Some Research On Green Mountain

 

(It's such a short story so far that I am posting all of it. )

I’m doing this old school, I thought, watching the sign painter finish the gold lettering on my office door window. “Nikita Rosen Agency.” I had the hat and the suit. “Professional, Personal Spook.” The small letters. If you can’t have fun with it, what’s the use? I’m on the second floor above the Vintage Café. That’s where I got the idea for the lettering.

I had business cards made. “You have a question you can’t answer? Maybe I can help!” Phone number and official email address.

Bit and character parts suited me well. I was not the kind of woman you notice in a group. Stealthy. It helps a spook to be invisible, but just solid enough to handle material objects. OK. Five eight, brown hair, blue eyes, light skin. I blend right into the scenery.

Apparently, my parents were big jokers. They came up during the N. Khrushchev era. As University Art School students in the late 60s they were lefties, as would be expected. Maybe they thought N.K. was cute. They were Jews but didn’t know how to go about it. So, they joked around a lot, had long hair, painty clothes and did as they wished. Nothing was better than a practical joke. They are still like that. Boomers.

Enter their best joke of all. At home they called me Nikky. At school they called me Nik. It did not go well for anyone who said Nikita.

This is the part of the story where I am looking for work. I put a discrete ad in the University paper. I built an old-fashioned looking website. I told the old babes in the apartment building I was looking for snoopy work. That ought to get the news out there.

I furnished my office with old style oak office furniture. Nothing much, a desk, large, a wooden office chair. Chair for the client, a bit cushier than mine. The usual electronic devices. A file cabinet, even if it never gets used. A lamp. Two framed prints on the walls of local scenery. I had time to get them adjusted just right on the wall. I thought, “there is something missing! A big old black rotary phone on the desk.” I made a mental note. I sat there some more. Minutes ticked by. No phone rang. No email binged in.

I went home. My cat, a fifteen-pound tabby named Richard, looked askance at me. Somehow, he always knows if I am running short on money. Not sure why he cares. He received a can of pure grain free chicken gloop. I had one of those bagged salads that comes with its own dressing and several packets of crunchy things. I would rather skip dinner than cook. Maybe if I had someone besides Richard to cook for things would be different.

Next morning, leaving my apartment building, I remembered that I wanted that old style phone. I didn’t have a landline, of course, but I might get one.

I was standing in the local thrift pit staring at a row of rotary phones in the colors of all eras when my cell phone rang.

*** 

Pulling it out of my pocket I glanced at the screen. It was Steve Shaw, anthropology prof up at the U. I had nearly married him last year, but we were still on speaking terms. Prof and student fraternization. Fraught with drama.

“Hey, Steve, wuzzup,” I whispered into the celly. Nobody in this old junk store needed to know what was up beside me.

“Nikky, I have a weird little problem I thought you might be interested in. Where are you? Can you talk?” quacked Steve from the mobile speaker.

“I’m in Value Village, hang on. I’ll check out and call you from my car.”

I grabbed a serious looking black rotary number and headed up to the check stand. I gave the worldly wise manbun type at the counter my debit card and he charged me 4.99 and tax. Then he handed me the phone in a carrier bag. It’s tough to be too cool to ask questions. Well, I didn’t help him out there.

I drive a Little Boy Blue 2014 Mustang. It stands out in a parking lot, always. I take very good care of her. I always name cars. Elise. Yup.

“So, Steve,” I said, settling into the driver’s seat, “what’s your weird little problem. Is this a professional call?”

Sounding a little cool, he said, “sure, if you want it to be Nikky.”

“Great, you are client number one Steve,” I chirped happily.

“I need to know something. I can’t know it officially or have my department even know that I do or don’t know or even if that I have heard of the question,” said Steve in a rush of words.

“That really nails it down Steve. Tell me more. Your secrets are safe with me.”

“I sent six students up into the Baker National Forest, up the Green Mountain forest-service road. They were supposed to be researching a site up there and they saw something. Something I don’t dare notice, but I have to know. What they saw was seven feet tall, female, with an infant clinging to her back. If these kids are pulling my leg, I’ll mangle em. They could get me fired and laughed at for the rest of my life, if I even admit I know what they are alleging.”

“How may I serve you, Steve? What do you want me to do about this?” He couldn’t see the silly grin on my face, now, could he?

“Well, Nikky, I thought maybe since you’re a chick investigator now you might be able to get close to this bush woman BF mom thing. I feel like an idiot even saying those words,” muttered Steve. “I’ll pay.”

I glanced at my own face in the rear-view mirror. Did I see a trace of wolfishness there? Surely not!

“Go armed Nikky,” said Steve. I could see an expedition coming up. I was already figuring out what to take up on Green Mountain. I knew my way around a handgun. No problem there.

“I have two questions Steve. One, did this creature seem hostile in any way. Two, what if I can’t find her? I will still have to charge you for my time and the mounting of a safari. Are you willing to take that chance?”

“She was picking berries. She was handing them over her shoulder to the kid, whatever. She was carrying a crude basket and had quite a lot of blackberries in it. When my kids, if this is even true, burst upon the scene, she laughed at their shock and wandered slowly uphill,” said Steve. “They didn’t dare follow her.” 

“I’m good for it, whether you succeed in locating her or not. If you do, though, I want good photos, maybe some video if you get a chance. This has to be for sure if it is at all.”

Do You Wonder What Comes Next?

