face in moments of abstraction than because I thought it would have any beneficial effect, but to my surprise over the course of the year several students had asked me about how to get in touch with UNESCO and what their requirements were. More surprising still, a couple of teachers had as well. I’d directed them all to the web site listed at the bottom of the poster.

Now, I was clearing out my things at the end of the school year, and I wasn’t going to be back in the Fall over what I considered to be a ridiculous misunderstanding, but which had tarnished my reputation seemingly beyond redemption. I looked at the poster and read the address at the bottom of the poster, looked up at Gaea’s sad, anxious face and said, “Okay, you got me.”

 

https://www.facebook.com/silvermoonshaman/posts/758775088115698

It Was After Dinner

 

I was washing the dishes, thinking over my options for the rest of the evening, when I was suddenly struck with an appalling feeling that I didn’t like any of them. That I hadn’t really liked any of my options for a very long time.

I felt an urge to drop the sponge in the sink and walk straight out the door, not even pause to put on my hat, just grab my pocketbook and go. Head on out and take off down the road and stop at a motel when I got tired, or just sleep in a field if I felt like it. Watch the Sun rise in a strange place and watch it set in a different one, just for the pleasure of seeing it happen. I wanted that.

I really did want that. Wanted it so badly that it scared me. I could barely feel the dishes in my hands as I continued to scrub them and rinse them, the blood was coursing through my arteries so hard.

I finished the dishes, just barely. Managed to get the last of them into the drying rack without any of them falling to the floor, somehow. But what was I going to do? I knew I couldn’t stay, no matter how much I loved my husband, I just couldn’t go on living in this house, going through these same motions day after day, any longer. I needed to get out and get moving.

I walked into the living room, and was slightly surprised to find my husband there. He was usually closed up in his study at this time of the evening, at work with his papers.

He put his arms around me and said, “Teddy, what do you say we close up the house for awhile and hit the road, just the two of us?”

I guess that’s why we’ve stayed together all these years: we can read each other’s moods so well, sometimes it’s downright eerie.

 

https://issuu.com/dolbychadwickgallery/docs/stay_inspired_single_pages

You Have Permission To Dance

 

I climbed off the table slowly and carefully.

“Are you in any pain?”

“I’m waiting for something to begin to hurt, but so far, nothing does. That’s miraculous, but also kind of…eerie, considering what I’ve been through. Not just the room full of gas that ate my skin off, but what I’ve been through for years before that. My knee doesn’t hurt, and it hurt for a long time.”

“We replaced a lot of things besides your skin and your lungs, yes.”

I ran a hand over my arm.

“By the way…am I always going to be this pink?”

“No. Your normal pigmentation should come back in a few months. Also your hair.”

I flexed and bent and reached.

“This really feels amazing. I feel like dancing.”

“You have permission to dance.”

I laughed, and executed an about-face, and then another, winding up facing him again. I dropped down into a squat and leapt up to touch the ceiling, then did begin actually dancing.

It felt good. So good.

 

https://www.altaredbygrief.com/blog

And Numberless Blades of Grass

 

The editor looked at the painting, which showed an astronaut walking toward a spaceship, with a trail of discarded objects behind him, representing parts of his life which he had discarded on his way towards his goal: a brightly-colored ball, a book of poetry, an Army rifle.

“I like it, but . . . put some grass on the ground, so it doesn’t look like just a Surrealist abstraction.”

I sputtered, “But it is a Surrealist abstraction!”

He glared at me.

“I hate Surrealism. Put some grass on it.”

I sighed, took the painting back, closed it in its cover and left. I took the train home, fuming, trying to concentrate on my book, thinking about grass.

Back at home, I set the painting on my easel and began adding grass to the painting. He wanted grass, okay, I’d give him grass. I painted blade after blade after blade, turning the elegant surreal landscape I had created into a grassy plain – which was plenty surreal itself, as I recalled from having crossed it hitchhiking years before. Man, there was a lot of it. A surreal amount, one might say.

I painted grass and I painted grass, first around the objects and the astronaut’s feet anf disturbed grass in a trail behind him. Then I spread the grass out to the sides, left and right, into the distance. Hours passed, and I painted grass until my hand ached, and I thought I might have permanently used up my brain’s grass-painting chemicals, but I painted me some grass.

I brought the painting in the next day. The editor liked it. He bought it. I was able to bring home a load of groceries, and pay the electric bill.

Grass….

 

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "It's work."

     https://madlyinlovewithlife.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/rabindranath-tagore-the-stream-of-life/