Words, Feelings, Stories

This cold winter's morning, as the darkness edges away from the horizon, I find myself wishing that I was--elsewhere. And maybe elsewhen. What would I be doing, and where would I be? Sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, wearing flannels and wool, wrapped in a blanket, a quilt, a comforter. Which or how many of these would depend on the temperature of the air and the prevailing winds. In my hands a hot drink. It doesn't matter what. Tea, coffee, cocoa, a toddy, hot lemonade. The steam from the drink both warms and wets my nose. The warmth of the contents warms the cup and the hands that hold the cup. Or do the hands warm the cup, keeping the fresh warmth from escaping? No matter. It and I am warm and we hold one another in warmth. Before me are treetops. Behind me, behind my home, are trees. Layers of trees. Rows of trees. Rising solemnly in ranks and ledges and lines. They stand silent, or Not-so-silent, in the breaking of day. They rustle, they murmur, reminding me of stretc...

Tonight's the night! Put on the socks, wrap a quilt around my head and shoulders, wrap my hands around a hot cuppa (for me, coffee) and sit on the porch. It rained today, so the light is shimmering. The lowering temperature has the air smelling so clean. The clean smell of falling leaves and fading greens; of pollen-heavy goldenrod and foxtails, and all those plants. of long darkened evenings and darkening days and long nights ahead when warmth is the best aroma and even in our electric or gas or other technology age, the scent of warmth calls to mind woodfires and cooked food and family. Too soon the coming cold will be tiresome. The wet, dark evening will be an annoyance. We'll be over it. the plants will die, the greens will brown, and the trees will be bare. But for now, for tonight, we can enjoy the changes in the air. We can cherish the passing of the seasons. We can await the coming hours of darkness knowing that, one way or another, the light will come again. Eventually...

There was some magnificence in today though. It was a beautiful day with a nice breeze. The birds, bees, and butterflies were busily enjoying all factors. It's so nice that the small creatures of nature appreciate the work that I (and mostly my friend) put into creating a place for them. It is also "nice" that I can sit at my desk and look out my door or window and see them going about their lives, adding their own color to the patchwork and their own movements to nature's dance. I saw the little white butterflies that we called cabbage moths playing tag or chase, whooshing up an ascending breeze and drifting downward when it passes. They chased one another through the flower beds and across the yard for I don't know how long. It made me laugh. The magickal highlight today wasn't the white wingers playing tag together though.  The highlight of the day was a single monarch butterfly. This monarch, which looked to be as large as my hand, cruised in the center of...

İ came outside to enjoy the pleasant night, and hoping to perhaps see some of the fireworks I can hear so clearly. As i step out my door, and sit in my chair, I see, just above the treeline, the crescent moon. İ hear the pops and the bangs and the booms from all sides. İt sounds as if the village of Bethel is reenacting war between the north and south, with occasional rat-a-tats rat-a-tats from the 'far' east. All the way down the hill maybe. İ see no flashes of light from any of these noises, not even the ones that rattle my window glass. Through all the noise, the moon remains. Patient, waiting, silent. There. And the night is blessed

I hear the peepers tonight, and the little green frogs that hide in the grass, and the groggy frogs from the flat topped roofs across the street. In the trees between the main street houses and the Union St houses I hear many chattering insects. It sounds as if the treetops may be being used as pillows by an invisible giant. While he may not be seen, he can certainly be heard. He is snoring, and the sound is reverberated through the treetops. I don't know if it's different species of cicadas, or different sexes, but one group is the murmuring breath in, and then I hear the buzzing exhale until it finally peters out. The quiet mumble again, and then the loud breathy buzz. It may be that there are Other insects - grasshoppers, katydids, mantises - that I no longer recognize easily. Bats are zipping and dipping around, as fast as a blink. Black shadow's against an orange sky. Occasionally two will dance together for a moment before vanishing. Yes, nightfall is a ...

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.