 

I’m doing this old school, I thought, watching the sign painter finish the gold lettering on my office door window. “Nikita Rosen Agency.” I had the hat and the suit. “Professional, Personal Spook.” The small letters. If you can’t have fun with it, what’s the use? My office is on the second floor above the Vintage Café. That’s where I got the idea for the lettering. 

I had business cards made. “You have a question you can’t answer? Maybe I can help!” Phone number and official email address.

Bit and character parts suited me well. I was not the kind of woman you notice in a group. Stealthy. It helps a spook to be invisible, but just solid enough to handle material objects. OK. Five eight, brown hair, blue eyes, light skin. I blend right into the scenery.

Apparently, my parents were big jokers. They came up during the N. Khrushchev era. As University Art School students in the late 60s they were lefties, as would be expected. Maybe they thought N.K. was cute. They were Jews but didn’t know how to go about it. So, they joked around a lot, had long hair, painty clothes and did as they wished. Nothing was better than a practical joke. They are still like that. Boomers.

Enter the best joke of all. At home they called me Nikky. At school they called me Nik. It did not go well for anyone who said Nikita.

This is the part of the story where I am looking for work. I put a discrete ad in the University paper. I built an old-fashioned looking website. I told the old babes in the apartment building I was looking for snoopy work. That ought to get the news out there.

I furnished my office with old style oak office furniture. Nothing much, a desk, large, a wooden office chair. Chair for the client, a bit cushier than mine. The usual electronic devices. A file cabinet, even if it never gets used. A lamp. Two framed prints of local scenery on the walls. I had time to get them adjusted just right. I thought, “there is something missing! A big old black rotary phone on the desk.” I made a mental note. I sat there some more. Minutes ticked by.  No phone rang.  No email binged in.

I went home. My cat, a fifteen pound tabby named Richard, looked askance at me. Somehow, he always knows if I am running short on money. Not sure why he cares. He received a can of pure grain free chicken gloop. I had one of those bagged salads that comes with its own dressing and several packets of crunchy things. I would rather skip dinner than cook. Maybe if I had someone to cook for besides Richard things would be different.

Next morning, leaving the apartment building, I remembered that I wanted that old style phone. I didn’t have a landline, of course, but I might get one.

I was standing in the local thrift pit staring at a row of rotary phones in the colors of all eras when my cell phone rang.

An Early Influence

There was a time in my earlier years that I read a lot of detective fiction. This was after and during the sci-fi period.  That whole period ended with the six volumes of Donaldson's White Gold Wielder.  Enough is enough!

I like clean, economical, straight diction, and I found it in Raymond Chandler who created the archetypal hardboiled detective, Phillip Marlowe. I understand Hemingway is also a neat and tidy writer, but I never loved him like I did Chandler. 

This was many years before I even thought of writing anything but free verse.

Having just read his entry in Wiki, I was surprised to learn that he did not grow up in the Los Angeles of the thirties. He had me convinced.

His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939, featuring the detective Philip Marlowe, speaking in the first person. In 1950, Chandler described in a letter to his English publisher, Hamish Hamilton, why he began reading pulp magazines and later wrote for them:

Wandering up and down the Pacific Coast in an automobile I began to read pulp magazines, because they were cheap enough to throw away and because I never had at any time any taste for the kind of thing which is known as women's magazines. This was in the great days of the Black Mask (if I may call them great days) and it struck me that some of the writing was pretty forceful and honest, even though it had its crude aspect. I decided that this might be a good way to try to learn to write fiction and get paid a small amount of money at the same time. I spent five months over an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.[2

His personal and professional life was messy. Well, he was a writer then, wasn’t he?

Parker, another detective writer said of Phillip Marlow: with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."[6]

I will find you a page of nice clean prose about Marlowe. This is the first page of the Big Sleep.

There you go!  You can see how he is already. Maybe you've already read Chandler?

I understand that there was a movie too, but I don't deal in movies much.

A Story From Home

 

Sometimes, sitting outside after dark, just watching the stars, I prayed for the little band up north, those who had been warned and had gone on to warn others. The trouble with a word-of-mouth movement is that it is limited in scope, but it also lacks the exposure of an online presence. But even word of mouth has its dangers I knew to my regret. 

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

In the afternoons Aunt Julia used to doze in front of the TV news with Billy on her lap. I guess she liked a little background noise during a nap. One day I slipped in quietly, because I knew it was during her nap time. Something on the screen caught my eye so I stayed to watch.

It was a story from home.

There had been a horrific fire at an industrial park in Lynnwood, near the freeway. That stopped me in my tracks. I knew that place. I had been there! I had been arrested by a couple of shadowy agents, battered and brought there, and held until I walked out, by the grace of God, alive.

A couple of step vans were burnt also, and four bodies had been found in the wreckage. I wondered about the fate of the woman at the desk, Garcia and whoever else. I knew what had happened to Wiggles. Some of the wreckage appeared to be the ruins of robotic mechanisms. 

Many questions sprang into my mind. No. 1, did anyone I know have a hand in this? Or was it an accidental fire? No. 2, would they forget about me? Was this whole episode finally over? Had we won a sort of victory, or merely a reprieve?

Maybe I would never know for sure.

“Beth, isn’t Lynnwood near your home up north?” Julia woke up enough to ask me.

“Yes, Auntie, in fact, that is the very place they took me that night,” I said. She woke further and sat forward in her chair looking at the screen.

