Daylight Taunts

Daylight taunts with flashes of brilliant clarity
but the sun, when it rises, is veiled with clouds
colored teasing purple and mocking gray.
Do they shroud a cold Apollo?
Or is this drab ersatz morning
prophecy and fulfillment all in one?
I long to blow away the brume
in long streamers of resurrection,
to fly on wings of light and color!
But I am fettered by cinereal chains
and freedom is drowned in a mist of lies.

Review for “The Ale Boy’s Feast” by Jeffrey Overstreet

“The Ale Boy’s feast” is the latest (and last) book in Jeffrey Overstreet’s ‘Auralia’s Thread’ series. I must admit, off the bat, that I have not read any of the other three books. However, reading this one made me want to read the others. Mr. Overstreet writes with lyrical and vibrant prose, eliciting descriptions as vivid as Auralia’s colors, yet he doesn’t let his poetic gift keep him from telling an exciting story.

The story follows the ale boy, the mage Sharr ben Fray and King Cal-Raven through entertwining story lines as they struggle to bring their friends, families and loved ones through darkness and danger into the final light and safety. Along the way he deals with such big ideas as faith, beauty, truth, honesty, faithfulness, humility, redemption and transformation, and all with understanding and compassion. And unlike some Christian authors he is not afraid to deal honestly with the darkness and sin within all of us, never losing hope along the way.

All in all I am glad to have made some new friends, and look forward to spending more time with them as I read the first three books.

Note: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Morning Light

Both of these pieces were actually written several years ago and were found as we were doing some spring cleaning. Though completely unrelated when they were written, they seemed somehow to fit with each other when I was reading through them, so here they are together:

You should have seen the sunrise this morning. At this time of year I start for work at that "twilight" time when the sun isn't visible yet, but its effects are beginning to be apparent; when everything - even color - seems to be in an in-between state. This morning, practically the whole sky was covered with clouds that almost glowed a dark silver-gray. Here and there were small oddly shaped patches of deep black-blue sky. You know how something gains in beauty and worth the rarer it is? These patches of sky were like that. Because they were so few and far between, and because they provided such a sharp contrast with the indiscriminate color of the clouds, they were breathtakingly beautiful. Gradually, as the sun rose above the eastern horizon, the clouds broke up into a cumulonimbal archipelago, drifting in a sky the color of a Caribbean sea. By the time I got to work, there were no more clouds. Only the moon, hanging like a pale ghost of the sun, a prophecy of death for the newborn day.

THE WORD

The sun, like burnished copper, rose
and woke the day with searing prose.
No poetry of royal clouds
or subtlety of shadowed shrouds,
but rose and simply spoke the word
from which the sleeping world inferred
its day begun, and yawned and stretched,
and looked to God and gently blessed
the One whose Word, on that first day,
had set the earth upon its way.

Check Out My Other Blogs

This blog contains mostly artistic writings (fiction and poetry) but I have two other blogs as well:

Palm Tree Pontifications ( www.palmtreep.blogspot.com ) Find here my musings about life: marriage, parenthood, sexuality, theology, literature, work, culture, travel, etc.

Dishes to Die From ( www.dtodf.blogspot.com ) My wife and I both love to cook good food, but every now and then we come across a recipe that is so disgusting, so fundamentally disturbing, that we can't help but laugh. We hope you get a good laugh, too - after you stop cringing.

Check them out and experience the full spectrum of my literary talent.

Going Home

Susan stood on the bridge in the middle of the road, arms folded across her chest, shoulders hunched defensively, looking steadfastly out towards the ocean. The once sunny day was darkening as storm clouds began to amass on the horizon where she was looking. The wind was picking up and had whipped her red hair into a flame that flickered behind her head like a threatening halo.

“Can we go now, Jonathan,” she asked in a voice that, while plaintive, brooked no argument. It was not a question, but a command. All around us, throughout the village I could see people, my friends and family, looking at us and wondering what was happening. Their curiosity twisted my gut.

“We just got here, Susan. We’re supposed to be here for several days.”

“I don’t care. I am not staying in this place. It is filthy,” her beautiful patrician face twisted in disgust.

“I told you what it was like, love.”

“I thought you were joking. I couldn’t believe you would actually bring me to a place such as what you described.”

I scoffed, “Why would I joke about a thing like that? I wanted you to be prepared! I know it’s not the sort of place you normally go, but this is my home. These are my people.”

“This is not who you are anymore, Jonathan. You’ve bettered yourself.”