It's an eerie night out here tonight on my porch. The frogs are there, and The crickets, and the locusts, but there's something different. The night sky glowers pink-orange. . Not really strange, because there are pink street lights beyond The trees, but it's not The usual color, even when clouds are hanging low. There are strange Shadows flickering throughout the yard. In the flower beds right in front of me. Along the front of the building on the left side of the yard. On The cars in The parking lot to my right. The Shadow's wander The alley and appear from behind and alongside the houses. They peek. They scamper. They scurry from here to there. Lights and reflections wink and blink. Things move. Things rock, wiggle, twitch. The wind blows gently but not unusually. It seems a night like many others. And yet. The night choir sings on and on. The pink sky outlines the trees clearly. And Shadows creep across the street and dart through the yard. It may be The...

The push begins from deep within The bands begin to tighten Pushing in and shoving out Throbbing with each breath It grows with sound and sight and light And heartbeats make it quicken The headache from hell Is really doing well Like the parasite it is It grows and devours All my waking hours And makes me quite a drag. Useless gutless log of pain Wondering when it all will end Wondering what relief is And where and why is it not mine? Day three this week and no end in sight Migraine my pain my life

Here is a little slice of my life for yall. My indulgence for myself this month was 2 books on the PNW, the setting of most of my (full length) stories. A book about the flora and fauna and the geology of the area. The other was an adult coloring book of the same. Do you know they don't have fireflies as we know them throughout that region? I'm so glad I researched that before I included them in a pastoral scene! I really was looking to see when they appear there, being that region is north of me, and happily saved myself from an inaccuracy. (So happy!) Anyway, it made me think since so many of my stories are in that setting, I needed a good reference book at hand. (Google leads me down too many rabbit holes.) I thought the coloring book would help me become more familiar with the wildlife especially if I use the pictures in the other book as guidelines. Easier for descriptions and environments and other details. So, I ordered the books. Now, you may know I have a granddaughter...

wow the drive home was almost as strange as the drive in. There was so much water on the road, everything was mirrored, almost perfectly. You could read the letters on the road signs reflected in the roads.It was eerie, driving exactly between up-right world and upside-down world. That Stephen King fog ate away the barriers between worlds.

I hear two frogs speaking to one another, one with a deep somber bass, the other a flippity alto. I think they are flirting. I hear Leaves whispering and quiet jingling that tells me of a breeze; a breath. I hear buzzing or humming and I cannot tell if it is the vapor lights thrumming, or a preview of the expected cicadas. I hear voices from other porches and sidewalks. Sounds are low tonight, and very near. Rain is coming to a place near me.

The man was sweating lightly, feeling trembly. He remembered. He remembered.        He had been walking from the shop to the farm, where his son was to bring him his lunch. His wife always wanted him to have something fresh, and since he liked her cooking, that was fine. He never knew what combination of his children would show up, and he usually made bets with himself on who and how many it would be. Since school was back in session, it was usually just one or two of the older boys. He had stopped to check out the balsams – something wasn’t looking right about the three year olds. He didn’t see anything – no insects or growths, and he made a note to have Jamie or Jon to check the soil. They may have been placed too closely, now that they had grown and spread out. They didn’t look crowded, but you couldn’t a;ways tell by looks. Ne bent a needle, and put it to his nose, then grimaced at the sharpness the scent sent through him. Oh well. He’d best get to the office at ...

He opened his eyes and they looked out at the nighttime darkness of a cozy room, but he didn’t even see that. The image before him was that of a bridge. The most beautiful, unrealistic bridge he’d ever seen. A fairy bridge. Made of lights, colors, and threads. And he had seen it before. He had run from it before. That night… He steadied himself in his mind. No more running. Besides, what was frightening about a bridge? Even an unworldly one? Even one created by fairies and woven by spiders with spider-thread? Ones that caught the silver-and-gold light and turned it to dancing rainbows of dancing color? He looked the bridge over carefully, in his mind. He had seen pictures of bridges built that way, he knew with certainty. Huge steel behemoths, towering over waters, the bridging held up by what looked to be fine dainty fibers but were actually metallic cables somehow spun together to bear great weight, but with flexibility. He thought maybe he had actually seen one, without the colors a...

