The Man Who Fell Into His Tree

 

            Something woke Max in the middle of the night. It wasn’t noise. Not at first anyhow.
            It was light.
            You know how a person becomes accustomed to the ambient sounds around home, and the usual smells, and the normal level of light. It all depends on where a person lives. If there is traffic nearby, there will be headlights through open curtains. If a person lives in the woods or on a farm there are only the sun, moon, and stars, and whatever yard lights and such.
            Max and Judy lived on a one acre hobby farm in the suburbs of a small city in western Washington state. Max was retired so  he was there most of the time, tending his trees, raised garden boxes, and a flock of busy hens. It was a nice life.
            Outside Max’s bedroom window, on the far side of the lawn, next to the woods, was a an old maple. It has been there before the house was built and the garden made. It was late summer, and the bedroom window was open. Max and Judy believed in fresh air at night.
            Something changed enough to make Max open his eyes. Judy slept on. Something was different outside. He sat up to take a look around. The room was fine. Totally normal.
            So, he went to the window to take a look out there.
            There was a globe of yellow light, a normal color, about the size of a cantaloupe melon moving around among the leaves of the ancient maple. Max’s first thought was that someone with a large flashlight had climbed his tree and was up there moving around for some unaccountable reason.
            “Judy, wake up. I’m going outside. Some nut is up in the maple with a light,” said Max.
            “What? Don’t go out there! Just call the police,” said sleepy Judy, up on one elbow.
            He put on his terry robe, and said, “It won’t take long. I’ll  just tell them to get out of the tree and go home. I bet it’s some nut who thinks it’s a magical tree or something.”
            “If I don’t come back, then you can call the cops,” said Max, barefoot, stomping out of the bedroom and to the backdoor of their house.
            The night was like night often is. Cool, a bit of dampness to the air, quiet in a sort of impending way. There was traffic noise from the freeway a few miles away, and he could see lights here and there in neighbor’s houses. The grass was in need of a mow and covered in dew.
            When Max got to his tree, the light was still up there, moving slowly around as if it was taking inventory of the leaves.
            “Get out of the tree!” Max ordered. Nothing changed. Not at all.
            There was a bench under this old tree, made of wrought iron, painted green.
            “If you don’t come down, I will come up there and make you get down,” called Max.
            It was kind of a rash threat to be made by a man pushing seventy years, barefoot, and in a bathrobe. But, Max climbed up on the iron bench and threw a leg over the lowest branch. Then he grabbed a higher branch with his right hand.
            The yellow light moved up higher into the tree.
            He couldn’t see any person associated with the big yellow light, but he was so sure that he hefted himself up onto the second branch. Sitting there, on a branch in his maple tree, in the middle of the night, Max noticed a sort of ringing sound, very high register, like you might imagine, if you were so inclined, that fairies might make by ringing fairy bells. It made him
 feel something or remember something, but he couldn’t quite place it. It felt like a memory but had no attached data. He frowned, working on it, trying to remember.
            Then there was an odor. Not unpleasant, but strong. The smell of sap, and crushed leaves. And while he was listening to the fairy bells, and smelling the green sappy scent, the night changed all around Max. It was as if he were in another place. He fell.
            He landed plop, right on his bottom on a stoney slope. He was in twilight, and surrounded by millions of wee lights, starlike, but not stars. Perhaps they were more like fireflies, though he had never seen fireflies at home.
            While Max was sitting on the stone surface, some small figures ran by  him laughing. He couldn’t really see them well at all. “Gotcha!” one yelled as they ran past.
 
            It was then that Judy woke for real. “Oh!” she said, remembering what Max had told her before he went out. It felt like it must have been some time too.
            “Oh!,” she said, and threw her feet onto the floor. “Oh, no!”
            Wearing only a granny nightie, Judy padded rapidly into the kitchen, and reached down into a lower cabinet. What she pulled out of there was a five pound bucket of honey of known provenance, real honey, the real stuff.
            Then white cotton billowing behind her, Judy ran out the same way Max had. There was no light in the maple tree, and the bench was knocked over.
            “Oh, no, they di’n’t!” she muttered in her Appalachian accent, picking up the bench.
            Judy put the bucket of real honey on the grass under the branches of the ancient maple  The she stood back.
            “Take this honey, and give me back mine!” said Judy, like she meant it.
            “Give him back!,” she called, saying a few words in some old language nobody speaks anymore.
            It was quiet for a while, a standoff. Negotiations, bargains, who knows?
            A small figure the size of a cottontail rabbit ran out of the darkness and grabbed the bucket and disappeared again.
            It was quiet again for several minutes. Judy waited, and did not lessen her pressure.
 
