I Decided To Live Anyhow

 

I decided to just live by the old rules that were set out for all cases in which we might find ourselves. Let me prove their efficacy in practice. 

The old goat is the ruler of this world to an extent, but he dropped himself into time and his own ending when he rebelled. Adonai is all being and permeates this world and all worlds.

As I walk through this valley of death, I will fear no evil, for He is with me. I am directed to not be in fear.

Of course, I must work to live, and teach anyone within my reach to live as best they can. I say live, in spite of them! Live as much as you can. Hit every day like you’re six years old. Love each other. Have fun. It drives the workers of iniquity nuts when you are happy in spite of them. They don’t get it at all.

I decided to stand against fear.

I decided to live as if I were free. Form follows function! A little dry joke.

I am reminded of the Italian man who said, “I will show them how an Italian dies.”

Let them try. To the extent that I am under the covering of the Lord God, when they raise their hand against me, just as an example, they are raising their hand against Him. Not wise, or safe.

Has anyone seen anything more ridiculous than these cartoon villains? I ask you…Klaus Schwab? Right out of a really cheesy casting company. And that other nerd, Yuval Harari? I bet girls beat him up in school! All of them are ridiculous. Look at Bill Gates and laugh.

Even if my body were destroyed and I lay dying, I would have more than they can even conceive in their small fantasies of control of mankind.

I laugh at such losers. This world, though much of it is wonderful, is not my home, but it’s all they’ve got. Then they must face Him.

*O*

Also wise advise from LoneStar and I quote:

Arm thyself.

Ivermectin

Glutathione

NAC

EDTA

Vitamin C

Nicotine Gum

A Plate Of Cookies And A Shortcut

 

In the morning, we packed up our sleeping bags and headed to Mrs. Steele’s house. I wanted to check on Lou and maybe get Bubby to come along with us. 

No one was home there.

Knocking had no effect. Doug tried the kitchen door and it was unlocked. He opened it and called out to Mrs. Steele. No answer. The house felt empty and dark. He stepped cautiously through the opening and Elvin and I followed.

The kitchen looked ok. No obvious signs of trouble. There were signs of cooking making. A couple of pans and bowls were in the sink. A large plate of cookies covered in saran wrap was on the counter.

I slipped silently into the living room, followed by the brothers. It looked ok too. I could see that Lou had been sleeping on the sofa. There were folded blankets and a pillow piled on one end of it.

I was about to speak when I heard a vehicle come up the drive and stop. We stared at each other! No one made a sound.

Four men in green uniforms crowded into Mrs. Steeles clean little kitchen and came through into the other room. They were large and not a bit friendly looking. They were armed, and they searched all over the house, upstairs and downstairs. Then all four went down into the basement.

They stood around the kitchen, while we waited without motion or sound, watching them. At last, the guy who must have been in charge said “let’s check outside. I’d like to throw this bunch in with the other two and that dog.” So, they looked all around the outside of the house and into the garden shed. I thought they were angry that we were being so hard to locate. It didn’t make sense to them.

“This is going to be more trouble for Wilson than it is for us. We may as well get back to the shop and tell him he’s going to have to come up with something better than us driving around and missing them every time,” boss guy said. “At least we have the kid and the old lady. But I want that Doug Simpson guy. He’s trouble and he’s going to be more trouble if we don’t stop him. The other two are just collateral baggage.”
The men stood around eating cookies for a few minutes, got into the van, and drove off toward Maysville. They didn’t recover the plate.

When they were gone, I replaced the saran wrap. Then I uncovered the cookies again and said, “we better eat them. We need to eat something.”

We ate the cookies, but I felt sick. Poor soft little Lou and Mrs. Imogene Steele along with old Bubby were in very great trouble.

Doug said they had to be in the P-Sec holding tank in Maysville. “Where else would they take them?” We had to stage a rescue. What else could we do. None of us knew how though. We thought we were going to have to walk the six miles out to Maysville along the old surface road over the slough. It would be night when we got there.

“Since it seems they can’t see us, maybe we can slide past them and get Roops’ mom and Lou and Bubs out of jail, if they are still alive...” said Elvin. He always seemed to sum up a situation, like that was his job in life. A bottom-line kind of guy.

We left the sleeping bags in the kitchen, under the table, and prepared to start the hike.

Standing out on the driveway, something caught my eye. I elbowed Doug and said, “what’s that?”, pointing at a small bluish glowing circle of light poised in midair a dozen feet away up toward the back of the house. I felt no sensation of alarm, just curiosity. It was beguiling in a way. Welcoming. It grew. The edges wavered and flickered. It was about four feet across when we could see a sort of green landscape inside, receding far into the distance.

