Semi-Daily Scribbles

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.

Our Timeless Story

What year is it? Time has sped up, slowed down and taken on a new meaning. I mean ... It could be 2005. You were my curly fur buddy way back then, when a book about a girl, a really old dude and the Olympic Peninsula was the most popular story circulating among tweens / teens / menopausal women. A quick semi-related rain forest note: one of my favorite work memories is splitting a stale tuna salad sandwich with you in the parking lot of the Forks Thriftway. A full day that was stomping through the woods to get a closer look at a cell tower. Yep - there has been more than enough free time lately to relive happy past meanderings. Again with the time thing ... not a day goes by that I don't look back fondly on our adventures/misadventures throughout the 15 years you were a member of the pack. You are still our #1 girl on Team Schnauzer, getting underfoot and whining for a piece of pizza crust. I turn my head slightly to the right and I can see you sleeping in your big green, fleece-lined basket. Snoring and twitching and more than likely dreaming about that stale tuna salad sandwich.

We've got a full house these days. Your Gran has come to live with us. You were never quite sure what to make of her when she and your Auntie came to visit, but I know they gave you a treat or two when they had to doggie-sit you, so I'm sure during those moments you thought very highly, indeed, of Gran & Auntie.

Your little sister is now a senior citizen (she's napping in your big green, fleece-lined basket.) Lil's still a feisty pooch who barks at passersby (ah, life on a corner!) and warns us of approaching dangers such as squirrels and the neighbor's equally elderly calico cat (the very same one that looked upon you with disdain from its perch atop our fence.) Oft-overlooked animal antics have become tiny pieces of What Is Real during a season of uncertainty. The mundane marks time in ways a 24-hour news cycle cannot. We could all use a dose of ordinary right now, and a little puppy love is good medicine.

Forever will you tug at our hearts. That kind of sweetly-sad happiness goes a long way these days.

An Official Visual

Previously...

Our Darla thinks she thinks for herself, but then sometimes she chalks up the talks she has with The Self as the hard-to-shake-off admonishments Ort flings at her every time she tries to express [in words] the really difficult, complex and sometimes icky feelings about [Ort] the world [internal landscape] in which she feels semi at home. But boy is she lucky [Darla often tells herself] that she can walk out her front door, drive off and set up shop wherever [but mostly the Prairie View Drive-In] the mood takes her. And Darla's moods have taken her to some pretty amazing [hellish] places. Like ... Boothby stands alone in his resolve to provide solace [a sturdy foundation] to Darla in her time of need [dirty deeds]. Open air markets are best for shoppers to browse with plenty of elbow room. Although the nearest elbow is hunkered down in a 4th floor studio of a 6 story walk-up, Darla remains available [by appointment only.] Little chance of Darla's determination turning into an endless thread of mishaps. Our girl is the very definition of tenacity! A plan was put in place before Darla was born. Scars carved into her skin are a daily reminder of that, even though what exactly "that" is can only be described as a recurring nightmare [at 11:37 a.m. behind the wheel of her pickup as she's headed to the swap meet] that a nice lady once meticulously transcribed. A father sometimes sees things that make for a rather uncomfortable supper discussion. Structure and rules are being rewritten during this contemplative episode. And aren't groups just so 2019? The inner journey is the logical commute for our time. What good did Dr. Makeda's pages of notes do for the girl disfigured through no fault of all the experts who poked at her wounds? We are entering the next phase of evolution. Darla's travels leave no contrails. Inward, inward does this wayfarer go. What was "out there" anyway? A distorted version of the story she was put here to tell? This is anyone's game. All the rules have changed, and a sneeze will get you a hole between the eyes. Ah, but for those seasoned few, the mystery may not be elusive for long. This is Darla's moment to show what she knows by turning an ill-played hand into gold.