            Max fell off of the branch he had been sitting on. Plop, he landed right on the iron bench, looking startled to find himself there.
            “Why have you been out here so long?” said Judy. “I was worried about you!”
            “I saw a light in the tree, I think,” said Max. “I came to see who was in the tree.”
            “You must have sat down and gone to sleep,” said Judy.
            “I think I did, Judy! I think I came out here and sat down and went to sleep,” said Max.
            “I  had a funny dream though, but it’s fading.”
            “We may as well stay up now,” Judy said. “Morning is nearly here. I’ll start breakfast and why don’t you have a shower and warm up?”
            Max agreed that a shower sounded nice about then, and then breakfast after.
            Before they went back into the house, Judy turned and gave the tree a long deep blue-eyed look.

💙

           

Any Little Road Anywhere, Open Thread

 

The best thing ever, I think.

No particular destination,

A mystery to be followed to its end.

Timeless.

Don't you think so?

🍁🖤🍁

A Trip To A Lumpy Little Mewn

 

            It was a heck of a hot day. Suzy was sitting on the black chair grooming her side in a sleepy, desultory manner. Something kept disturbing her little noodle.
            Maybe someone wanted to talk to her. Since she only ever talked to Toots by KittyComm™, she figured it must be Toots!
            It was Toots!
            “Suzy? Are you there?” said Toots. (telepathically, of course)
            “Mrrrp?” said Suzy, sleepily.
            “You want to get out of  here?” said Toots.
            “Wha? I’m not there. I’m here!” said Suzy.
            “Don’t mess with me, Suzy. It’s too hot for that nonsense. You were joking, right?” said Toots.
            “The weather is stupid here too. Where do you want to go?” said Suzy, squinting at a spot on her paw, wondering if it had always been there.
            "Boss was listening to a video. Two guys, Jesse and Max. There were talking about a mewn. Not this mewn. Another one. Around Mrrrz. Remember Mrrrz? Yeah, well, it’s got this lumpy little mewn and on this mewn there is a mondolith,” said Toots.
            “What’s a mondolith?”
            “Maybe they said megalith. People want to know what’s in this megalith,” said Toots.
            “Back up a minute,” said Suzy. “Is it a building? What, they think it’s full of aliens?”
            “They don’t know! We could be the first to check it out, Suzy! Think about it. If we could just communicate it, we could be famous. First cats in a megalith, on Phobos, I think that’s the mewn’s name.”
            “It sounds like ‘big rock thing.’ What if it’s just a big rock thing and nobody was ever there?”
            “You know, it’s cold in space?” said Toots. “Not that it makes a heck of a lot of difference to cats on an Exoprowl. Still….”
            “I’m sold. Let’s do it,” said Suzy.

***

            And before you could say Holly Golly Buttered Biscuit, the girls were off.
            First they hovered about our own blue planet, noting with approval how beautiful it was.
            “Let’s press on to Mrrrz,” said Toots. And in a cosmic blink they floated in orbit over Mrrrz, looking for the lumpy little mewn.
            They had to orbit Mrrrz a couple times before they spotted it. But at last….
            “It’s awfully small, and it’s not round!” said Suzy. “Where is its megalith?”
            “We better go down there and check. Maybe it’s all human malarkey! We must search,” said Toots resolutely.
            So, round and round the little mewn they orbited, altering their orbit each time to see more of the surface. Finally, they saw something that looked way too big to have just happened like stuff usually does. It didn’t look like a hill, a crater, a desert, or anything natural, and it was way too tall.
            “That must be it,” said Toots.
            “It looks like a messed up skyscraper,” said Suzy.
            “It’s probably old,” said Toots.
            “How old could it be?” said Suzy, dubiously. (Cats don’t grok time much.)
            It was very tall and thin for a building. It was dark in material, and dark inside. No lights brightened its windows. There were many stories. If there had ever been glass in those windows, it was eons gone.
            “I’m afraid,” said Suzy. “It looks scary!”
            “Remember we are intelligently curious as well as Cautious™, Dear,” said Toots.
            “Very well,” said Suzy. “I must remember we aren’t really here; we’re just looking!”
            “That’s right, let’s try this window here,” said Toots.
            Inside, there was a room with a regular flat floor. In the smaller room off that one there was a table. On the table were four plates and some odd looking implements. On the plates were some ancient ghosts of scraps of food.
            Around the table were four things much like stools, two were knocked over, and two just sat back from the table.
            It looked like whoever had been there had left in a hurry.
            “I wonder what they looked like,” said Suzy.
            “Now, that could be scary. Maybe you don’t really want to know that,” said Toots.
            There were 15 floors, and each one showed signs of rapid departure. They found drawers hanging open. Tools scattered. Broken machinery.
            There were closets open with contents spilling out. The remaining clothing appeared to be some sort of uniform, roughly hominid in configuration. These garments appeared to have been dark green with some kind of shining insignia.
            The girls began to wonder  if the inhabitants had left voluntarily or if something else had happened to them.
            Floor by floor it was the same, all the way down to the bottom.
            The very bottom floor was a single large room. Doors opened out onto the rough surface as it they had stood open forever. The floor was covered in fine grey dust in drifts. Whoever had lived and worked here was long long gone.
            “Toots, look at that,” said Suzy. She was staring at an image engraved into the black stone wall.
            “It’s a cat! An impossibly regal and mighty cat! An ancient ancestor of all cats, surely, Suzy,” whispered Toots, in awe.
            And so it was. Carved into the stone was a great tabby, stripes and all, wearing one of the green uniforms they had seen upstairs. The image was huge, far over the size of an Earth lion.
            “We’ll never know why they left, or how, but we know one thing,” said Toots.
            “Yes!” said Suzy. “Cats were here first!”
            “Not those bossy talking monkeys!” said Toots.
            “How will we ever tell them?” laughed Suzy.
            “I don’t know! Maybe someday they will figure it out themselves,” said Toots, “Oh, let’s go home.”
            It was nearly night, and starting to cool down when the girls got back home, each to her own little world on Earth. Each held in her heart the knowledge that cats had been to the mewn of Mrrrz first, and that was enough.
            The megalith continued its vigil. 
 

