Amidst the Mists

He put out a hand and leaned it against a tree trunk, while he gasped. He had been running,

and he was sweaty and breathless. He had run and run, and finally ran into a fog bank, and

after that he was finally able to stop to catch his breath.

He couldn’t remember why he was running. Was he running to, or running from? He thought

it was probably from, because he had run into the White for safety and reprieve. 

But who or what was he running from, and why?

Was he a child, running from punishment? 

Was he a man running from some natural disaster?

Was he running from a person or a thing? Or maybe even just a thought, or a fear?

Why didn’t he know the answers?

And where was he? While he had been running, his feet had known where they were going,

so he was on home territory, but oddly enough, he couldn’t remember where home was, other

than

where he was. 

Maybe he was dreaming? 

Maybe it was the fog? Fog could do weird things, not just to sight, but also to sound, to  

            time, and to the very feel of the air.

His breathing slowed, but remained raspy. He leaned forward, hands on his thighs, feeling the

muscles there. He had to keep moving, but he no longer felt the need to hurry. Here, in the white,

he was not being chased anymore.He could take his time, catch his breath as best he could, and

go forward – where? – to find – something. What?

Or where, or who?

More importantly, why?

His breathing slowed, quietened. His skin still beaded with moisture, but he was pretty sure that

was the fog, not the awful hot/cold sweat that had formed while he’d been running, so fast and so

far.

He started moving forward again, walking. The slower pace was soothing, and he was able to see

if he could see any familiar landmarks. The path he was walking still felt familiar, and he knew he

was heading to somewhere specific.

To a special place, special to him and to the object of his search.

Because he did have an objective.

He wasn’t running from, now, as he had been before the fog.  

He was approaching something, something that was his. That was waiting for him. 

He stopped again, as something in the sound changed.  Echoes weren’t reliable in an ordinary

fog, and this was the thickest, densest, whitest fog he had ever seen.

He suddenly knew he was near a bluff, an abrupt drop-off. He couldn’t say how he knew, but he

trusted the feeling as he had trusted his feet to run safely and to safety. 

Wherever he was, it was home.

Wherever he was going, it was home. 

Join my Caravan! :)

I have had a dream, for most of my life, to see the
Pacific NorthWest. I want to breathe in trees and lakes and mountains.

The closest I have got to this, in this lifetime, is when my sister included me in a trip into the Great Smoky Mountains. There was an instant peace there, a sense of being "home" that I have never ever in my life known.

A childhood home,perhaps... 

As a grown-up, I feel there's something more, and I still want it.

I'm losing my mobility and my health, and have begun trying to make this dream of mine come true. I have some (relatively little) money saved. I have pictures to look at everyday to encourage myself to spend my money on that dream instead of pizza. I'm still working on it. I have scents and incense to breathe in what I can from this far out. 

When I've thought about it, it has been as a road trip. With a few select people, most of whom I suspect will have lives too complex for them to leave when I finally do get everything together. 

And, as much as I like a road trip, I am not a distance driver, so someone else would have the bulk of that responsibility, but I want them to do it my way. That is, no freeways, no hurry, let's meander across the plains (may as well, because no matter how fast we go, it's going to feel like forever, especially after the mountains (finally!) come into view. Days become weeks, driving through the here to get to the there in the flatlands. Been there, done that. 

I don't want to have to be in certain towns by certain dates because of reservations or anything. I want to go until we're tired of going, and stop at the first stopping place we find, be it a hotel, motel, campground, or a park of some other sort. I want to pull off at odd little stops and walk down odd little paths to odd little or large waterfalls, and eat in odd little towns. Tourist stops, if they are the natural kind. Not interested in flashing lights and crowds and staged events. I want to see the world --or just the country -- as it is in the open.

Now, today it popped into my mind that perhaps I'm being too close, or closed-minded, in my choice of companions for travelling, and that I should ask around and find if maybe there are others interested. There are certainly others who share interest in some of the things that piqued my interest and fostered the dream. (Haven't yet found many tree-people yet though.)

The thing about this thought is that it isn't exactly me. I'm uncomfortable with persons I don't know well. Heck, I'm uncomfortable with people I DO know well.