“Bettered myself?” My voice was rising incredulously. “There are no better people on the face of this planet than these. I am still one of them and will always be and there’s nothing you can do to change that. You can pretend it doesn’t exist, pretend that’s not who I am, pretend that I’m one of you, but I am not and never will be and don’t want to be.”

Expressions flickered across her face like ghosts, quickly suppressed so as not to disturb the stoic implacability of her class: fear, loathing, horror, pain. I loved her, god help me I did, and a part of me wanted to reach out and stroke her face and assure her that I would whisk her away to safety on the instant. It hurt to see her shoring up fragility with illusion. But on this I was not backing down. My father always said, “Pick your battles.” I was going to fight this battle to the death.

“Jonathan...”

“No.” I interrupted her. She broke her distant gaze suddenly, looked at me startled. She started again.

“Jonathan...”

“No.”

“Please!” It was nearly a wail, and her masks began to waver.

“Susan, you would be horrified if I treated your family like this.”

“I would be horrified if my family were like this!” I suppressed a sudden urge to slap her.

“That’s a completely nonsensical statement and you know it. Look, whether you believe it or not, you don’t have anything to fear here, and you might actually find that you enjoy the people and the experience, if you let yourself, but that’s up to you. What you will do, though, is stay here with me and spend this time with my family, and even if it is a pretense, you will act like you enjoy it. You will treat them with courtesy and civility, just as you expect me to treat your family.”

“I will not, Jonathan. I cannot. I am leaving here, with or without you.”

“Okay, then. Good-bye.”

“What?” Her eyes flicked towards me again with the first stirrings of real fear.

“Good-bye, Susan. The airport’s that way.” I pointed up coast along the road she was standing on. Around us there was a smattering of laughter which caused Susan’s arms to drop to her side in outrage, her fists clenched. She had no way of knowing that laughter was a common expression of embarrassment here. Nobody understood what we were saying, though they could probably read the tension between us pretty well. They were just trying to defuse the situation.

“How dare they,” she growled.

“How dare you?”

“You will arrange transport for me.”

“I will not. Transport’s already gone and it won’t be back for several days. If you want to leave you can walk.”

“Jonathan.” She stamped her foot, her voice rising imperiously.

I turned my back to her and began walking away. “Good-bye, Susan.”

The villagers trailed after me asking questions all at once like a flock of parrots. Susan was left standing alone in the middle of the road, the once love of my life, though I was too angry to remember it right now.

“Jonathan!” she screamed behind me. But I ignored her and kept walking back to the hut as the first fat raindrops masked the tears that I couldn’t hold back. Somewhere nearby lightning seared the darkness briefly into light and thunder followed almost instantaneously rattling the bones of the living. Susan screamed wordlessly behind me and all of the villagers around me stopped and turned back towards her. I kept walking.

After a few steps I suddenly felt a small, familiar hand slide trembling into mine. I could hear her sniffling and hiccoughing as she sobbed like a child, but I refused to look at her. I didn’t move my hand, though, and gave hers a gentle squeeze. By now the rain was coming down in sheets. She gasped, suddenly, and I looked involuntarily, only to discover that on her right side Miriam had come along side and taken Susan’s hand in hers, smiling encouragingly up at her. From behind gentle hands reached out to straighten Susan’s hair which now lay plastered dripping across her face and to pat her comfortingly on the shoulders. She smiled shyly at Miriam and then turned to look at me.

“I’m sorry, Jonathan. I,” she looked at the ground at a loss for words. She took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’ve behaved abominably and I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

My heart swelled with love and pride and it took a moment for me to be able to speak as my throat was already full. She looked up at me beseechingly and her eyes widened in surprise.

“Why, Jonathan,” she wondered, reaching a hand up to touch my cheeks, “are you crying?”

I nodded wordlessly.

“Whatever for?”

I shrugged, helplessly. “I love you.” She smiled and it seemed to dispel the gloom. I took her in my arms and there in the deluge we kissed as if for the first time.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Well, it's been almost two years since I last posted here. Crazy! With a new baby, a busy job and not much time for anything else it just hasn't happened. I have been writing, I just haven't had a chance to post it here. I will be making the effort to post some of what I've been working on, as well as some new stuff over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, for you writers out there, I am really excited about a new website I've discovered with help for writers! Check out www.hollylisle.com . She has resources that you have to pay for as well as ones you don't, and I have personally found them very helpful. In fact, you'll be seeing the results of some of her exercises here soon.

I hope this finds you well. I leave you with Holly Lisle's tag line (which I really like):

"Write with joy!"

