Such a difference between the old school tungsten yellow light of wood lamps with dirty glass compared to the modern salty white light of sodium vapor parking lot lamps. What colors the landscape that I see? Where does its flavor come from? Is it the source of light or the history of my mind?
From Melissa Pierson:
The brake pads close like a vice on the front disk. The bike is heavy and is unbalanced at rest, waiting for the human to help it become its true self. With a push of a button, the engine fires and there is contained fire only inches from the riders knees. With a twist of the throttle, the bike launches and becomes as stable as stone. On the road, you can look at your shadow chasing you. A moving portrait in the medium of light and asphalt.
It is spring now in the northern hemisphere with the promise of new life, warmer weather, and longer days. Although today it is gloomy, and cold raindrops are falling like ice picks, the daffodils are trying their best to hold up their heads and the forsythia are festooned with bright yellow cheer. I heard robins and cardinals hiding in the trees calling with their gregarious voices and bluejays crying in their sharpness. The grass is greening. The magnolia and dogwood are blooming. So its on! The planet has gifted us another season.
Hannah shared this:
"We are just silly mammals trying our best and eating snacks and looking at the stars and making nests with the people we love. The expectation that we will live up to the goodness of angels is a wrong one."
Thanks for sharing that Kiddo! That is a very good grounding reminder of what we are.
What is this vaporous waif that comes at me during the early morning hours before dawn? I wake overnight to a misty apparition in the corner of the bedroom. A scentless benign gloom that lingers. Patiently. The hesitating snatch of mortality creeping at me in my dreams? I also smell it outside during the day in the decaying leaves that swirl down the driveway in god's own vortex. Is it a warning? Or just a gentle reminder to cherish the days we have. All things converge in the same ending,
History can be blurry, but after traumatic events, the clouds of memory drift over the vague horizon of the mind and haunt us. Tease us. Resurrected events long buried come back and reengauge us. What is this invisible presence that we feel around us? How close do we stand to the edge? Are we close? Life used to feel like the kind spirit of warm wind on a spring day that lifted the tree leaves and soared our kites. We need to preserve that half light dragon energy gifted to us from the day. Please speak to us. Remind us of the warm enveloping dream smoke from the sky.
We only have three minutes left to live. And then we take a breath and the clock resets....
What I needed tonight was a temporary escape. When I get in the helmet, the phone doesn't connect. Texts and emails do not come through. It is an alone time when no one can reach you.
This trusty horse is responsive and does not judge. When I need her, she says, "Lets go!" And she is willing to run.
Tonight we traveled together through the darkness of river smells and nighttime scenes, engaged in tandem moving through space and time. Feeling the cold air. Feeling it sweep around us. Pushing it aside and blasting up the hill rush on the way back home, we burned through the cold air with a joy that left my eyes crying.
My fiancé is amazing. How does she do it? She is like a dagger that is stuck deep into the wet soil for the purpose of plunging energy into the dirt. She sends their energy back to the earth and purges their pain. She is a grounding cable. The energy is zapped down to the planet. They call her and have conversations of vivid concerns.... stitches in their forehead... nightly sleeplessness... daily heartburn,... midnight wakelfulness... disturbances that upend daily activities. But a broken spirit is harder to heal than a broken bone. There is no prothetic for that. Where does that diverted energy go?
My woman is a lightning rod.
I sat in the grass and waited.
What was I doing? The dog smiled at me. The dog was not concerned, and she was happy to just hang out with me. Her diminutive tail wagged. How wonderful it would be, I thought to myself, if life were as easy and simple as involuntarily wagging your tail. Maybe that is how some people live? I don't know? I have tried but I have not achieved that relaxed life style yet. I need more practice.
As for myself, I had to call for help.
She came and helped me up off the ground and took me inside. She said it was a panic attack, but that I should not punish myself. Punishing myself appears to be one of my involuntary gifts. I don't know why. She gave me bag of frozen peas from the freezer and put them on the back of my neck. She sat me down in my favorite reading chair and waited with me until I calmed down.
I don't know what I would do without her. I am grateful for her patient and tender care.
The world lit up from behind me and splashed glitter down my throat. It was hard to breathe and the death came quietly as the elevator door closed. Sparkles faded to darkness. They say I gently slid down the wall and crumpled on the floor.