The brothers and I looked on as it grew larger and settled down to ground level, as if to welcome us inside. I remembered then what Bubby had told us. This was a gate, and we wouldn’t see one unless we were supposed to see it and it had been sent for us.

I don’t know. Looking back, it seems like it was a rash thing we did, but we walked into the gate, trusting that this would work out for the best. As we passed the flickering edges, what we saw changed. It was quiet here and softly peaceful. We seemed to be in a sort of parkland. There was a trail on the grass and far down the trail another flickering ring of bluish light. As we walked it seemed like we covered an unusual amount of space in just a few steps.

I thought I saw three Lights up in the brilliant sky, like bubbles. Watching, I guessed.

In what seemed like just a couple of minutes Doug and Elvin, and I came to the end of this trail and looked out of the open gate into a less pleasant world. We stepped out onto pavement. It was a late afternoon in Maysville and facing us was the local headquarters of P-Sec. The lot where cars had been parked was empty. No one was selling or buying new cars these days. We walked down the lot toward the building.

I looked back at the gate. It drifted upward and diminished in size until it was just a little blue circle like a bubble in the sunlight.

Now it was up to us. I could see from here the large door that used to open into a new car dealership in the past before everything changed.



One fat guy in a green uniform was sitting at a desk in the old show room. He seemed almost asleep, with his head sinking down onto his chest. No one else was visible. Apparently, he was all the security they needed.

The big glass door was not locked, so we slipped inside. I knew Lou and Mrs. Steele had to be here and presumably Bubby also. The question was…where.

Bubby was a weird dog in more ways than one. He knew things he had no business knowing. I think he knew we were there, for I heard a distinct sharp bark back in what should have been the repair shop.

Security man twitched but didn’t wake. No one else appeared. But now we had a direction.

Link so far:
In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx

Ein Bisschen Mehr Von Unserer Geschichte

 

I had some major questions. What was the connection between our local goons, and World Com.? Why did they care what we did over here in a small American city? 

We packed up sleeping bags and locked the house as best we could.

*O*

I guessed Roop’s place must be considered headquarters then. We were sitting around with him again on his ratty assortment of old living room furniture, while he roosted in his big creaky office chair. He had the same black knee pants on and the whole same look, including beanie. But he wasn’t grinning so much. He looked large and rather imposing when not goofing around.

We all had some more of his instant coffee and some dry cookies.

“Who is World Com., really,” I asked him.

“There is a war going on in the cosmos Jen,” he began. “World Com. is the earthside representative force of the Black Ones. The Spooks are with them too. Their goal is to scour the planet. I am not sure why they desire this so badly.

“The Shorties, the ETs who do the bidding of All Being and manifest in those Lights, are in opposition to World Com. and all the works of the Black Ones, who seem to hate all life. They seem to have a violent revulsion against warm blood and sentience in the warm blooded. They hate All Being with all their might and their minds.

“You remember how all the O positive blood people died from the spray? That wasn’t an accident. They were experimenting. The Bugs were meant to cause such an uprising in the people that they begged for relief. Besides, they enjoyed watching people getting injured and killed by their Bugs.”

Doug sat up, elbows on knees and said, “I don’t understand how they even know I exist and what they think I might be able to do to them.”

“The Shorties tell me that you have a gift. The gift to persuade and lead. You don’t feel it yet, but you will. That urgency inside you is the birth of this gift. The Black Ones, who exist outside of our time, see a mark on you. They tried to kill everyone with your lineage, but they messed up. It had nothing to do with O positive blood.

“Apparently, you are descended from some prophet in the holy land, and you are enough like him, that they are worried,” said Roops. “It bred true in your case. I’m sure you must have felt some of this.”

Doug looked stunned, but also not really surprised. Elvin looked wise and kept his thoughts to himself.

“So, how does P-Sec fit into this?” I asked Roops. 

“P-Sec is nothing. They are very weak and can’t last long. They are the last manifestation of the old-world governments. It is the same all over this country, and most of the other countries have something similar. But they are dangerous to you kids. They can still imprison you if they catch you, and they can execute you also. Who would stop them?” he said.

“They must do the bidding of World Com., it’s the only way they can continue to have any power at all. World Com. has directed them to capture all four of you and put you down immediately.

“World Com. is a spooky outfit. They aim to have total control. Their rule will be spiritual, they believe. They have a vision of earth stripped of human life completely. Their story is that the earth would be better without humanity. The Black Ones hate us more than you can know. It is the fruition of their hatred of our Creator.” Then he sat quietly.

I missed Lou, all of a sudden, and what passed for our weird boring life out beyond the river. My grief over my parents threatened to emerge too. But this was no time for bitter tears.

Roops, Elvin, and I looked toward Doug. He stood up and walked the length of the room and back again. I was starting to see something new in him. He looked as though he was puzzling on something internally. He stopped and sat down again.