As a child it was considered being intensely shy. Then for a period of time it was some type of social anxiety or phobia. Now it is extreme introversion. And although it's not as strong as before, believe me it IS still extreme, almost to the point of phobia.

Anyway, this ranks highly in the category of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever had, So I laughed at my crazy self and went about the business of my day.

When I got around to the delights of my day, one part of that was reading my horoscope. Which said, I kid you not, that I would have a crazy idea that day and however wild it seemed to be, I should consider it seriously. That it could have merit and meaning for whatever vague plans I had been considering. 

That made me laugh, too. Almost as funny as off-the-cuff socializing was the idea of me taking a horoscope more as a specific rule for the day than a general guideline for some time or other before I die. 

The same advice was repeated, in different words,  in my career horoscope, my money horoscope, and it also appeared in my magical tarot card draws that I actually have NO participation in. 

So, I thought maybe I should put it out there. Anybody interested in joining my (thus far imaginary) trip to the PNW? .

You'll need your own money, and it would really be a big help if you have a car, because mine is not up to the trip (although it might surprise us all, that's not a risk I wish to take). Actually, an RV might be even better, and a truck camper thing would be best. They can usually get in campgrounds that RVs can't. 

So, having provided your own vehicle to drive yourself (or vehicles if our group becomes too large for just one) and your own financing, you are invited to join a trip planner who has made no plans, no reservations, nor mapped out a definite course for no specific time frame.  

Come one, come all, no need to shove. Surely together we can figure me out!

TREES!

I need trees!

The pictures just aren't doing it today

At @20 degree temps, I can admire the waterfalls from my chair, but it's just not working for trees. I need the shaded hidden green areas where the giants dwell. They needn't be green themselves, which is fairly rare in this place at this time of year, but they need to be somewhere in the verdant hidden spaces that only tree lovers can find and cherish. And touch and smell, and be immersed in.

I need to put my hand on the bark, and feel in my mind the stirring of the sap as the year begins again. I want to feel the moss, live and lush from recent snowfalls, or dry and dusty from cold, and feel the incipient life therein. 

I want life to blossom and winter to end.

I want to touch the trees  that touch the stars.

THE Return

 The words have returned to me, in a very big way.

Oh, they never left entirely. I could scribble out a poem, describe an evening on my porch, share a summer shower, and most especially I could write a lengthy rant and make others laugh at my horrible life, because I was making a joke of it, even while complaining and whining and feeling sorry for myself. 

Always, always, a thin trickle of words remained. 

But I was used to a river! A wide, full, flowing river, hopefully with a waterfall or an underground component that popped back out of a rock wall.

Not just a babbling brook, although those could be fun. 

Not a nearly dried up creek bed full of rocks that crack and turn to powder in the heat of everyday. 

And not just things. Not just weather, and birds, and description of static objects.

My words were persons, and lives, and with voices and thoughts of their own. With in-jokes and griefs and crying-until-laughing, and laughing-until-crying. 

These persons wanted needed me to tell their stories so that they did not dissolve unnoticed into the midsts of mists. 

But I could only share moments of them, if even that much.

Somewhere I lost them.

My words had gone, and with them gone, so was I. I was no longer the Voice, or the Participating Narrator, or however my role could be defined. 

I was not them and they were not me, and so I was no longer I, and their very existence was at risk. 

Sometime in the autumn of this past year, they came back. A whole gang of them started shouting at me, even waking me every three or four hours in the night. 

Mostly they were saying, "Look at Me! Here is My Story!" That was okay. I could watch and listen and wander off into dreamland, often a mixture of their presence and my lack of presence. I need do nothing but be aware, and I needed only to be aware of their existence. 

Soon, they compelled me to creating them for others, and I did. Not always easily, not often quickly, but the more I did it, the more I felt myself again becoming.

I am me! I am Here! I am me!

I finished that story and did a second draft, and sent it out to a few chosen readers that I thought would offer good commentary. So far the reviews have brought up good points, but I've not heard from one section of my chosen readers. I don't know yet what does or doesn't work for that class (for lack of a more precise word.)

As I waited to hear from my readers -- I am seriously considering this as a venture into self-publishing, or print-on-demand, or whatever it's called these days -- I began another story with my fingers and there was a third story stirring into existence in my mind. 