There was a throbbing. And the smell of old dirty brass. Someone hit the big red emergency call button and far away through the deep ocean of darkness, an alarm sounded.
I don't remember the CPR or the defibrillator. I do remember the clean smell of the sheets on the medical raft that lifted me and floated me out to the ambulance. Then the world came back with antiseptic purity at the sharp tear of flesh when they made the hole into the vein where the IV went in.
What magic buoyed me? Who are these dark purple people made of rough fabric and tactical textiles? She said I had a seizure and she would meet me at the hospital.
Life ain't fair and the world is mean. But I feel grateful to have another day.
I took my head off
So I could feel the sky
But the ponderous
Lantern Fly
Brought China
So close
That the planet
Shrank
And in the darkness
I drank
The New World Order
And my whole body felt curiously
Older.
Where did the sky go?
Slowly, across the field, it moved. Past the endless rows of wheat, it moved. Its front blades churned up the long golden strands of buffalo grass. The huge harvester plunged diligently through endless gold. It didn't ask why. It knew nothing of international affairs. It was only a computerized machine. Twenty feet high, forty five feet long, it would not have to be approached by a human until it had collected its three thousand bushels of tirelessly collected grain.
The soviet spy sped silently over the grain. Upon entering the United States, he had almost been detected. He was lucky. The Americans, he thought... how stupid they are for placing an embargo on their grain again. War had almost begun the last time, now his country must take The Offensive. He eased back on the control column and his pressurized craft rose effortlessly, like a defensive eagle taking wing to protect its nest from a vicious predator. From here, he could see the horizon, where the sea and sky became one, a large band of soft velvet reaching its outstretched hands to eternity. Rough and raucous were the mountains that defended the eternal ocean of grain from the destroying ocean of liquid.
As the hovercraft exceeded its ground travel altitude, on board computers switched gas balance, wing angles, and other things necessary for flight, and he began to soar faster and higher. A slight breeze swept the field and the grain leaned down in a big wave, each lithe blade mimicking the strand behind it. One small spot caught hgus eye and the hovercraft swerved to the left and dived. The Harvester put up a barrier to to the giant wave of grain. The grain swept around the harvester as water flows around a rock at the water's edge, He had almost missed it. He looked around to the rear compartment and made sure of his tiny side blaster and three cartridges of explosives., A glance once more to the ocean, a deep breath, and he dived toward his destination.
He slid down through the sky to the large mechanical machine, leveled off, and set his speed to match that of the Harvester. He released the air lock and the glass and steel canopy swung open. Agilely, he reached over and wrapped his fingers about the col metal bars of the Harvester's catwalk. He slung the explosives over his shoulder and prepared to jump. He released his left hand from the hovercraft and swung slowly down to the catwalk. "There are three danger places", he remembered, "depending on what type of harvester you find." "Only one location will destroy the harvester. Don't worry about finding out, simply put explosives in all locations." He stopped on the second catwalk to look for a small elusive door. "There it is." He opened it silently and placed in a small cartridge of explosives. He ran back up to the top and down the other side to look for a similar door. "Found it", mnu mumbled. Inside, as in the other one, the air was almost unbreathable, He fumbled in the darkness for aone small pipe that led past him into the wall. He placed the explozive there and left.
He went up to the top ao a small computerized opening and switched onto manual. Now, he was driving the Harvester, making wide circles and crazy angles in the unharvested wheat.He didn't know why this was so hard.. coming over here to the United States. No one knew he was here. This was no act of legerdemain. In fact, no one knew any of them were here. Over one thousand of his comrades had slipped through the "tough American defense", "Ha!" What the heck, he would hurry now, jump back into his hovercraft, and fly back to his wife who was waiting in silent agony for his return to Mother Russia. He scurried down the front ladder to a small opening to place his final charge. The flame engulfed him from all sides and he fell slowly down the front of the huge Harvester. In great pain, he laid in the bloody hay and could only mumble, "faulty explosive". Now he realized in horror that he was no longer the predator, He screamed in terror as the great blades churned toward him. He couldn't move. The vicious teeth of The Harvester bit sharply into the prey.
The Harvester, oblivious to the world around it, continued on diligently through amber waves of grain.