“Are Jen and Lou in danger too,” Doug asked. “How about your mom and Bubby? Do they know about them too?”

“In the long run yes. The girls are in this now too, but it really makes no long-term difference. Death is the desired result for all of us, mom and Bubby included.”

We took a lunch break. Canned bean soup and brown bread and butter. I thought about the things my mom used to cook. Well, those days were gone. I washed the few dishes in the little kitchen off the main room and then went back to my seat with the others.

I pondered the contrast. Washing dishes and war in the cosmos. Maybe that war had always been waged unseen by most of us. Yes, I decided, it had. Nothing else would explain the history of earth.

“What next, oh guru, wise one, saintly cosmic advisor,” said Doug. “What should I do? I don’t know how to save the world. Do you?”

He pulled out that mysterious pack of Camels and offered them around. Roops took one and they smoked for a bit without speaking.

“That isn’t your job, Doug. You can’t save the world. You are not Him. Your job is to be a contagion for life. You must stay alive, which won’t be easy, and infect the survivors with the desire to live, in spite of World Com. and all  the Black Ones and their fellow travelers. You will be speaking for All Being on earth for these days.

“You must inspire others to pick up from where the world has left us now and begin again. The Lights will guide you about where to go and who to speak with. They promised to help you. You will be the emissary of life to the scattered groups of people still living. Those you have infected will go further than you do and infect other clusters of survivors. And so on. The people are full of death, and they need to live again. Once long ago there were fewer people than live now. It can be done again.

“And you better figure on staying here tonight at least. Jen’s house is too hot for you right now.”


In the morning, we packed up our sleeping bags and headed to Mrs. Steele’s house. I wanted to check on Lou and maybe get Bubby to come along with us.

No one was home there.

link to all of it: In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx

Just A Peek Over The Horizon

 

As has been going on for some time now, my sister and I have been slowly digesting our way through the ephemera of our parents' lives.  All the big stuff is gone, leaving letters and cards and photos to be processed and sorted.

One of the things we found was a card that my brother had written to my grandmother after grampa died.  It was a bit of a shocker.

He expresses sympathy in a typical young male sort of way, but then goes on to say that he expects to see grampa later in the hereafter time.  That was shocking enough.  I had no idea that he harbored such radical notions.

But on the back of the card, in shaky handwriting he goes on to tell of an  experience of his that was recent.  At the time Dan, my brother, was renting our cabin at Tulalip and had married a tribal woman and was fishing commercially in a small way.  He had gone outside the bay into the Sound and was alone in a small boat.

He got into trouble and the wind and tide were against him and he was pretty worried.  He said, now this is very strange, that grampa came to him and helped him know what to do to get back inside the bay.  He didn't say what grampa said.  The funny thing is, grampa was no boatman!

So anyhow, he found out later that night that grampa had just died, while he was out in Puget Sound.

I was a little amazed, but it blew my sister's mind.  She does not know how to process such a thing.  She sat there shaking her head with tears in her eyes. But there it was, written in a young man's shaky handwriting in blue ballpoint ink.

My prayer is that his early faith will be nourished and that my sister will come to knowledge.

It's A Barnum and Bailey World

 Just as phony as it can be!

You say it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me

Yes, its only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

You say its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me

Yes, its only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

*O*

Yes, it's a sentimental old love song.  It came to me while I was napping Thursday morning.  I thought there must be a reason.  So, I looked up the words, though I remembered most of them.

They struck me as on topic around here.

With only a little stretching it could be heard as a conversation between the Creator and a soul.

Or maybe only a love song to a doubtful soul.

I call it standing on one foot.  Realize that one world is temporary and one is eternal.

Without His love it's as phony as it can be.

All the world is but a play!

Home Cooking For Defense!

 

Maybe you are not quite what you eat, but it counts.

I am always thinking about the reasons that so many people are so weak when they should be robust. Also, when did all this extreme obesity happen? It’s not natural.  Something is wrong. Back in the days of the fifties and sixties we didn’t even know anyone super heavy.

All the elements to build strength are all around us. The hidden ingredient is wisdom and the ability to abide by reasonable choices.  In a way, it’s the easiest thing in the world to eat right.  Eating what your mom would have cooked would work in a high percentage of cases!

The world of food production these last few decades is set up like a trap.  The goal is making a lot of money.  The goal is not anyone’s health. These products are designed on purpose to be addictive.  I have read material to that effect from people involved in the business of commercial food.  It must be a fine line to walk between outright killing the customer and having them keep buying the stuff.

A fine example of an addictive product.