🌖

A KittyComm™ Transmission:

 

 
            “Good morning, Earthlings! We hope you are seated comfortably and are fortified with fresh mugs of coffee, whatever that is!” said Suzy from her location somewhere in the house.
            “Yes! This won’t take long, but a question has come up, and we want to address it,” said Toots, also located somewhere, undisclosed.
            “Some have impugned our courage!” said Suzy.
            “That’s right! Some, I won’t say who, ahem, have equated a rational state of caution with raw fear! Nonsense!” said Toots. “Any ninny should be able to see the difference.”
            “There is a huge difference. How would you describe it, Dear,” said Suzy.
            “Caution™ is required in a state of intelligent Courage. It’s a weighing of the options available in a certain situation, and choosing the best course of action. Courage is not a reckless, thoughtless exposure to danger! Far from it!” Toots said, fervently.
            “It takes thought!” added Suzy. “How about an example? Take that vicious sounding crow out there. Do you hear him yelling ‘come out!’?”
            “Yes, I do!” said Toots, “Even though he’s in Milltown, a safe distance from my location, one would think.”
            “And what would be the truly intelligent, Courageously Cautious™ reaction to such a provocation, Toots?” queried Suzy.
            “My advice would be to sit tight, under cover. Don’t go out there! No good could come of exposing the tender back of the neck to that beak,” said Toots firmly. “How about if there is a knock on the door, Suzy? What say you?”
            “What say I? Can you guess? I say remain in a position of cover, but able to see what is knocking if one of the gullible pinkies happens to  open the door!” said Suzy.
            “Brrrrrr! Anything could be out there! The mind boggles!
            “To reiterate, Caution™ is not fear! Fear is irrational. It’s based on nothing but emotion. It might even be free-floating physical anxiety!” said Toots.
            “We are not Scaredy-Cats, nay! We are Thinking-Cats!” said Suzy, “And those are the very best kind of cats to be!
            “On the subject of thoughtless braggadocio, I could mention these Scouts..” said Suzy.
            “No doubt,” said Toots. “Young Toms, whatcha gonna do?”
            “Stay clear?” said Suzy.
            “It’s the only way!,” said Toots. “Now, I believe we have covered this topic sufficiently. I’m getting sleepy, and I’m sure you are too…..!”
 
            The signal dropped at this point.

📻

           

I Pondered The Imponderable

 

             I am relatively sure that I was among a throng of impressionable bookish young wights, when I was in my early teen years, who used to bust their noggins on the question of existence.
          Back then I didn’t quite say it like that in my middle of the night thought experiments. How I cast the question was; what if nothing at all, neither God Himself, or the Universe had ever existed. I seriously tried to imagine such a state. (Of course, there could have been no state of any kind if what I was trying to imagine….. You see how it is.)

