Peaked mountains of clouds
Peeked over green and brown peaks
Piquing my concerns
Witnessed
“Rim of the World.” She’d spoken without preamble. They’d been quiet for about ten minutes.
Breakfast plates were spread around the table in front of her, along with a cup on a saucer and a silver teapot. Appearing about sixty, she was looking at an iPad.
A man, about her age, sat to her right reading a newspaper. He said, “That’s a Netflix show.”
“It’s on Netflix,” she said.
“I just said that. It’s science fiction.”
“It’s about some kids.”
“I know. I took a look at a trailer and added it to my list. I’ve been thinking about watching it.”
“It’s science fiction.”
“I know. I just said that.”
“Maybe we ought to watch it. It sounds like something we’d like.”
He flipped his paper and turned the page. “I’ll check it out.”
Haifloof #27
Wild eyes and tame eyes
watching from under bushes
unseen by others
The Path Dream
Just did a walk-about writing break, and thought about one of last night’s dreams.
I was helping a man build a path. We each had a length of nylon rope. What I thought of as his rope was yellow and mine was white. The white rope was in my left hand, and the yellow rope was in my right. It was reversed for him. We were using the ropes to lay out the path. It was a long path, and were squatting down to do this.
So, weird, the path already existed in my mind, because he was laying the rope on a long and straight stretch of black cement. On either end was a platform that people were to use to arrive and depart.
Others were watching from grassy areas on either side of me. The man would shift the ropes one way and then the other as I followed his lead. I didn’t understand why he was doing this. “How’s it going?” an onlooker asked me.
“Slow,” I said. “I don’t understand what he’s doing. One, the path already exists. Why does he need another one? Two, why was he trying different paths? I don’t see what the difference he makes? Why doesn’t he make a decision? As part of that, I don’t understand why the path that’s already there doesn’t satisfy him. Three, shouldn’t the path, if you were going to make it, connect the platforms that people were expected to use?”
The onlooker said, “I don’t know.”
That dream ended.
Of course, thinking about it during my walk, I realized that I’m the other man. I have the path establish but doubt keeps me looking for another path. Why, I keep asking myself, just as I do in the dream? Clearly, it’s because I doubt the path, even though it’s already established.
Hot
The heat wasn’t that bad. He thought that people were exaggerating, the way they gasped, shrieked, and ran, sweat running down their faces, eyes bulging and mouth gaping like they were imitating fish out of the water, as their clothes ignited.
A Volvo, BMW, and Jeep exploded as they passed him. Street lights drooped like limp noodles. Flames sprang from nothing to consume trees as the grass turned into black ash and a yellow fire hydrant lost its shape, issuing arcing geysers of water that turned into steam and blew away. Buildings began melting and crumbling.
Smiling, he shook his head and looked at the black-smoke inferno spreading behind him. If they thought this was bad, they should experience what he’d just been there.
Now that had been hot.
Just Mine
Debby told me and Emi a story when we were all visiting Mom for her birthday. This was about twenty-five years ago. Debby had a habit of making a coffee drink at home in the morning and topping it with whipped cream. She’d then go out into her Florida home’s backyard to enjoy it. Trying to rebuild her life, she’d started going to college while working at night, leaving her children up north for their grandparents to raise them.
A squirrel approached her during one of her early mornings. Debby thought the squirrel was interested in her drink. Debby put some whipped cream on a spoon and offered it to the squirrel. The squirrel hopped over to her and lapped it up.
That started a daily habit. Debby and the squirrel met every morning to share a spoonful of whipped cream. Their ritual continued for four years. Then, one morning, she went into the back yard and found the squirrel dead.
Debby’s life had been a struggle since a brutal assault in Jacksonville had taken place in her early twenties. She kept trying to rebuild, and kept getting knocked back. After a miscarriage, she endured a three year stretch that saw a business bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy, and divorce because her husband was unfaithful and a drug abuser. Then she learned that her husband hadn’t been paying taxes to the IRS for over three years. The squirrel had been a symbol of change. Now the squirrel was dead.
Debby cried when she told the story. Emi and I cried when we heard it.
Come forward to last week. Mom had passed away. Home to make her funeral arrangements, Debby, Emi, and I were remembering our lives with Mom. Debby recalled how her parents had taken her children in, so I mentioned the squirrel tale, because it was part of that same era.
Debby looked blank. “Nope. Wasn’t me.”
Emi said, “I don’t remember ever hearing that before in my life.”
Their response stunned me. I guess the memory was just mine.
It really makes me wonder.
Inspirational Quote # 1375
My own thoughts, too. I don’t stop. I think that if I do stop, I won’t start again.
Google Search Image Karma’s Ripples
He knew exactly what’d taken place.
The firefight wound down. Adrenalin still scorched his nerves, numbed his muscles, and drove instincts and senses. The others were in front of him. “Rat-a-tat-tat,” he said, shooting into his comrades’ backs. Laughter poured out of him as they jerked. “Rat-a-tat-tat.”
That was it. They were dead. He was alive. He’d enjoyed it, to be truthful. Killing felt good. Killing was the best way to set yourself free. He put his rifle in another dead man’s hand. “Bang, bang,” he said to the dead man, what’s his name? Why’d the dead have names? They’d never use them.
One sat up to his left. He didn’t see. Later, he knew, because he was the one, the one who’d killed, the one who was the killer, and the one who came back to kill the killer. Karma’s ripples were bigger than he’d known or suspected.
Sitting up, a temporary life in a dead man, he watched himself laugh as he remembered laughing, and then pointed the assault rifle at himself and emptied the magazine into himself, regretfully smiling as he jerked, gushed blood, and finally sank to the floor. Even so injured, he managed to turn his head and look at him. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak. He remembered, though, that he’d been about to say, “You,” because he knew, he knew.
It was really a mercy. With that done, he left the dead man and the site, returning to the bardo from whence he’d come. At last, he felt peace. At last, all the voices in his head fell quiet. At last, all the dead left him alone.
At last, karma’s ripples died.
The Difference
He used to tell himself, “I’m feeling lucky today.”
It happened a few times a year. Feeling lucky, he’d rush out and buy lottery tickets.
Nothing was ever won. He began re-thinking his process. He wasn’t buying tickets because he felt lucky, but because he was feeling unlucky, and was hoping he could change his day, his status, his life. Once he understood that difference, well…it made a huge difference in how he lived.
Thursday’s Theme Music
My rocking stream was turbulent this morning. Portugal! the Man kicked it off. Then I bounced into Train and GnR to Springsteen. Run DMC’s cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” came up, which led to Aerosmith’s cover of the Beatle’s “Come Together”. From there, I bounced into Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” and then the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”. Next, though, Marshall Tucker invaded, followed by CBD, which took me to Lynerd Skynerd.
A cat provoked the last. Tucker, the black and white feline enigma for which little outside his fur seems black and white, followed me around as I prepared to depart the fix. At one point, he got underfoot, and I chided him, “Won’t you give me three steps?”
That’s how I got her. Here’s “Gimme Three Steps” from 1973.
Michael Seidel, writer 