Well, these days, it’s hard not to think that the people are being made defenseless in all ways possible.  Being physically weak, is um, weak.  It’s also depressing.  To have a vigorous mind takes energy. I speak to you as one who has been strong and has also been weak. To fight the good fight is exactly that, a fight!

Those of us raised on our mother’s, or dad’s, or sister’s or whoever’s cooking tend to be tougher than the Gerber generations, as I call them. Even if mom was not a good cook…she didn’t put weird chemicals in your food.  She didn’t put damaged vegetable oil in everything, or all that sugar and salt that are used to hype flavor, so you don’t notice that what you are eating is garbage.  Sometimes I think that oil by itself is behind the super fat thing.  But that is another lecture. It is not a matter of calories. It’s also a matter of taste.  We know what food tastes like.  We don’t like modern junk. We should do the young a huge favor and feed them well.  It will make them more resistant to the poison when they are on their own.

We didn’t do bottled baby food.  I’ve never known a baby to like that stuff.  I have seen them fight it!  However, from experience, I know that the baby wants to eat what he sees you eating, more or less.  It’s just natural. Cats and dogs are the same about that. As I said in a comment earlier, we just mashed up whatever a baby could manage and slipped the kid some of that.  It works lovely, as you all know.

I won’t go into the breast-feeding story because that is another whole subject. There are spiritual elements to that one.

If you can raise some of your own, that is the best thing to do.  Grow sprouts if nothing else.  Farmer’s markets or shopping out on the farms works too.

 Left over from making pickles! lol!

Frequent butchers who have access to better meat, like a country butcher.

Cook your own food.  If you hate cooking, like lazy P, it’s possible to eat a lot of salad and other simple stuff. It doesn’t have to be a big hard job. I’m not lecturing you guys really, just clarifying what I think is true.

Touch not the unclean thing.  They are going to try to get to you any way they can.  I say don’t make it easy for them by being gullible.  Hamburger helper is not food.  Coke is not a reasonable drink. And all those snacks!  Nothing but bait.

💓

Oh, Brother!

 

🛞 🛞 🛞

Meet Brother Ass, Brother Light's alter ego. We all recognize Brother A. He is us. An embodiment... anybody... somebody... but only a body. He doesn't realize he was born an ass, but he works hard at being one his whole life, which is actually a chain of subsequent corporeal lives... until, well, he sees the light. 

Brother A. has taken on a heavy job! He subscribes to a corrupt paradigm in which conformity to mortal law is the standard. He's a proud beast of burden, and his duty is to move matter around from place to place, and make big stuff into small stuff so small stuff can be made into big stuff. Brother A. has to be an ass in order to navigate this 3D plane. He's out of his mind that way. After all, something has to turn the mortal coil, and Brother Ass is it!

We can't really know Brother Ass 100% until we are able to look down again through the clear eyes of an elevated Brother Light to see what happened and what's going on inside this big swirling electron cloud of molecular dust. It's a matter of perspective, and that matters. You see, Brother A. came into being when Brother L., who is immortal, fell in love with his own shadow. Coincident with desire, Brother L.'s intelligence consorted with an unreasoning image in the form of Brother A. 

The light went out of his eyes when he wrapped his head in the material world. Brother Light hit the ground with a thud. Intelligence became unintelligible, and the next thing he knew he was walking and walking and walking and just plumb forgot where he came from. He became Brother Ass, a one asspower mortal on a horizontal path. The relationship between Brother Ass and Brother Light is a backasswards existence, so to speak. 3D should aspire to 4D, not the other way around.

Having Brother A. as a roommate is a tedious occupation. We have to feed him, bathe him, clothe him, shelter him, educate and train him on how to be a productive ass, doctor him when he needs it, and generally watch him until he grows old and dies. In the meantime he gets plenty of exercise trodding his circular path... dawn to dusk... birth to death. 

Tradition holds that Brother A. get turned out to rest on SUNdays in a pen with his fellow asses to hear another worldly ass's version of the rules and regulations for behaving like a proper ass in the ass run world. Be that as it may, at least it gives Brother A. an opportunity to peek out from beneath his veil and get a glimpse of the light... more or less, depending... that is if he takes the time to understand that Brother Light has always been right there within him and beside him forever.

Glory be! At some point in his existence Brother Ass will hear a voice echoing through his true self and undergo a mental rebirth. He will rectify his image and be reunited with the mindset of starry-eyed Brother Light, the infinite and eternal vertical traveler, become singularly divine, and no longer be a divided creature.

🛞 🛞 🛞

🛞 🛞 🛞

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch; like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

🛞 🛞 🛞

✯

Grubby Woodland Creatures In Second Growth Timber

 

When I think of my life in the years between 1954 and 1966, I think “spare” might be the operant term. It almost had a kind of elegance.