Let me tell you about my carventure today. It was great fun, as it always is, when I set out on my own, in my trusty rusty automobile. First, I had to remove the blankets draped over the window that won't close. We had hella storms over the weekend and winds and tornado warnings and all the good stuff as kitten-cub March roared it's way out as a full grown bull-mad lion. So I had protected the car and contents as best I could. All that had to be undone before I could go anywhere. Blankets on the windows tend to limit the driver's ability to see out, and that's not really good in gray-day situations. (Although it wasn't actually raining by then.) Next I needed gas. Well, my knees have been bad all week, and, it was, in fact, for my knees that I was going out, so I went to the gas station here in town -- hometown tradition; Wichard's -- where they will pump the gas without having to be informed of a disabled person's presence. We're just like normal people...

Sitting on my porch listening to the rain. Watching the water dance in the streetlights. İ hear the birds stirring and waking on this damp and probably dreary morning. They seem to be complaining as vigorously as the "good morning sunshine" people do. İ smell coffee brewing. Been smelling it for about a half hour now. Lovely strong and warm. İ smell it most mornings when I'm out (or have my window open) at this time. İ like to think it is from the coffee shop up on the corner. They open at 6 weekdays, i think, so maybe they start brewing early for themselves. İt could be a going to work neighbor, of course, although i don't know of any who are up and about quite so early. İt is good to sit here in the Outdoor. Too bad it's not quite warm enough to sit with bare feet on the wet wood. That connection would feel so completing. Completion is what I need to earn my rest, i believe, and it has eluded me for all this night and the day before. İ am weary of the incompleti...

He was still in the bed, but sitting up more and better. In other words, he was getting bored. Tonight, for several rare minutes, he had been alone, while voices and doors and all the sounds of a full busy household sounded around him. He watched out his extravagant window as the darkness fell, long and slow, and the mists gathered off the lake and wandered down from the treetops. Winding, whirling, dancing. He thought of the clean living smell, and wished he was out there once more. “No, you don’t,” a voice said next to his ear and he looked around but no one was there. “You aren’t here, go away,” he said crossly. “Now how can I go away if I’m not here?” “I don’t know how you’re here when you aren’t here.” “Temper, temper.” “Oh shut up!” His wife looked into the room. “Do you need something? Are you talking to me?” “No. Just – just talking, I guess.” “My silly man,” she said, came in and kissed him on the forehead and adjusted the covers around him, like he was one of ...

He was back in the bed, back in the bedroom. It wasn’t hot and steamy and there wasn’t so much noise or people coming and going. It was a pleasant place to be. And he didn’t feel bad. He was propped up on pillows, his hands folded across his chest (that was a tiny bit unnerving) He was breathing easily and nothing hurt especially. He opened his eyes. The room was filled with muted sunshine pouring through the large window facing east. Muted because the sun was overhead. He’d built in that window to watch the sunrises over the mountains and across the lake. The time and trouble he’d had installing all those panes of glass! It had been such detailed work, but he had never been sorry about the time and money spent. It was a perfect way to start the day, especially in the Dark Time that was winter. There were a couple of children playing some game on the floor. Marbles maybe. Young, still wearing baby gowns. Couldn’t tell if they were boy or girl or both. Right now he couldn’t recognize ...

“I am always with you. Why don’t you understand that?” The man answered slowly, thinking out loud as he had so often done with his friend. “The memory of you is always with me. But a memory isn’t you.” “Who is it then?” “It’s an it, not a who.” “Whos aren’t its? What are they then?” "Whos are whos. Persons. Its are things.” “Well I like to think I’m some thing. Some kind of a thing.” “I like to think you’re a person. Even when you aren’t anymore.” “Yet here I am.” “Here you are.” They fell silent. They waited, together, in a place that didn’t (shouldn’t) exist, where their presence together was as tangible as the strong friendship (love) between them. Both bodies and spirits seemed made whole out of the fog, by the fog, and they rested as part of the fog. The fog itself swirled and rippled around them, lightening and darkening, and in general deepening and entwining until there was nothing to be seen but the glimmering light and the embracing cloud.