These last two were abruptly and rudely shoved out of place by a compulsive need to write a fan fiction piece about a young child trying to make sense of the death of a parent. 

It wrote itself in ten days, wringing me out from the inside out. That's why it took so long to write it. It left me too exhausted to communicate. 

I slept. 

I slept, I wrote, I ate, with occasional trips to the doctors (5 or 6 of them) because I am old. But mostly I stayed home, with two sets of people pushed to the back of my mind, squabbling for my attention, while this child was trying to make his world make sense again. 

That exact type of compulsion to write is a rare event. It was really almost like what psychic scribes (I forgot the correct term) describe. As if someone else was melding with me, using my mind and body to do what theirs could not.

And I am concerned, my friends, for surely a compulsion of that strength and with that urgency was MEANT to be heard/seen by someone, perhaps to make sense of their topsy-turvy world. 

I just hope that somehow I am getting the word out to the right person. 

Fan fiction seems a strange platform for delivering such a message. 

I don't do fan fiction. The people in my own head tell me this or that is wrong with the other peoples characters and turn them into who they are. I have a sincere respect for any writer who can make someone else's character breathe, and can do it right, but that is a skill I have never ~quite ~ had.

I can only hope that the same energy that produced it reaches across or through the void and finds its target.

Whoever you are, I hear you. I feel you. I even love you. 

Because I, too, have been there.

You are not alone. 

Somewhere In My Mind

 There's an 'understanding' that wandering through one's own mind is a bad thing. As children, as soon as we are indoctrinated into the education system, we are told to "quit daydreaming". We are discouraged from coloring chickens neon colors. Our off-beat rhythms are discarded because they "don't exist." (then how did we create them in the first place?) Music should have rhythm, tune, melody, and harmony -- never mind that our ears and our minds are filled with garbage trucks, tankers, revved-up motorcycles, children screaming, doors slamming, and many other types of discord.

Inside one's own mind is a place to be avoided. It can't be taught; it cannot be reached. One who lives in an isolated spot is an oddity, a weirdo, an object of pity and ridicule.

An outsider.

This continues through our growing-up years, and into our grown-up years, and sometimes we find ourselves trying to program our children into the same ruts and roadways of communal living. 

Because humans are social creatures, and without organization and codes of behavior, life will be chaos. Anarchy. Different.

Different.

As we age, though, we are "allowed" by society a little more room for vagueness, wonder, and wandering. 

***********

I used to think it was the saddest thing when old people would no longer recognize their in-person loved ones. When they call grandchildren by a (long dead) brother's name. When they ask where their spouse has gone. When they marvel and grieve at the same time at a child with a beloved's eyes. 

When they tell you to your face that they can't visit with you today because you and a sibling are coming to take them somewhere. 

So sad. 

But Now, as I age, and as I spend more time with my memories and my dreams of days and lives gone by, it doesn't seem so sad or bad.

I am spending time with people I love(d), and who love(d) me. In my mind, I am present with them, no matter who is at the door, or sitting with me on the porch, or by my bedside as I roam beyond my body's abilities. 

Besides, how can that fat old woman be my granddaughter? She's a little girl with bright eyes and curly hair that won't stay combed. 

And that guy over there, you can't fool me. That beard can't fool me. That's my brother, who went away decades ago. It's so good to see him again, and didn't he always like to make a fool of everybody with see-through pranks?

Now, there are some whose memories bring violence and fear and anger. They may harm themselves or others. They should be cared for as needed.

There are some whose only thoughts, if thoughts they be, are of pain and messes, and the failure of the body. They too should be cared for, and eased as much as is possible.

These, the ones with no peace and no escape, are the truly sad cases, and the most needy. Try to love them, care for them, and grieve as you must for the lost loved one, overwhelmed by too much today and no escape into either tomorrow or yesterday.

But do not grieve for me.

I am with friends.

I am with family.

I am loved.

I love.

And I am, finally and at long last, who I am. Lime green chickens and 9/8 tempo with lots of slam-bang-crash and an occasional screech.

I am me and I am happy here.

Somewhere in my mind. 