I was 6 years old in September of 54, the year my parents bought an unfinished two-bedroom house on three fourths of an acre, still covered with second growth alder and firs and maples.  The lot and the house cost $4000.00. Perhaps thirty or forty years before then this area had just been virgin timber, which was logged off. Years later he built three more bedrooms on the house.

The house had rooms framed in, but no walls inside.  There was no power to the house yet, or water.  I think we only lived without plumbing for that one summer.  But I am not absolutely sure about that.  I do know that my father made an outhouse.  I am that old, lol.  I lived with an outhouse. I remember bathing in a small zinc watering trough in that dark kitchen.

For household water we had a ten-gallon milk can that my father would load onto the Model A Ford, which was their only car at that point, and drive several miles over to where there was an artesian wellhead that was open for people to take water from.  Sounds odd, but that well is still in operation on 164^th, and you can still go there and bottle water if you like.

We had a kerosine heater, which I remember very well, and kerosine lamps. I do not remember what my mother was cooking on that first summer. Well, we ate, that I know.  Perhaps she was using a camp stove of some kind. Later, we always had a wood stove in the kitchen in addition to the electric appliances.

My parents were very young farm kids, in their twenties still at this point.  They had escaped being stuck on dad’s parent’s farm in southern Idaho and had come up here to make their fortune, lol, right? So, my father worked at Boeing.  It was the Seattle thing to do.  Mom stayed home until my youngest sister was old enough to go to school full days.

My mother was 24 years old that summer, and she had four very young children.  It’s hard for me to imagine what her life must have been like, but on the other hand, youth just gets on with it.

Birdsong, particularly robin’s calls, take me right back there.  I remember things from a short point of view. I think I might have been a bit feral, or maybe just a backwoods kid.  I have very strong memories of just the trees and the undergrowth.  When I was a few years older I remember being out there in the woods away from home picking wild blackberries where there was open country, and just sitting silently and listening to the silence punctuated by bird calls.  If I sat long enough sometimes small animals would come and look at me.  We had mountain beavers, and something that must have been a mustelid of some kid, like a weasel.

It did not take my father long to get the house finished inside.  He was hyper-active, I now realize, and unusually strong.  He could do anything. Being a farmer, he also removed the trees and old stumps from the logging in the old days, from our place.  I do remember a fair amount of dynamiting stumps!  We had to stay in the house and watch out a window as the blast went off and the stump jumped into the air.  I think he just burnt all those big stumps.  In fact, I should mention that places like ours out there were called stump farms by some people.

I always wanted to make things and learn how to do things.  I was a menace to some of my neighbors as a kid.  I found out who knew how to do such and such and I would go ask for help knitting or whatever. I remember carving my first knitting needles myself.  I feel like I must still have them somewhere.  I was hot to knit, I wanted to make sweaters. I think what started that was reading an encyclopedia called The Book of Knowledge, that was sold to my parents by a door-to-door salesman. It had directions for making a cardigan in it.  I remember those illustrations perfectly.

Mrs. Christiansen, a Danish grandmother, was probably my first victim.  But she was a good sport and helped me. I thought she was a million years old; she did have completely white hair.

Another one lived across the gravel road from our place.  She and her husband, who my mom was sure was oppressing this lady, whose name escapes me right now, lived in a mobile home of some sort.  She did colorful crocheted doilies and such.  You can see where this is going.  I remember sitting in her living room finding out how to make doilies!  She was tolerant also, and maybe she liked the company.

Our most important neighbors lived right behind us.  We kids grew up together. There were five kids there and their dad was an Indian from one of the local tribes.  I never knew which tribe.  He wore dark green uniforms and drove a green pickup and did something in maintenance for the school district.  He was called Woody.  The two older boys were from her earlier marriage, but the three little black-haired girls were his.  I remember having some strange snacks over there. Those kids liked to take slices of plain white bread, spread it with margarine, and sprinkle a lot of sugar on it!  Even as a kid, I thought that was gross. I think I had some breaded testicles of some kind over there too.  Just the truth.  My mom didn’t cook stuff like that!

I do remember that my grandmother sent us a goose, that must have been packed in with dry ice, all the way from Idaho.  By the time mom got the box the ice was gone.  I remember that goose just slithering out of the box!

My mother was what they used to call a good plain cook.  She got a lot of practice.  Every bite we ate was prepared by her.  There was nothing else. No cafés, no fast food, no commercial snacks of any kind.  In fact, when I encountered anything like potato chips, I hated them.  I remember even hating popcorn.

There was no ethnicity in her cooking.  Pure American style.  She didn’t know about chilis either! Lol We had pot roasts, burgers, potatoes, salad, soups, stews, meat and veg pie, plain cake cooked in a rectangular pan. She made cookies and pies too. Every summer we made quarts of jam.

