Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Don’t you love it when you’re outside with a hat on, and a large spider starts running around on your hat brim’s underside, and then he drops down on a thread and swings onto your sunglasses like Tarzan, and then races onto your cheek and makes a dash over your mustache for your nostril?
Yes, yes, I really love it.
Really.
Ah, nature.
I was walking up from a vale. The land was becoming steeper but greener, with forests on either side and blue skies above.
A shadow passed over me. Turning, I caught movement on my vision’s edge, and swung around more sharply. I’d seen a shadow. Following its movement, I realized it was a bird with spread wings.
I craned my head back. Wings spread, an enormous eagle was flying overhead. Gasping, I pointed, and then called to my wife, “Look, look, it’s an eagle. It’s huge.”
Dream end.
The thief isn’t death – we’re all going to die —
the thief is the decline that robs us of time.
The thief burgles memories
and steals our wit,
the thief is the disease that rots our bodies
and makes us sick.
The thief embezzles our energies and usurps our pride,
darkens our vision and makes hope a lie.
It takes our hearing and corrupts our senses,
builds up walls and creates new fences.
We look out from within and they look in from without,
both of us wondering,
does anyone know what life is about?
Oh, I remember the first time. Dad had taken us children out. It was just the four of us. Mom was working. When we reached home, we discovered that Dad didn’t have the key, and the door was locked. This was pre-cell phone days, back when phones were big, clumsy things a headset as large as a small child’s head, and a rotary dial.
Dad reconnoitered to find a way in and then started talking about going to one of the neighbors’ houses to call Mom. We hadn’t lived there long, and didn’t know the neighbors.
I had a more pressing issue; I had to pee. Dad pointed to a bush and said, “Just go behind a bush.”
I was shocked. Pee outside? What are we animals. But when a boy hasta go, a boy hasta go.
Yep, I remember the first time.
While sitting on the commode, doing their business, has anyone heard their body making noises like the predator from the original Predator movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger is hunting them?
Asking for a friend. Should he be worried?
Always enjoyed this song, “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam (1992). I often played it in my car during my ’90s Bay Area commutes, cranking it up and singing along even though I had no idea what Eddie Vedder was singing. I’d just make up my own lyrics for the most part because I enjoyed his range’s slide from sounding wistful, drifting toward anger, and almost sighing with resignation. Later, the net provided me with the lyrics but I keep singing free form whenever I hear this song, just going with the flow, you know.
The guitar playing on it, though, is what moved me most about this song. Never played the air guitar to it during my commutes because I imagined what looks I’d get from my fellow drivers.
Floofears (floofinition) – A unique hearing capability among pets that allow them to hear cans and refrigerator doors opening, rattling kibble, and package rustling, often from amazingly far distances and frequently through walls and doors.
In use: “Opening a can of food for one cat pestering him, a scratching at the door pulled his attention. Staring in through the window beside the front door, the cat meowed at him. Shaking his head, he went to the door to open it and let the cat in to be fed, even as he marveled at their floofears.”
(This post was temporarily interrupted by WordPress technical issues. WordPress told me that the image was been uploaded and set as the Featured Image, but my eyes tell me otherwise. Then, as I wrote this comment, the image appeared.
(Please ignore this interruption. Thank you.)
Michael Seidel, writer 