“The Creator makes mysteries girl,” she said thoughtfully. “So be it.”

I couldn’t wait to talk to Jessie about it. “I have to go tell Jessie,” I ran out of the house and back to Jessie reading in the hogan. He was studying an old book of his Uncle John’s called Practical Gold Mining. 

When I burst through the door Jessie looked up in surprise. Honda stood up from where he had been napping, wondering what the excitement was about, ready for fun.

“Jess, the place burnt down! All of it!” I sat down and described the news report in as much detail as was given. He didn’t say anything for a while, sitting with his finger in the book where he had been reading.

“Hm. Sounds like Nuevo Mundo is having a little setback. Well, I don’t think we have a lot to worry about, ourselves. Let’s just stay put Beth and see if we hear anything else at all.”

What else could we do? It was a thoughtful evening. We were all quiet during the rest of the day. It was a gruesome story, but we couldn’t help but be thankful. It felt like a reprieve but was also frightening not knowing the back story.

That evening we stayed in with Julia and talked about kitchen gardening in Arizona. It was totally different from vegetable gardening on the wet side of Washington. She said that you could grow something year-round in Arizona, that there were three seasons. There was the cool crop’s season from September to May. Then there was the warm crop’s season from February to May, and then again July through October. And there were also the hot season crops from May through October. 

You had to be careful where you planted too. Morning light was better for the garden. Of course, the garden plot here was already established.

Water was always a problem. And also, the soil needed to be built up unless you just wanted to grow native plants. Vegetables like humus and a slightly acid soil, which is not native to Arizona. I could see that this was going to take thought and more careful work than at home.

I could see us buying compost. There just wasn’t a lot to make compost out of on the dry little spot we inhabited. At home you could call for a truckload of the stuff to be delivered. Another thing to look into.

These were more pleasant things to consider than the fire in the news. We were glad to have something constructive to occupy our minds.

Part of our routine now was to take Honda out into the yard and teach him some things. To come, to sit, to stay, to be quiet, all the usual commands. He was with one of us always. We never left him shut up in the hogan or the mobile. He was growing fast and would be quite a large dog when he was about two years old. Jessie thought Honda would top out at over a hundred pounds.

He especially loved Aunt Julia. Of course, she loved him too. He liked to sit on the floor by her chair and listen to her talk. He got along fine with Billy. Billy didn’t swat him, and he didn’t bark at Billy or poke him with his big nose. I think Julia told him how to treat Billy. She had a way of taking animals into her confidence quietly. I think she talked to those hens too. I think they laid eggs just to please her.

One morning soon after that day, I found that my coffee did not agree with me. It tasted wrong somehow. Not even sugar and cream helped. Neither Julia nor Jessie noticed the same thing. I didn’t like my eggs either. Then I ran into the bathroom because I was suddenly nauseated by the eggs, the coffee, and the cooking smells. I emerged shaky and clammy.

I wondered how I had managed to get sick out here around only two other people and some animals. By evening I was fine.

Linkie to all of it; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx

A Little Doggy's Tale

 

“I found this out there digging up the deer guts and stringing them around all over the ground. He made a hell of a mess,” said Jessie rather loudly. “What in the hell are we going to do with him!”

“Well,” I said, “um, feed him?”

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

We didn’t get much sleep after that. I thought the little dog would just settle down on the floor somewhere and sleep. But no. He was too much of a baby. He cried and peed on the floor and all the things little pups do.

His arrival was a total mystery, but he was here now. Who tosses a pup out of their car, or whatever, out here in the sticks?

“Look Beth, it’s only about midnight. Let’s just go in, make a fuss, put him in the tub, he’s dirty. Then we can get a bowl of water, some leftovers, and a box to sleep in with an old towel and bring him back out here.

“Maybe when he isn’t so hungry, he’ll quiet down,” he added. This was a bony little guy under  all the fluff.

“Hey, Jess, can we keep him?” I said.

“Dogs are like kids, baby, you have to be with them all the time, train them, talk to them, be in charge. They don’t do well if you don’t,” he told me. “Besides, I think we better get my aunt’s approval before we bond with him totally.”

“Okay Jess.” So, we went into the house and made a bunch of noise and woke up Auntie Julia, who seemed fine with the whole circus.

“You know, we might just need a dog around here,” she grinned at us. She bent over and whispered to the puppy, right in his ear. She sat back up and winked. It was settled in that moment, I guess. We had a dog now.

I started thinking about this pup’s name. I kept thinking of one kind of funny name, and the thought just wouldn’t go away. So, back in our place, I said, “um, how about we call him Honda Jessie? What do you think? Is that too weird?”

“Beth, you are a strange chick, you know that? Sure, why not,” he was laughing at me, but fondly.

I folded the old towel up nicely and laid it in the box we got from Julia, and I put the box next to our bed on my side. Then I picked up our little Honda dog and put him in the box. I could reach him from the bed so I could pat him if he cried during the rest of the night. But he didn’t. He went right to sleep.

***

No doggie food there!

It turned out that there were no pet supplies in Joseph City, so we drove into Holbrook looking for the Giant store on highway 77 to get Honda some puppy chow. He rode along of course. He was pretty excited to go for a ride in the old pickup with both of us to keep him amused. The clerk in the store wanted to know the pup’s name. He laughed and said that a honda is, besides the car, the eye at one end of a lariat through which the other end is passed to form a running noose or lasso. We thought this was a neat thing to name a dog after, even better than the car. I told Honda all about it when we got back in the pickup.