 School lunches were made at home, in a hurry.  For as soon as I was big enough to be Mother to the younger three, she was always in a hurry to go to work. This is probably where I got my attitude.  I was in charge, and they needed me to be in charge. It is what it is.

We were grubby forest creatures. Really. Even as I got older, most of my life was lived outdoors. I helped garden. I helped my father repair cars. I took care of animals. I kept track of the younger kids out there.

The road past our place was kind of a metaphor.  It didn’t go through anywhere, but it wasn’t a dead end.  It was graveled, didn’t get paved until years later.  It was a loop.  It went past us and then around a big block.  That road, the loop, and the block it enclosed still appears in my dreams, in various disguises. I still have agates I picked out of the gravel.

I don’t know if this is interesting, but it is real.

In 1966 the whole world changed.  I went to a rented room up here by the college and began to grow up.

The Cloak Of Irrelevancy

 

No time to worry about it now!

 

********************************************

 

I knew very well that it was the same van that had left just an hour ago.  It had to be.  In the dark there we had no idea what to do.  There was no way to hide or to escape.

The doorknob rattled. Someone gave the door a good shove and it didn’t open. We heard voices.

“They’ve been here and nailed the door shut!” 

“Doug Simpson are you in there” loudly.  There was a lot of discussion that was not audible. The voices went around to the back of the house.

One of them had a portable light of some kind.  Using a knife blade or something he managed to jimmy the lock on the kitchen door. The door flew open and crashed against the wall.

We all three just stood in the living room without making a sound. I could not imagine what to do next.  I still didn’t know why this was happening. A lot of wild ideas flitted through my mind.

“That guy said he was here, and his brother, staying with these girls.” There was some coarse laughter. Only two men, talking between themselves. “Jennifer and Louise Milton. Wonder how they would like it if their Allowance disappeared?”

“He thinks he is going to lead the people to the promised land, and everything will be like it was again!” That brought some bitter laughter.  I had to wonder if our two officers were not entirely happy with life in the here and now.

Heavy steps up to the second story.  They went through all the rooms, searching for us I assume. They did not go into the attic.  Good. My extra supplies were in the attic.

They came down the stairs again, heavily.  Flashlight guy shone his beam all over the living room.  It was like we didn’t exist.  I wondered what would happen if one of them bumped into one of us. What would he think he had touched?  Would he feel anything? Or would it just not register?

“Look, they’re not here.  Probably back on the road.”

“Well, World Com wants him, and we have to find him!  Their tails in Maysville are on the line, which means our tails are on the line too!”

Both men walked out of the kitchen door without shutting it.

The engine started up in a moment and the van moved off toward Milltown. Doug shut the backdoor and shoved a chair up against it. It would make noise if the door opened.

Doug said we needed to have a pow wow, “but let’s do it in the morning.  I don’t think we’ll see them again tonight.”  So, they crashed in the living room again and I got into mom and dad’s bed right next door to the front room. I didn’t feel like being upstairs all by myself, without even Lou for company.

We did sleep.  When I awoke, the power was back on. So, I made oatmeal again.  We thought we had better get showers while we could before it went out again. This was normal.  It did this all the time.

Later, sitting around the table, we looked at each other.  I missed Lou, but I was glad she was with Mrs. Steele and Bubby.  She was not good at being quiet.

“First, who is World Com?  Why would they even know my name,”
said Doug.

“Second, somebody has talked to P-Sec.  Somebody who was at the last meeting.” I remembered the man who silently listened to Doug talking with the newcomers, and then left without saying anything. It would be normal to think it was him.

“Last, what now?” said Doug.

“Hey, remember what Roops said about that planetary power movement in the Middle East” I said.  “He seemed to imply that it was behind a lot of this, whatever you call it. In fact, I think he hinted that the bugs came from over there!”

“I suppose you should be flattered.  Or scared to death.  They think you might be able to oppose them!” I was thinking out loud then.

“You know what Doug” I said, “we need to not be in this house for a while.  We don’t know if our cloaking will always work, and we need to talk to Roops.  He is our only source of world news.”

Doug, looking thoughtful, pulled a Camel from his shirt pocket and lit it. Someday I would find out where those came from.  I never saw them for sale anywhere.  At that moment, I didn’t think I would bother him about it.

Elvin hadn’t said anything.  I wondered what he thought. So, I asked him, and he said “yeah, we have to stay with Roops and sleep on his floor while we figure out what comes next.”

I had some major questions. What was the connection between our local goons, and World Com?  Why did they care what we did over here in a small American city? 

