Words, Feelings, Stories

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....

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 ...