The land was beautiful, the light was so different from home. It was a pleasure to drive home through it all.

Our lives had assumed a slow dreamy pace. One day was much as the previous, and all pleasant.

Aunt Julia and I met with her old lady dentist friend at her little office next to her house. She said that I was healed up enough for her to make a bridge where I had lost the two teeth. That was set in motion. It took another good chunk of our cash. I had two appointments with her. Honda came along for those trips too. All three of us rode in the pickup with the pup in my lap so he could see out. Aunt Julia seemed to greatly enjoy getting to see the world outside her place.

When it was done you couldn’t tell that anything had ever happened to me. My hand was healed also. I was able to use it quite normally. Speaking of dreamlike, that whole episode kept getting more and more distant in my mind. But I knew that it had been real.

Winter faded into early spring. The chill in the air began to moderate. The six hens began to lay a few eggs, every couple of days. Honda grew taller and less fuzzy. He was becoming a very good boy. He did not bark at just anything. That was not his style. He watched everything carefully. He was introduced to Ben Jr., whom he loved. He was instructed to leave the chickens alone. If anything, he seemed to just be happy to have a family, so he did his best.

It was still too early to plant anything, but we started spading up a strip of garden every day. To buy seeds we would need to take another trip to town. The Walmart would have that sort of thing.

Every time we went to town, we kept an eye open for that ominous van, but we never saw it. I could only hope that I wasn’t important enough for the search to continue. The famous stoic reticence of American Natives could only help me to stay hidden.


Sometimes, sitting outside after dark, just watching the stars, I prayed for the little band up north, those who had been warned and had gone on to warn others. The trouble with a word-of-mouth movement is that it is limited in scope, but it also lacks the exposure of an online presence. But even word of mouth has its dangers I knew to my regret.

Link to all of it; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx

Regarding New Jericho

Where God's redeemed their vigils keep.

The setting for this little story is the second growth forest of semi-rural western Washington. The characters are some raffish children growing up in a symbiotic relationship with the forest. The children were in the forest, but more importantly, the forest was in the children. They were truly grubby forest creatures. This creature, myself, will never lose the sense of forest existence. It is more real to my memory than the house we lived in or our own yard at home.

These kids were my sibs and myself and maybe a few of the other kids tagging along. We had been told to stay away from this place, and several other places moldering away forgotten in the forest. I remember other derelict or abandoned buildings in the forest also. They were always merely sided with peeling tar paper. Tar paper shacks for real. There is a particular scent memory to these kinds of places up here in mushroom country. A fungal scent, mixed with dust and the decay of rotting household items left behind when the people died or just left. We never knew anything about the previous inhabitants. Kids hear stuff when adults talk, but never get the whole story. And kids get stories wrong too. 

The Grubbies

There was at least one abandoned well out there too, we heard, but we never found it. Probably just as well.

This memory involves some sort of extremely outré religious community that had vanished as a living entity before our time there. It had been inhabited by men only we heard.

Deep in the forest, it seemed miles away to us, though it was probably only a few blocks away. Surrounded by a thick growth of tree trunks and brush was this shabby building. We thought it was creepy and actively frightening. This did not stop us from exploring.

This old building was easy to get into. Doors were not locked. It was all rough lumber with no finishing whatsoever. You could see daylight between the wall boards. Boards they were too, maybe 1x8s in a vertical position. The very high ceiling had holes in it too.

In the main hall were several rough homemade desks and stools built very tall for some reason. Seemed like it would have been hard to get up on those stools. I might also remember some dusty books, perhaps some Bibles and other papers. I don’t remember searching for the living quarters.

We understood that they were like monks perhaps. Men living without women in the forest in their strange wooden building. Maybe they were trying to concentrate on God alone out there.

One of the things we probably got wrong was the name of the place. We thought it was New Jericho, but I bet you anything that it was really called New Jerusalem by its odd inhabitants. That is a realization that just occurred to me yesterday after all these years.

I wonder what happened to them. Did they just die off, or did they leave to ponder God somewhere else?

Some Hunters Came Hunting

 

That evening Julia prepared a venison roast herself. I had never seen her so animated. She hummed little songs and laughed to herself. I made the salad and the potatoes.
She was a bit of a mystery.

_____________________________________

Next morning when I went into the mobile Julia was already up and sitting in her kitchen with Billy, drinking coffee. This was unusual, she usually slept in a bit. She had been up long enough to make muffins too.

“Beth, I got a call early this morning from Ben Jr. He said that yesterday when he was in town after classes, there was a strange official looking van driving around and the guys in it were going into stores and even on the street asking questions. He said they were asking about strangers in town or in the area,” said Julia. “They didn’t explain why they were asking; they were weird and rude. No one wanted to talk to them once they met them.”

“He thought you might want to know. Of course, he told them nothing. He said he hadn’t noticed anyone new at all. He said they looked kind of official, but he had never seen that uniform or that insignia before.”

I was proud of the boy’s instincts but thought right away that we might need to fill him in a little. I had to suppose that he knew we were here on the quiet, but he didn’t really understand why.

“I wonder what brought them here Aunt Julia,” I said slowly. “I thought we had made a clean break. I haven’t contacted anyone in Washington, even on a public computer, and I do need to let some people know I am alive.”