He was back in the fog, back at the rock, back with his friend Mark, who was chipping at the rock with his knife. Who was being a bit unfriendly. “You know you should go back, they still need you.” “I don’t have to hurry, I can be with you a while.” “You are, always.” “You don’t need to sound so happy about it.” “I don’t want you here. I want you there. With them. Alive. Having tomorrows.” He gestured at the fog. “Not this.” “Yeah, I prefer sunshine, myself. But you aren’t there. “ “I am. Always.” “I never see you there.” “Liar. You see me every time you look into my sons’ faces, or watch them walk into or out of a room.” He thought that over for a long moment. “No.” “No?” “I see parts of you in parts of them. But they aren’t you and you aren’t them. I want you.” “I’m telling you, I’m there. As there as I can be.” “Then how come I never see you?” “Because you look with your eyes closed.” “That’s us’ly the best way to see things that don’t exist.” “I exist. I’m here, am I not?” “I don’...

  For a moment, or so it seemed, he was back in the fog, in the thick almost substantial parts of it, but sounds drew him back to the bed. Sounds of footsteps.  Sounds of voices.  Three people, out in the hall. Tall, male. Working men, wearing boots, that they were taking off, from the sounds. Weren't they supposed to do that out on the porch?  A slammed door on a rush of wind and rain hitting the inside floor answered that. Rain coming from that direction, the porch was probably inundated.  Only one of the men came to the door(?) of the room. "Any change?" he asked, but not like he expected an answer.  The hand woman said yes and the doctor woman said no.  The doctor elaborated that there had been no physical change worth mentioning. Irregular breathing irregularities, but that was to be expected. No signs of returning consciousness.  The other woman said, in a warm positive tone, that she felt a difference.  That he WAS coming back from whe...

 He was sweating again, and gasping, and he was in a hot place. He hoped he hadn’t died yet, as that was a bad sign if he was, when suddenly sound was all around him, as overwhelming as the heat.        Maybe not though, as the heat felt and smelled steamy rather than ashy. They probably didn’t have water to make steam in the bad place. Unless somebody was melting a snowball? (What did that mean?)     Voices, and people were moving around. A mix of male and female voices, as well as children’s voices more distant. He knew the voices, and was satisfied they were NOT dead people, so he must not be either. That was a good thing.  Maybe?     He tried to take in a deep breath, but somehow choked on it, and, good lord did it hurt! Breathing wasn’t supposed to hurt living people, although sometimes it did. If they were sick or something. He stopped choking and managed a swallow of air that (still) left him panting.  At th...

   I'm really missing your kids right now, kiddo. Haven't seen or talked to them since Thanksgiving. They didn't even call me or text me to say Happy Birthday. (Christmas was sad, and they hadn't called me then, either, but there's no grudge there. I'm the one who had to cancel at the last minute.)Between the weather, my health, and my car's condition, I just haven't been able to get there. Seems like I'm farther away now than when you were in Georgetown and we were in Winchester.     There's no "we" anywhere now for me, not in Winchester, not in Bethel, not in our 'hub' of Mt. Orab. Tracy's miles away (good for her; I'm proud), and you and your daddy are gone.      I miss you, but this last few months I've finally begun adjusting to that. It's been a long hard pull, almost three years, but maybe I'm finally getting on. I guess I hope so, anyway.      It's those strange weeks between my birthday and yours...

The fog was lightening, he was beginning to see vague shapes swirling just beyond his eyesight. Less thick, he supposed, although he really couldn’t tell for sure. The light was as white, the ‘wall’ was just as white, scents and sounds just as distorted, but there was some change. Maybe it was just that the terrain was becoming more familiar. He couldn’t explain it well, but while he couldn’t say where he was, with each step, he somehow knew. That’s how it was with a home place.  Up ahead was a dark spot, almost shiny, but a kind of shiny dull, like seeing a boulder in the fog. That was it! He was at the Big Rock, up on the Short Ridge. What was he doing there? Ahead, something moved . Something on the Big Rock.  No.  SomeONE. Someone sitting om the Big Rock, waiting. Waiting for him. Oh yes, someone! He felt a little thrill, as the same unconscious that had recognized the countryside responded to the someone. The someone becoming clearer as he closed the distance....