Words, Feelings, Stories

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’...