Semi-Daily Scribbles

Ted's Indelicate Misadventure

bright side

Itinerary

There are lots of activities and attractions to keep you busy when you come visit H-ville:

Second-run movies and weekend swap meets at the Prairie View Drive-In.
Breakfast specials at the Chik'n & Biskit.
High School!
McAllister's Flowers.
Hanging out down by Cathedral Rocks along the Samson River.
Keggers in The Woods!
Hiking along Authority Ridge up to the alpine meadows.
Mountain Goats!
Drownings.
Unfortunate run-ins with wild animals.
Lost hikers.
Missing sisters.
Talking owls.
The Center of All Creation.
The Steps of Death!
Apple Harvest Festival Queen & Court.
Courtroom appearances.
Secluded rentals.
Herbal Procurement.
Roadside confessional.
Come Live Among the Sentinels!
Stay for a day but live year-round in H-ville.
Just passing through.
Picturesque Olde Growth!
Youth leave town and never come back.
River Guide and Fishing Excursions.
Watch the locals weave their ancient traditions.
Hearts & Souls on display in a museum.
Snatch up trinkets made to unreliably remember the past!
No one is forgotten in a town lost to memory.
Favored Sons are Always Protected!
DNA found everywhere but no one's come looking.

In Memoriam.

From Camels to Humans

Thoughts are ordered in No Particular Order. It's .. they are like reading a book by landing on random pages "and just going with it." Timeline? A logical sequence of events? THEME! All are about as useless as peanut butter without bits of said legume embedded within. Or like ... please explain to me the narrative thru-line of your life, why don't you? No easy feat, that. Our brains flit from factoid to face to that tingling in one's feet to what's her name to ... what was the subject again? We slosh about in our thought soup daily and still we're able to hold down jobs and pack the kidlets off to school and pray to whichever Belief System we are the most comfortable believing in that one of these days we (the entire world's population, I'm thinking) don't just wake up one morning to the news that this novel-bugger-this-or-the-other carries with it a 40.3% case fatality rate.

The Season of Reason

Come To Pass

Previously...

A certain slant and intensity of light captures the rays of a pink undulating star from within the center of Darla's agate. No need for assembly. Darla's burst of radiance does come with a price, though. Brilliance enters The Change and comes out the other side of the galaxy as a footnote. Darla designs pendants from polished stones and found objects that serve as compass / early warning system at reasonable price points. Everyone likes to rub thumb and index finger over the smooth and yet irregular surface of a much loved talisman as the End of All Things Recognizable approaches.

And about that far-flung footnote straddling a couple undiscovered galaxies:

Darla's arch nemesis is the Vendor Badge Checker. A man with no warmth in his grey-green eyes and a space-invading habit of yanking on lanyards to check one's credential against a list taped to his clipboard. No permit? No permission for Darla to weave her magic upon shoppers with treasures salvaged from forgotten places. Memorabilia forged by tall tales and dirty faces. That boy and girl in the plowed fertile field who just found one of your paperweights. Wait until the camp boss finds it hidden under the straw upon which the girl and boy sleep. Together tightly; limbs give off warmth like one of Darla's Krazy Kwilts. Morning comes in minutes and nothing to break a fast other than what must be dug up, and the camp boss always counts what's been collected in that wicker basket strapped to a narrow, bony back.

the bad guy is always someone's hero

Judgment Call

Tucked into the grey splintered planks of my spine is an invitation. A call to action for your generation. Remember, it is I who whispers in your ear "complete the work."

on one knee
break free
urgency
responsibility

If you stand upon that threshold a minute more, you'll become the bloody door. I've left you to hang once before. I would be remiss if I did not comment on your emergence from the chrysalis. Check your trepidation at the gate before you book passage on this plane.

Too Much and Not Enough

I should hope one would think he or she is interesting. If a person doesn't have that sort of opinion of oneself, all sorts of unfortunate occurrences can happen, like hearing a nonstop self-censure loop booming inside an already thought-heavy head. Oh, and if a person does find him/herself pleasant company to be around, that happily self-actualized individual should not foist any such presumption of that dearly held belief upon family and friends.
---You just groove inside your Private Opinion Bubble, buddy!---
Any such foisting of one's actually REAL self only muddies the sensitive depths of YOU and makes a gal or guy look like an imbecilic navel-gazer.
... and who wants to be perceived in that way?

Lock It When You Leave

A time out sounds like a grand luxury after knowing Zoë has been wandering the stillness without me. Why haven't I picked up the yoke so she could rest a while on this splintered trip? A slip of the tongue and I'm right back on that bottom rung. I've struggled to breathe in this thin atmosphere, tethered as I am to your sphere. Of Influence and Reticence. The two of us never stood a chance. Heaven's got to be easier to get into than this, but then it is the place that invented gates, isn't it? Don't say anything. Just tell me a story.