Rita's Birthday Presence (Not Presents) SURPRISE!

 Today was my sister's birthday.

So, of course, I had a doctor's appointment. I have had an appointment nearly every birthday this year. I even had to have Rita drive me to one on her son's birthday, which was shameful. It was a drive I could normally make myself, but for whatever reason couldn't this time. 

When I had this appointment come up on her birthday, a more difficult drive, and a case of take this appointment or wait three months for the next one, I knew I didn't want to do that to her on her day.

She probably wouldn't have minded too much. She likes to drive. She likes to help. And I could buy her lunch at one of her favorite places if she took me. 

Unless, of course, she had other plans with friends, or lunch with Josh or Ron or something. Not impossible for her, and sometimes it feels like encroaching to ask -- an invasion of privacy, which is indeed a BIG DEAL to me.

Without consulting her, I decided my gift to her would be a day of respite from me and my not-so-pressing needs. 

I could do this myself.

I would do this myself. 

(And tell her about it later. I'm not completely altruistic.)

Appointment was afternoon, so car would be good for the trip. No rain or humidity. Not too chilly. Not too hot. 

I had got both an address and directions from the office I was going to, with a predetermined idea of where it was, based on the numerical address and what I knew of the area. 

So off I went. 

Made good time. Took me 45 minutes to make a 45 minute drive, so that was good. Got me there about a half hour early, because I was unsure of exactly which building I was to go to, and those medical outbuildings can be clumped together in some really awkward and barely accessible configurations.

So I drove around.

And around.

And around.

And around some more.

I pulled up Google maps on my phone, and tried to get it to speak to me. I even remembered to turn the sound up on the phone so that I might be able to hear what it said. Yay me. (Too bad my car didn't want to assist me in hearing, but since I was mostly touring parking lots, I had plenty of freedom to pull over and recheck the directions.)

The directions given had me making the same round-and-rounds that I had already been on. 

I came out, once again, onto the main entry point/parking lot, and I'll be darned if I didn't see a Rita's-type vehicle coming from the Mediplex to exit. And I wasn't even in Williamsburg, where another Rita-vehicle lives that I pass going to doctor.

This was a good one, too. It even had the Bengal plate on the front. I wondered if it had any other Bengals stuff on it, like hers, and the thought crossed my mind that it would be just my luck that she had been coming down there at this time anyway, and it would NOT have been an intrusion or a reliance that was an imposition. 

Wouldn't that just be my luck?

That was my luck. 

Oh well, odd as it was, it was a bit of good luck. She knew her way around down there, and she knew more about the entire area than I did, so maybe she could help me out.

She likes being able to help people out, so that could be my passive birthday gift to her maybe. 

Although it was strange.

I gave her the address, she put it in her phone, I showed her what my phone was reading, and we set off with her leading me -- around in the same old big circuit I had already driven so many times. (That made me feel better. At least she was the same lost as me, based on the information I had.)

Finally, we stopped again, and she said, "we're gonna have to call them," so I looked up the number and called it. She thoughtfully spoke for me -- I am not good at voice communication, although I don't usually mess up this badly.

The result is that we were on the wrong damn road!

We got much better directions this time, and she volunteered to once again lead the way, for which I was grateful. Who knows what crazy loop-de-loop I'd end up on on this other road with the same possibilities of problems. 

So my birthday present to Rita ended up being a gift to me -- of her presence. 

As I waited for the doctor and entourage, I tried to think where I may have miscommunicated. And I do think I figured it out. The first directions I had got was from someone who asked me if I knew where the hospital was. I said I did, yes, straight down Beechmont and turn on Five Mile. (There's another turn -- which is the roundabout  hill-climbing road I got lost on --and signs to follow, but I shortcutted those right out of the conversation.)

Anyway, she said "That's right, and our building number is 7575." 

I turned right instead of left, and onto another road, when I should have turned left and stayed a minute. So I had input the number with the wrong road and therefore, since I did not know it was the wrong road, I spent over a half hour looking for an address that wasn't there. I also helped my sister get lost in this non-existent place. 

Happy birthday, Rita, and I hope you can appreciate the fact that I tried to save you from me-dramedy on your own day.

 

Keys to the Kar

I am such an IDIOT! 