She said, “it might have something to do with your stolen car. What if the guy who took it got picked up with it and told the law where he got it? I don’t know why he would. I also don’t know how your kidnappers would find out about that. But far stranger things have happened. A leak is a leak and water runs downhill Beth.”

“You’re right Auntie, it has to be the car somehow. There is also the fact that Jessie's connection to this Res is known to anyone who checks him out.” My tummy felt sick and cold. I didn't know what to believe right then.

Her look was enigmatic and dark. I was glad that she had never turned those glittering black eyes on me like that!

I didn’t even stay for coffee but ran out to the hogan to speak with Jessie. He didn’t look any happier than his aunt had. He agreed that it had to be our old Honda that had provided a good clue as to where we had gone. We were not sure what our next move, if any, should be.

It occurred to me that maybe the USPS was the safest way for me to contact some of my friends up north, the ones I had been forming into a little bit of a resistance movement. That would be slow, but safest in the long run. I needed to let them know why I was gone. I knew better than to write down on paper where we were. Paper could be found by anyone, even if only sent to a trustworthy friend. That’s just the truth and I knew it.

So, after breakfast, with the sun coming up outside, I sat at our little table and wrote a long letter to my friend Letitia explaining what had happened to me, and that I was alive and well, and I joked about an undisclosed location. I asked her to let the rest of our motley gang of alert friends know that the situation had become a step more perilous for them. I only wrote the one letter. I didn’t write a return address on it either. I realized that there would be a post mark of course. So, to keep my dear friends in the dark, and anyone else, Jessie and I decided to drive up into Utah to mail the letter in a little place called Kanab. It would be a pleasant change and safer for my friends to not know where we had gone.

There being no time like the present, Jessie and I decided to go right away. It was still morning. We said goodbye to Aunt Julia, leaving her on her own for the day. We would be driving home in the dark possibly but that was okay. After gassing up in Joseph City, we drove north.

Kanab turned out to not be such a little place. It was an old Mormon town, of course, and the setting for many western TV shows and movies. After stopping at the Kanab Post Office to mail the letter, we found the Wild Thyme Café convenient for dinner. It was like a taste of our old familiar foods up north. Western Washinton is a famously foodie area.

Heading south back into Arizona was a drive into a beautiful sunset, and then the stars came out. I never could get enough of those stars. The distress of the early morning seemed rather remote as we rolled down into Arizona toward our new home. It was a sleepy sweet drive in that old blue truck rattling along the highway making about fifty miles per hour.

Home at last, after checking on Julia, we were all tucked in and nearly asleep when I started hearing some kind of fussing and yipping out beyond the buildings. Not sure what to think of it, I woke Jessie and said “listen, what is that?” He sat up in the dark and listened for a few minutes.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think it sounds dangerous. I better go look.” He jumped in his jeans and shoes and grabbed his flashlight. I wasn’t really sure about this, but I let him go.

Five minutes later he was back. Tucked under his arm he had a fuzzy pup that appeared to be maybe a couple of months old. It reminded me of pups I had seen before in my childhood. A mutt. Maybe half German Shepherd and half some sort of Collie. Terribly, terribly cute, bright eyed and curious about where it found itself. 

“I found this out there digging up the deer guts and stringing them around all over the ground. He made a hell of a mess,” said Jessie rather loudly. “What in the hell are we going to do with him!”

“Well,” I said, “um, feed him? After we wash him?”

The whole deal so far; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx

A Woodsy Conversation

 

Ralph:   Maeve…. What are you doing upside down?

Maeve:    I’m trying to gain perspective.

R.:         Body posture isn’t everything Maeve.  What are you talking about anyhow?

(Ralph is lounging on his favorite mossy log, near the cave.)

M.:       Say, did you know that Maeve means intoxicating? Back in mythic times she was a warrior queen in pre-Christian Ireland. I bet they all were. Warrior queens, that is.

R.:        Looks more like intoxicated at the moment. Did you name yourself?

M.:       Yes, very funny. What I mean is that nothing makes sense anymore. For instance, you Ralph.  You are a near mythical hominid, but you have a ball cap on. Riddle me that!  Also, how did you find one big enough?

R.:     They’re adjustable. You’re trying to avoid answering me!

M.:    No. It’s hard to explain. Has Mankind always been so self-destructive? They worry me. As you know, I see it all. I also hear all. That engineer says that I am a spy.  But I am really more like a witness.

R.:     Bad timing.  I was just starting to modernize. Heck, Ramona cooks! No Sqatchwife ever did THAT before.  Thaga said she would teach Ramona to knit! Can you see Twigg in sweaters? Can you see me in a sweater!

M.:   Never mind all that Ralph. I see that bone pipe in your mouth. Where do you get tobacco?  What in the world….? You spend too much time peeking into windows. Next, you’ll want a recliner in the cave. Did you make that thing? You know, you already smell pretty much like an annoyed skunk.

R.:   Yeah. I sawed off a section of deer leg bone after Ramona was done boiling it clean and I hollowed it out. I had to work on it in some guy’s garage while he was sleeping. I figured if he came out, I would scare him. That usually works.

Yes.  They’ve always been self-destructive.  Next question.  Why do you think we stay, mostly, away from them?

Tobacco? Did I say that? (he fiddles around with his pipe a bit, grinning)

M.:   Oh no.

R.:   Yeah, Uncle Bob traded that Portable Portal to some Plaidies for enough of this for both of us!

M.:   Who are Plaidies?

R.:   I don’t like to say.  Bad stuff happens if you call them out. We invented that name because they wear little plaid coats. They are about the size of gophers.  Really cute! Sharp traders too!

M.:   You and Bob are hobnobbing with the wee folk? He’s already lost the best gadget he will ever have.  For weed?  What next?

(Maeve rights herself on the branch.  Her bright black eyes regard Ralph sharply.)

R.:   I don’t feel like I can go back Maeve.  It seems like once you know a thing you have to decide something about it. One of them said you are responsible for what you know.

We used to eat deer, rabbits, fish, and birds raw.  I can’t do that again. Disgust might be one of Mankind’s defining features. Once you feel it, though, it doesn’t just disappear.

I am not one of them. But I don’t think they should get all the good stuff, you know?

(Ralph turns his cap around backwards, tucks his pipe down under his favorite mossy log and heads back to the cave to see if Ramona has something good for dinner.

Maeve takes her black shiny self to wherever it is that Ravens go when they leave the conversation. She is rather amused at Ralph thinking that Ramona isn't going to smell it on him.)

Tuesday Is Wide Open

This is it.  Everything I got done today.

Not much.  Just a start.

No stories. No amateur philosophizing. 

I hope it's a lovely Tuesday!

All is well!

The Attraction Of The Other

 

Don't you wonder what is over that hill?  Way over there?

I didn’t have much to talk about yesterday so I will tell you what I was dreaming about. Dreaming as in non-scholarly pondering. 

I was thinking about the mechanisms for change among people in the past. Why didn’t they just stay put in their home villages, or their caves, or their floating reed houses or whatever? What made them leave? (This makes me think of Carl Sandburg’s very long poem, The People, Yes. https://www.amazon.com/People-Yes-Carl-Sandburg/dp/0156716658)

Why do people go out of their way to pick up new words and techniques and styles and foods, whole lands, etc?

Why do the races mix and remix?

I tried to imagine a world where nothing ever changed. Depends on where you start, doesn’t it? We could be living in grass huts or caves, if nothing ever changed!

Some of the usual good reasons for leaving home are climate got strange, food ran out, those other guys are trying to kill us, or hey those guys have a whole bunch of gold/money/spices/slaves/silk…let’s go get it!

But I was thinking about something else. I believe people are just attracted to the “Other.” I can imagine that as a mechanism for change all during human history. Maybe we are like certain birds. Things just catch our eye. Shiny things. Weird things. The girls in the next village! But mostly things that we see as better than what we have at home, or the way mom or dad always did it. Or, we just want more.

“The people have the element of surprise!” Carl Sandburg.

Taking My Time

 

I have always been a hurrier. The faster the better was my way. I also appeared at least fifteen minutes early for appointments. 

This morning I was, as usual, hurrying to get ready to leave the house for a terribly urgent appointment. Right? Going to meet my daughter to go shopping. Not really all that urgent when I thought about it.

I was thinking about this as a way of life. Perhaps it’s wrongheaded. Perhaps it is a fruit of fear and lack of confidence. Lately I have been trying to determine where the center of life is. Is it out there somewhere or is it inside me.

Maybe I had been operating as if there was a timekeeper out there counting how long it took me to do what I needed to do. Who was this timekeeper, anyhow? Habit? Paranoia? Childhood training?

What would it be like if I moved at a relaxed but efficient speed? Would the world collapse? No, not really. I might even take the time to do a better job of whatever I was doing.

Maybe I have the God-given authority to do things in my own time!

Maybe I am meant to be at peace in all, the same as all of us are.

What do you think?

I'm taking the time for a number of things that weren't important yesterday...

***

Ecclesiastes 3

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Knitting As A Manifestation Of Love, And Lower Mathematics

 

I know that I have touched on this in a past post, but I have gathered some more thoughts on the matter today. 

When I sit silently knitting, while some program that I don’t need to look at much is nattering on, several things are going on in my mind. I am in a state of meditation usually. It is like a pool of quiet to me. I can be there and also monitor what is being said in my presence. It helps me to pay attention to the spoken word. It obviates tension.

Knitting represents an unfolding in the physical. It is simple math. I progress through a pattern which exists completed in my mind. I am in the moving present then. I don’t use other’s patterns. I have, but that is a whole different deal.

It represents inquiry on my part when I was very young, willingness to take instruction, practice, and patience. It represents a desire to use my human ability to bring forth from the inside to the outside. A birth in a way.

For me knitting is sensory too. There is a tactile satisfaction in the fine smooth needles and certainly in the various fibers, colors and spun styles of the yarn itself. It is often quite succulent.

In a closely related subject, spinning yarn is its own story. Spinning yarn creates order out of chaos! If you start with raw wool, it is a long process involving washing and drying the wool, carding, which is like combing in a way, to make it ready to spin. Order increases as the process continues. In home spinning, little sausages of combed wool called rolags are brought to the wheel or the drop spindle and a bit of the wool is drawn out and attached to a length of leader yarn already on the spinning wheel. Then the process of drawing out and twisting the yarn begins. You can see that this is a process of refinement. 

When it comes to the knitting, then, the process continues. I have a little joke. I call the knitted object re-organized sheep. These days I mostly use purchased yarn. 

It sounds rather physical, doesn’t it? But the physical is just the outer working of thought and my intentions. 

By the time I get to designing, or simply using a well-known practical pattern, which exists only in my mind, I am beginning to think about the person who will receive the finished work. I try to create a pleasing thing. By the way, if you dropped all of the things that I have knitted or sewn for loved ones on me I am pretty sure it would squash me! lol! Of course it would.

I will tell you that during the long hours that person rests in my heart and in my good intentions towards them.

It means that for that period of time as I completed stitch after stitch, I was in my homely way manifesting my love for that person, persistently, quietly and with determination.

This is just my example. I believe that it is mirrored by everything a person does for another’s welfare or comfort. Even just making dinner.

AND, just in case anybody is curious about this arcane art...

Transient Gold

 

I am here without much to say.

I really like Mike Oblinski's work.

This video is a fine meditation.

I pray that the Lord bless you, 

and I wish you a golden Friday.

In Which We Enter The Earth At Last

 

*Well, I was spreading the word no more. I was living in Arizona with Jessie, his sweet old auntie, a Tom cat, six hens, and the whole Navajo Reservation to call home. We were ghosts in our own nation.

I called it a good trade.

***!***

Winter continued. There were bitterly cold days. There were mild days. Not much snow at all. The desert all around was beautiful, stark, a picture in contrasts.

One day when it wasn’t too cold and there wasn’t much to do, Jessie decided that we should go look in Uncle John’s little forgotten mine, just to see how it looked down there and to get our bearings. Also, he wanted to see if he could find any reason to keep working the mine. In other words, was there any sign remaining of the vein Uncle John had been following.

In the mornings the sun shone directly towards the mine shaft, making that seem like a very good time to choose to explore it. So, after breakfast and taking care of the hens, we bundled up in coats, hats, socks and shoes and gloves. Jessie got his super bright flashlight out of the hogan.

The trail to the mine passed behind our hogan, downhill to the small stream, which we crossed by means of some steppingstones that had no doubt been placed there many years before by Uncle John. Then we walked uphill back out of the gully for a quarter of a mile. The trail was faint, but still visible. Even in this dry place plant life will reclaim a place with no traffic.

When we got to the mine opening, I saw that it was about the size of a small household door, such as to a closet. There was no door, however. Above the doorway on a horizonal piece of bracing timber was a light green plastic cross of the type that glows in the dark, after storing daylight all day. The shaft was open to the elements and whatever creature might wish to enter. Sitting off to the left side was a little shack about man height, with a door, quite firmly closed. Naturally, Jessie pulled the door open with some effort. It had been closed for years after all. Inside were three shelves. On two of the shelves there was nothing. On the top shelf was a case marked dynamite. It held six old sticks. They looked old, and they were a little sweaty, like maybe they weren’t very stable anymore. He shut the door again. Something to keep in mind. Also, something to research. Was it still usable?

With the sun on our backs, we paused at the entrance to this hole in the earth. What a lot of work it must have been to create this opening and the further mine shaft, even with the help of explosives.

Jessie grinned at me and switched on his flashlight and went first. I followed a few feet behind him. The sunlight vanished inside the shaft. We were in the dark except for the beam of light from the flashlight. We waited while our eyes adjusted to the sudden change in illumination. Soon small shiny reflections appeared in the dark all along the left side granite wall when the beam of light passed over it. 

Jessie said, “Beth, we goofed. We should have brought something to throw to make noise. You know by now that rattlers live around here and favor holes in the ground. We need to know if any of them are here. Let’s get back out and grab some sticks.”

We entered more cautiously the second time, listening for any of that typical rattle. The whole mine was only about 25 feet deep and only about 2 feet wide in some places. Jessie threw a few big branches down toward the end to startle any sleepy snakes. There didn’t seem to be any. We couldn’t raise a rattle, thankfully.

We proceeded. To my untaught eyes, the mine appeared to be full of possibilities. There were little twinkles, brilliant in the relative dark, all along the left side, in a sort of river of golden sparks at about waist height. We knew that Uncle John had only quit mining because of his health failing. It seemed like there was still gold here.

Suddenly, there was some kind of movement and sound down at the very end of the shaft. It was so startling, a sort of growl and shuffling, that just like in every scary movie ever, Jessie dropped the flashlight, and it went dark! We were in the dark in a mine with something growling at us!

We froze, desperately straining our eyes to try to understand what it could be! Two yellow eyes looked back at us! They began coming towards us too, moving fast. Something large and furry brushed my legs running powerfully. My hand just touched its back, and a kind of terrified thrill ran up my arm. I had touched something wild and elemental with my very hand! Its tail whipped my legs, and it was gone in less than a second.

When I began breathing again, I said, “let’s go home now! I think we’ve seen the mine.” On shaky legs I headed for the outer air and Jessie followed silently. It was very good to see the sky again.

When we got home Julia was dozing in her chair with Billy attending, and the TV droning away about some family in Alaska. While I rattled around in the kitchen making toasted cheese sandwiches and coffee, Jessie filled her in on the morning’s adventures.

Aunt Julia said, “she didn’t mean you any harm. You just startled her!” Then she laughed, to herself it seemed. A question passed my mind. “No,” I thought reasonably to myself. “Such things do not happen,” I told myself.

Jessie put a couple of pieces of wood in Julia’s stove. I refilled her coffee cup, and we headed out to our own little place. I felt like taking a little nap. It was not to be.

Outside the mobile there were cat prints in the light dusting of snow on the ground. They circled the chicken’s pen and then went right out to where we were going, back and forth a couple of times. I felt that essential thrill again just looking at these tracks. More was to come.

When we neared our door, something was lying on the ground in front of it on the pathway. It was a deer carcass. It was a young doe with a grievous wound in her throat and still warm. She lay there like a gift, an offering of some sort. Was it for peace between us? Or something else?

Well, what could we do? Being reasonable people, we decided to process the deer. I had never been present at a butchering, but Jessie had. We didn’t have any large knives, but Julia did. Once again, we had a very strange story to tell her, but she seemed to concentrate on the fact of venison. She was apparently passing fond of venison and almost purred at the prospect of a whole deer.

Jessie borrowed some rope from Julia and a big heavy knife from her kitchen. He lugged the deer over to one of those trees behind the mobile, tied her back feet together, threw the rope over a sturdy branch and hung her there to finish bleeding out, after he had removed the head. It was a messy job, something that I had never expected to be a part of. He removed the insides after making a long slit in her belly. The entrails were set aside to bury along with the head. Some of the organs we would give to the chickens, the heart and liver we kept. Then he skinned her. The skin we would nail to the outside of the hogan to dry, maybe someday to tan it. Then came the big job of true butchering. There are a lot of left over bits when butchering an animal, I found out during the afternoon. I had to go back to the house and borrow a plastic tub, which was not large enough for the whole thing. It was quite a big job. There was a lot of wrapping to do, which we did later.

Aunt Julia did not have a big freezer, but her son, Ben, did. So, she called Ben Jr. to come pick some of the meat up to store in his freezer. After wrapping, in plastic wrap and butcher paper, I put as much as I could in her fridge freezer.

We didn’t feel like explaining to Ben how we had come to have this deer. We just let it go. He didn’t ask either.

That evening Julia prepared a venison roast herself. I had never seen her so animated.

Link to the whole story so far; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx

Promise!

 

Winter in Darrington.

The view out of the cave opening was not encouraging. It was very white out there. It was also cold and very windy.

A fire was roaring in the usual circle of stones between the warm cave proper and the forest outdoors. Still, snow drifted in and turned to steam near the fire. A persistent layer of cold air hovered just over the cave floor.

Ralph, bending down to peer outside, sighed a massive sigh like the wind passing by.

“Ramona, I better get out there and try to grab something we can eat. I dunno. Maybe a deer. We should hibernate like bears,” he murmured. "Then we could sleep all winter." 

Ralph and Ramona and little Twigg live in the foothills of the Cascades, just at the snowline. Their cave isn’t too far from the storied timber town of Darrington. It's pretty nice for a Sasquatch domicile. They don’t sit or sleep on the floor. Thaga had a hand in this. She and Ramona spent the summer, on dry sunny days, gathering moss and bundles of grass to spread on the floor until there was a layer about a foot thick of bouncy warm plant matter. Of course, it would have to be replaced next summer. 

Summer in Darrington.

Ralph had carried in some big flat smooth river rocks to sit on, and he also made a bed of springy saplings woven into a strong platform placed on some large logs. He was quite proud of his project.

 

Thaga provided a huge heavy quilt she had found somewhere, for the bed. She has her sources, not strictly larcenous. 

Sitting in the shadows, Ramona said, “I hate it when you go out there and leave us here. I never know if you will come back. Goodness knows what could happen out there!”

“You have abandonment issues Ramona. As soon as you can’t see me, you think I am gone forever. I am never gone. No matter where I am, when I am ‘there’ I am just as ‘here’ as I always was. Or am. You are always in my thoughts. I’ll get you some more firewood before I go. I won't even be long.”

“Promise, Ralph?  You never forget us?" Ramona smiled a little tearfully.

His laughter shook snow out of trees outside. Bears rolled over in their sleep. Rabbits went to the deepest hollows of their burrows.

People in Darrington heard a strange loud rumbling noise from the hillsides. “Maybe it was a landslide!”

“I promise.”

 

Then the huge form ducked down and passed out of the cave's low opening.

PSA*!* A Timely Reminder Dealing With Immunity

May you indeed. Amen Bob.

 Well, I have had my eyes opened.  Again. But for reasons that will be easy to keep in mind in future.

If you can, it would be worthwhile to watch the video, before it gets lost or something.

It's about vitamin D.  Yep.  We all know about vitamin D.  It's good for your bones! However, it is utterly essential for your immune system.

Some things I learned by knitting and sitting and listening.

1. It's made in the skin of oily young pale people when they go out to play in the sunshine.

2. The elderly, the dark skinned can't make it in their skin. The obese make it in their skin but it gets sidetracked. The elderly because their skin is dry, the dark because sunshine is blocked out and the obese because the vitamin D gets grabbed by their adipose tissue and kept there. The only way to correct their deficiency is by supplementation.  Having them sit in the sun is nice, but it doesn't raise their blood levels of vitamin D.

3. These were the people who were most ill from covid, or who died from it.

4. The medical powers ignored all of this and continued to push the poison shots.  After each injection a person's blood level of vitamin D goes down and unless it is supplemented it gets down to where their lives are in peril. 

5. Each vitamin D molecule, converted to the proper chemical to activate the immune cells is only used once.  Must keep supplementing.

The video lays it out well. I just hit the highest high spots. It's an easy and cheap thing to supplement and also life saving.

I just wanted to be sure you all knew how important it is.

As the 2nd Smartest Guy In The World™ says:

They want you dead.

Do not comply!