A Blessing of Rain

It is the small hours of the morning and I am alone. Outside the closed blinds it is raining, an instant balm to my soul. I remember when I was in Jerusalem for the wedding of my best friend from high school. It rained between the ceremony and the reception and there, in the desert, it was considered a blessing. I have never forgotten that – indeed that concept has wormed itself into the very bedrock of my thoughts and values. Even here, in the land of lush greenery, rain is a blessing. And tonight it is blessing me.

We have been here two weeks today. A new city, a new job, a new home. It is not what I expected. Visions of gliding smoothly into a new and wonderful life are blown away like dandelion seeds before the breath of God. I am left with the reality. The start of my new job has been postponed by 3 weeks due to unexplained “business reasons”. That is a blessing and a curse, since it leaves us without the income from those 3 weeks, but also gives us a lot more time to unpack, and time to settle in as a family before I have to start my job. With the stress of moving, and the exhaustion that has followed we are all short on patience, and just generally short with each other; quick to anger, quick to take offense when none was intended. During the day, and in general, my daughter seems to be doing well adjusting to the move. Twice now, though, we have heard her crying in the middle of the night - not her normal cry but more of a moan or a whimper - and gone into her room to find her looking out the window at unfamiliar surroundings, lost and confused and scared. It breaks my heart! I can only hold her and tell her that I understand and that no matter what Mommy and Daddy will be there for her. She eventually goes back to sleep and I am left alone to cry in her stead.

I, who have traveled around the world, and who just moved a mere and relatively paltry 500 miles away, realized the other day that I am experiencing culture shock and for some reason it is not going well. I can adapt with ease to Kenyan or Israeli or Chinese culture, quickly insinuating myself so that (were it not for the fact that I’m 6’4” tall and so very obviously Caucasian) I practically blend unnoticeably in. But then you expect those places to be very different, you are looking for the differences, aware, alert, on your toes. I don’t think I expected that here. After all it’s only one day’s drive, part of the same country, even part of the same general region of the country. And yet it’s very, very different here.

So, it has been hard, and not at all what I expected, but that is not all. We went apple picking the other day. My wife and I have wanted to do that for 5 years now, and somehow something always got in the way. Here, within 2 weeks in a new place, less than 5 miles from our new home that desire finally came to fruition. It’s a small thing, but there is a true sense of hope, of possibility and potentiality, of starting over. My family loves to swim. At our old house we had a ten foot round inflatable pool, which was nice but a big hassle. Here we have a fairly large indoor pool – and hot tub! Almost daily swims have helped keep us sane. And there is that pervading sense, no matter what else happens, that God brought us here and that he has something great in store for us.

It has not been what I expected, but I am reminded that life almost never conforms to the fantasy. It is often difficult, but always worth it. Challenge and difficulty, even suffering, are often the soil out of which amazing things grow. I can’t wait to see what God has planned for us here. But for right now, it is enough that he is blessing me with rain.

Breathing

The city is left behind. I am traveling at something approaching twice my normal high speed, and yet through the elongating effect of distance it seems as if I have slowed down. Buildings give way to corn and soybean fields, cement gray and slatted brown to a thousand vibrant gradations of green. The scents of gas and oil and the battling odors of a million restaurants give over to the more earthy aromas of manure and rain and hay. Soon forests grow up where there were crops and the ground begins to rise. A rhythm develops. Not so much a rhythm of duration as of direction. Up and down, up and down - a sensation you don't often get in the city. It almost feels as if the earth itself is breathing, as if out here it can breathe. And eventually, finally, I begin to feel as if I can breathe again too. As if that movement of the earth has kickstarted some long dormant and forgotten physical faculty. Not just breath but deep, cleansing breath.

Over time, as I cycle between hilly forest and flat plain, between town and city and open land, I begin to get a sense of the similarities that connect different parts of the nation. Despite differences in accent and culture and sometimes values, there is a sense in which we all belong to the same place, the same aggregate idea. Even separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, you can still see the same restaurants, some of the same companies, the same cars. Two states over from my own I begin passing signs for cities with the same names as ones back home, and I get the eerie sense that after driving for several hours I've never really left.

Just leaving behind the ordinary for a little bit gives me a greater appreciation for the routine that has so recently felt constricting, and whole new opportunities seem to expand before me. Sometimes it is a simple matter of perspective. To realize that there are other and larger horizons beyond the petty problems of my everyday life. There is beauty to be explored and taken in, made a part of who I am. The mundane and everyday will wait, they will return, but for just a moment the possibilities are endless, and the eternal is imminent, and I am awed into silence.