The whole shebang: In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx

The Trip To Colockum Pass

 One time around ten years ago my navigator/last child decided that she would like to drive the Colockum Pass between Ellensburg and Wenatchee WA.  She did her homework.  It seems that Trip Advisor, or some other worthy source assured her that is was doable by a normal vehicle.  Ok, then.

We gathered up the granddaughter who was a young teen at the time, and took off!  

Road was so rough it knocked a tire off the wheel kinda.  I kept going.  You know how it is.  I kept thinking that it would smooth out, and I sure didn't want to go back where we had been!

Here I am getting ready to put the other tire on.  Upon surviving the excursion, arriving in Wenatchee, I had to see Les Schwab about a tire.

The next photo actually looks smoother than I remember.

I do remember crossing a boulder strewn pasture/meadow and coming upon some men on ATVs who just watched me drive past with their mouths open.  It was almost worth it.  The cows seemed interested also.

In some spots my granddaughter was silent. Totally. I think we scared her.  But, as usual, I brought them home alive.

Final analysis, you can't always believe what people say in trip reports.  If you decide to drive this pass you need something with a lot of clearance or an actual ATV.  I did not find a map that would mean anything to people in other places.

The video is nice.  Flying over it would be fun.

Here is another take on the place.

The type of vehicles that you should drive over Colockum pass.

In Which We Do Not Join Our Heroes

 

Not today, for there were crows turning cartwheels against the high arching blue.  Not today, gulls were flying up and down on reconnaissance missions way up there.

There was a little yellow cottage slowly being consumed by old roses.

The sisters, orphans at their ages, slowly removed the ensorcellment of old vines and dead roses and old dried hips.  That was done.

Crows and robins made their usual comments.

The boy next door was engaged to cut the grass, and paid off.

There wasn’t any writing today.

There was a large box of old letters and cards to be checked for relevance and sorted into piles.  Keepers and tossers.  Judgments made.

An exhaustion, the ephemera of lives.

Odd confrontations with signs and portents.

Yet, the heart is very full.

Fire Walking Quite Optional

 Of the strange movie posters, this is the one that stuck with me. There must be a lot in the Fire Walk movie that didn't appear in the TV series, which I watched.  

Twin Peaks, the TV show was so weirdly Western Washington like, that it was off putting, in a way.  IMO anyhow.  I see places like the cafe every day.  Everett would have been a great place to film something like that.  Maybe someday somebody will write a dystopic novel about Everett, calling it by an older name.  And then someone will make the movie!

Hey, why not?

Un Piccolo Piccolo Romanzo, (più affari)

 

Milltown Nocturn

I woke her, and after some fussing, she stood and we all left, Doug making sure the door was closed. I hadn’t heard much from Elvin all night.  He was tired too.  Like a kid.

Back over the bridge, out into the partial darkness, we walked.  It’s never completely dark at night under the sky.  If nothing else, cloud cover gives a very subtle grey light.  Within a mile of our place, we came upon Mrs. Steele’s red brick house.  Her lights were on in the kitchen.  She came to the door agreeably as always, little and in a fuzzy robe and slippers.  She invited us in, but I said we just wanted to leave Bubby with her, so he got a good dinner and a rest.

“Oh, ok,” she said, and about then Lou burst out in big juicy sobs and sat right down on the porch steps. In the light from inside the kitchen she looked exhausted, grimy, and stubborn and small.

 *O*

Bubby gave a mighty great dog sigh and sat down beside Lou and leaned against her and looked hard at Mrs. Steele.  She looked back.  She winked.  Bubby winked. I distinctly saw this.

Tiny in her bathrobe, Mrs. Steele stepped over her threshold and bent over Lou.  She found Lou’s grubby hands and held them, saying “Lou, honey, why don’t you come in and have a slumber party here with me and old Bubs?  You can get in my bathtub, and wear one of my nightgowns and tomorrow we can make cookies!”

I stood there with my mouth open.  Finally, I said “hey Lou, that sounds really really nice.  I’d go on in if I were you.” 

She got up and gave me a damp hug.  The three, old lady, young girl and big dog stepped inside, and Mrs. Steele shut the door.

I looked at Doug and Elvin to see how they were taking it and they looked at me.  We all kind of shrugged.  We walked back down the driveway in the dark and headed toward my parents’ house.

It was a cool fall night.  It wasn’t quite raining, but the was slightly damp.

It was less than a mile from Mrs. Steele’s house to our house.  We started out silently walking, then it occurred to me to ask, “hey, um, did you guys forget that the Light said we could have one special ability that they would give us?  I wonder what we could have and when they want the answer?”

Elvin laughed. “I want to be invisible!”

Doug and I both looked at him and then at each other. “Hey… That’s not a bad idea,” said Doug. “That could come in handy and be really funny too! A dream come true, for every kid on earth!”