           It was a whole lot easier to ponder my own lack of existence, if I had never been born. I learned to be grateful for existence. Surely the greatest gift of all, to exist.
            I knew nothing of theology, or philosophy, or any of the famous thinkers in history. I had only my own reason, and the Old Book to go by. Talk about a noob!
            After banging away for several decades, at the nuts and bolts of my own mundane daily existence, it occurred to me that existence isn’t just a big deal, it’s the only deal.
            “World without end.”
            At the bottom of the physicist’s glass, once he had drunk all the world’s wisdom as far as he could understand it, he found that he faced GOD.
            Somewhere in the Jewish liturgy, I remember the phrase, “There is no One else.” And, indeed, it is so. There can be no One else, and He is existence.

*❤*

            Additions, debate, commentary of all kinds welcomed and desired.  Tell me what you think. I'd love to know.

           

💮🖤💮

Upon Leaving Eden

 

            The fish was lovely, as were the mushrooms. The cowboy coffee was good. The company was charming and kind. The forest was glamorous like a Bierstadt painting. But evening was coming and it was time to leave the world of the Great Forest.
            Ramona hugged Hannah goodbye, saying, "Come back again!"

           "Thank you, I will!" said Hannah.

            “We’ll see each other again,” said Ralph.

            "Oh, I  hope so!" said Hannah.
            “I want to help,” said Cherry. She wanted to go with Maeve and Hannah, so of course she was allowed to drift along.
            “Stay right with me, it's so easy to get lost," said Maeve. “I will fly a short distance, then wait for you to catch up. You’ll see me if you watch carefully. Then we’ll do that again and again.”
            “I will,” said Hannah, and they started out of the Forest by a new path. Leaving looked different from arriving. The sun slanted low, picking out some things to highlight with golden evening beams. A startlingly red rose burnt there like a beacon. Surely, she hadn’t just missed that on the way in.
            This path was much shorter and straighter. Cherry stayed right with Hannah, nearby in the air. Maeve would fly a short distance and then be found waiting on some branch or bush. It was quite a nice walk they had together.
            At last, Hannah could see the ranger station through the trees, and knew that it was time to say goodbye.
            “Goodbye, Little Cherry, I love you,” said Hannah.
            “I love you too,” said Cherry, then she darted back toward home.
            “You’ll see me around from time to time, Hannah. I keep an eye on things around here,” said Maeve.
            “Yes, Ma’am,” said Hannah. “Goodbye!” Maeve called a goodbye, as she flew back into the trees. Hannah was on her own.
            She stepped out from behind the station dumpster intending to go up into the campground and to her little mobile. Rick’s truck was in its usual spot, though it was a little late for him to be at the station. It seemed like it must be time for him to go home. Dexter’s little junker was on the other side of the service vehicle.
            Maybe Hannah’s eyes were full of memories, or maybe there were still some tears, and maybe someone had left a stone on the parking lot, but in any case she stumbled and fell. She had been walking swiftly, and it was a sudden and shocking fall.
            She sat there stunned for a few moments.
            Then she cried out a little because she noticed that one knee of her jeans was torn and that she had a skinned knee just like kid, and it was bleeding through her jeans as she sat there.
            Inside Rick’s office, where Dexter had been talking park business with Rick, Dexter heard that little cry. He jumped up and ran to the window. Then he ran to door and pulled it open, running out to Hannah.
            “What happened?” said Dexter.
            “I think I tripped on a rock, but I don’t see it now,” said Hannah, a little damply.
            Dexter scanned the lot quickly. “I don’t see a rock either,” he said.
            He turned to help her to her feet, and it was awkward, because he didn’t know exactly how to go about it without actually touching Hannah, which he had never done before.
            “Just pull on my hands, and I will stand up,” she said.
            But, somehow, she ended up in his arms. That was awkward too, but they just stood there in the middle of the station parking lot, with the late sun light gilding everything around them, with their arms wrapped around each other as if they had forgotten how to let go.
            After some period of time, Dexter said, “We have a first-aid kit in the office. Why don’t we go patch up your knee?”
            “OK,” said Hannah. But neither of them moved off the spot.
            Well, eventually they figured out how to let go, and Dexter helped Hannah, who was limping a little bit, into the office.
            Rick looked up when they came through the door, then he smiled.

💚

Look Deeply Into Her Green Eyes!

 

This is what it looks like when she has a tale to tell.

(It's almost beyond me not to spell that 'tail'.)

Suzy wishes you all a fine Catfurday.

You can see that there is a lot going on there behind those green eyes.

Toots knows!

🐈‍⬛🖤🐈🐈🖤🐈‍⬛🐈🖤🐈