100 Words - Faster

I'm back with this entry for Velvet Verbosity's 100 Words Challenge. The prompt for this week: faster. And yes this continues the mysterious romance from Treasures (2) and Pillar, so if you haven't read those yet, you might want to go back first and catch up - this will make more sense then. Enjoy! Oh, and if you want to join in check out www.velvetverbosity.com .

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The pace of dissolution increased the longer she sang, and with it the speed of his heartbeat. He felt a pressure from inside as if his heart were trying to escape. Didn’t she know that he had carefully built these walls over years? Each stone a monument of silence, a barrier against pain. Or did it keep the pain in? With that thought it exploded! But each stone followed the sensuous curve of her melody and dropped in orderly rows forming a neatly paved bridge between him and her. She was beautiful! Now his heart beat faster for another reason.

Untitled

How does one put words to something barely understood, something that grasped for in the night slides away, sidles into shadows and melts into the darkness? That grief, wholly internal and almost juvenile, that pulls at happiness, self-esteem, confidence and peace. “No man cries like that” – and no man does. No. It is the sorrow of a child, never comforted, never acknowledged, never healed.

It is the silent wailing in the night. It is the dung that reeks, but is warm and provides a beggar’s comfort. It is the slap, the punch, that burns but signals attention – an arid deluge in a thirsty desert.

It is the wounded soul who curls, fetus like, in the dark place where words cannot reach. It is a god’s agony in a child’s heart in a man’s body. It is the velvet razor.

It cuts, soft and dark and sweet in its familiarity, never letting the wound close. Blood drips like tears. Tears drop like rain; thunderstorm and hurricane and tornado rolled into one.

It is the cry of the forgotten; the never known; the unseen.

Even spattered so, with simile and metaphor, there is only the merest suggestion of shape; invisible; elusive. Perhaps it is mystery which gives it its power. How can one understand something that can’t be put into words?

It is the sacrifice, one for another, the daily cross; death for life, or death into life, it is hard to be sure.

It is tears, petal soft and warm as blood, unchecked, eternal, as deep and salty as the sea.

I'm Still Here

For those of you who care, I'm still around, just way busy looking for a job and overwhelmed by other stresses, so haven't been doing much blogging or writing. I'm sure I'll get back to it eventually, I just have other priorities at the moment. I am, from time to time, reading some of your blogs and trying to keep up, even if I'm not posting on my blog. TTFN.

Extreme Parenting (Don't try this at home.)

This limmerick is in response to Simply Snicker's poetry prompt at www.simplysnickers.blogspot.com . The prompt for this week is: total, tradition, triumph. I'm sure you're glad I decided not to continue my alliterative adventures. Here you go:

There once was an oral tradition
On the triumph of nuclear fission
You yell and blow up
Then they come like a pup
Tails tucked into total submission.

Codependence

I am given rotten fruit
told it is mine
that I must eat it.
Once I might have,
not knowing the difference
having been raised
on bruised sweetness
Spotted, worm-holed
compost fodder
might have formed
bones and sinews
but it was bitter
in the belly
Today I am a
connoisseur of freshness
not a gourmet yet, perhaps
but tasteful nonetheless
and it is sweet

Wander Well

This is my response to this week's poetry prompt at Simply Snickers (www.simplysnickers.blogspot.com) . The prompt: wander, weak, wild, wit, wonder. And, well, all that alliteration got me thinking...so this is kind of a wild, wacky romp through the world of the letter W. It is tongue-in-cheek, but there is a more serious moral in there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Without further ado...

Wander well o will ‘o wisp
Wait not, weak with water want
Watch the whirl-wind wyvern waver, whimper
Wonder at willow’s worthy, wild wit
Wish the wife’s week whittled to weal, but the
Wheel of wealth is weighted with woe
West is won, warded by whales
Wind is a warehouse the width of the world
Wander well o will ‘o wisp

100 Words - Pillar

Here is this week's entry for the 100 Words challenge. The word? Pillar (as you may have already guessed :). Oddly enough - and I am not the only one to do this - this week's entry continued from where last week's left off. Continuity seems to be important to me lately - perhaps because I haven't had very much of it in real life. Anyway, I hope you enjoy:

Like tendrils of mist, erasing, forgiving, her voice curled around the pillars of the courtyard and filled the spaces in between. It was careful and gentle, neither tentative nor demanding. He could feel it seeping into the chinks in his defenses, loosening stones and threatening to topple his carefully built walls. That frightened him more than anything. He wasn’t sure he was ready for a love that threatened his defenses.

“SHUT UP!”

But she continued unfazed, unabated, as if to say, “I love you too much to give up.” He sank to his knees, weeping for he knew not what.

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Join in and leave a comment with a link to your post (and read others' efforts) at www.velvetverbosity.com .

Five Word Friday #4

Welcome to Five Word Friday, published on Friday for the second week in a row! Something's wrong, I tell ya :) Anyway, the words for today are: pomegranate, helicopter, tissue, organic and drumming. If you participate, just stop back by and add a comment with a link to your FWF post on your own blog. Enjoy!

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I sit at my kitchen table sipping my pomegranate juice, a daily ritual. Some people drink coffee. I happen to believe in the amazing powers of the pomegranate. Most people I tell about that are skeptical, but on the other hand I haven’t been sick once in the past 7 years, ever since I started doing this.

This is one of my favorite times of day, especially in my new apartment. Phileas made good on his word and his friend agreed to a trial contract. As long as I continue to pay rent in full and on time I will have a full contract in six months, and with the money I’m making at the nursery that should be no problem. Not only does my new apartment have 2 more rooms, the regular rooms, like the kitchen and dining room, even the bathroom are more spacious. Everything is clean, kept up, and in good working order. What a difference it makes! There is a dining room, in addition to the kitchen, but there is also a bay window in the kitchen with space for a little breakfast nook. The window looks out over a lush garden filled with hibiscus, rhododendrons, fiddle ferns, taro and a squat little date palm, all plants that are reminiscent to me of beaches and paradise. I usually get up before Kyra wakes up and sit and drink my pomegranate juice and enjoy being alone for a bit.

Usually my mind wanders, flitting from subject to subject like a hummingbird, never resting for long but staying only long enough to sip the nectar from each thought before moving on to the next. Today, however, and for the past few days my thoughts have been consumed with the Fraternal Order of Journeymen. It has been over two months since my encounter with Grisleigh and in that time I have not seen him or heard from him, nor have I ever met another member of this order. Sunday, August 31 is now only two days away and many of the fears I had put aside are returning. Who are they? How do they know about me? What do they want from me? How will this affect Kyra? These questions swim in useless, menacing circles in my mind, like sharks drawn by the scent of blood only to find there is no food. The ball is marked (grudgingly) on the calendar that hangs by a magnet on my fridge, and the bright orange envelope with the invitation hangs next to it. Not knowing what to expect, or what I should wear I have rented a tux, which I picked up yesterday after work and now hangs in my closet.

A helicopter roars by overhead, scattering my thoughts and startling Kyra awake. I throw back the last couple of swallows of my juice and get up to go get Kyra, noticing that it is only 6:57. Our new apartment is closer to both Mrs. Kice’s and the nursery, so we generally have a lot more time together in the mornings before we have to get going – another substantial perk to the new place. Kyra stops crying as soon as she sees me and smiles and reaches for me. I quickly change her diaper while she excitedly babbles to me and then carry her into the kitchen and sit her down in her high chair. She has added rice cereal to her usual soy formula, and, now that I can afford it, I’ve started buying the organic stuff. Usually about half of it ends up anywhere but in her mouth, but she has fun and seems to love the stuff. She continues talking, no doubt telling me about her dreams last night, or her plans for the day or something, while I make her cereal. I set the cereal down on the tray of her high chair and dip the spoon in and make it about halfway to her mouth before her fingers are in the bowl and she is sucking the stuff off of her chubby little digits. She giggles with delight and I can’t help but laugh along – what use does she have for spoons after all? It is moments like this that make all the struggle and heartache of being a single parent (or I suppose being a parent at all) worthwhile.

Once she is done eating/playing I clean up the high chair and most of the big stuff on her with a few tissues, and then it is time for her bath. Once she is clean I dress her, make sure everything is ready for Mrs. Kice’s and off we go. Mrs. Kice has grown quite fond of Kyra over the last couple of months, and I have to say that Kyra returns the favor. She knows where we are going and keeps repeating “Ga-ga, ga-ga” which I have come to understand is her name for Mrs. Kice.

“Yes, you’re going to see Ga-ga,” I confirm. She smiles and launches into a new soliloquy, no doubt about her friend. She hasn’t cried since that first week, and as time progresses she gets more and more excited about going to her nanny. Today is no exception, and having dropped her off without issue, I make my way to work.

My thoughts and worries about the Journeymen return as I walk by myself. I have tried over the intervening months to find out something about them without success. I did some research at the local library, even going so far as to request help from one of the librarians when I couldn’t find anything on my own. Nothing. I searched for them on the web. Nothing. I just don’t understand how an organization could have been around for apparently a thousand years and there be absolutely no information about them. I haven’t talked to anybody else about them, for fear of looking like a fool. Even the librarian was getting frustrated when I couldn’t tell her anything about them to help her search.

I get to the nursery and Phileas greets me warmly as usual. He lifts an eyebrow at me when I reply kind of half-heartedly.

“Sorry, Phil, got a lot on my mind today. Nothing personal.”

“Well, I guess we’re all allowed an off day now and then. Anything you want to talk about, PW?”

“No, not yet. I think it’s just something I’ve got to work through on my own, that’s all.”

“Otay, well you know I’m always available if you want to talk, right?”

“Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. Hey, would you mind putting up a display of gardenias. We just got a new shipment in this morning.
“Yeah, sure.”

The rest of the day is uneventful and pretty routine, with plenty of time to think, unfortunately. Thoughts of the Journeymen keep drumming in my brain, as if in some mysterious code. I only wish I had the key to unlock the mystery. I guess Sunday will tell.

100 Words - Treasures (Take 2)

Well, here is my second "Treasures" post for this week, just a teensy tad late. As hard as doing one is, with all of the thought and planning and editing and cutting and rewriting, etc., doing two is just exhausting :) Not to mention the fact that with the first you begin to associate the word with a certain idea, and then you have to completely turn that around and go with something different. Just goes to show the richness of the language and all of the different associations a particular word can have (as if the challenge doesn't already ably demonstrate that). Anyway, here it is for your reading pleasure:

He slammed the gate shut with all of his strength. The clang reverberated in the empty space, echoes seeming to gain strength as if the cold, stone walls amplified them. He held his hands to his ears to keep them out. He felt like he wanted to cry. He only wanted to protect himself – was that so wrong? “Fool,” the stones seemed to cry out. “You only protect yourself from love!” Silence. Interminable emptiness. Could this be true? He dared to begin to hope. In the quiet of that hope her voice began, o treasured voice, to sing a lullaby.

Join in and see other entries at www.velvetverbosity.com .

Five Word Friday #3

Yeah, I finally posted one of these on a Friday! The words for today (thanks again to my wife) are: joy, blanket, sawdust, orange and toenail. A challenge to be sure, but I'm pretty pleased with the results. If you'd like to join in, just leave a comment with the URL of your post. Otherwise, enjoy the continuation of Michael and Kyra's adventure!

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Joy suffuses me this morning! Today marks the beginning of my second week working at Phileas Jackson’s Concrete Jungle Nursery, and Kyra’s third week with Mrs. Kice. For the first time in over a year I feel like things are beginning to look up. With the money I’m making at the nursery we might even be able to move into a nicer place closer to the nursery. Phileas suggested some apartments that are run by a friend of his and said he’d be willing to put in a good word for me.

I whistle as I walk from Mrs. Kice’s to the nursery. “Zippety doo dah…what a wonderful day…everything’s going my way…hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm.” I probably shouldn’t sing – it’s not my forte, so to speak – but I just can’t help myself. Humming along, garnering stares, I walk up Costa Mesa St. to Raymond Ave. and over to Walnut St. The nursery is only 3 blocks from here on the corner of Walnut and Orange.

My attention is caught by a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision. Looking to my left I see a bundle of rags and papers in the doorway to the Chubby Panda. ‘That’s odd,’ I think, ‘they usually keep things pretty clean.’ They don’t open til 11am for lunch, so there’s nobody in the shop at 8:45am that I know of. The bundle moves and groans and suddenly I realize that the rags are clothes, and the papers are just a blanket. A hand appears, and then a head. It is a homeless man! At least I think it’s a man. I can only see the back of a head of long greasy, stringy gray hair. He turns over to reveal a beard that is as dirty and tangled as a rat’s nest, long and square like some hirsute shovel. His long hair hangs down in front as well, until he pushes it back with one leathery hand to reveal a relief map of a face with a mountain of a nose, two deep buccal valleys and a limpid forest pool for an eye, the forest being his eyebrow. The left eye looks like a cave. The kind of cave you’re too afraid to enter. He looks at me and I get the eerie sense that he can see out of both eyes, or eye sockets, or…whatever.

“Can I help you,” I ask, wanting to return some semblance of normalcy and control to the situation. I am wringing my hands trying to keep them from trembling. The sunshine seems to have been sucked out of the day. If you asked why I was so affected I’m not sure I could tell you. I’ve been around homeless people before, even bought dinner for a few, but this feels different.

“Hello, Michael,” he replies with a voice like wet sawdust. “Sorry I’m late.”

“L-l-late?”

“Oh, I meant to be awake and waiting for you when you came by, but I must have been more tired than I thought. I slept until you tripped my warning system.”

The man’s gotta be a lunatic. Maybe he just guessed at my name and happened to get it right – it’s not an uncommon name after all. And I certainly didn’t hit any wires or anything like that. What’s he talking about – warning system?

He pulls out an orange envelope from somewhere within his clothing. A pocket? A sleeve? I can’t quite tell. The envelope is smudged and dirty around the edges, but clearly written in the center on the front, in a flowing script, is my name: Michael Samuels. The bottom curve of the first S bulges out below the line like a bubble about to burst, and curls around to underline my first name. He is holding it out to me, the expectant look in his eye made somewhat ghoulish by the gaping ghastliness of the socket next to it.

“Well, go on then,” he urges, flapping it towards me like some demented servant fanning his master. I get a whiff of sewer water breath and body odor which smells like he hasn’t taken a bath in several hundred years.

“Wh-what is it?”

“What do you mean, what is it? It’s an invitation of course. What did you think it was, a letter bomb?” Yeah, that makes me feel better.

“An invitation to what?”

“If you’ll stop being such a pamby and take the damn thing you’ll find out.” He smiles, I’d guess to soften the insult, but the row of jagged, broken off branches that serves as his teeth has exactly the opposite effect.

I snatch the envelope, trying not to touch him as I do so. I don’t want to get him angry or something. Who knows what he’ll do? I look down at the orange square in my hand with trepidation. An invitation?

“Well, go on. Open it up.”

“Here?”

“Where else? You have to RSVP – reply soon via postman. And I’m the only P you’ve got to RS via. If you dilly dawdle much longer I’m gonna tell them the answer is no.”

“You’re a postman?” Now I’m really confused.

He only raises one bushy eyebrow and glares at me.

“Okay. Hold on.” I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather he just tell “them” no anyway. I don’t know what’s going on here, nor am I sure I want to find out, but I’m getting the sense he’s not going to let me get away without at least reading the invitation, so I rip the envelope open with my finger. I look back at him but he is ostensibly ignoring me, lazily picking grime out of the toenail on his left big toe. I suppose any invitation, no matter how bizarre, is better than that sight. I slide the card out of the envelope and open it up. Inside, in graceful calligraphy, I read:

Mr. Michael Samuels
is cordially invited
to attend the
1,000th annual
Journeyman’s Ball
for his
induction
into the
Fraternal Order of Journeyman
8pm, Sunday, August 31, 2008
Please R.S.V.P. immediately with Grisleigh.

I look up to find that he is done with his toenails and is patiently regarding me with an incongruous twinkle in his eye.

“You’re Grisleigh?” I ask, realizing as soon as I hear the name spoken that it fits him like no other name could.

“One and the same,” he says with a grin and little flourish of his hand. “At your service.”

“And the Fraternal Order of Journeyman?”

“Oh, that’s a secret, that is.”

Exasperated, I snap, “How am I supposed to know whether to say yes or no, if I don’t even know what is is?!”

“That’s the challenge,” he replies cheerfully. “You have to decide now, yes or no, and once you decide there’s no going back.”

“Not even a hint? Is it something I’d like? I’ve never heard of them before.”

He only looks at me without expression, his eye suddenly dull and flat and unreflective. That, more than anything so far, frightens me. I am torn by indecision. I have to admit that I’m curious. Who is this Fraternal Order of Journeyman? What do they do? How do they know about me? Why do they want me to join? On the other hand, is it worth the risk? If it were just me, I’d probably risk it just for the heck of it. But I have Kyra to consider. What if it’s dangerous? I can’t endanger her life, just to satisfy my curiousity.

I examine my emotions, my response to Grisleigh and the situation, and realize that most of my fear has only been because it has been unexpected and bizarre, so out of place in the normal course of things. There are things I can’t explain and that is frightening to me. I have to admit, Grisleigh’s appearance is a little off-putting, but he has been nothing but friendly, if gruff, to me. And though I have no doubt whatsoever that he is dangerous, I don’t sense any of that directed towards me. So what does all of that mean? That I should do it?

“Look, I need an answer soon, Michael. I’ve got work to do, as I believe you do too.” Oh shit, the nursery. I totally forgot. I’m going to be late! “I’m not going to wait around forever. Either you take courage in hand and say yes, or you live with yourself as a coward forever. The choice is simple really.”

“Hey, now. I am not a coward.” He only stares at me silently. He seems to be very good at that. Finally my curiosity gets the better of me. “Fine, tell them, whoever they are, yes I accept.”

He beams at me, and I can describe it no other way than that it transforms his face, unifies it somehow.

“Aye, that’s what I was hoping you’d say. A carriage will pick you up at your apartment at 6pm on the day of the ball. Your daughter is welcome to attend with you. Breathe not a word of this to another living soul, Michael. Until then.”

He stands in a flurry of rags and without looking back steps around the corner and out of sight. Carriage? Daughter?

“Wait!” I rush after him, but he has disappeared and the street is clear for blocks. There’s no way he could have vanished that quickly! What is going on? What have I gotten myself (and Kyra) into?

Heart pumping, sweating slightly and thinking furiously, I make my way the remaining 3 blocks up Walnut to the nursery. I discover as I walk in the door and look at the clock on the wall that it is 9am on the dot. I am not late, I am exactly on time, as I would have been had I not been delayed. Did he stop time, too?

“PW, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Phileas is standing to my right in the middle of a bunch of rhododendrons.

“I think so.”

“You think you’re okay or you think you’ve seen a ghost?

I smile. “Yes.”

He raises an eyebrow at me, putting me in mind of somebody else.

“I’m fine, Phileas. What have we got going today?”

He launches into a list of tasks for the day and eventually I lose myself in work, temporarily forgetting the bizarre events of the morning.

Standing Still

This poem was written in response to Simply Snickers' poetry prompt at http://simplysnickers.blogspot.com/ . The two word prompt for this week was: standing, still.

I am standing still,
watching with quiet eyes,
as the world rushes past:
an ineluctable blur.
I am not sure we were meant
to move this fast.
We flee headlong
seeking an intangible future,
leaving the present
to slide into the past
unchanged
invariable
permanent
and wonder that technology
has not made our lives
easier.
We have not learned yet
that it is not the future
which changes the now.
A choice is not
a ripple in a pond
but a brick, a beam, a nail.
Start with the roof
and you have only
a pile of rubble.
But layer choices one by one
from the ground up
and you create
an architectonic edifice of time,
a mansion of peace,
a city of joy.
The problems of today
resolved today
cannot haunt us tomorrow.

Picayune Poise

My daughter and I were out on our own today while my wife was at a church meeting. We went to Whole Foods to get a snack and then afterwards sat at some tables outside of the store to eat and hang out. While we were there, just as my daughter was finishing up, a couple biked up to the store. Since there wasn't anywhere to secure their bikes (or perhaps they didn't have locks, I don't know) the wife stayed out with the bikes, one table over, while the husband went into the store to shop. My daughter immediately wanted to go over and say hello. I made her wait until she was done eating and drinking and I had wiped off her face which was covered with cherry juice and chocolate milk. My daughter then walked right over to this complete stranger and said hello. They proceeded to have a 10 minute conversation - I kid you not. And my daughter carried her half of it, too. During that ten minutes she managed to clearly convey her name and age, that I was her daddy, that we had had lunch with friends at a nearby restaurant, that her mom was in a meeting and had the car, that she had a purple umbrella for when it rained and that we were just there for a chocolate snack. What else she might have said I didn't hear, but honestly, what else is there?

She began the conversation standing up at the other end of the bench from the woman she was talking to, with her hands in her pockets - you know the traditional shy, scuff the ground with the toe of your shoe kind of pose. Eventually she climbed up onto the bench with the woman with her feet flat against each other, leaning against the table and spent the rest of the time up there in various positions, but always at her ease. She spoke with great confidence and poise, clearly and convincingly, nodding her head for punctuation when it was needed. She listened to the lady's questions, considered them and answered appropiately, as well as listening intently when the lady spoke about herself and her bike ride. Never disconcerted, never at a loss for words, completely in her element.

Now, as someone who is just about as far towards the introverted end of the spectrum as it is possible to get, this amazes me! I clam up when I even think about approaching a complete stranger. My heart starts beating faster, my brain deserts me for more temperate climes, I sweat. When I am forced into such a situation I usually spend the whole time listening while they talk – even generally quiet people have been known to be verbose around me. I sat there watching her with great wonder and pride, beaming from ear to ear. Seeing her skill and confidence and grace now, I can only imagine what a force to be reckoned with she will be when she is all grown up.

Oh, did I mention, my daughter is only 3 ½?

Eventually the husband returned and as they were leaving the wife stopped by my table and said:

“I told her that the next time it rains I will be thinking of her and her purple umbrella. I wish I had a purple umbrella.”

Obviously my daughter had made a lasting impression on her, too. In only ten minutes! I never ceased to be amazed at the marvel that is my daughter.