Or maybe just brain dead. 

Took Tammy to Kroger and decided at last minute to take her car. So we went to the store, came back out, and got in. I took keys off the keyring and put in ignition, but the key would not turn. It would not go forward, backward, jiggle up or down or anything. 

We called home and David told us to do all the stuff we had already done. It still didn't work. 

Ended the phone call and Tammy was still trying to get it to work. 

I started to say something about all the jiggly things maybe weighing it down too much, when I suddenly noticed that there were NO jiggly things. So I checked my keyring.

Yup. That's what I did. 

Sitting in a hot parking lot with the sun beating down on us, we were trying to start the Escort with keys belonging to the Crown Vic.
(On the plus side, they didn't work. That's always good to know.)

Starling Road on a rainy night

I wish I could have taken pictures on my drive home. The shiny road through the dark trees, the huge sky with rolling clouds and intermittent sparks and splashes of lightning; orange and blue and white. I pulled off a couple times to try to get a video but of course the lightning stopped when I did, or just wasn't as impressive. My motion going toward it somehow added to the visual drama. It was beautiful and otherly.
At one point on the road, I slowed way down. It appeared that I was approaching something like a large pillar, just a wide dark shape, going up and up. I wondered at first if it was the water tower, although I was pretty sure I hadn't come that far yet, and also I thought the tower was farther off the road, and NOT on a sharp curve. Also, didn't it have multiple legs, not just one column?
I passed a house with porch lights, and there was a street/yard light farther on. The top of the column seemed to spread.
So maybe it was a tree?
There are some massive trees along that road, but again none that I thought were that huge and that close to the road.
The streetlight shone down from above the top.
The top of the hill.
The pedestal was the wet road rising up a hill, through normal sized third or fourth growth trees. The spread at the top was rising above these trees to open fields, and the plowed and tumbled sky with its flickering and inconsistent lights.

A slice of time.

It's been a grayish rainish day today and now that night is creeping in, the sunlight has taken on a misty mystic haze of almost-but-not-quite-a-rainbow light.

The air glows like golden dust.

The sun is behind the trees now. The trees are haloed in the diffused light. Not quite colors quiver as leaves tremble.

Along the alley, a long lazy ray of white light makes its way down the pavement, perfectly placed evenly with the edges. At those edges, where the light meets the grass, the color blossoms into golden fizz, dancing above the ground.

I reach for my phone, my only camera, and try to capture this ethereal moment that was already fading.

I cannot, of course. The magic is beyond both my skill and the phone cameras abilities.

I hope my words have helped you to see it. A slice of time such as this is meant to be shared,and i am sharing it with you.

Dollar Store Invasion.

www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-bad-business-for-the-neighborhoods-they-open-in?fbclid=IwAR3cqFpYVeM481_4wlCFaPw_gn4QL2sJMFTrJSlmO35VIOcKP2V_VvW3V64

As someone living in a food semi-desert, I disagree with some of this. Before dollar stores started popping up, we had to drive miles for reasonable assortments of groceries, OR we had to buy them at overpriced convenience stores and gas stations.
I do agree it places an additional strain on mom-and-pops, but so does any new business with the same prospects. We are fortunate here that we have a family owned (and expanding) set of convenience stores that are reasonably priced.

The only larger store in my current town is a save-a-lot. Dollar General and Family Dollar often have name brand foods for the same price or less than this bigger store. There are Kroger, Wal-Mart, and IGA stores in several different directions, but why go to them when the 'Dollar$' are both available and reasonable and don't use a lot of gas? And this is in an only semi desert for shopping. 

Part of the reason for new stores is that the older stores can no longer carry all the products that the citizens need. The buildings need to be larger, and with more adaptable for usage space.
In some cases the buildings, equipment, and utilities are no longer compatible. Or adaptable.
These are solid reasons for a new building.
(it's my hope that the old building's next life has been planned, because I hate stores that let old building sit and rot.)

As with most of life, there is no clear yes or no choice here. No black and white; no either/or. The situation is not good OR evil. It's more likely to be good AND evil, at the same time, in subtle shades of gray -- or maybe even loud brilliant colors.

It's life.
It's how things are.