“Well, let’s see if that is on the menu,” I said to the brothers, “next time we see them.”  We kept walking in cheerful silence.

About a block from home, in the dim light from the cloudy sky, I could see that something was not right at the house.  Something was parked in front of my house, where nothing should be parked.  And it was a van just like the one we saw at the store.  I poked Doug in his ribs and whispered, “look….!” He grabbed Elvin by the back of his coat and said, “shhhh! Look!”  We stood still in the middle of the road.

There were some low bushes across the road from where we were standing.  Doug pointed to them.  He whispered, “hey, let’s go lie low over there on the ditch bank and see what happens.”

We kind of tucked up under the bushes and waited there.  It was late and we were tired.  It had been a busy day to say the least and now this. 

It must have been around half an hour later that we heard men come out of my house and get into the van.  Two men.  Probably the same two from the store.  They were probably the enforcement for Milltown, or part of Milltown.  The van’s engine started up and the headlights came on.  Slowly, it started moving in the other direction from where we waited. 

When we could no longer see their tail lights at all we got up out of the ditch and headed home. I felt damp and chilled.  I was not happy.  I felt just about as happy as Lou had appeared to be.

Mailbox looked normal. They had been parked right by it.  Nothing on the lawn. I was searching around in the pocket of my pea coat when Doug said “never mind.  You ain’t gonna need a key Jen.” I looked at the front door.

The frame of the door was broken.  The door had been kicked open.  It stood halfway open.  It was dark as a dungeon inside my house.  For the first time in my life, I was truly afraid. It did seem like the danger was gone.  But fear rose up like a mist and I stopped in front of my own house, not knowing what to do next. My hands fell to my side, and I wept like Lou.

Doug took hold of my shoulders and moved me over, then stepped up on the little concrete porch.  Elvin was right behind him. Cautiously, one then the other stepped into my living room.  Nothing happened.  Doug flipped the light switch by the door, up then down.  Nothing happened. No power, or maybe the light bulb was dead or broken. He tried other switches.  No lights.  So, no power. I followed them into the house and pulled the door closed behind me. 

For the second time today, we depended on candles. We always had candles because sometimes the power just didn’t work. I had inched my way to the kitchen and fished around in the junk drawer for the candles and matches.  I stuck the candles into a brass candle thing mom kept for that purpose in the living room.  It held three candles, which I lit. In that weak light I looked around to see, if I could, why they had come here.

Slowly, I went up the stairs to the second story.  The boys followed me.  My bedroom looked normal, I thought.  Someone had used the bathroom and hadn’t flush. Nothing seemed broken.  I still felt the alien presence of someone who didn’t belong here, just because they had been here.

Before going back downstairs, I glanced out my bedroom window and remembered the Lights hanging in midair out there. I wished they were back.

We went to the kitchen.  I went back to the junk drawer and found my hammer and ten 16d nails.  Good and long, over three inches.  I asked Doug to nail the front door shut.  I stood holding the candle stand so that he could see to work.  We would have to use the kitchen door to go in and out now.

I thought some more about being invisible.  It sounded silly, but also, very attractive.

Maybe P-Sec was just snooping.  Maybe they had been wanting to arrest us for some reason.  I was glad Lou was where she was. Maybe it was just a threat to scare us and keep us in line.  Maybe it was something nastier, I mean they tried to grab Denise too! 

Doug said we should all sleep downstairs.  He thought I should sleep in my parents’ bed, and they would keep watch and nap in the living room on the chair and sofa.  We still had some jerky, so we ate some of that and drank some water.  We were so tired that we actually slept.

Morning light comes late in October but come it did.  I felt dirty and apprehensive lying in mom and dad’s old bed.  I casually glanced around the room. I saw a soft bluish light coming in from the other room.  I vaulted out of bed and ran into the front room.  

Both boys were still asleep.  One Light in a partial manifestation, rather more translucent than before, was suspended in the air about four feet off the floor, as if waiting.  It was bigger than the one that had stopped Denise's abduction, but smaller than the one in the gym.

Eyes glued on the sphere I said, "hey Doug, hey Doug.  You better wake up!"  His eyes flew open and he sat up. Elvin was moving a little too, now.

The voice that didn't seem to have a location said "you may now choose your special ability." 

Elvin sat bolt upright.  "We want to be invisible!" Doug and I sort of stopped breathing for a minute.

The voice said quietly, "you can't be truly invisible, but you may have the ability to shield your presence from those who wish you harm. You may walk among them unnoticed."  The Light began to fade and appear to pass further and further away until it was a little point of light that moved toward the ceiling and vanished.  We hadn't gotten much of a chance to inquire as to how to operate this gift!

Just then I heard a vehicle pull up in front of the house.

all of it!  In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx